I. ON FAITH AND THE CREED. Since it is written, and confirmed by the most robust authority of apostolic teaching, that «the just shall live by faith,» and since that faith demands of us a duty both of heart and of tongue—for the Apostle says, «With the heart it is believed unto righteousness, but with the mouth confession is made unto salvation»—it behooves us to be mindful both of righteousness and of salvation, since, destined to reign in everlasting righteousness, we cannot be saved from this present evil world unless we, striving also for the salvation of our neighbors, profess with the mouth the faith which we bear in the heart. And lest this faith be able in any part to be violated in us by the fraudulent cunning of heretics, it must be provided against with pious and cautious vigilance.
Now the catholic faith is made known to the faithful in the Creed and committed to memory with as much brevity of speech as the matter has allowed: so that to those who are beginning and as it were sucklings—those who have been reborn in Christ but are not yet strengthened by the most diligent and spiritual handling and knowledge of the divine Scriptures—it might be appointed to believe in few words what was to be expounded in many words to those advancing and rising to the divine doctrine with a sure firmness of humility and charity. Under these very few words, then, set down in the Creed, very many heretics have attempted to conceal their poisons:
against whom the divine mercy has resisted and resists through spiritual men, who have been counted worthy not only to receive and believe the catholic faith in those words, but also, by the Lord's revealing, to understand and know it. For it is written: «Unless you believe, you shall not understand.» But the discussion of faith avails for the fortifying of the Creed: not that it itself should be handed down to be committed to memory and recited in place of the Creed by those who obtain the grace of God, but that what is retained in the Creed it may guard against the snares of heretics by catholic authority and a more fortified defense. For certain men have attempted to persuade that God the Father is not omnipotent; not that they have dared to say this, but in their traditions they are convicted of so thinking and believing.
For when they say that there is a nature which the omnipotent God did not create, yet out of which He fashioned this world—which they grant to be beautifully ordered—they so deny God to be omnipotent that they do not believe He could have made the world unless, in fashioning it, He had used another nature which already existed and which He Himself had not made; namely, by the carnal habit of seeing smiths and builders of houses and any craftsmen whatever, who, unless they are aided by prepared material, cannot arrive at the effect of their art, they so understand that the Fashioner of the world is not omnipotent, if He could not fashion the world unless some nature not fashioned by Him should aid Him as it were a material.
And if they grant that the omnipotent God is the Fashioner of the world, they must needs confess that He made out of nothing the things He made. For there cannot be anything of which He, since He was omnipotent, was not the creator; because, even if He made something out of something—as man out of clay—He surely did not make it out of that which He Himself had not made, since the earth, whence the clay comes, He had made out of nothing. And if heaven and earth itself, that is, the world and all things that are in it, He had made out of some matter, as it is written:
«who didst make the world out of unseen matter,» or even «out of formless matter,» as some copies have it—by no means is it to be believed that that very matter, out of which the world was made, however formless, however unseen, in whatever manner it existed, could have existed of itself, as it were coeternal and coeval with God; but whatever manner of its own it had, by which it might in some way exist and be able to receive the forms of distinct things, it had not save from the omnipotent God, by whose bounty there exists not only whatever is formed, but also whatever is formable. Now between the formed and the formable there is this difference, that the formed has already received form, but the formable is able to receive it.
But He who bestows form on things, Himself also bestows the very ability to be formed, since from Him and in Him is the most beautiful and unchangeable form of all things; and therefore He alone it is who has granted to anything not only that it be beautiful, but also that it be able to be beautiful. Wherefore it is most rightly believed that God made all things out of nothing: because, even if the world was made out of some matter, that same matter was itself made out of nothing, so that by the most ordered gift of God there might first come to be the capacity for forms, and then whatever was formed might be formed. Now this we have said, lest anyone should think the sentences of the divine Scriptures to be contrary to themselves, since it is written both that God made all things out of nothing, and that the world was made out of formless matter.
Believing, therefore, in God the Father almighty, we ought to deem that there is no creature which has not been created by the Omnipotent. And because He created all things through the Word—which Word is called both Truth and Power and Wisdom of God, and is intimated by many other names; who, as our Lord Jesus Christ, is commended to our faith, namely our Liberator and Ruler, the Son of God (for that Word, through whom all things were established, none could have begotten save He who through it established all things)—we believe also in Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God the Father, that is, His only Son, our Lord.
Yet this Word we ought not to take as our words are taken, which, uttered by voice and mouth, pass away through the beaten air and remain no longer than they sound; for that Word remains unchangeably. For of it was it said, when speaking of Wisdom: «Remaining in itself, it makes all things new.» For it is called the Word of the Father, because through it the Father is made known. For just as by our words we bring it about, when we speak the truth, that our mind is made known to the hearer, and whatever secret we carry in the heart is brought forth by signs of this kind to the knowledge of another: so that Wisdom, which God the Father begot, since through it the most secret Father is made known to worthy minds, is most fittingly named His Word.
But between our mind and our words, by which we try to display that same mind, there is a very great distance. For we do not beget our sounding words, but make them; and for the making of them the body lies subject as material. But there is a very great difference between mind and body. God, however, when He begot the Word, begot that which He Himself is—neither out of nothing, nor out of any already made and created matter, but out of Himself that which He Himself is. For this we too attempt, when we speak, if we diligently consider the appetite of our will—not when we lie, but when we speak the truth. For what else do we labor at, save to convey our very mind itself, if it can be done, into the mind of the hearer, to be known and seen through?
so that we indeed remain in ourselves and do not withdraw from ourselves, and yet bring forth such an indication by which our knowledge may come to be in another, so that, as far as the capacity is granted, as it were another mind may be brought forth from the mind, by which it may make itself known. This we do by attempting it both with words and with the very sound of the voice and with countenance and with gesture of the body—by so many contrivances, namely, desiring to demonstrate that which is within, because we cannot bring forth any such thing; and therefore the mind of the speaker cannot become inwardly known. Whence also a place lies open for lies. But God the Father, who most truly both willed and was able to make Himself known to minds that should know Him, begot, for the making of Himself known, that which He Himself is who begot it:
who is also called His Power and Wisdom, because through Him He wrought and disposed all things. Concerning whom it is therefore said: «It reaches from end to end mightily, and disposes all things sweetly.» Wherefore the only-begotten Son of God was neither made by the Father—since, as the evangelist says, «all things were made through Him»—nor begotten in time, since the eternally wise God has eternally with Him His own Wisdom; nor is He unequal to the Father, that is, in any respect less, because the Apostle also says: «who, being established in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God.»
By this catholic faith, therefore, those too are excluded who say that the Son is the same as the Father, since this Word also could not be «with God» unless with God the Father, and He who alone is, is equal to none; excluded also are those who say the Son is a creature, although not such as the other creatures are. For however great a creature they may call Him, if He is a creature, He was established and made; for to establish is the same as to create. Although in the usage of the Latin tongue «to create» is sometimes said for that which is «to beget»; but the Greek distinguishes. For we call that a creature which they call κτίσμα or κτίσις; and when we wish to speak without ambiguity, we do not say «create,» but «establish.»
Therefore if the Son is a creature, however great He be, He was made. But we believe in Him through whom all things were made, not in Him through whom the rest were made; for neither can we here understand «all things» otherwise than as whatsoever things have been made. But since «the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us,» that same Wisdom, which was begotten of God, deigned also to be created among men. To which pertains that saying: «The Lord created me in the beginning of His ways»; for the beginning of His ways is the Head of the Church, which is Christ clothed with manhood, through whom an example of living might be given us—that is, a sure way by which we might come to God.
For we could not return except by humility, we who fell by pride, as it was said to our first creature: «Taste, and you shall be as gods.» Of this humility, therefore—that is, of the way by which there had to be a returning—our very Restorer deigned to demonstrate the example in Himself, He who «thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant,» so that man might be created in the beginning of His ways—the Word, through whom all things were made.
Wherefore, according to that whereby He is the Only-begotten, He has no brethren; but according to that whereby He is the First-born, He has deigned to call brethren all who, after His primacy and through His primacy, are reborn into the grace of God through the adoption of sons, as the apostolic teaching commends. The natural Son, therefore, was born of the very substance of the Father, the Only one, existing as that which the Father is, God of God, Light of Light; but we are not light by nature, but are illumined by that Light, that we may be able to shine with wisdom; for, «it was,» it says, «the true Light, which illumines every man coming into this world.»
