Institutes & Conferences 3 part 10/11

And yet, if it pleased you to use apostolic testimony, why, content with one saying of his, did you keep silent about all the rest, and did not at once subjoin this: 'Paul, an apostle, not from men neither through man, but through Jesus Christ'; or that: 'We speak wisdom among the perfect,' and after other things: 'which,' he says, 'none of the princes of this world knew; for had they known it, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory'; or that: 'For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily'; and: 'One Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things'? Or, approving the Apostle in part and reproving him in part, do you receive him only in that where, according to the dispensation, he names Christ a man, and reject him in that where he names Him God?

For Paul does not deny the man Jesus, but yet confesses the same man to be God, and so proclaims that resurrection came to the human race through a man, that he nevertheless confirms that in that very man God rose again. For see whether he proclaims Him who rose again to be God, who testifies that He who was crucified is the Lord of glory. But yet, lest you should render the Lord Jesus as if one of the common crowd, you have given Him something of dignity, bestowing on Him honor as on a holy man, not divinity as on true man and true God. For what do you say? 'God formed the Lord's incarnation: let us honor the God-receiving form together with God as one form of the deity, as the inseparable statue of the divine will, as the image of the hidden God.'

Above you said that Adam was the image of God; here you say that Christ is an image: the one a statue and this one a statue. But thanks, forsooth, are to be rendered to you for the honor of God, because you concede that the God-receiving form is to be honored together with God! In which there is not so much honor as injury: for not even in this very thing do you bestow upon the Lord Jesus Christ the honor of divinity, but you deny it. For by the subtle art of impiety you say He is to be honored together with God, so as not to confess that He is God; and by this very thing whereby you seem deceitfully to have joined Him, you disjoin Him. For since indeed you blasphemously hold that He is to be honored not as God to be worshipped, but as it were together with God, you therefore bestow on Him the conjunction of divine nearness, in order to take away the truth of the Godhead.

Most impious and most crafty enemy of God, you wish to accomplish the crime of one denying under the name of one confessing. 'Let us honor,' you say, 'as the inseparable statue of the divine will, as the image of the hidden God.' The honor of our Creator and Redeemer, the Lord Jesus Christ, has profited us much, forsooth, through His benefits! If we have therefore been redeemed by Him from eternal destruction, in order that we should call our Redeemer a statue, we strive, forsooth, to respond to His kindness and mercy with worthy homage, with worthy worship, if we too endeavor to take away the majesty which He did not refuse to humble for our sake! But you excuse, forsooth, the contumely brought upon the Lord by the office of a subordinate honor, saying: 'as it were the image of the hidden God.'

In that you call Him an image, you compare Him to the human condition; in that you call Him the image of the hidden God, you derogate from His most certain dignity. For David says: 'God shall come manifestly, our God, and shall not keep silence.' And He came indeed, and did not keep silence, who, before He Himself said anything after His birth, declared His coming by both earthly and heavenly witnesses alike, while a star points Him out, while Magi adore, while angels announce. What more do you seek? His voice was still silent on earth, and His honor already cried aloud in heaven. Do you say, then, that God lay hidden and lies hidden in Him? But this neither the prophets, nor the patriarchs, nor finally the whole Law foretold.

For they did not say He would lie hidden, who foretold to all that He would come. You err, unhappy blindness, seeking and not finding causes for blaspheming. You say that He lay hidden even after His coming; I prove that He did not lie hidden even before He came. For did the sacrament of the God to be born of a Virgin lie hidden from that eminent patriarch, on whom the appellation 'vision of the present God' was imposed, who from the name of the supplanter rose up into the name of Israel? He, when in the contest of a man wrestling with him he had recognized the mystery of the future Incarnation, said, 'I have seen God face to face, and my soul has been saved.' What, I pray, had he seen, that he should believe he had seen God?

Did God then present Himself to him amid lightnings and thunders, or did the flashing face of the Godhead show itself to him with heaven opened from within? Nothing of the sort; but on the contrary he rather saw a man and recognized God. O truly worthy of the name he obtained, who by his inner eyes rather than his outward ones deserved the dignity of the title given him by God! He saw a human form wrestling with him, and yet bore witness that he was seeing God. For he knew assuredly that this human form was the truth of God, because in the very form in which God then appeared, in that same form He was afterward to come in the truth of that form itself. And yet why should we wonder if so great a patriarch believed without doubt what God Himself showed him so plainly through Himself, when He says:

'I have seen God face to face, and my soul has been saved'? What so much of His present Godhead had God shown him, that he should say that the face of God had been made manifest to him? For, as it seemed, only a man had appeared to him, whom he had even overcome in the struggle. But this assuredly God was doing through anticipatory signs of things to come, that there might be no one who would not believe that God had been born of man, since even the patriarch had already before beheld God in human form. But why do I linger so long over a single example, as though many were lacking? For could God, soon to come in the flesh, then lie hidden from men, when the prophet declared of Him openly, as it were to the whole human race: 'Behold your God,' and elsewhere: 'This is our God,' and that other saying:

'the mighty God, the Father of the age to come, the Prince of peace: and of His kingdom there shall be no end'? But even when He had now come, did those who openly confessed that He had come fail to know that He had come? Did Peter not know the coming of God when he said: 'Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God'? Did Martha not know what she was saying or in whom she believed, when she said: 'Yea, Lord, I have believed that Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God, who art come into this world'? In short, all those who sought from Him either the healing of diseases, or the restoration of limbs, or the raising of the dead to life—did they beg these things from the weakness of a man or from the omnipotence of God?

The devil himself, in short, when he tempted Him with every allurement of enticement, with every art of his wickedness—what did he in his ignorance suspect, or what did he in his tempting desire to know? Or what had so greatly moved him that he sought God in the lowliness of a man? Had he learned this from earlier evidences, or had he ever truly known that God had come in a human body? Certainly not; but by the great tokens of His signs, by the great proofs of things, and by the very voices of the truth, he was driven to suspicion and inquiry concerning this matter—especially he who had once already heard from John: 'Behold the Lamb of God, behold Him who takes away the sin of the world,' and again from the same: 'I ought to be baptized by Thee, and comest Thou to me?'

The dove also, descending from heaven and resting above the Lord's head, had given a clear and manifest indication of the God thus declared. A voice too, sent from God not through riddles nor through figures, had stirred him, saying: 'Thou art my beloved Son: in Thee I am well pleased.' And therefore, although outwardly he saw a man in Jesus, he sought to probe the Son of God, saying: 'If Thou art the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.' Did the sight of a man rob the devil of his suspicion of the Godhead, so that from seeing a man he believed it impossible that He could be God? Certainly not; but what does he say? 'If Thou art the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.' He did not doubt that it could be so, but examined whether it was so:

his anxiety was about the truth, not his assurance about impossibility. And yet he assuredly knew that the Lord Jesus Christ had been born of Mary; he knew that He had been wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger, that His entry into human existence had been poor in its smallness, and that His infancy was destitute even of the lawful services of the cradle; he did not doubt, moreover, that He had true flesh and was truly born a man. And why did this seem too little to give him assurance? Why did he believe that He whom he knew to be truly a man could be God? Learn then, unhappy madness; learn, insane and cruel impiety; learn at last to be of less perfidy even than the devil. He said, 'If Thou art the Son of God'; thou sayest, 'He is not the Son of God.' What he asked, thou deniest.

No one until now has been found, save thee, who has surpassed the devil's impiety. What he confessed could be true in the Lord, thou believest could not have been. But perhaps he afterward ceased and grew quiet, and, his temptations having been foiled, laid aside his suspicion because he found no result? On the contrary, it remained in him always, and, heaped up in him through his own dread, his suspicion persisted even up to the very cross of the Lord. What more? Not even then did he cease to think Him the Son of God, after he had learned how much was permitted against Him to his own persecutors.

But the cunning enemy, beholding the signs of Godhead even amid those very bodily sufferings, though he preferred that He be a man, was nevertheless compelled to suspect that He was God; for although he preferred to believe what he wished, he was yet driven by sure evidences of things to that which he feared. And no wonder. For although he saw Him spat upon and scourged and afflicted with insults and led to the cross, he yet perceived, amid the very indignities of these injuries, divine powers overflowing—when the veil of the temple is rent, when the sun flees away, when the day is darkened, when all things feel the power of the Passion, and even all things that know not God acknowledge the working of the Godhead.

And therefore, seeing this and trembling, the devil in every way attempted, even in the very consummation of the man, to arrive at the recognition of God, saying through those who had crucified Him: 'If He is the Son of God, let Him now come down from the cross, and we will believe Him.' He indeed perceived that our Lord God was working the redemption of human salvation through the suffering of the body, and at the same time that through it he himself was being destroyed and subjugated, and we redeemed and saved; and therefore the enemy of the human race wished by every means and every wile to frustrate those things which he knew were being done for the redemption of all. 'If He is the Son of God,' he says, 'let Him now come down from the cross, and we will believe Him'—that is, that the Lord, moved by the insult of these words, might forsake the mystery while avenging the injury.

Thou seest, then, that the Lord, even while set upon the cross, is called the Son of God; thou seest that they suspect that very thing which they name. Learn therefore, as I said above, to believe Him the Son of God even from His very persecutors, or from the devil. Who has ever equaled the unbelief of the demons? Who has surpassed it? He suspected Him to be the Son of God even when He endured death; thou deniest it even when He rose again. He suspected Him to be God when He hid Himself from him; thou deniest Him to be God to whom He proved Himself. Thou usest, therefore, the sacred Scriptures against God, and thou strivest to make His very own witnesses testify against Him. But how? Truly, so as to be a prevaricator not only of God, but even of the testimonies themselves. And no wonder indeed if, because thou canst not do what thou wilt, thou doest only what thou canst:

since thou art unable to turn the sacred testimonies against God, thou pervertest what thou art able—the testimonies themselves. For thou sayest: 'Then Paul also lies about Christ when he says: without mother, without genealogy.' I ask thee, of whom wouldst thou have Paul to have said this? Of the Son and Word of God, or of Christ, whom thou separatest from the Son of God and blasphemously assertest to be only a man? If of Christ—of Him, that is, whom thou callest a solitary man—how could a man be born without mother, without a genealogy of maternal origin? But if of the Word of God and the Son of God, what shall we make of the fact that the same apostle—thy witness, as thou, sacrilegious one, supposest—in the same place and by the same testimony declares that He whom thou assertest to be without mother is also without father, saying: without father, without mother, without genealogy?

It remains therefore that, using the apostle's testimony—since thou assertest the Son of God to be without mother—thou must blasphemously make Him to be without father also. Thou seest, then, into what precipice of impiety thou hast cast thyself by thy zeal for perversity and wickedness, so that—what no one until now from the ages, save perhaps a madman, has said—while thou sayest the Son of God had no mother, thou wouldst deny His Father as well. And this too, I know not whether by greater impiety or greater folly, since what is more stupid, what more foolish, than to set down the name of Son and yet wish to pass over the name of Father in silence? But thou sayest: 'I do not pass it over in silence, nor deny it.' And what madness then compelled thee to cite that testimony where, while thou sayest He had no mother, thou seemest also to have denied His Father?

For since in the same testimony He is said to be both without mother and likewise without father, it necessarily follows that, if He can there be understood to be without mother, then in the same manner in which He is there understood to be without mother, He must also be believed to be without father. But that precipitate madness bent on denying God did not perceive this—which, while it set down as maimed what had been written whole, did not see that, once the sequence of the sacred volume was laid open, its shameless and manifest falsehood could be refuted. O foolish frenzy of blasphemy, which, while it itself does not see what ought to follow, likewise had no discernment of what could be read:

as though, forsooth, because it took away understanding from itself, it could take away the reading from all men, or as though all men were therefore about to lose the eyes of their heads for reading, because it had itself already lost the eyes of its mind. Hear then, heretic, what thou hast filched; hear whole and entire the words which thou hast set down crippled and truncated. The apostle, desiring to instill into all men the twofold nativity of God, that he might show the Lord both born in the Godhead and in the flesh, says: 'without father, without mother.' For the one is proper to the nativity of the Godhead, the other to that of the flesh; and just as in the Godhead He is without mother, so in the body He is begotten without father. And thus, since He is neither without father nor without mother, and yet

He must nevertheless be believed to be both without father and without mother, because, if thou regardest His being born of the Father, He is without mother, but if of the mother, He is without father. And thus, having the one in each of the two nativities, He lacked neither in both, because neither did the nativity of the Godhead need a mother, nor for the nativity of the body did He suffice not to Himself. 'Without father,' therefore, says the apostle, 'without mother, without genealogy.' How does he say that the Lord was without genealogy, when the Gospel of Matthew began from the genealogy of the Saviour, saying: 'The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham'? Therefore according to the evangelist He has a genealogy, and according to the apostle He has not, because according to the Gospel He has it from His mother, according to the apostle He has it not from His father.

And therefore the apostle rightly, in saying 'without father, without mother, without genealogy,' where he set down that He was begotten without mother, there also recorded that He was without genealogy. And by this, in both nativities of the Lord, both the Gospel and the apostolic writings agree together, because both according to the evangelist He has a genealogy, being incarnate without father, and according to the apostle He has none, being begotten as Lord in the Godhead without mother, as Isaiah says: 'But His generation, who shall declare it?' Why then, heretic, didst thou not in this manner set down whole and uncorrupted the things thou hadst read?

Thou seest, then, that the apostle, by the very reasoning by which he set down that the Lord was born without father, set Him down also as without mother, so that by the reasoning by which He was understood to be without father, by that same He might be known to be without mother; and as He could not be believed to be without father, so neither could He be understood to be without mother. Why then, heretic, didst thou not set down whole and inviolate the things which thou hadst read in the apostle, but insertest one part and withdrawest another, and, that thou mightest by crime build up thy falsehood, dost steal the words of the truth? I see by whom thou art led. For thou must be believed to have the instruction of him whose example thou followest. For thus the devil in the Gospel, tempting the Lord, says: 'If Thou art the Son of God, cast Thyself down. For it is written:

for He shall give His angels charge concerning Thee, to keep Thee in all Thy ways.' And when he had said this, he withdrew what cohered with it and followed it, namely: 'Upon the asp and the basilisk thou shalt tread, and thou shalt trample the lion and the dragon.' Cunningly indeed he set down the former part and withdrew the latter: for the former he set down that he might circumvent, this he passed over in silence lest he should condemn himself. For he knew that he himself was marked out by the prophetic voice as the asp and the basilisk, as the lion and the dragon. So then thou too, casting one part forward and withdrawing the other, settest down that part, forsooth, that thou mayest ensnare, and withdrawest this, lest, if thou hadst set down the whole, thou shouldst thyself condemn thy own deceit. But it is at last time to pass on to further matters.

For, lingering too long over individual points, while we are led on by the desire of a copious reply, we exceed the measure even of a longer book. Thou sayest, then, in another disputation—nay rather, in another of thy blasphemies: 'And He who created His humanity separated it also from the divine nature by the Spirit.' For he says that what was born of Mary is of the Holy Spirit—He who also filled with righteousness that which was created. For he says: 'He appeared in the flesh, was justified in the Spirit.' Likewise, He who made Him also dreadful to the demons. 'For I,' he says, 'by the Spirit of God cast out demons.' He who also made His flesh a temple: 'For I saw the Spirit descending as a dove and remaining upon Him.' Likewise, He who granted Him elevation into heaven. For he says:

'Giving commandment to the apostles whom He had chosen, He was taken up by the Holy Spirit.' Lastly, He who bestowed such great glory upon Christ ...... All thy blasphemy, then, in these things is this: that Christ had nothing through Himself, but that not even He, as thou sayest—a solitary man—received anything from the Word, that is, from the Son of God, but that all in Him was the gift of the Spirit. If, therefore, we shall demonstrate that all that thou referrest to the Spirit is His own, what remains but that—He whom thou wouldst have understood to be a man because, as thou sayest, He had all borrowed—we should prove to be God, because He had all His own? And this indeed we shall prove not by disputations only or by arguments, but by the very voice of the Godhead, since nothing testifies more rightly of God than the divine words:

and since nothing knows itself better than the very majesty of God, nothing is believed of God more worthily than those things in which God Himself is His own witness. First, then, as to what thou sayest, that the Holy Spirit created His humanity—we could understand this in a simple sense, if we recognized that thou hadst not put it forward faithlessly. For neither do we deny that the Lord's flesh was conceived of the Holy Spirit; but we say the body was so conceived by the cooperation of the Spirit, that nevertheless we say the man created for Himself by the Son of God is His own—the Holy Spirit Himself saying and testifying in the sacred writings: 'Wisdom hath built herself a house.' Thou seest, then, that what was conceived by the Holy Spirit was built and perfected by the Son of God:

not because the work of the Son of God is one thing and that of the Holy Spirit another, but because, through the unity of the Godhead and majesty, both the operation of the Spirit is the building of the Son of God, and the building of the Son of God is the cooperation of the Holy Spirit. And therefore we read not only that the Holy Spirit came upon the Virgin, but also that the power of the Most High overshadowed the Virgin, so that—since Wisdom herself is the fullness of the Godhead—when Wisdom built the house for herself, no one should doubt that the whole fullness of the Godhead was present. But wretched madness of blasphemy, while it strives to separate Christ from the Son of God, does not see that it utterly separates the nature of the Godhead from itself:

unless perhaps it believes that a house was built for Him by the Holy Spirit for this reason, that He Himself was not fit or able to build a house for Himself. But how insane, as well as ridiculous, is this—that He who is believed to have created by His nod the whole universe of things heavenly and earthly, should be believed unable to build for Himself a body—especially since the power of the Holy Spirit is His power, and the Godhead and majesty of the Trinity is so united to itself and inseparable, that nothing whatsoever can be understood in one Person of the Deity that could be separated from the fullness of the Godhead.

Therefore, this being laid down and understood—that, according to the faith of the sacred Scripture, with the Holy Spirit coming upon and the power of the Most High overshadowing, Wisdom built the house for herself—the remaining blasphemies of thy calumnies are nothing. For there is no doubt that He made all things through Himself and in Himself, in whose name and faith even the faith of believers has never been without power; for neither did He need the help of another, since not even they had need who believed in His power. And therefore that too, which thou sayest—that He was justified by the Spirit, and that the Holy Spirit made Him dreadful to the demons, and that His flesh was made a temple by the Spirit, and that He was elevated into heaven by the Spirit—all these are sacrilegious and frenzied:

not because in all these things which He Himself did, the unity and cooperation of the Spirit is to be believed to have been lacking—seeing that the Godhead is never absent from itself, and in the works of the Saviour there was always the power of the Trinity—but because thou wouldst have the Holy Spirit come to the aid of the Lord Jesus Christ as though to one helpless and feeble, as having bestowed on Him, forsooth, those things which He Himself could not furnish for Himself. Learn therefore from the sacred testimonies to believe Him God, and not to mingle falsehood with truth, since the matter does not admit it and reason shudders—that the understanding of a demonic spirit should be mixed with divine testimonies. Now first, this that thou sayest, that righteousness filled that which was created, and this thou wouldst prove by the apostolic testimony where he says:

'He appeared in the flesh, was justified in the Spirit'—both of these thou speakest with an insane sense and a frenzied spirit, because both this, that thou wouldst have Him filled with righteousness by the Spirit, thou settest down in order to show His emptiness, to which thou assertest the fulfilling of righteousness was granted; and this, that thou usest the apostolic testimony on this matter, thou stealest away the order and reasoning of the divine testimony. For it was not so set down by the apostle as thou hast set it down, maimed and vitiated. For what does the apostle say? 'And manifestly great is the mystery of godliness, which was manifested in the flesh, justified in the Spirit.' Thou seest, then, that the apostle proclaimed the mystery or sacrament of godliness to be justified.

For he himself was not so forgetful of his own sayings and doctrine as to say that He needed righteousness whom he himself had always proclaimed to be righteousness, saying: 'Who was made unto us righteousness and sanctification and redemption.' Elsewhere too he says: 'But ye are washed, but ye are justified, but ye are sanctified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.' How far, therefore, is it from Him that He should have needed the fulfilling of righteousness, who fulfilled all righteousness, and that His majesty should have lacked the use of that whose very name justifies all things!

Thou seest, then, how inept thy blasphemy is, or how insane, since thou strivest to take away from our Lord God that which is always so largely poured out from Him upon all believers, that yet it is never diminished in Him by its continual lavishing. Thou sayest also that the Spirit made Him dreadful to the demons. To reject and refute which, although the very execrableness of the saying suffices, yet we adduce examples. Tell me, I pray thee, thou who sayest that His being feared by the demons was not His own but borrowed, and wouldst have this to have been not of power but of gift—how did even His name have the power by which He Himself, as thou sayest, was in need? How were demons cast out, the feeble healed, the dead raised, in His name?

For Peter the apostle said to that lame man who sat at the Beautiful gate of the temple: 'In the name of Jesus Christ, rise up and walk.' And again, in the city of Joppa, to him who for eight years had lain paralytic on his bed: 'Aeneas, Jesus Christ healeth thee: arise and make thy bed.' Paul too said: 'I charge thee'—to the spirit of Python—'in the name of Jesus Christ, come out of her: and the demon came out of her.' But how far this feebleness was from our Lord, understand from this: that I say that not even those were feeble whom He made powerful through His name, since we have known that never after the Lord's resurrection did either a demon or any infirmity withstand any of the apostles.

How then did the Spirit render Him dreadful, who made others to be dreadful; or how was He in Himself weak, whose faith reigned over all things even through others? Finally, those who received power from God never used that power as their own, but referred that very power back to Him from whom they had received it, because neither could that power ever have any force save through the name of Him who gave it. And therefore both the apostles and all the ministers of God never did anything in their own name, but in the name and invocation of Christ, because the power itself received its virtue from the same source whence it had its beginning, and could by no means be given through the ministers unless it had come from the Author.

Thou, then, who wouldst have the Lord to have been the same as one of His own servants (since, just as the apostles assuredly had nothing except what they had received from their Lord, so thou wouldst have the Lord Himself to have had nothing except what He received from the Spirit, and by this, even that which He had, thou wouldst have Him to have had not as Lord but received as a servant)—tell me, then, how did He use that power as His own, not as received? For what do we read of Him? 'Arise,' He says to the paralytic, 'take up thy bed and go into thy house.' And again, to the father praying for his son: 'Go, thy son liveth.' And that instance where the only son of his mother was being carried to the tomb: 'Young man, I say to thee, arise.'