Anti-Arian Works 4 part 1/3

CHAPTER ONE. When, most beloved son Victor, I was reading over your letter, which breathed the most sweet fragrance of faith and charity, with every delight and eagerness of soul, I found appended the discourse of Fastidiosus, which you assigned me to refute. Having read it through, I grieved the more for one lost, the more I was compelled to shudder at the blasphemer; whom we knew, after the Christian faith, after the profession of a monk, after the honor of the priesthood which he received in the sight of men and did not possess before the Lord, to have turned away from the way of truth and to have utterly forgotten his own redemption, becoming a slave of fornication and luxury, and on this account to spurn the service of the divine majesty.

Hence it is that, having become a heretic from a Catholic, and bringing forth evil things out of the evil treasure of his heart, against the right faith, against the Catholic truth, gorged with the poison of impiety, he not undeservedly vomits out that discourse, since he has spurned the bread of life and, fastidious by the token of his own name, has cast away the wholesome food of the true faith. Moreover, in that profane discourse, calling us Homousians (which we Arians are wont to be named), he set down these words: 'To the Homousians,' he says, 'who assert an inseparable and undivided Trinity, and that the Son was not less than the Father, and that the Father, unbegotten, is not the maker of His own Son.' Consider, I pray, in these words of Fastidiosus certain things so badly put that they can never be rightly maintained;

and certain things spoken by him so impiously that they could also be well spoken (if only piety be present) and alike be uttered and heard. For that on which he thought we should be charged, namely because we call the Trinity inseparable and undivided, he put forth so badly and impiously that no one can put it forth well. For who does not see with what impiety a separable Trinity is asserted by the Arians? The blessed Apostle says of us: 'Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Tribulation, or distress, or peril, or famine, or persecution, or the sword?' (Rom. VIII). And a little after: 'I am certain that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present;'

'nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord' (ibid.). CHAPTER TWO. Since therefore the blessed Apostle is confident that through the grace of God we cannot be separated from His love, how do they not perceive themselves entangled in the deadly noose of impiety, who do not hesitate to preach the holy Trinity as separated, whose works they cannot show to be separable in anything? For in that which the evangelist says of the Son, 'All things were made by Him, and without Him was made nothing' (John 1); and in that which blessed David sings, 'How magnificent are Thy works, O Lord! Thou hast made all things in wisdom' (Ps.

CIII, 24); and the blessed Apostle professes Christ to be the power of God and the wisdom of God, of whom it is said: 'For in Him were all things created in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether Thrones, or Dominations, or Principalities, or Powers; all things were created by Him and in Him' (Col. 1, 16); it is manifest that all the works of the Father are the same works of the Son, and the same are the works of the Holy Spirit. For the holy Trinity works inseparably: nor is there any work which the Father has made and the Son has not made; or which the Son has made and the Holy Spirit has not made. For it is written: 'By the word of the Lord the heavens were established, and by the Spirit of His mouth all their power' (Ps. XXXII, 6).

Concerning wisdom also, which we say was created among the angels, we read written in the book of Ecclesiasticus: 'Wisdom was created before all things, and the understanding of prudence from everlasting' (Ecclus. I, 4). That He might show that the angels too were made by the Word of God, through whom all things were made, holy Scripture immediately subjoined: 'The Word of God is the fountain of wisdom, and His commandments are eternal entrance' (ibid., 5). And a little after, that He might show the angels to belong to the works of the Holy Spirit, it is thus said: 'One is the most high Creator, almighty, a powerful King and greatly to be feared, sitting upon His throne and ruling. God created her by the Holy Spirit' (ibid., 8).

What then shall be denied to have been made by the Holy Spirit, by whom the power of the heavens is read to have been established, and whose work created wisdom is proclaimed to be? For also concerning the divine gifts which God bestows on His Church, when the blessed Apostle spoke and had said: 'Now there are diversities of graces, but the same Spirit; and there are diversities of ministries, but the same Lord, who works all things in all' (1 Cor. XII, 4); then, having enumerated the diversity of heavenly gifts, he added: 'But all these things one and the same Spirit works, dividing to everyone according as He will' (ibid., 12). But what, among all creatures, in which wisdom reaches mightily from end to end and disposes all things sweetly (Wis.

