Works 5

I. What is to be answered to those who, reading in the Gospel thus: 'The Father is greater than I,' blaspheme that the Son is lesser in divinity? Response. According to the authority of all the Scriptures, there are two nativities in Christ: one from the Father, knowing no beginning, because we read: 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,' and He who was in the beginning encloses within Himself every beginning. But from the mother He took a beginning, as we read through Isaiah: 'Behold, a virgin shall conceive in her womb and shall bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel,' which is interpreted: 'God with us,' that is, majesty lying hidden in human frailty, as we read in John the Evangelist:

'And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us'—'among us,' that is, in the frailty of our body. Likewise concerning the generation of the Virgin Mary: 'And the gate was shut and was not opened'; as if, when it was asked why it was not opened, he added: 'because the Lord passed through it.' The gate shut, that is, the seal of modesty, the integrity of immaculate flesh. For she was not violated by childbirth, who rather was sanctified by conception. Likewise concerning the twofold substance of Christ, of God and of man: 'And they shall be,' he says, 'two in one flesh,' that is, God and man, one Christ; which the Apostle commanded to be understood of Christ and the Church, that is, of the body of Christ, as he says: 'And they shall be two in one flesh. But I speak in Christ and in the Church.'

This he plainly expounded to the Romans: 'our fathers, from whom is Christ according to the flesh,' asserting the flesh of man; consequently he asserts the parts of God, saying: 'who is over all things, God blessed unto the ages.' Here so perfect an eminence of the Son is declared that greater things cannot be said of the Father. For if He had a beginning, He would not be over all things, but among all things, which by the condition of their making are contained within a beginning. But Christ, because He is equal to the Father, is enclosed by no law of time, no law of age. Evidently too, to the Philippians the Apostle proclaims two nativities and two substances of Christ, saying: 'who, when he was in the form of God, took the form of a servant.' Of which rules the volumes of the New and Old Testament are full.

Similarly Job also, the excellent prophet, proclaims: 'And in my flesh I shall see God.' Which he prophesied of that time when the deity of Christ was clothed in the guise of our flesh. Since therefore, as we have said before, the Word was made flesh, and it is established that there are two, man and God, in one flesh, now man speaks to the Father, now God; now visible from the mother, now invisible from the Father. Give the words of the man. He Himself says in the Gospel: 'The Son of man has not where to lay his head.' Let this poor Son of man show here His riches in the glory of divinity: 'All things,' He says, 'that the Father has are mine.' While He says 'all,' He left here nothing that He might have less from the Father. 'All,' that is, the power, substance, majesty of the one Deity.

Who would not tremble to call Him lesser, who, a truthful witness, makes Himself equal to the Father generally and in all things, as the Evangelist pronounces of Him: 'Therefore the Jews wished to kill Him, because He called God His own Father, making Himself equal to God'; and to the Philippians: 'He thought it not robbery to be equal with God'—that is, the equality of divinity which the rebel angel wished to seize by robbery, Christ possesses by nature. When therefore you believe Him when He says Himself lesser in the substance of man, believe Him when He professes Himself equal in the substance of divinity. Let the Son of man speak: 'The Father,' He says, 'is greater than I'; let the Son of God speak: 'I and the Father are one.'

As man He hungers; as God He satisfies five thousand hungry men with five loaves by the obedient service of His creature. As man He hangs on the cross; as God from the cross He brings the thief into paradise, by deeds speaking through all the world, saying: 'Amen I say to thee, this day thou shalt be with me in paradise.' At which time the body of the Lord was in the tomb, the soul in hell, the divinity in paradise and in heaven, everywhere embracing all things within itself by the surpassing immensity of majesty. According to the man He is called lesser, when He is seized, scourged, crucified, dies, is buried; according to God, exalted to the heavens by the power of the resurrection—as man having undergone death, as God above death.

According to this rule He is now poor, now rich; now lesser, now equal; now lord, now servant. Then, therefore, let Him be believed lesser than the Father, when the Creator of angels is made a little lower than the angels, as we read in the eighth Psalm: 'Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels'; then, therefore, let Him be called lesser than the Father, when He is described to have taken the form of a servant, when also He is found younger than the mother, when He says of Himself in the twenty-first Psalm: 'They have dug my hands and my feet, they have numbered all my bones.' That therefore He is called lesser than the Father according to the flesh and according to the man, is declared by innumerable testimonies of the Scriptures. Concerning His divinity the Apostle speaks thus to Titus:

'The grace of God our Savior has appeared,' and again: 'looking for the blessed hope and the coming of the glory of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ.' It is a monstrous crime that He should be said to be lesser through the infidel blasphemies of men, whom truth itself professes to be the great God. For Thomas the apostle also, in the Gospel of John, where after the resurrection he recognized the body of the crucified man by the marks of the nails, confessed with apostolic and evangelical authority the God who lay hidden within the man, saying thus: 'My Lord and my God.' If faith be present, the reasoning is open by which Christ is asserted in the sacred volumes now lesser, now equal to the Father, as He Himself says of Himself: 'I am the first and the last.'