We add, therefore, to the faith in eternal things also the temporal dispensation of our Lord, which He deigned to carry out and minister for us, for our salvation. For according to that whereby He is the only-begotten Son of God, it cannot be said «He was» and «He shall be,» but only «He is,» because both what was is already no longer, and what shall be is not yet. He, therefore, is unchangeable, without condition of times and variation. Nor do I judge that from any other source flows that which He intimated as His name to His servant Moses. For when Moses asked of Him, if the people to whom he was sent should despise him, by whom he should say he had been sent, he received the answer of Him who said: «I AM WHO AM.» Then He added: «Thus shall you say to the children of Israel: HE WHO IS has sent me to you.»
From which I am confident it is now plain to spiritual minds that no nature can be contrary to God. For if He is—and this word can properly be said of God alone (since that which truly is, remains unchangeably, because that which is changed was something which now is not, and shall be something which is not yet)—God has nothing contrary to Him. For if it were asked of us what is contrary to white, we would answer black; if it were asked what is contrary to hot, we would answer cold; if it were asked what is contrary to swift, we would answer slow, and whatever is similar. But when it is asked what is contrary to that which is, it is rightly answered: that which is not.
But through the temporal dispensation, as I have said, since for our salvation and restoration, by the operation of God's goodness, our mutable nature was taken up by that unchangeable Wisdom of God, we add the faith of temporal things wrought wholesomely for us, believing in Him, the Son of God, who was born through the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary. For by the gift of God—that is, by the Holy Spirit—so great a humility of so great a God has been granted to us, that He deigned to take up the whole man in the womb of the Virgin, inhabiting the maternal body whole and leaving it whole. Against this temporal dispensation the heretics lie in wait in many ways.
But whoever shall hold the catholic faith, so as to believe that the whole man was taken up by the Word of God—that is, body, soul, and spirit—is sufficiently fortified against them. Since indeed this assumption was wrought for our salvation, we must beware lest, if anyone has believed that something of ours does not pertain to this assumption, it does not pertain to salvation. And since man, apart from the form of his members—which is variously assigned to the various kinds of living creatures—does not differ from a beast except by the rational spirit, which is also called mind, how is that faith sound by which it is believed that the Wisdom of God took up that of ours which we have in common with the beast, but did not take up that which is illumined by the light of wisdom and which is proper to man?
But detestable also are those who deny that our Lord Jesus Christ had Mary as His mother on earth, since that dispensation honored both sexes, both the masculine and the feminine, and showed that not only he whom He took up, but also she through whom He took it up, pertains to God's care—by playing the part of the man in being born, and being born of a woman. Nor does it compel us to deny Christ's mother, that it was said by Him: «Woman, what have I to do with thee? My hour is not yet come»; but it rather admonishes us to understand that according to His Godhead He had no mother, the person of whose majesty He was preparing to display by turning the water into wine. But that He was crucified—He was crucified according to His manhood;
and that was the hour which had not yet come, when it was said: «What have I to do with thee? My hour is not yet come»—that is, the hour in which I shall acknowledge thee. For then, as a man crucified, He acknowledged His human mother and most humanly commended her to His most beloved disciple. Nor let that move us, that, when His mother and brethren were announced to Him, He answered: «Who is My mother, or who are My brethren?» and the rest. But let it rather teach our ministry, by which we minister the Word of God to the brethren, that when our parents hinder, they ought not to be acknowledged. For if anyone should therefore think that He had no mother on earth, because He said «Who is My mother?», the Apostle too must needs be compelled to deny that men have fathers on earth, since he charged them, saying:
«Call no man your father on earth; for one is your Father, who is in heaven.» Nor let the thought of womanly entrails diminish this faith in us, so that on that account such a generation of our Lord should seem to be rejected, because the impure deem it impure—since the Apostle most truly says that «the foolishness of God is wiser than men» and that «to the clean all things are clean.» They ought therefore to look, those who think this, at the rays of yonder sun, which assuredly they do not praise as a creature of God, but adore as God—how they are diffused everywhere through the stenches of sewers and through all manner of horrible things, and operate in them according to their nature, and yet are not thereby defiled by any contamination, since visible light is by nature more closely joined to visible filth:
how much less, therefore, could the Word of God, neither corporeal nor visible, be polluted by a feminine body, where He took up human flesh together with soul and spirit, by whose intervening the majesty of the Word dwells more secretly removed from the frailty of the human body! Whence it is manifest that the Word of God could in no way be stained by the human body, by which not even the human soul itself is stained. For the soul is not stained by the body when it rules and quickens it, but when it covets the body's mortal goods. But if they wished to avoid the stains of the soul, they would rather dread these lies and sacrileges. But the humility of our Lord in being born was a small thing for us; there was added also that He deigned to die for mortals.