VIII, 1)—what could be found alien to the operation of the Holy Spirit, when Christ, who is the power and wisdom of God, testifies that He casts out demons by the Spirit of God? For He Himself said: 'But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you' (Matt. XII, 28). How then does Fastidiosus deny an inseparable Trinity, when no Christian dares deny that the works of the Trinity are the same and inseparable in all creatures? For one God works inseparably, namely the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. For the Only-begotten of God testifies that His works are the same as those of His Father, saying: 'For whatsoever things the Father does, these the Son likewise does' (John V, 19).

And yet what the Son does, He does in the Holy Spirit, in whom He casts out demons. CHAPTER THREE. But lest, on account of our saying that the Son also does in the Holy Spirit whatever He does, the Arians should wish to assert some question of diversity, thinking that He in whom something is done ought to be received as less than He who does it, let them hear our Saviour resisting this perversity in every way in that which He says: 'But he that does truth comes to the light, that his works may be made manifest, because they are done in God' (John III, 20). Here let the Arians choose how they wish to understand God when named in the Son: whether the Father, or the Son, or the Holy Spirit?

For if they think the Father is to be understood, in whom good works are done by men, they themselves destroy what they object in blaspheming against the person of the Holy Spirit. For they will not dare to call the Father less, to whom according to divinity they refuse to preach the Son as equal. And on this account, since man does good works in the Father, and Christ casts out demons in the Holy Spirit, let them acknowledge the equality of the Father and of the Holy Spirit. But if they say the Son is here to be understood, from the fact that good works are done in the Son and in the Holy Spirit, they are not only compelled to confess the Son and the Holy Spirit equal, but they will also confess that the works of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit are the same and inseparable:

'For all things one and the same Spirit works' (1 Cor. XII, 12), as the blessed Apostle testifies. But if the Arians reckon it to be the Holy Spirit, they must from this passage be compelled to confess the Holy Spirit to be God. For it did not say, 'the spirit of the Lord, He that does truth, that his works may be made manifest, which are done in the Holy Spirit'; but, 'which are done in God'—which we say are done not in the Father alone, nor in the Son alone, nor in the Holy Spirit alone, but in that same holy Trinity, which is one God; we confess that truth is done by man in it, in which blessed David intimates that strength is wrought by the faithful, saying: 'In the Lord we shall do valiantly, and He will bring to nothing them that trouble us' (Ps. LIX, 14).

For He is the one God of whom the blessed Apostle says: 'For from Him and in Him are all things: to Him be glory for ever' (Rom. XI, 36). CHAPTER FOUR. How then is the holy Trinity called separable by the impious, when it works inseparably—by those by whom, as far as it is given to understand, it is not even conceived to be separated in the spirit, as the truth of the matter requires? For from our God, that is, from that same holy Trinity, nothing can be locally separated, because the same God, supreme, true, and good, as He made all things, so, immeasurable, contains and fills all things. But He is neither corporeal nor local, and therefore not even bodily things can be locally separated from God; because every body is in a place, and without God there is no place.

For God is so contained by no place, that He Himself contains every place; in whom there is no mass, and whose power is immeasurable. Since therefore bodies, which cannot exist without place, cannot be locally separated from God, without doubt neither are the spirits which God created locally separated from God. For every spirit which God created, in whatever place it is, there is God: who, although He is not in evil spirits through the grace by which He bestows a holy life and blessedness on those whom He Himself wills, yet through His natural power He is always so present in all His creatures, that no creature or particle of a creature can be found in which God is not present through His power.

That nature therefore can be separated from God, which was able or is able to be subject to sin. Nor is there any other thing which can depart from God, except the substance which is able or was able by its own will to sin. For Isaiah says: 'Behold, the hand of the Lord is not shortened, that it cannot save, neither is His ear made heavy, that it cannot hear; but your iniquities divide between you and your God' (Isa. LIX, 1, 2). In the book of Wisdom also it is shown that men are separated from God, not by places, but by depraved thoughts and wicked deeds. For there it is said: 'For perverse thoughts separate from God. But virtue, when it is tried, reproves the foolish:'

'for wisdom will not enter into a malicious soul, nor dwell in a body subject to sins; for the Holy Spirit of discipline will flee the deceitful, and will withdraw Himself from thoughts that are without understanding' (Wis. I, 3, 4, 5). But who does not here see the Trinity of persons intimated by their properties? For it was said that perverse thoughts separate from God, by which name the person of God the Father is recognized. Then it was added, that wisdom will not enter into a malicious soul, by which name Christ is shown, whom Paul calls the power of God and the wisdom of God. Then it was said that the Holy Spirit will flee the deceitful, and will withdraw Himself from thoughts that are without understanding.

But lest anyone should think that any wicked or impious persons could be locally separated from that holy Trinity, which is the one, true, and good God, a little after the Scripture speaks thus: 'For the Spirit of wisdom is benevolent (toward man), and will not acquit the evil-speaker from his lips, for God is witness of his reins, and the true searcher of his heart, and a hearer of his tongue. For the Spirit of the Lord has filled the whole world' (ibid., 6, 7). The divine oracles therefore do not cease to profess the immensity of the holy Trinity. This indeed blessed David most surely knew, and therefore said: 'Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit, and whither shall I flee from Thy face? If I ascend into heaven, Thou art there; if I descend into hell, Thou art present' (Ps.

CXXXVIII, 7, 8). Concerning Wisdom also, that is, the Son of God, Scripture says, that He reaches from end to end and disposes all things sweetly (Wis. VIII, 1). Since therefore nothing is locally separated from the holy Trinity, which is everywhere whole, but iniquities and perverse thoughts alone separate from God, as we have already said; whoever tries to assert a separable Trinity must necessarily say that either the Father, or the Son, or the Holy Spirit can naturally be subject to depraved thoughts and iniquities.

But who would extricate himself from the noose of such great impiety, as to suspect any separation in that Trinity where the unity is natural, when, through the grace received (as was demonstrated above by us), faithful Paul is confident that he can in no way be separated from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord? And the blessed apostle John confirms both that charity is from God and that charity is God, in these words: 'Dearly beloved, let us love one another, for charity is from God, and everyone that loves is born of God' (1 John IV, 7); and, 'God is charity' (ibid., 16). It surely cannot be separated from itself, because it is inseparable.

For since men who can be separated from one another it not only possesses undivided, but out of many hearts and souls it makes one heart and one soul; what madness is it to call that very charity separable, which is wont to bind together separated minds with inseparable love? Hence surely it is that Paul said: 'For though I am absent in body, yet in spirit I am with you, rejoicing and beholding your order' (Col. II, 5). And in the Acts of the Apostles it is written that of the multitude of believers there was one heart and one soul (Acts IV, 32); which surely nothing knows except the spirit of faith and charity. For the charity of God is poured forth in our hearts (Rom. V, 5).

And through that same Spirit it comes about that all believers, as the Apostle says, are one body and one spirit. Whence he himself says in another place: 'For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Gentiles, whether slaves or free, and we were all given to drink of one Spirit' (1 Cor. XII, 13). And the Only-begotten Son of God commanded with His own mouth that all nations be baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. CHAPTER FIVE. Since therefore baptism is given in the name of the Trinity, it makes all the faithful to be baptized into one body, so that from this all may be made one body, as the blessed Apostle says, that 'we are one body in Christ, and each members one of another' (Rom. XII, 5).

Of the multitude of believers also there was one heart and one soul through charity, which is poured forth in our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who was given to us. Truly it appears with what great impiety that Trinity itself is called separable, when indeed every creature is separated from God, not by place, not by time, but by iniquities alone. Hence it is that God says of certain ones: 'This people honors Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me' (Matt. XV, 8). And yet He Himself says: 'I am a God at hand, and their God from afar. If a man be hidden, shall I not see him? Do I not fill heaven and earth?' (Jer. XXIII, 23, 24). Yet David himself says: 'Behold, they that remove themselves far from Thee shall perish' (Ps. LXXII, 27).

And to show what it is to remove oneself far from God, he added: 'Thou hast destroyed all them that go a-whoring away from Thee' (ibid.). Therefore one withdraws from God in heart, to whom also one approaches in heart. For it is manifest that God is everywhere whole, but is in no way contained by place. For God is a Spirit, the Creator indeed, not created, the maker of all bodies and all spirits, unchangeable, eternal, immense, just, and good. Who never departs from all the things which He made, through the immensity of His nature. For it cannot come to pass that God Himself should be lacking by His power to any thing that has from God that it should be. And yet through mercy and judgment, of which the Church does not cease to sing to Him (Ps.

C, 1), it is not inappropriately said both to be present to the faithful and to be far absent from the unfaithful. For as regards nature, since the whole of whatever is created, whether corporeal or spiritual, the holy Trinity alone, that is, one God, who is Father, and Son, and Holy Spirit, made by one will, one operation, one power, one benevolence, and one omnipotence: just as the Father fills the whole creation, by power indeed, not by mass; so the Son fills the whole, so the Holy Spirit fills the whole. For the Trinity does not so fill the whole creation that the Father fills a part, the Son a part, the Holy Spirit a part; nor yet is the whole filled by the Father alone, nor by the Son alone, nor by the Holy Spirit alone.

For who would dare to think thus concerning the Trinity, that is, concerning the one God—I do not say a fool, but altogether sacrilegious—since the power and divinity of God must necessarily be by nature so immense, as it is by nature everlasting? But men given over to carnal senses cannot think even of God Himself except in a carnal way. And they suppose that the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit can be separated from one another, just as men are separated from one another; who, as they are distinguished by the mode and quantity of each one's body, must necessarily be discerned also by places.

But such men, while they turn their souls over in the enclosure of the flesh, with the phantasms they have created, and weighed down by the burden of vanity, the more they are occupied in the thought of those things which present a corporeal mass to bodily eyes, the less they are able to ascend to understanding the Godhead. Nor do they attend that by the Lord God through holy Isaiah it is commanded that we should not wish to think of Him as of the creatures which we know were made by Him; because neither does He Himself think as we men think. Whence Isaiah says: 'For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are My ways your ways, says the Lord:'

'for as the heavens are exalted above the earth, so are My ways exalted above your ways, and My thoughts above your thoughts' (Isa. LV, 8-9). CHAPTER SIX. God the Father therefore, and His Word, and the Holy Spirit, that is, the holy Trinity, the sole, one, true, and good God, as there is no thought in Him which is varied by the mutability of time (for He does not, like men, think one way before He made the world, another way after He made the world, nor is He going to think another way after the figure of this world has passed; because 'the counsel of the Lord abides for ever' [Ps. XXXII, 11]); so He is inseparable, as He is unchangeable. For the Trinity, one God, is neither body nor created spirit;

because a body is enclosed by place, and every spirit that is created is bounded by the measure of its nature. But the Trinity, one God, as it is eternal, and no times are co-eternal with it; so it is immense, whom no creature can enclose; and because immense, everywhere whole; because it is neither contained by place, nor extended, nor contracted by space. God therefore is wisdom, God is truth, God is charity. This the Father is, this the Son, this the Holy Spirit, this the Trinity itself, which is the one, true, and good God. If then anyone can teach that there is any division either in wisdom, or in truth, or in charity, let him dare without hesitation to assert and divide the Trinity.

But if neither wisdom, nor truth, nor charity is in any way divided, from this surely the Trinity is recognized to be indivisible and inseparable. It appears therefore that great was the impiety of Fastidiosus, whereby he thought we were altogether to be blamed because we confess an inseparable and undivided Trinity: since indeed, as the preceding disputation has taught (which not only reason, but also a sufficient abundance of divine testimonies has strengthened), neither can the immense nature of the Trinity be contained by place, nor can any person in the Trinity be subject to sin: because the Trinity itself is by nature eternal, perfect, and of unchangeable justice. But heretical perversity indeed strives wickedly to assert the Son to be less:

but with piety preserved, the Catholic truth confesses Him equal. For the heretics, thinking of the incorporeal divinity in no way but corporeally, when according to nature they call the Son less, under the image of the Christian name, which they fallaciously pretend, entangle themselves in the nefarious crime of idolatry. For what is it to say a greater god and a lesser god in the individual persons, but to set up idols of diverse kind and diverse power, not on walls, but—which is worse—in hearts? For hence the Arians evidently show that they worship two gods, while they deny the Son to be equal to the Father; and while they assert Him to be less (i.e.,

Him) not by the assumption of flesh (which the truth of faith holds), but by the nature of the immense divinity—although it is said of Him that He is the wisdom of God, who is the brightness of eternal light (Wis. VII, 26). Of whom in the Epistle to the Hebrews it is said: 'Who, being the splendor of glory, and the figure of His substance' (Heb. I, 3). But let them attend to the brightness of eternal light, and acknowledge that, just as that light is eternal and immense, so also its brightness has by nature neither anything later, nor anything less; but eternity has immensity, immensity has eternity as its equal. CHAPTER SEVEN.

The Christian faith therefore, which knows the Only-begotten God, both born of the Father's nature alone, and created of the Virgin Mary, recognizing that in Him both substances truly remain, so confesses Him truly equal to God the Father according to the Father, that without the crime of falsehood and impiety it also proclaims Him less. For because there is to Him one natural divinity with the Father, and one natural humanity with the mother, the Son is equal to the Father in that in which He is true God of the Father, and the Father is greater than the Son in that in which the Only-begotten God is Himself true man. This therefore is the true faith, this the holy piety, this the Christian belief:

in one and the same Son of God, both to believe the nature of the paternal divinity, and not to deny the substance of the maternal humanity; neither to believe the divinity of the Son different from the divinity of God the Father, nor to separate the humanity of the Son from the humanity of the Virgin His mother, but in the same true God to believe the true and whole humanity of our race, in the same true and whole man to believe the true and full deity of the paternal nature. For he who denies in the Son the unity of the Father's substance is polluted with Arian impiety; but he who denies the truth of the flesh in the Only-begotten God is profaned with the crime of the Manichaean pestilence; and he who denies in the same Son of God a human, that is, a rational soul, is straightway defiled with the sacrilege of the Apollinarists.

CHAPTER EIGHT. Wherefore, when the truth of the paternal and maternal nature in the Only-begotten God has been believed to fullness, and in the one person of Christ the natural property of the twofold substance has been preserved, the Son is piously and truly said to be both equal and less than the Father, is piously and truly proclaimed both co-eternal and later, is piously and truly asserted to be both always born and born in time, both always unchangeable and changed in time. And so the Son is equal to the Father, because He has this always from the Father. He is also less than the Father, because He received this temporally from the Virgin. Wherefore, just as the Son is piously said to be equal to the Father when the humanity in Him, by which He is less than the Father, is not recognized: so impiously

is the same Son said to be less when the unity and equality of divinity with the Father is naturally denied in Him. We say therefore that the Son is naturally equal, we say also that He is less. We say that according to the form of God He was born equal, but according to the form of a servant He was diminished in condition. We say that He is equal to the Father, in that we recognize Him born of the Father without beginning; we say that He is also less, because when the fullness of time came, God sent His Son, made of a woman, made under the law (Gal. IV, 4). Accordingly, just as we undoubtedly preach Him born, so surely we preach Him also made. For we say that He was born without beginning of the heart of the Father; we say that He was made in time by the work of the Trinity.

For the Father begot His own proper Son, and of His own nature, and made Him of the nature of the Virgin. But whatsoever He made, He made with the Son and the Holy Spirit cooperating. Therefore the Father alone indeed begot His Son, but not alone did He make Him. For in the Only-begotten Son there is the eternal generation of the Father alone, and in the same Son, made, there is one operation of the whole Trinity. For the Only-begotten God, the Creator of man, was created man; and the same who from man made woman, of woman was made man. Whence it appears that the testimonies which Fastidiosus impiously brought forth from the Gospel and from the Acts of the Apostles, and from Solomon, do not take away the unity of the paternal nature from the Son, but show the mystery of the divine incarnation.

Knowing this most certainly, John the Baptist said: 'This is He of whom I said: After me comes one who was made before me' (John I, 15). Proclaiming the truth of this mystery, the apostle Peter says: 'Therefore let all the house of Israel know most certainly, that God has made both Lord and Christ this same Jesus whom you crucified' (Acts II, 36). Fittingly indeed did he say made, whom he proclaims crucified; for the Only-begotten God, incomprehensible and immortal, made by none, and the eternal maker of all things, deigned by His own work to become Christ, that He might be able by the work of the Jews to be crucified; because no cross would by any reason have borne the Redeemer of the world delivered up, had not the womb of the Virgin brought forth the maker of the world conceived.

He therefore also, through Solomon, intimating the truth of His generation and creation, said: 'The Lord created me in the beginning of His ways in His work' (Prov. VIII, 22). But before He said this, He set forth a manifest indication of His future incarnation, saying: 'If I shall announce to you the things that are done daily, I will call to mind the things that are from the beginning' (ibid., 21, according to the LXX). Then, enumerating, He subjoined: 'The Lord created me in the beginning of His ways in His work.' This creation surely is from the beginning of time, not before time. For afterward He says: 'Before the ages He founded me'; and a little after: 'Before all the hills He begot me.' Here, in that He says 'before the ages' and 'before all the hills,' He wished the eternity of the divine nativity to be understood.