Undoubtedly recognize that He who is the first cannot have one before Him. Likewise: 'I am Alpha and Omega,' and just as no letter precedes the letter A, so it is established that the Son of God is second to none, because He is God. II. What shall we answer to those who say the Holy Spirit is a lesser God, or, what is more wicked, with abrupt impiety pronounce Him to be ministerial rather than God? Response. How shall He be called a creature, who is proved to be the Creator of the Lord from Mary, as we read: 'conceived of the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary'? For Christ was conceived not of the substance of the Holy Spirit, but of His power; not by generation, but by command and blessing.

And just as by the Father, so also by the Holy Spirit He was destined for the redemption of our wickedness, He Himself speaking of Himself through Isaiah: 'The Father sent me, and His Spirit.' If the Holy Spirit is believed lesser, how does the Son testify that He was sent, just as by the Father, so also by the Holy Spirit? The Holy Spirit Himself spoke in the apostles, He Himself glowed in the prophets, the blessed apostle Peter saying in his epistle: 'Prophecy,' he says, 'was not brought by men, but the holy men of God, inspired by the Holy Spirit, spoke.' And the Savior in Matthew says thus to His disciples: 'It is not you,' He says, 'who speak, but the Holy Spirit.'

Similarly David also, full of the Holy Spirit and knowing that it was He who spoke through him, pronounces plainly, saying: 'I will hear what the Lord God speaks in me.' When therefore the vessels of God, drunk with the Holy Spirit, speak and say: 'Thus says the Lord God,' or: 'The God of gods, the Lord, has spoken,' it is manifest that this Lord God is the Holy Spirit. And to the Corinthians he evidently shows the Holy Spirit to be God, when he says: 'You are the temple of God.' And who this God might be, he consequently taught, saying thus: 'The Holy Spirit,' he says, 'dwells in you.' Therefore the God of the temple and the Holy Spirit, the Inhabitant of the temple, are one person. And in the Acts of the Apostles Peter evidently speaks thus to Ananias concerning the deity of the Holy Spirit:

'Who compelled you to lie to the Holy Spirit? You have not,' he says, 'lied to men, but to God.' What is so evident? Behold, he is recorded to have vowed a vow to God, and is convicted of having lied to the Holy Spirit. If the Holy Spirit were not God, the injury of sacrilegious falsehood would in no way have reached to Him. Likewise to the Corinthians is the voice of the Apostle: 'Know you not that your members are the temple of the Holy Spirit? Glorify and bear God in your body.' They are surely bidden to bear that God whose temples they are declared to be. III. What shall we answer to those who say: 'The Father cannot but be first, who is named first in baptism'? Response. The Holy Spirit also is first, without whom it does not suffice to have named the first.

He admits neither number nor order, who in the substance of the Three is one and alone. IV. What shall we answer to those who blaspheme with impious mouth, saying: 'Therefore the Holy Spirit is not God, because He has wrought nothing as God'? Response. Let us see whether nothing of divinity appears in His works. In the first place, the remission of sins is not granted unless the Holy Spirit is invoked. And because sins are not forgiven without the Holy Spirit, let us know that it was most plainly said also of Him: 'No one,' He says, 'can forgive sins but God alone.' Whom therefore you see to be the Restorer of man, doubt not that He is the Author of man.

He Himself in the first place made man without sin, who in the second, as Regenerator with the Father and the Son, looses man from the bond of sin. See how the Apostle in the epistle to the Corinthians celebrates together the works and powers of the Holy Spirit, saying thus: 'To each one is given through the Spirit the word of wisdom, to another the word of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith in the same Spirit, to another the grace of healings in the one Spirit, to another kinds of tongues, the working of powers, to another prophecy. All these worketh one and the same Spirit, dividing to each as He wills.' And how do we say He is ministerial, who has wrought the miracles of such great charisms by the choice of His own will and by the right of dominion?

Concerning whom we read, under the distinction of the Trinity, through the prophet: 'By the word of the Lord the heavens were made firm, and by the spirit of his mouth all their host.' The prophet said 'by the spirit of his mouth,' not 'of his work,' that you might know that He proceeded as it were from the substance of the Father. And therefore he says: the Spirit who proceeds from the Father. 'By the spirit of his mouth all their host': the powers of the heavens, that is, the angels, the dominations, the thrones, and the principalities—Truth declares that, just as by the Father and the Son, so also by the Holy Spirit they were created. Therefore you would not, save by monstrous sacrilege, call Him a creature whom you perceive to be the Creator of the whole heavenly host. According to these things, in the property and number of three persons acknowledge one power, one glory, one

nature—lest, with the Jews and the Patripassians, you deny the Son or the Holy Spirit apart from three persons, or, apart from one substance, be found together with the pagans to believe in three gods.