Chapter I. The cause and aim of the present work. Since it is written, and confirmed by the most robust authority of apostolic teaching, that 'the just man lives by faith' (Hab. 2:4; Gal. 3:11); and since that faith demands of us a duty both of heart and of tongue—for the Apostle says, 'With the heart one believes unto righteousness, but with the mouth confession is made unto salvation' (Rom. 10:10)—it behooves us to be mindful both of righteousness and of salvation. For, seeing that we who are to reign in everlasting righteousness cannot be saved from this present evil age unless we too, striving for the salvation of our neighbors, also profess with the mouth the faith which we bear in the heart:
and lest this faith be able to be violated in us in any part by the fraudulent cunning of heretics, we must provide against it with pious and wary vigilance. Now the catholic faith is known to the faithful in the Creed, and committed to memory, with as much brevity of speech as the matter has permitted: so that for beginners and sucklings, for 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 settled that they should believe in a few words what would have to be expounded in many words to those who make progress and rise to the divine doctrine with a sure firmness of humility and charity. Under these very few words, then, set down in the Creed, most heretics have tried to hide their poisons:
but the divine mercy has withstood and still withstands them through spiritual men, who have merited 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' (Isa. 7:9, according to the LXX). But the treatment of the faith avails for fortifying the Creed: not that it should be handed over 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 may be guarded, against the snares of heretics, by catholic authority and a firmer defense. Chapter II. That there was no nature co-eternal with God, out of which He made the world. How the world was made from nothing, if it was made from formless matter.
For certain men have attempted to persuade others that God the Father is not almighty: not that they have dared to say this openly, but they are convicted of thinking and believing it in their traditions. For when they say that there is a nature which God almighty did not create, out of which nevertheless He fashioned this world—which they grant to be so beautifully ordered—they thus deny God to be almighty, in 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: following, forsooth, the carnal habit of seeing craftsmen and builders of houses and workmen of every sort, who, unless they are aided by prepared material, cannot arrive at the accomplishment of their art.
Thus they also understand that the Maker of the world is not almighty, if He could not fashion the world unless some nature not fashioned by Him aided Him as material. But if they grant that God the Maker of the world is almighty, they must of necessity confess that He made what He made out of nothing. For there cannot be anything of which He was not the creator, since He was almighty. For even if He made something out of something, as He made man from clay, He surely did not make it out of that which He Himself had not made; because the earth, from which the clay comes, He had made out of nothing. And if He had made the very heaven and earth—that is, the world and all things that are in it—out of some matter, as it is written, 'Who madest the world out of unseen matter' (Wisd.
11:18)—or even out of formless matter, as some copies have it—we must in no way believe 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 though co-eternal and coeval with God: but whatever measure it had of its own, so as to exist in any way at all and to be able to receive the forms of distinct things, it did not have except from God almighty, by whose bounty a thing is not only whatever is already formed, but also whatever is formable. Now between the formed and the formable there is this difference, that the formed has already received a form, while the formable can receive one. But He who bestows form on things, He also bestows the very power of being formed:
since from Him and in Him is the most beautiful and unchangeable Form of all things; and therefore He alone is the one who grants to any thing whatever, not only that it be beautiful, but also that it be able to be beautiful. Wherefore we most rightly believe that God made all things out of nothing: for even if the world was made out of some matter, that same matter was made out of nothing, so that by God's most orderly gift there might first come to be the capacity for forms, and thereafter whatever things are formed might be formed. This, however, we have said lest anyone suppose that the pronouncements of the divine Scriptures are contrary to one another, since it is both written 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 hold that there is no creature which has not been created by the Almighty. And since He created all things through the Word—which Word is called both Truth (John 14:6), and the Power and Wisdom of God (1 Cor. 1:24), and is intimated by many other titles by which He is commended to our faith, our Lord Jesus Christ, namely our liberator and ruler, the Son of God—for that Word, through whom all things were founded, could not have been begotten save by Him who founded all things through Him. Chapter III. Why the Son of God is called the Word. That the Word is the very same as the Father is. We believe also in Jesus Christ the Son of God, the Father's only-begotten, that is, His only Son, our Lord.
Yet this Word we ought not to take as we take our own words, which, uttered by voice and mouth, pass away when the air is struck, and remain no longer than they sound. For that Word remains unchangeably; for of it this was said, when Wisdom was being spoken of, 'Remaining in herself, she makes all things new' (Wisd. 7:27). And it is called the Word of the Father precisely because through it the Father is made known. Just as, then, by our words we bring it about, when we speak truth, that our mind may be made known to the hearer, and whatever we bear secret in the heart may, through a sign of this kind, be brought forth to the knowledge of another: so that Wisdom, which God the Father begot, since through it the most hidden Father is made known to worthy minds, is most fittingly named His Word.
But between our soul and our words, by which we try to display that same soul, there is a very great distance. For we do not beget sounding words, but make them; and for making them, the body serves as underlying material. But between the soul and the body there is a very great difference. God, however, when He begot the Word, begot that which He Himself is; neither out of nothing, nor out of any already made and founded material, but out of Himself that which He Himself is. For this too we try to do when we speak—if we carefully consider the desire of our will—not when we lie, but when we speak truth. For what else do we strive at, but to bring our very own mind, if it can be done, into the mind of the hearer to be known and discerned:
so that we ourselves indeed remain within ourselves and do not depart from ourselves, and yet bring forth such a token by which our knowledge may come to be in another; so that, as far as the faculty is granted, as it were another mind may be brought forth from our mind, through which it may make itself known? We do this by attempting it both with words, and with the very sound of the voice, and with countenance, and with the gesture of the body—with so many devices, that is, desiring to demonstrate what is within: because we cannot bring forth any such thing perfectly, and therefore the mind of the speaker cannot become fully known; whence there lies open a place even for lies. But God the Father, who most truly both willed and was able to make Himself judged by minds that would come to know Him, begot, for the making of Himself known, that which He Himself who begot is:
who is also called His Power and Wisdom, because through Him He wrought and disposed all things; concerning whom therefore it is said, 'She reaches from end to end mightily, and disposes all things sweetly' (Wisd. 8:1). Chapter IV. The Son of God is neither made nor less than the Father. To create and to found are the same. Why the Son of God was made man. Against the heresy of the Manichees. The whole man was assumed by the Word. The nativity of Christ from a woman. Wherefore the only-begotten Son of God was neither made by the Father—since, as the evangelist says, 'All things were made through Him' (John 1:3); nor begotten in time—since God, being eternally wise, has His Wisdom eternally with Himself; nor is He unequal to the Father, that is, in any respect less;
for the Apostle also says, 'Who, being established in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God' (Phil. 2:6). By this catholic faith, then, both those are excluded who say that the Son is the very same who is the Father—because this Word cannot be 'with God' except with God the Father, and He is equal to none who alone is (i.e., the Father alone would exclude the Son's coequality)—and those are also excluded who say that the Son is a creature, though not such a one as the other creatures are. For however great a creature they call Him, if He is a creature, He has been founded and made. For 'to found' is the same as 'to create': although in the usage of the Latin tongue it is sometimes said 'to create' for that which is 'to beget'; but the Greek distinguishes them.
For that which they call 'ktisma' or 'ktisis,' this we call a creature; and when we wish to speak without ambiguity, we do not say 'to create,' but 'to found.' Therefore, if the Son is a creature, however great He be, He has been made. But we believe in Him through whom all things were made, not in Him through whom the rest were made: for here we cannot understand 'all things' otherwise than as whatsoever things have been made. Now since 'the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us' (John 1:14), the same Wisdom which was begotten of God deigned also to be created among men. To this pertains that saying, 'The Lord created me in the beginning of His ways' (Prov. 8:22).
For the beginning of His ways is the Head, the Church, which is Christ clothed with man, through whom an example of living was to be given to us—that is, the straight way by which we might come to God. For we could not return except by humility, we who had fallen by pride, as was said to our first creature, 'Taste, and you shall be as gods' (Gen. 3:5). Of this humility, then—that is, of the way by which we had to return—our Repairer Himself deigned to show forth the example in His own person, He who thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant (Phil. 2:6-7); that man might be created in the beginning of His ways—the Word through whom all things were made.
Wherefore, according to that in which He is only-begotten, He has no brothers; but according to that in which He is firstborn, He deigned to call brothers all who, after His and through His primacy, are reborn into the grace of God by the adoption of sons (Luke 8:21), as the apostolic teaching commends (Heb. 2:11). The natural Son, therefore, was born of the very substance of the Father, the only one, being that which the Father is: God of God, Light of Light; but we are not light by nature, but are illumined by that Light, so that we may be able to shine with wisdom. For 'there was,' He says, 'the true Light, which enlightens every man coming into this world' (John 1:9).
We add, therefore, to the faith of eternal things also the temporal dispensation of our Lord, which He deigned to carry out and administer for us, for our salvation. For according to that in which 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 now no longer, and what shall be is not yet. He, therefore, is unchangeable, without the condition and variation of times. Nor do I think that from any other source remains that name which He intimated to His servant Moses as His own. For when Moses asked Him, if the people to whom he was being sent should scorn him, by whom he should say he was sent, he receives the answer of the One saying, 'I am who I am.' Then He added, 'These things you shall say to the children of Israel: He who is has sent me to you' (Exod. 3:14).
From this I trust 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 (for what truly is, remains unchangeably; since that which is changed both was something which now is not, and shall be something which is not yet), then God has nothing contrary to Him. For if it were asked of us what is contrary to white, we should answer black; if it were asked what is contrary to hot, we should answer cold; if it were asked what is contrary to swift, we should answer slow; and whatever things are like these. But when it is asked what is contrary to that which is, rightly is it answered: that which is not.
But since, through the temporal dispensation, as I have said, our changeable nature was assumed by that unchangeable Wisdom of God, for our salvation and restoration, God's benignity working therein, we add the faith of temporal things wholesomely accomplished 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 assume the whole man in the womb of the Virgin, inhabiting the maternal body whole and leaving it whole. Against this temporal dispensation the heretics lay their snares in many ways.
But if anyone holds the catholic faith, so as to believe that the whole man was assumed by the Word of God—that is, body, soul, and spirit—he is sufficiently fortified against them. Indeed, since that assumption was accomplished for our salvation, care must be taken lest, when someone believes that some part of us does not pertain to that assumption, it should not pertain to salvation. And since man—apart from the form of members, which is diversely allotted to the diverse kinds of living creatures—differs from a beast only by the rational spirit, which is also called the mind, how is that a sound faith by which it is believed that God's Wisdom assumed that of ours which we have in common with the beast, but did not assume that which is illumined by the light of wisdom, and which is proper to man?
Moreover, those too are to be detested who deny that our Lord Jesus Christ had a mother, Mary, on earth; whereas that dispensation honored both sexes, both the masculine and the feminine, and showed that they pertain to God's care—not only the one whom He assumed, but also that one through whom He assumed it, by bearing Himself as a man, by being born of a woman. Nor does what was said by Him compel us to deny Christ's mother, when He said, 'What is it to me and to you, woman? My hour has not yet come' (John 2:4). But it rather admonishes us to understand that, according to His Godhead, He did not have a mother, whose majesty's person He was preparing to show by turning water into wine. But in 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 is it to me and to you? My hour has not yet come'—that is, the hour in which I will acknowledge you. For then, being crucified as a man, He acknowledged His human mother, and most humanely commended her to the most beloved disciple (John 19:26-27). Nor let that move us, that, when His mother and brothers were announced to Him, He answered, 'Who is my mother, or my brothers?' etc. (Matt. 12:48). But rather let it teach us that, in our ministry by which we minister the word of God to the brethren, when parents hinder, they ought not to be acknowledged. For if anyone should therefore suppose that He had no mother on earth because He said, 'Who is my mother?'
then the Apostle too must of necessity be forced to deny that men have fathers on earth, since he charged them, saying, 'Call no man father to yourselves on earth; for one is your Father, who is in heaven' (Matt. 23:9). Nor let the thought of a woman's inward parts diminish this faith in us, as though such a generation of our Lord ought therefore to be refused, because the filthy-minded deem it filthy. For the Apostle most truly says both that 'the foolishness of God is wiser than men' (1 Cor. 1:25), and that 'to the pure all things are pure' (Tit. 1:15).
They ought, then, who think this, to consider the rays of this sun—which they certainly do not praise as a creature of God, but adore as God {the Manichees}—diffused everywhere through the stenches of sewers and whatever horrid things, and working in these according to their own nature, and yet not growing foul from thence by any contamination, although visible light is by nature more closely joined to visible filth: how much less, then, could the Word of God, being neither corporeal nor visible, be polluted by a female body, where He assumed human flesh together with a soul and spirit, by whose intervention the majesty of the Word dwelt more secretly apart from the frailty of the human body?
Whence it is manifest that the Word of God could in no way be defiled by a human body, by which not even the human soul itself is defiled. For the soul is defiled by the body, not when it governs and gives life to it, but when it covets the body's mortal goods. But if they wished to shun these defilements of the soul, they would rather dread these lies and sacrileges. Chapter V. The passion and burial of Christ. The resurrection of Christ. But small was our Lord's humility, for our sake, in being born: there was added also that He deigned to die for mortals. For 'He humbled Himself, being made obedient unto death, even the death of the cross' (Phil. 2:8);
lest any of us, even if he could not fear death, should shrink from some kind of death which men deem most ignominious. We believe, therefore, in Him who was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and buried. For the judge's name had to be added, for the knowledge of the times. And when that burial is believed, there arises a remembrance of the new tomb, which offered a testimony to Him who was to rise again unto newness of life, just as the virginal womb did to Him who was to be born. For just as in that tomb no other dead man was buried (John 19:41), neither before nor after; so in that womb neither before nor after was anything mortal conceived.
We believe also that He rose again from the dead on the third day, the firstborn among the brethren who were to follow, whom He called into the adoption of the sons of God (Eph. 1:5), whom He deigned to be His fellow-partakers and fellow-heirs. Chapter VI. The ascension into heaven. 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' (Matt. 22:30), in that city which is the mother of us all, the eternal Jerusalem in the heavens (Gal. 4:26). Now it is wont to offend certain persons, whether impious Gentiles or heretics, that we believe an earthly body was taken up into heaven. But the Gentiles for the most part strive to contend with us by the arguments of the philosophers, to say that nothing earthly can be in heaven.
For they know not our Scriptures, nor understand how it is said, 'It is sown a natural body, it rises a spiritual body.' For it was not so said as though the body is turned into spirit and becomes spirit; since even now our body, which is called natural, is not turned into soul and made soul. But a spiritual body is understood to be one so subjected to the spirit that it is suited to a heavenly habitation, all earthly frailty and blemish being changed and converted into heavenly purity and stability. This is the change of which the Apostle likewise says, 'We shall all rise again, but we shall not all be changed.' And that this change is made not for the worse but for the better, the same one teaches, when he says, 'And we shall be changed' (1 Cor. 15:44, 51, 52).
But where and in what manner the Lord's body is in heaven is a most curious and superfluous thing to inquire; only it must be believed to be in heaven. For it belongs not to our frailty to discuss the secrets of the heavens, but it belongs to our faith to hold high and honorable thoughts concerning the dignity of the Lord's body. Chapter VII. The sitting at the right hand of the Father. We believe also that He sits at the right hand of the Father. Nor yet is God the Father therefore to be thought of as circumscribed by a human form, so that, to those thinking of Him, a right or a left side should occur to the mind;
or that this very thing—that the Father is said to sit—is to be supposed to come about by the bending of hams (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' (Rom. 1:23). For it is unlawful for a Christian to set up such an image of God in a temple; much more is it wicked in the heart, where the temple of God truly is, if it be cleansed from earthly desire and error. 'At the right hand,' therefore, is to be understood as thus said: in the highest blessedness, where there is righteousness and peace and joy; just as at the left hand the goats are stationed (Matt. 25:33), that is, in misery, on account of their iniquities, labors, and torments.
Therefore, when God is said to sit, this signifies not the position of limbs but judicial power, which that Majesty never lacks, always assigning what is worthy to those who are worthy; although at the final judgment the undoubted glory of the only-begotten Son of God, the Judge of the living and the dead, will be far more manifest among men. Chapter VIII. His coming to judgment. We believe also that from thence He shall come at the most fitting time, and shall judge the living and the dead. Whether by these names the righteous and sinners be signified, or whether those be called the living whom before death He shall find on earth at His coming, and the dead those who shall rise again at His coming: this dispensation is temporal, not merely so, as was that generation according to God;
but also has been, and shall be. For our Lord was on earth, and now is in heaven, and shall be in glory the Judge of the living and the dead. For He shall so come as He ascended, according to the authority contained in the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 1:11). Out of 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 (Rev. 1:8). Chapter IX. On faith in the Holy Spirit. The mystery of the Trinity. Explained by similitudes. The profession of the Christian faith. Concerning the Holy Spirit, the opinion of certain persons that He is the very Godhead of the Father and the Son: Holiness (sanctitas) is from making holy (a sanciendo).
Having thus set forth and commended to faith both the divine generation of our Lord and His human dispensation, there is added to our confession, for the perfecting of the faith which we have concerning God, the Holy Spirit, of a nature no less than the Father and the Son, but, so to speak, consubstantial and coeternal; because this Trinity is one God: not so that the Father is the same as 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, and this Trinity is one God, as it is written: Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is one God (Deut. 6:4). Yet if we be questioned concerning each severally, and it be said to us, Is the Father God? we shall answer, God.
If it be asked whether the Son is God, we shall answer the same. Nor, if such a question be put concerning the Holy Spirit, ought we to answer that He is anything other than God: taking most earnest heed not to understand it in the way it was said of men, Ye are gods (Ps. 82:6). For those are not gods by nature, whosoever have been made and created by the Father through the Son by the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the Trinity itself is signified when the Apostle says, For of Him, and in Him, and through Him are all things (Rom. 11:36). Therefore, although being questioned concerning each severally we answer that He of whom the question is asked is God — whether the Father, or the Son, or the Holy Spirit — yet let no one suppose that three gods are worshipped by us. 17.
Nor is it wonderful that these things are said of that ineffable nature, since even in those things which we perceive with bodily eyes and judge by bodily sense, something of the like sort occurs. For when we are asked concerning a spring, we cannot say that it is itself the river; nor, when asked concerning the river, can we call it the spring; and again the draught which is drawn from spring or river, we can call neither river nor spring; yet in this trinity which we name, even when each is asked about severally, we answer 'water' for each. For if I ask whether there be water in the river, no other answer is given, and in that draught there can be no other answer; nor yet do we call these three waters, but one.
Yet one must indeed be on guard lest anyone conceive the ineffable substance of that Majesty as one conceives this visible and bodily spring or river or draught. For in these, that water which is now in the spring goes forth into the river, and does not remain in itself; and when from river or spring it passes into the draught, it does not remain there whence it is taken. And so it can come about that the same water now pertains 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 be sometimes the Son, sometimes the Holy Spirit; just as in a tree the root is nothing but the root, nor is the trunk anything other than the trunk, nor can we call the branches anything but branches: for that which is called the root cannot be called trunk and branches;
nor can the wood that belongs to the root ever be, by any transition, now in the root, now in the trunk, now in the branches, but only in the root: while yet the rule of the name remains, so that the root is wood, and the trunk wood, and the branches wood; nor yet are they called three woods, but one. Or if these have some dissimilarity, so that they might not absurdly be called three woods, because of the difference of firmness; this at least all concede, that if from one spring three cups be filled, they may be called three cups, but three waters they cannot be called, but altogether one water; although, being asked concerning each of the cups severally, you would answer that there is water in any of them: even though here no transition takes place, as we were saying of the passing from spring into river.