For he humbled himself, being made obedient even unto death, yea, the death of the cross, lest any one of us, even though he might be able not to fear death, should shrink in dread from some particular kind of death which men reckon most shameful. We believe therefore in him who under Pontius Pilate was crucified and buried. For the name of the judge had to be added for the sake of marking the time. And when that burial is believed, there is a remembrance of the new tomb, which gave testimony to one about to rise again unto newness of life, just as the virginal womb did to one about to be born. For just as in that tomb no other dead person was buried, neither before nor after, so in that womb nothing mortal was conceived, neither before nor after.
We believe also that on the third day he rose again from the dead, the firstborn among the brethren who shall come after, whom he called into the adoption of the sons of God, and whom he deigned to make his fellow-partakers and co-heirs. We believe that he ascended into heaven, which place of blessedness he also promised to us, saying: They shall be as the angels in heaven, in that city which is the mother of us all, the eternal Jerusalem in the heavens. Now it is wont to offend certain people, whether impious Gentiles or heretics, that we believe an earthly body to have been taken up into heaven. But the Gentiles for the most part are eager to deal with us by the arguments of the philosophers, so as to say that nothing earthly can be in heaven. For they do not know our Scriptures, nor do they understand in what manner it was said:
It is sown a natural body, it rises a spiritual body. For it was not so said as though the body were turned into spirit and became spirit; since even now our body, which is called natural, has not been turned into soul and made soul. Rather, a spiritual body is understood to be one which is so made subject to the spirit that it is fitted for a heavenly dwelling, every earthly frailty and defilement being changed and converted into heavenly purity and stability. This is the transformation of which the Apostle likewise says: We shall all rise again, but we shall not all be changed. And he teaches that this change comes about not for the worse but for the better, when he says: And we shall be changed.
But where and in what manner the body of the Lord is in heaven, it is most idle and superfluous to inquire; only that it is in heaven must be believed. For it does not belong to our frailty to scrutinize the secrets of the heavens, but it belongs to our faith to hold lofty and worthy thoughts concerning the dignity of the Lord's body. We believe also that he sits at the right hand of the Father. Nor on that account, however, is God the Father to be thought of as circumscribed, as it were, by a human form, so that, to those who think of him, a right side or a left side should present itself to the mind;
nor is that very act, by which the Father is said to sit, to be supposed to take place with bended knees, lest we fall into that sacrilege in which the Apostle execrates those who changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of corruptible man. For it is unlawful for a Christian to set up such an image of God in a temple; much more wicked is it in the heart, where truly is the temple of God, if it be cleansed from earthly desire and error. Therefore it must be understood that 'at the right hand' is said to mean in supreme blessedness, where justice, peace, and joy are, just as at the left hand the kids are set, that is, in misery, on account of the toils and torments of iniquity.
Therefore that God is said to sit signifies not a position of members but a judiciary power, of which that majesty is never destitute, always rendering to the worthy what is worthy, although in the last judgment the unquestioned brightness of the only-begotten Son of God, the judge of the living and the dead, shall shine forth far more manifestly among men. We believe also that thence he will come at the most fitting time to judge the living and the dead. Whether by these names the just and sinners are signified, or whether those whom he shall find then on earth before death are called the living, and the dead are those who at his coming are to rise again, this temporal dispensation is not only, like that generation according to God, but it also has been and will be.
