And since in ever thinking of a beginning no one finds a term, therefore that is to be called truly the beginning which is essentially everlasting. Hence it is indeed that the Son Himself, wishing to show to the Jews by an altogether sure manifestation the immensity of His own everlastingness, when they asked who He was, answered: 'The Beginning, who also speak unto you' (John VIII, 25). But perhaps, because He is called that which is the beginning, He will rather be thought subject to a beginning of existing.
But if from this word anyone strives to construct a prejudice against the truth, so that, because he knows Him to be called by the name of beginning, he supposes Him to have had some beginning of nativity, he will assuredly give also to the Father (which is impious) some beginning of existing, whom together with the Son we know to be named the beginning, as He Himself says: 'With thee is the beginning in the day of thy power, in the brightness of the saints; from the womb before the day-star I begat thee.' But what will he answer, who from the name of beginning asserts that the Son has a beginning of nativity? But if anyone, because He is called the beginning, believes the nativity of the Son to have a beginning, it follows that the same Son, because He is called the end, he should also assert will have an end:
—for the Lord Himself, when the Jews asked, affirmed Himself to be the beginning, saying: 'The Beginning, who also speak unto you.' But Paul names Christ the end, saying: 'For the end of the law is Christ, unto righteousness to every one that believeth' (Romans X, 4). The Lord also says of Himself: 'I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end' (Revelation I, 8). But if, because He is called the beginning, He is asserted to have begun, then also, because He is called the end, let Him be thought to be about to be ended. And where will be that utterance of John, which he drank from the breast of the living fountain? We know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us understanding, that we may know the true, and may be in his true Son Jesus Christ: this is the true God, and eternal life (1 John V, 20-21).
That life he must needs deny to be eternal, whosoever asserts that it will fail. But He Himself who is the true God and eternal life says that the righteous shall go into life eternal. How then shall the life of the righteous be eternal, if the eternal life itself shall at some time not be? Or to what purpose is this labour of holy conversation and of continual struggle against temptations endured, if the reward shall at some time be taken away from the victors? Is this the praiseworthy intention of the whole course in the saints? Do they for this reason chastise their body and bring it into subjection? Is it for this that they presume not to run at uncertainty, and, fighting, know that they beat not the air (1 Corinthians IX, 26)?
Is it for this that they know they have not a wrestling against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against the spiritual wickedness in the heavenly places (Ephesians VI, 12)? For this do they resist the roaring lion, going about in tireless circuit seeking whom he may devour (1 Peter V, 8)—so that, after they have here lived patiently in tribulation, once the seductive recompense of the divine promise (which is seductive rather than true) is consumed, they should either live in misery, or live not at all? For Christ is called Life, as He says: 'I am the way, the truth, and the life' (John XIV, 6). Christ is called the beginning and the end, because He likewise said: 'I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end' (Revelation I, 8);
—but this life, if, because it is called the beginning, it is thought subject to a beginning of nativity, it follows that, because it is called the end, it should at some time be thought finally to be abolished. But how shall they live without end to whom eternal life shall be given, if the eternity of that very life shall be brought to an end?
But if these things are altogether absurd, then consequently the truth of the catholic and apostolic faith is to be held, which, just as it therefore names Christ the end—because not only in that substance wherein He was born naturally everlasting from the Father, but also in that which He took in time from His mother, it believes Him to be without end perpetual—so it justly and truly proclaims Him the beginning, because in the divine substance which He has it asserts Him always coeternal with His Begetter. But it is not doubted that nothing is found prior to a true beginning, nothing posterior to a true end. Christ is therefore the beginning, because as everlasting He precedes all things; Christ the end, because as perpetual He concludes all things; Christ the beginning, because He Himself began the things to be perfected;
—Christ the end, because He Himself perfects the things begun; Christ the beginning, because from Him the things that were not have their being; Christ the end, because from Him certain things which began to be have it that they may always be. CHAPTER VI. An objection concerning Melchizedek, of whom it is said he was without father and without mother. Christ the king of righteousness and of peace. Christ without mother, as God; without father, as man. In the one person of Christ a twofold nativity. But what doubt is believed to be left over from this point, when in Melchizedek (who, because he bore the type of the future high priest, Christ) the Apostle showed the person of Christ, the one and same God and man, to be signified,
—showing it both, according to the divine substance, to be everlasting without beginning, and, according to the servile form which He took in time, to be perpetual without end. Thus therefore the same teacher of the nations speaks to the Hebrews: 'For this Melchizedek, king of Salem, priest of the most high God, who met Abraham returning from the slaughter of the kings, and blessed him: to whom also Abraham divided the tithes of all.'
'First indeed, being interpreted king of righteousness, and then also king of Salem, that is, king of peace; without father, without mother, without genealogy; having neither beginning of days nor end of life; but likened unto the Son of God, he continueth a priest for ever' (Hebrews VII, 1, 2, 3). Perhaps in this testimony the contradiction of the resistant might, concerning the person of this Melchizedek, oppose something to so great a light of truth, if it were to be believed that any creature had naturally existed without beginning.
But since it is clear that every creature in every way, as being made altogether out of nothing, does not lack a beginning—whose origin, by the sole will and power of the Creator, when He judged it should be made (He who has ever held immutable the disposition of mutable works), is known to have been substituted out of nothing, which nevertheless never was before it existed at the beginning of creation—it is by no means accepted that Melchizedek was either begotten without father and mother (which belongs to the first man) or that he naturally lacks a beginning of existing, which belongs to God alone.
He therefore naturally retains the truth of this figure, who is marvellous in both nativities, nor anywhere lacked the truth of a natural origin, and in each was marvellously born as singular. For who is the king of righteousness, save our King Christ, who was made sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him? Who also is the king of peace? Is it not He who says: 'My peace I give unto you, my peace I leave with you' (John XIV, 27)? For He is our peace, who hath made both one (Ephesians II, 14). To Him the prophet cries out: 'O Lord our God, give us thy peace; for thou hast given us all things, O Lord our God. Possess us; O Lord, beside thee we have known no other; we name thy name' (Isaiah XXVI, 12).
Moreover, Christ the Son of God had no mother in the divine substance, which He always has from the Father. Again, the same had no father in the human nature, which He took from His mother alone. For in the truth of both nativities He preserved the singularity both of the parent and of the offspring: so that, although He was first born of the Father alone and afterward of the Virgin alone, yet it was one and the same who was both first born of the Father and afterward born of the Virgin:
—so that in the wondrous and ineffable mystery of the one true God and true man Christ, neither was the natural substance lacking to the begotten from the begetter, nor was the person doubled in the begetter or the begotten; and although in the one Christ the unconfused truth preserved the truth of the nature of God and of man, yet the undivided truth exhibited in Christ one person of both natures, so that neither should the twofold nativity of the one Christ seem to double the person, nor should the unity of person, either in the name of God or in the man united to God, be able to abolish the true substance.
And although each substance, being true in the one Christ, testifies in itself both the nativity of an origin and the origin of a nativity, yet the wondrous devotion of the mystery, remaining, has shown us also in this human generation a certain sure line of understanding for that divine and ineffable generation which has no end: for He who is ever God of God, the same is temporally of man both God and man; and in whom the everlasting nativity possessed the natural fullness of the paternal substance, in the same the natural truth exhibited the full nature of man.
For the Son of God, that He might raise our understanding from the visible to the invisible, demonstrated in Himself the truth of human nature, so that it might consequently be believed that He, whom it was established to have been naturally born a true man of man, had naturally existed as true God of the nature of the true God. CHAPTER VII. The temporal nativity of Christ leads to the knowledge of the eternal. The immense majesty of Christ, because His nativity is everlasting. There was no place before the Son of God in which He might be born. Nor was there any place coeval with the Word. Christ also had a beginning of His nativity in the nature of man, in which the mother whom He begat could not be without a beginning;
so that, once the truth of his nature is acknowledged, it might be recognized that his divine birth had no beginning, since for the eternal Father, just as there was no beginning of his existing, so no birth of a generation that had a beginning came to him. For in this way Christ Jesus displayed in himself the truth of both substances, that just as in the substance of the man Christ—the prerogative of that singular dignity being preserved—there is found substantially that which naturally belongs in man, so in the same Christ who is God it is believed that there is substantially that which naturally subsists in the Father; so that when in the man Christ the truth of man is seen, in the same Christ who is God the truth of the paternal Godhead may be known;
and when that birth is found to be subject to a beginning—the birth which arose substantially in time from the man who exists in time—that other birth too may be believed to be without beginning, which subsists substantially and eternally from the eternal God. He himself therefore is without a mother in the divine substance, being naturally begotten of the Father alone; he himself indeed is without a father as the fruit of the inviolate Virgin, whom no marital embrace touched; he himself is without genealogy, of whom it is written: 'Who shall declare his generation?' (Isaiah 53:8), so that while faith affords us knowledge in the true generation of the Son of God, yet eternity surpasses speech, in that the steadfastness of faith is nourished by the firm foundation of belief,
while the boldness of speech is restrained by faithful fear, so that the true and natural eternity of the divine generation may be acknowledged. For since what is divine is assuredly true by nature—because in the true God there is nothing false; and since it was neither begun nor created, just as it surpasses every want of thought concerning a nature begun or created, so it exceeds every capacity of speech. Or do we perhaps doubt to receive concerning his generation what we have grasped by the truth of apostolic authority concerning the peace of God? For the most blessed Paul says to us: 'The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus' (Philippians 4:7).
Whose peace therefore, although it surpasses all understanding, is nevertheless believed to be true, eternal, and natural; why then should the natural truth and infinite eternity of his generation—which surpasses all speech altogether—be denied? Where therefore there is eternal peace, let there also be believed an eternal birth; and of whom an eternal birth must be believed, let not an immeasurable majesty be denied, since indeed that is bounded by no natural limit which is not held by any beginning of birth; and therefore that substance is recognized as utterly immeasurable whose birth is not begun but true. For whatever is circumscribed by some limit must necessarily be held by place or by time. But how can he be believed to have made time and place, if he himself were subject to place or to time?
For through him every place was made, since 'all things were made through him, and without him was made nothing' (John 1:3). Through him also time is recognized to have been made, concerning which Paul says: 'In many ways and by many means God, who of old spoke to the fathers by the prophets, in these last days has spoken to us in the Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom also he made the ages' (Hebrews 1:1-2). He is therefore not local through whom place was made, nor temporal through whom time was made; for if he himself, being local, made place, and it is certain that everything local is in a place, it follows consequently that he must have been in a place beforehand, and so could have created place.
But this place, in which the Son of God is said to have been, I ask whether it is believed to be prior to the Son, or coeval with him? But if some suppose the place to be prior to the Son, let them see into what abyss of wicked assertion they run headlong, when they set the material of any work whatever before the maker of all things. And since John recorded that all things were made through him, he must be said (God forbid) to have had no truth in himself, if any work whatever preceded the workman. For how could he make a place before which he could not be, or without which he could not be, if he himself were so made? Then let them further weigh with anxious consideration that they seem to give to place the infinity of eternity, which they strive to take away from the Son of God.
For if they assert that the Son of God was not born without a beginning because the evangelist says: 'In the beginning was the Word,' and does not say, 'before the beginning was the Word'; then those who assert that place existed before the Word must necessarily confess that it also existed before the beginning, since that which they think existed before the Word they suppose to have had no beginning. But if place had no beginning, it is without doubt coeternal with the eternal Father.
And since the eternal cannot stand apart from the eternal, such absurdity assuredly follows upon this impiety: that either we must suppose God to be local, or place must be believed to be that which God is, or they must suppose place itself to be some beginning without God, which by its own eternity naturally persists uncreated. But since these things are not believed without impiety, therefore place must be called not only not prior to the Son, but not even coeval with him. For to him through whom all things were made (Psalm 148:5), no things whatever that were made can be set before or compared. For he who arranged all things in number and weight and measure, just as he could not be numbered by time, so he could not be measured by place. Therefore the psalm truly sings:
'Great is the Lord our God, and great is his power, and of his wisdom there is no number.' And that the infinite immensity of this wondrous eternity might be shown, it is said in another place: 'Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised, and of his greatness there is no end' (Psalm 145:3). For it is truly necessary that what is naturally eternal be pronounced naturally immeasurable, because what always is is not contained by number, and what is wholly everywhere is not enclosed by place; therefore, finally, in another testimony of Scripture it is said concerning Wisdom: 'She reaches everywhere by reason of her purity' (Wisdom 7:24). And a little after: 'She reaches mightily from end to end, and orders all things sweetly' (Wisdom 8:1).
Here indeed, when we hear that wisdom reaches from end to end, it must be understood that when she reaches from end to end, she exceeds both ends by the immensity of her infinity. For she is able to reach every creature, whom no creature is able to enclose; for just as, filling heaven, she remains immeasurable, so, reaching from end to end, she remains infinite. For 'She reaches mightily from end to end' is of the same kind as that which is said through Jeremiah: 'I am a God at hand, and not a God afar off. If a man be hidden in secret, shall I then not see him? Do I not fill heaven and earth?' (Jeremiah 23:23-24). He who fills all things sees all things.
And in this he showed what it is to say 'I will see him,' in that he added, saying: 'I fill heaven and earth'; for God must not be believed to see in a bodily manner, as though he himself were in one place when he sees, and in another place that which he sees. For whatever he sees, he does not see outside himself, since he himself fills all the things that he sees. For it is written: 'For in every place the eyes of God behold the good and the evil' (Proverbs 15:3). And in another place: 'The eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, and his ears unto their prayers, but the countenance of the Lord is upon them that do evil' (Psalm 34:15-16). CHAPTER VIII. How the omnipresence of the divine nature is to be understood. Here arises the occasion of a question not to be passed over, in that which Solomon says: 'In every place the eyes of God behold the good and the evil.'
And again the prophet says to the Lord: 'Your eye is pure, that it may not see evil' (Habakkuk 1:13). For it must be feared lest he who is said to see those things which he is said to fill be thought to be nowhere present when he is said not to see something; since he would not be substantially everywhere, if he were not even in evils. But in the divine discourses, if humility of heart be maintained, no repugnance to the truth will be found. In a certain sense, therefore, God sees all things, and in a certain sense God does not see certain things, just as in a certain sense he is wholly everywhere, and in a certain sense he is nowhere—not because he is substantially absent from anywhere [concerning whom it is written: 'All things were created through him and in him, and he is before all, and all things consist in him' (Colossians 1:16-17);
and who, according to the prophetic saying, 'has measured the waters in his hand, and the heaven with a span, and all the earth with a closed hand' (Isaiah 40:12)]—but because he is not present to all things equally: for he is present everywhere by his power, not everywhere by his grace. By the power whereby God fills and contains all things, by that same power he sees all things; but by grace he is said to see that which he himself bestows, and that which he works in his faithful ones: 'For God saw all the things that he had made, and behold they were very good' (Genesis 1:31). And by this, both where he does not see certain things in order to bestow, he sees in order to requite;
so likewise he sees evil, and does not see evil, because what he does not see so as to approve, he sees so as to judge; and what he does not see as granted by his grace, he sees as to be exacted from the sinner by justice: since even where the bounty of justifying is not present, the severity of judging is not lacking, as blessed Paul says: 'Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God: toward them indeed that fell, severity; but toward you, goodness, if you continue in goodness' (Romans 11:22). And since these things are so, how can he be substantially absent from anywhere, when even the light shines in the darkness, although the darkness comprehended it not (John 1:5)?
Or how can he substantially not see anything, concerning whom blessed Paul most clearly protests, saying: 'For the word of God is living and effectual, and more piercing than any two-edged sword; reaching unto the division of the soul and the spirit, of the joints also and the marrow, and a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. And there is no creature invisible in his sight: but all things are naked and open to his eyes' (Hebrews 4:12-13)? Nor here, as we said above, ought any suspicion of bodily vision to creep in, as though the Son of God were in heaven, and thence saw all things where he is not;
for to God, to see is the same as to be, and however great a vision he intimates, so great does he will his substance to be believed, so that when we hear that all things are naked and open to his eyes, we may suppose no boundary of his substance. CHAPTER IX. That infinity belongs equally to the Son as to the Father. But that the Son might be shown to be of one infinity with the Father, holy Scripture took care to say concerning Wisdom: 'For she is the brightness of eternal light, and the unspotted mirror of God's majesty, and the image of his goodness' (Wisdom 7:26). In this testimony are shown the natural unity, and the property of the persons, and the immensity of the equality of the Father and the Son. For no one doubts that the Father is here called light, and the Son brightness.
Concerning whom the apostolic authority also says: 'Who, being the brightness of glory, and the figure of his substance, and upholding all things by the word of his power' (Hebrews 1:3). Behold, the Son is declared both to be brightness and to uphold all things. If therefore anyone thinks the Father immeasurable, but believes the Son to be limited by some quantity, let him demonstrate to us how light and brightness can be of diverse substances, since they are neither confounded in name, nor separated in kind, nor does one differ from the other in quantity. For the names of light and brightness are not confused, but the nature of light and brightness is not divided.
Again, brightness is so inseparably united to light that it can in no way be separated from it, and light holds in itself as much brightness as brightness contains in itself of light; nor can light, in order to be silent, be deprived of brightness, nor can brightness, in order to shine, ever be destitute of light; but whatever light fills, brightness also fills, remaining equal in brightness, being likewise equal in light. Wherefore, if even that eternal light could neither be without its brightness, nor can lack the same: consequently either one limit of quality and quantity will be given to the Father and the Son, or of necessity both must equally be declared immeasurable:
for however great the brightness of that light is, so great must you confess the light of that brightness to be; since its brightness so equals the light in all respects that it can there be neither greater nor lesser. CHAPTER X. The Son did not descend from heaven locally. The Father too is said in the Scriptures to descend and to come, but not locally. But we greatly marvel at those who conspire to the outrage of the Son of God, supposing him, according to the substance of his deity, either to pass from place to place by local motion, or to be unable to fill all things at once by the immensity of his deity;
to such a degree that, when they hear that he descended to earth, they believe him not to have been in heaven or among those below, and they affirm that he descended to hell according to the substance of his deity in such a way that they suppose him then to have been absent from heaven and from the earth. How do they not consider, according to the manner of the Scriptures whereby the heavenly words are wont to be adapted to the understanding of little ones, that sometimes similar things are found also in the person of the Father? For, to pass over those places of the legal books in which it is said: 'And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower' (Genesis 11:5), as though if he had not come down he would not see; whereas we have shown above that Scripture said: 'In every place the eyes of God behold the good and the evil.' And,
the Lord himself says to the prophet: 'I am the Lord God of all flesh; is anything hidden from me?' But also that which is said a little after: 'Come, let us go down, and there confound their languages' (Genesis 11:7). So that these things may for now be reckoned in silence, since some are wont to attribute them not to the whole Trinity, but to the person of the Son alone, what will they say concerning that place of the Gospel, in which the Son himself, instructing the disciples before he suffered, says: 'He that has my commandments and keeps them, he it is that loves me; and he that loves me shall be loved by my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him' (John 14:21). And when Jude the disciple (not the traitor) had answered, saying:
'Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us, and not to the world?' Then, to show that the grace of manifestation is signified by the name of coming, Jesus answered and said to him: 'If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him, and will make our abode with him' (John 14:23). Together they love, together they come, and with their lover together they make one abode, together they manifest themselves, because with one light of their coming they illumine the heart of the lover. And since by revealing themselves they manifest themselves, they do not reveal themselves without the Holy Spirit, because they do not manifest themselves without the Holy Spirit. For so they cannot be known without their Holy Spirit, just as they cannot be without their
Holy Spirit they cannot be; and for this reason, just as the manifestation is one, so the revelation of the Trinity is one, and where there is one gift of divine revelation, there is one coming of the undivided Trinity: for just as the Father is shown to reveal, as the Son himself says: 'Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, because flesh and blood have not revealed it to you, but my Father who is in heaven' (Matthew 16:17); so the Son is shown by his word to reveal the Father; for he says: 'No one knows the Son but the Father, neither does anyone know the Father but the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal him' (Matthew 11:27). Nor is the revelation of the Holy Spirit to be esteemed unlike, in whom there is the natural knowledge of God himself, the Apostle saying: