Supplication 2 part 4/6

It is enough if we also approve this very thing by divine testimonies. In the prophet Zechariah we read: Ho, ho, flee from the land of the north, says the Lord, for I will gather you from the four winds of heaven into Zion: be saved, you who dwell with the daughter of Babylon, for thus says the Lord almighty: After the glory He sent me against the nations which despoiled you; for whoever touches you touches as it were the pupil of His own eye: for behold, I bring My hand upon them; and they shall be spoils to those who served them: and you shall know that the Lord almighty sent me (Zech. 2:6-9).

If you attend to this chapter, you will find that the almighty Son was sent by the almighty Father, to come to the aid of those placed in captivity. For consider that the prophet says: Thus says the Lord almighty: and let us hear, the prophet reporting, what the Lord almighty says: After the glory, He says, He sent me against the nations: without doubt it is the Son who says that He was sent after the glory against the nations, whom the prophet calls the Lord almighty. This Son therefore, existing as the Lord almighty, in the final testimony—and you shall know that the Lord almighty sent me, as was said above—was sent by the almighty Father. But the apostle John also in the Apocalypse says these things:

Amen, the faithful witness, the beginning of the creation of God (Rev. 3:14), who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Lord God almighty (Rev. 1:4,8; 4:8). And Solomon, among other things, says concerning Wisdom—which is surely Christ the Son of God: For He is the brightness of the eternal light, and the spotless mirror; the Lord almighty is His name (Wis. 7:26,27): Likewise: He also who redeemed them, the Lord almighty is His name. Likewise in Maccabees: For not yet [had come] the judgment of the almighty and all-possessing God; [He is] the majesty, and the image of His goodness, and since He is one, He can do all things. How is He not almighty, since He can do all things? For above also He had said concerning the same Wisdom, having all power (ibid., 23):

therefore He is almighty, having all power. But further the same Solomon says concerning the same Wisdom: And remaining in herself she makes all things new (ibid., 27). And elsewhere Solomon: For your almighty hand is not powerless (Wis. 11:18). Likewise the same: Your almighty Word, leaping down from the royal thrones (Wis. 18:15). II. Recognize His omnipotence, since He makes all things new: recognize meanwhile also that He is unchangeable, since while remaining in herself she makes all things new: that is, although she makes all things new, she herself nevertheless perseveres unchangeable; which belongs to none but the almighty God. But because the Son is truly unchangeable and the creator of all, this too is approved by these verses of the Psalmist:

In the beginning You, O Lord, founded the earth, and the heavens are the works of Your hands: they shall perish, but You shall remain; and they all shall grow old as a garment: and as a vesture You shall change them, and they shall be changed: but You are the same, and Your years shall not fail (Ps. 101:26-28). Paul, writing to the Hebrews, interpreted this as written concerning the Son of God (Heb. 1:10-12). You have therefore through these chapters both the almighty Son, and the unchangeable, and the creator of all, just as also the craftsman of all, Solomon saying: For Wisdom, the craftsman of all things, taught me (Wis. 7:21). But it must be guarded against, lest you understand two almighty ones:

for although both the Father is almighty and the Son, nevertheless there is one almighty, just as there is also one God: indeed the omnipotence of the Father and the Son is the same, just as the deity also is the same, according to what was expressed above as far as our powers and the constraining condition of time allowed. But now also it will be explained below by the testimony of the prophet Isaiah: Egypt is wearied, and the merchandise of the Ethiopians, and the Sabaeans, men of stature, shall pass over to you, and they shall be yours as servants; and after you they shall follow, bound in chains, and they shall worship you, and shall make supplication to you: for in you is God, and there is no God besides you. For you are God, and we knew it not, the God of Israel the Savior. They shall be ashamed and confounded, all who oppose Him, and they shall go in confusion. (Isa.

45:14). Mark that it is said to the Son: and they shall be yours as servants, and after you they shall follow, bound in chains, and they shall worship you, and shall make supplication to you. Therefore from this also the Son is shown to be true God, since He is worshipped. For to be worshipped belongs to God: indeed elsewhere too the Apostle teaches that it is written concerning the Son of God: And let all the angels of God worship Him (Heb. 1:6): namely, because He is truly God and Lord. But in this present testimony of Isaiah, just as He Himself is God, so also God is in Him: for he says, For in you is God, and there is no God besides you. And when he had said that God is in God, he goes on and says: For you are God, and we knew it not, the God of Israel the Savior.

Therefore, since God is in God, and there is no God besides Him in whom God is, and He Himself is God the Savior of Israel; the unity of divinity in the Father and the Son is shown, just as also of omnipotence, and of whatever altogether belongs to the divine substance: the Son differing from the Father in this alone, that the one is Father and this one is Son; that is, that the one begot and this one was born: yet not that, because He was born, He has anything less than what is in God the Father—being the image of the invisible God (Col. 1:15), and the brightness of glory, and the express character of His substance (Heb. 1:3). Those who do not believe this concerning the Son of God shall undergo the sentence of Isaiah, who says: They shall be ashamed, and confounded, all who oppose Him, and they shall go in confusion.

But Jeremiah also expresses the Son's deity, saying: 'This is our God, and no other shall be accounted beside him; he it is who found out the whole way of wisdom, and gave it to Jacob his servant, and to Israel his beloved. Afterward he was seen upon earth, and dwelt among men' (Baruch 3:36-38). Surely it was not God the Father, but the Son made man, who was seen upon earth and dwelt among men, exercising in himself the nature of man without sin for our salvation; concerning whom we also read: 'And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us: and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father' (John 1:14). III.

If therefore the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, born of a virgin as God-with-us, what do you now gain, O heretic? If you object the infirmities of the flesh which he assumed, if you describe the passions of the human soul which he had taken on together with the flesh as profitable to us—when it is established that he, insofar as he is God and the Son of God, is in all things impassible like the Father. For this reason we have already affirmed those things which belong to his deity, so that if now anything of lowliness and infirmity is read of Christ, it may not be believed that his deity has been violated, but that the fulfilment of the nature of the man he assumed, and of the teaching which he was handing down, is proved. For it would be in vain that he willed to be born—not indeed as God, yet truly as man, born of a virgin—and not to manifest in himself the weak nature of man.

It would be in vain to give precepts by which men should live, and then for him—since once he deigned to be man—to have hurried on without the observance of those very precepts. If he, having been made man, had not willed to exercise the infirmity of man, who would believe that he had truly been made man from the womb of our origin, though without the embrace of a man? For even to this day there are not lacking those who deny that he bore our bodily substance, even after he had exercised the infirmity of the flesh. If he, having been made man, had not kept the discipline which he had come to teach, he would not have given a good example of mastery. For what disciple would strive to keep what the Master himself, made as man, had not kept?

—since today whoever keeps it by his example is lifted up to keep it. You see that he had to suffer infirmities also, so that he might be proved to have been born as man; and being made man, to observe whatever he had taught, so that he might invite the rest—or rather, I would say, so that he might raise up the rest: for now our flesh has learned to be lifted up by his flesh. For if he had not willed to suffer the infirmities of man, why was he even born as man of a virgin? And if he was unwilling to observe the precepts, because he was Lord, why had he even taken the form of a servant, which is bound to precepts and obedience? Yet the whole mystery of the man assumed by God is this: that what in Adam was not kept, in disobedience, in Christ the man should be kept, in obedience.

The Apostle Paul asserts this very thing among the other matters which he treats divinely: 'For as by the disobedience of one man many were made sinners, so also by the obedience of one many shall be made righteous' (Rom. 5:19). (For as by the contempt of one man many were made sinners, so also through the mystery of obedience in Christ—which he grants not out of infirmity, but out of the goodness of his deity, unto the saving discipline of man—many are saved). IV. Let us now consider also the mystery of the Passion. The whole Adam had sinned; the whole Adam had been cast out of paradise: he who had come to save the whole had to take upon himself the whole that had been cast out.

But he would not have seemed to take the whole that was cast out upon himself, unless he had taken it on through the substance of flesh and soul: for in this is the whole man by nature. And this could then be proved, if he sustained the very infirmities of his flesh and soul, though without the defect of sins; so that he might not be thought to have taken on some other substance of flesh and soul: that when he frees in himself the man from infirmities and passions, we might believe that those also who follow according to his footsteps are freed. But let the Apostle, the teacher of the nations, support this understanding still more forcibly, writing as a mystic interpreter: 'For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive' (1 Cor. 15:22).

But Isaiah may better describe the nature of the man assumed in him: 'Lord, who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? We announced him before him as a child, as a root in a thirsting ground: he has no form nor comeliness of beauty: and we saw him, and he had no form nor grace: but his form was without honour, failing beyond all other men: a man set in affliction, and knowing how to bear infirmity, for his face was turned away: he was despised, and not esteemed. He bears our sins, and grieves for us: and we accounted him to be in grief and in affliction and in suffering: but he was wounded for our iniquities, and made weak for our sins:'

'the chastisement of our peace was upon him; by his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray: man has gone astray from his own way, and the Lord delivered him up for our sins: and he, because he was ill-treated, opened not his mouth. He was led as a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb before its shearer, so he opened not his mouth: in his humiliation his judgment was taken away. Who shall declare his generation? for his life shall be taken from the earth: for the iniquities of my people he was led to death; and I will give the wicked for his burial, and the rich for his death. Because he did no iniquity, neither was deceit found in his mouth' (Isa. 53:1-9). V.

It is sufficient to have proved by this testimony that he carried out in himself the whole nature of man, yet without any sin of his own, although he bore our sins. But lest he should be believed to be man only, the prophet interposed and said: 'Who shall declare his generation?'—that generation, namely, by which he was begotten of God the Father, which is without beginning: and therefore he says of it, 'Who shall declare his generation?'—not as if it were unknowable, but as inexpressible. For we all who are catholic know that he was born of God the Father, but ineffably: and therefore he says, 'Who shall declare his generation?' But this generation by which he is born of a virgin according to the flesh, the Gospel relates, also describing its times.

But the beginning of the divine generation, as we have said, cannot be investigated, just as neither can the divinity which is one with the Father: and therefore he says, 'Who shall declare his generation?' If therefore in the mystery of faith we have received this, that we believe Christ to be God and man—God indeed, of God without beginning only; but man, because born of a virgin in time—let us not slander his divinity, when for our healing he carries out the things of man, having in himself the nature of man which he has taken; for neither is the man to be denied, when he puts forth the natural power of his own divinity, having taken upon himself the servile form. If therefore he both prays to the Father, and if he says that he can do nothing of himself (John 5:19), except what he sees the Father doing;

—to say nothing else now, certainly it is a measure of human exaltation which the Master imposes; so that man may learn all the more to defer to God, inasmuch as the true Son also deferred, who had no proper cause for subjection, who had also given a form of prayer, that we should ask not so much that our will be done, but the will of the Father who is in heaven (Matt. 6:10). And therefore, that he might fulfil what he had taught, he says: 'I came not to do my own will, but the will of him that sent me' (John 6:38). But also that he was made less, that he grows, that he advances, that he hungers, that he thirsts, that he labours, that he weeps, that he grieves, that he is sorrowful, and finally that he dies:

—all this is to be referred to the nature of the man assumed, which he mystically exercised for the mystery of our salvation, under the understanding which was set forth above in the testimony of Isaiah. Under this mystery of faith are loosed not only those points concerning which you deigned to inquire, but also all the questions which impious heretics frame against the divinity of the Son. ON WHAT THE SON SAYS: 'THE FATHER IS GREATER THAN I.' I. Receive now also these questions, which you had proposed from the opposing side as stronger, specially resolved. The heretics say, you tell me, in order to belittle the perpetual and perfect deity of the Son in all things: 'The Father is greater than I' (John 14:28). But it must be inquired when the Son said this:

was it not when there was fulfilled in him that which is written: 'Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, thou hast crowned him with glory and honour' (Ps. 8:6)? How he was made lower, let the Apostle Paul expound, who was privy to the third heaven: 'We see Jesus,' he says, 'made a little lower than the angels on account of the suffering of death; crowned with glory and honour, that by the grace of God he might taste death for all' (Heb. 2:9). 'For all,' he says, not for himself: therefore, since he tasted death for all, what wonder if for all he was also made lower? But he tasted death for all, not for himself, because, having been made man for all who lay under the guilt of sin, he himself was held bound by no sin of his own.

And see how this very fact—that he was made lower on account of the suffering of death, and that by the grace of God he tasted death for all—the most wise Paul interprets unto the beauty of the work, continuing thus: 'For it became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings' (Heb. 2:10). You see how beautiful, how truly comely a mystery of our salvation is shown in this, that the Son is shown to be made lower. How then do you cast it up as a reproach, to obscure his divinity, what he carries out unto beauty? 'The Father is greater than I': this he said then, after that the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us. II.

And see that you do not believe him changeable, as though he ceased to be the Word after he was made flesh; but remaining ever the Word, God, he was also made flesh. For although he said, 'And the Word was made flesh,' he wished to speak more pressingly, lest anyone should not believe in him a true flesh. For indeed, even after so pressing a statement, there are not lacking those who say that he had a putative flesh. But that it may be plain that the Word was made flesh, not by a change of the divine substance, but by the assumption of human flesh, attend to what follows: 'And dwelt among us.' The Word, then, which dwelt among us through the flesh it assumed, was not intercepted by any change: for the dwelling proves the perseverance of the Word.

I have interposed this for the reason that no one should believe the Son of God changeable, when he reads: 'And the Word was made flesh.' The Son therefore says, 'The Father is greater than I,' after that the Word was made flesh, and took up the office of one who ministers. For he came not to be ministered unto, but to minister. 'The Father is greater than I' (cf. Matt. 20:28). What sayest thou, O deity? how dost thou say that the Father is greater than thou? Surely thou and the Father have one image according to Moses, and the same form according to the Apostle Paul, who taught me also that thou art 'the brightness of glory and the express image of his substance' (Heb. 1:3). But thou thyself also hast taught, saying: 'He that hath seen me, hath seen the Father; and I am in the Father and the Father in me' (John 14:9). 'I and the Father are one' (John 10:30).

But also whatsoever the Father does, thou dost likewise: for these are thine own words: 'For whatsoever things he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise: and as the Father raiseth up the dead and quickeneth them, so the Son also quickeneth whom he will, and that they may honour the Son, even as they honour the Father' (John 5:19-23). Since therefore thou hast the same image, the same form and the same substance, the same unity of nature, the same power, the same freedom of will, the same honour, and absolutely all things which are the Father's are thine, because what are thine are the Father's; how sayest thou, 'The Father is greater than I,' when in all things which belong to deity thou art such as the Father is also? Let the Apostle Paul speak, in whom Christ was speaking, according to what he himself says:

'Do ye seek a proof of Christ that speaketh in me?' (2 Cor. 13:3). What does the Apostle say? '...who, being established in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God' (Phil. 2:6). Therefore, according to this—that he is in the form of God and that he is equal with God—the Father is not greater. And how the Father is greater, the following words demonstrate. 'But he emptied himself,' he says, 'taking the form of a servant' (Phil. 2:7-8). III. See that here too you do not understand an interception of the divinity, when you hear, 'he emptied himself': for attend to what follows, 'taking the form of a servant.' He is therefore shown to remain in his own state, who is said to have taken the form of a servant.

But although the divine state remains and perseveres in him, nevertheless he emptied himself, namely by the concealment of his divinity, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and found in fashion as a man. He humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Now, being such, if he says, 'The Father is greater than I,' he does not impugn the equality of the divinity, but designates the mystery of the humanity, through the fact that he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant. Now, being such, if he says, 'The Father who sent me gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak' (John 12:49); and: 'I came down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him that sent me' (John 6:38);

—he shows that he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and found in fashion as a man: he humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death: and yet what diminution of his divinity is there in these things, if, in order to cut away arrogance in men, he himself spoke without arrogating anything to himself? Let me be a liar, if the Apostle Paul could not have used this very testimony for the purpose of provoking individuals by his example to the humility of the Saviour. You will find it to be so, if you read more attentively the same Epistle which he writes to the Philippians. But the heretics also are unwilling that, on account of the mystery of God emptied through the taking of the servile form, the words 'The Father is greater than I' should be understood.

Let us too speak of the Father as greater, with respect to the mystery of generation alone: for some catholics also have pursued this pious sense, saying that the Father and the Son are of the same substance, and therefore, according to substance, the one is not greater than the other. For such as God the Father is, such also is God the Son: for he begat nothing less than himself; for, being perfect, he begat the perfect. Although therefore, as God, the Son is equal to God, nevertheless, as Son, he is said to be less than the Father: that is, because the Son is of the Father, and, being fulness, he begat fulness: but the Father begat the Son, and therefore he did not say, 'God is greater than I,' but, 'The Father is greater than I.' On what is read in the Acts of the Apostles:

'LET ALL THE HOUSE OF ISRAEL THEREFORE KNOW MOST ASSUREDLY, THAT GOD HATH MADE THAT SAME JESUS, WHOM YE HAVE CRUCIFIED, BOTH LORD AND CHRIST.' I. Among the other things by which the heretics would have it believed that the Son of God was made, I have also set down this from the person of the opposing party, which we read in the Acts of the Apostles, blessed Peter saying: 'Let all the house of Israel therefore know most assuredly, that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ' (Acts 2:36). But the resolution of this question too is plain, according to the earlier exposition, in which we said that the Son of God was also made the Son of man.

Although he cannot suffer, because the Son of God is the Word and Wisdom of God, since according to this he ever perseveres impassible, just as his Father also; nevertheless, through the fact that he was made man, born of the Virgin Mary, he is passible: inasmuch as he both sustained death, and the death of the cross, while ever remaining in himself, because he is God, inviolable, even when he is engaged in the man and is crucified. This Jesus therefore, who is according to the flesh, God made both Lord and Christ. For according to the fact that he is the only-begotten Son of God, who is the Word and Wisdom of God, he is no creature, nor awaiting promotions, since he exists in all things as perfect God, just as his Father also.

But this Jesus, according to the flesh, was made Christ, when first that servile form which he had taken on was freed from the sin of Adam. For Adam fell back from dominion into servitude through the commission of sin: 'For everyone that committeth sin is a servant' (John 8:34). But the Saviour renewed, much more firmly, nay even incorruptibly, the dominion in the man he assumed, when in him he wiped away that very sin which through Adam had been the cause of the abject servitude. But he was again made truly Lord, when the believing peoples subjected themselves to his dominion in him. For, summoned by the exhortations of holy Scripture which says, 'Serve the Lord in fear' (Ps. 2:11);

—each one, now recognizing in Christ a saving dominion, says: 'Is not my soul subject unto God?' (Ps. 62:1). To become the servant of such a one is of the highest beauty, and as it were a certain nobility surpassing the world. Therefore the Apostle also writes it as his glory: 'Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ' (Rom. 1:1). You see how he was made Lord, when even he who had persecuted him confesses him as his Lord for his own highest glory. II. But Jesus according to the flesh was made not only Lord, but also Christ. Now in the name of Christ are involved the mysteries of king and priest. We read that in the Old Testament the priests and kings among the Israelites were consecrated by the anointing of oil, and therefore they were called anointed ones.

For what is called 'Christ' in Greek, that among the Latins is interpreted 'anointed' or 'smeared.' But our Saviour was truly made Christ according to the flesh, being a true King, a true Priest also: both the same one himself, lest anything should be held to be lacking in the Saviour. Hear him therefore made king, when he says: 'But I am appointed king by him over Sion his holy mountain' (Ps. 2:6). Hear too that he is a priest, from the testimony of the Father who says: 'Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchisedech' (Ps. 110:4). Aaron in the law was first made priest by the anointing of the chrism; he did not say 'after the order of Aaron,' lest it should be believed that the Saviour's priesthood too could be held by succession.

For that priesthood which was in Aaron consisted in succession: but the priesthood of the Saviour is not transferred to another by succession, because he himself perpetually perseveres as priest, according to what is written: 'Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchisedech.' The Saviour, then, according to the flesh, is both King and Priest, yet not anointed bodily, but spiritually. For those kings and priests among the Israelites, bodily anointed with the anointing of oil, were kings and priests; not both in one, but each one of them was either a king or a priest: for to Christ alone is due perfection in all things and fulness, who had also come to fulfil the law.

But although they were not each one both, nevertheless, anointed bodily with royal or priestly oil, they were called anointed ones. But the Saviour, who is truly Christ, was anointed with the Holy Spirit, that there might be fulfilled what was written of him: 'Therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows' (Ps. 45:7). For in this he was anointed more than the partakers of that name, since he was anointed with the oil of gladness, by which nothing else is signified than the Holy Spirit. III. That this is true, we learn from the Saviour himself. For when he had received the book of Isaiah, and had read, 'The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me' (Luke 4:18), he said that the prophecy was then fulfilled in the ears of the hearers.