For our Lord was on earth, and now is in heaven, and will be in glory the judge of the living and the dead. For he will come even as he ascended, according to the authority which is contained in the Acts of the Apostles. From this temporal dispensation, therefore, he speaks in the Apocalypse, where it is written: These things saith he who is, and who was, and who is to come. So then, when the divine generation of our Lord and his human dispensation have been set in order and committed to faith, there is joined to our confession, for the perfecting of the faith which we have concerning God, the Holy Spirit—of no lesser nature than the Father and the Son, but, so to speak, consubstantial and co-eternal, because this Trinity is one God:
not so that the same one should be the Father who is the Son and the Holy Spirit, but so that the Father is the Father, and the Son is the Son, and the Holy Spirit is the Holy Spirit, yet this Trinity is one God, as it is written: Hear, O Israel: the Lord thy God is one God. Yet if we be questioned about each one and it be said to us: Is the Father God? we shall answer: God. If it be asked whether the Son is God, this also we shall answer. Nor if such a question be put concerning the Holy Spirit, ought we to answer that he is anything other than God—being most earnestly on our guard against taking it as it was said concerning men: Ye are gods. For those are not gods by nature, whosoever have been made and created by the Father through the Son in the gift of the Holy Spirit.
For the Trinity itself is signified when the Apostle says: For of him, and through him, and in him are all things. Although therefore, when questioned about each one, we answer that the one inquired about is God, whether Father or Son or Holy Spirit, yet no one should suppose that three gods are worshipped by us. Nor is it any wonder that these things are said concerning the ineffable nature, since even in those things which we perceive with the bodily eyes and discern by bodily sense, something of the kind occurs.
For when we are asked about a spring we cannot say that it is the river itself, nor when asked about the river can we call it the spring; and again the draught which is from the spring or river we can call neither river nor spring; yet in this triad we name water, and when asked about each one severally, we answer 'water' of each. For if I ask whether there is water in the spring, the answer is 'water'; and if I ask whether there is water in the river, no other answer is given; and concerning that draught there can be no other reply; and yet we do not call these three waters, but one. Yet certainly care must be taken lest anyone think the ineffable substance of that majesty to be like this visible and bodily spring or river or draught.
For in these the water which is now in the spring flows out into the river and does not remain in itself; and when it passes from the river or from the spring into the draught, it does not abide there whence it is taken. And so it can come about that the same water now belongs to the name of spring, now of river, now of draught—whereas in that Trinity we have said it cannot come about that the Father himself should at one time be the Son, at another the Holy Spirit. Just as in a tree the root is nothing but root, nor is the trunk anything other than trunk, nor can we call the branches anything but branches; for what is called root cannot also be called trunk and branches;
nor can the wood which belongs to the root, by any transition, be now in the root, now in the trunk, now in the branches, but only in the root—while that rule of names abides, that the root is wood and the trunk is wood and the branches are wood, and yet they are not called three woods, but one.
Or if these have some dissimilarity, so that they may not absurdly be named three woods—as they can indeed be called three woods because of their difference in firmness—this at least all concede: that if three cups be filled from one spring, they can be called three cups, but cannot be called three waters, but altogether one water, although, when questioned about the several cups, you answer that water is in each of them; even though here no transition takes place, as we said of the passage from spring into river.
But these bodily examples have been given, not because of any likeness to that divine nature, but because of the unity even of visible things, so that it might be understood to be possible that some three things should obtain a singular name not only severally but also together—lest anyone wonder and think it absurd that we call the Father God, the Son God, the Holy Spirit God, and yet not three gods in that Trinity, but one, and one substance. And concerning the Father indeed and the Son learned and spiritual men have discoursed in many books, in which they have endeavored, as far as men could to men, to convey both how the Father and the Son were not one person but were one thing, and what properly the Father is and what the Son: that the one is begetter, the other begotten;
the one not from the Son, the other from the Father; the one the beginning of the other, whence also he is called the head of Christ—although Christ also is a beginning, but not of the Father; while the latter is the image of the former, though in no part dissimilar and altogether indifferently equal. These things are treated more at length by those who do not, as briefly as we, wish to expound the profession of the whole Christian faith. And so, in so far as he is the Son, he has received from the Father that he should be, whereas the Father has not received this from the Son: