The Image of the Invisible God

First we must note this: the divine nature that is in Christ, in that he is the only Son of God, is one thing, and the human nature he took on in these last times for the carrying out of God’s plan is another. So we have to settle first what the only Son of God is, since he is called by many different names, depending on the case in hand and on how people are thinking of him. He is called Wisdom, in Solomon’s words: “The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways, and among his works, before he made anything else. He founded me before the ages. In the beginning, before he formed the earth, before he brought forth the springs of water, before the mountains were set firm, before all the hills, he brought me forth.” He is also called the Firstborn, as the apostle said: “the firstborn of all creation.” But the Firstborn is not by nature a different person from Wisdom; the two are one and the same. And in fact the apostle Paul says that “Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.” [a]

But no one should imagine that when we call him the wisdom of God we mean something that is not a real being. No one should suppose, for instance, that we take him to be, not a living being who has wisdom, but some thing that makes people wise by giving itself to their minds and planting itself in them, in those who are made able to take in his powers and his understanding. Once it is rightly understood that the only Son of God is God’s wisdom existing as a being in its own right, I do not know that our curiosity ought to push on past that point, or begin to suspect that this hypostasis, this substance, has anything bodily about it. Everything with a body is marked out by shape, or color, or size — and who in his right mind ever looked for shape or color or size in wisdom, as wisdom? [f]

And who that can think or feel about God with any reverence would suppose that God the Father ever existed, even for the space of a single instant, without having brought forth this Wisdom? For then he has to say one of two things. Either God was unable to bring Wisdom forth before he produced her, so that later he called into being one who had not existed before; or he had the power and — a thing that cannot be said of God without irreverence — was unwilling to use it. Anyone can see that both are equally absurd and irreverent. They come to this: either God moved from not being able to being able, or he had the power, hid it, and put off bringing Wisdom forth.

That is why we have always held that God is the Father of his only Son, who was indeed born from him and draws from him what he is — but with no beginning at all. Not a beginning that could be measured out in stretches of time, and not even the kind of beginning the mind can look at inside itself and see, so to speak, with the bare power of thought. So we must believe that Wisdom was brought forth before any beginning that can be grasped or put into words. And since all the power and shaping of the creation that was to come was contained in this very existence of Wisdom — both of the things that exist in their own right and of the things whose existence is derived — formed in advance and set in order by the power of God’s foreknowledge, it is on account of these very creatures, sketched out and prefigured in Wisdom herself, that Wisdom says, in Solomon’s words, that she was created the beginning of God’s ways. She held within herself the beginnings, the forms, and the kinds of everything created.

Now in the same way that we have understood Wisdom to be the beginning of God’s ways, and to be spoken of as created — shaping beforehand and holding within herself the kinds and the beginnings of every creature — we must understand her to be the Word of God. She is the Word because she discloses to all other beings, that is, to the whole of creation, what the mysteries and secrets kept inside the divine wisdom are; and she is called the Word because she is, so to speak, the interpreter of the mind’s secrets. And so the line found in the Acts of Paul, where it says, “Here is the Word, a living being,” seems to me rightly put. But John says it more grandly and more exactly at the opening of his Gospel, where he defines God, by a definition all its own, as the Word: “And God was the Word, and he was in the beginning with God.” [h]

So anyone who assigns a beginning to the Word or Wisdom of God had better take care that he is not guilty of irreverence toward the unborn Father himself. For he is denying that God had always been a Father, that he had brought forth the Word, and that he had wisdom in every period before this one — whether those periods are called times, or ages, or anything else that can bear the name.

This Son, then, is also the truth and the life of everything that exists — and rightly so. How could created things live, unless their being came from life? How could the things that are truly be, unless they came down from the truth? How could reasoning beings exist, unless the Word, that is, reason, had existed first? How could they be wise, unless there were wisdom? But it was going to happen that some would fall away from life and bring death on themselves by that falling — for death is nothing but a departure from life. And beings once created by God for the enjoyment of life were not to perish altogether. So there had to be, before death, a power in existence able to undo the death that was coming; there had to be a resurrection, whose pattern was in our Lord and Savior; and that resurrection had to have its ground in the wisdom and word and life of God. [k]

Then, next. Some of the beings that were created were not always going to be willing to stay unchanged and unaltered, quietly and moderately enjoying the good things they had. The good that was in them was not theirs by nature or by their own essence but by accident, and so they were going to be twisted and altered and to fall away from where they stood. That is why the Word and Wisdom of God was made the Way. He is called that because he leads to the Father those who walk along him.

So whatever we have said of the wisdom of God applies just as well to the Son of God, and is to be understood of him as the Life, the Word, the Truth, and the Resurrection. All these titles are drawn from his power and his work, and in none of them is there the least reason to understand anything bodily, anything that would seem to mean size or shape or color. The human children we see around us, and the young of other living things, answer to the seed of those who fathered them; and whatever it is that they bring into this light and carry with them when they are born, they get it from the mothers in whose wombs they are formed and fed.

But to compare God the Father, in the bringing forth of his only Son and in that Son’s very being, to any man or any other living thing in the act of begetting is a monstrous and forbidden thing. We are bound to hold that here is something out of the ordinary and worthy of God, which admits of no comparison at all — not among things, and not in anything the mind can frame or the senses find out — such that a human mind could take in how the unborn God becomes the Father of the only Son. For his being brought forth is as eternal and unending as the brightness that comes off the sun. He is not made a Son by being given the breath of life, by some act from outside, but by his own nature.

Now let us see how what we have put forward is supported by the authority of the holy Scriptures. The apostle Paul says that the only Son is “the image of the invisible God” and “the firstborn of all creation.” And writing to the Hebrews he says of him that he is “the brightness of his glory and the exact imprint of his being.” [o]

And in the book called the Wisdom of Solomon we find this description of the wisdom of God: “She is the breath of the power of God, and the purest outflow of the glory of the Almighty.” So nothing defiled can come upon her. She is the splendor of the eternal light, the spotless mirror of God’s working, and the image of his goodness. And we say again what we said before: Wisdom has her existence nowhere but in him who is the beginning of all things, from whom everything that is wise also comes; for he alone is a Son by nature, and that is why he is called the only Son.

Now let us see how we are to understand the phrase “invisible image,” so that we may see from it how God is rightly called the Father of his Son. Let us start from what people ordinarily call images. Sometimes we call a thing an image when it is painted or carved on some material — wood, or stone. And sometimes we call a child the image of his parent, when nothing in the child’s features fails to match the likeness of the father. So I think the man who was formed after the image and likeness of God fits the first illustration. We shall look at him more exactly, God willing, when we come to expound that passage in Genesis. [q]

But the image that is the Son of God, whom we are speaking of now, fits the second of those examples — and fits it in this respect too, that he is the invisible image of the invisible God, in the way we say, following the sacred history, that Adam’s image is his son Seth. The words are: “And Adam fathered Seth in his own likeness and after his own image.” Now this image holds the oneness of nature and being that belongs to Father and Son. For if the Son does in the same way all the things the Father does, then just because the Son does everything as the Father does, the Father’s image is formed in the Son, who is born from him the way an act of will comes out of the mind.

And so I hold that the Father’s will alone ought to be enough for the existence of whatever he wants to exist, since in willing he uses no other means than the one that the deliberation of his will makes known. And in this way the Son’s being too is brought forth by him. This above all must be maintained by those who allow that nothing is unborn except God the Father alone.

And we must be careful not to fall into the absurdities of people who imagine certain emanations, so as to cut the divine nature into parts and divide God the Father as far as they can. Even the faintest suspicion of such a thing about a being that has no body is not only the height of irreverence but a mark of the greatest folly; nothing is further from an intelligent idea than that a nature without a body should be physically divided. Rather, as an act of will comes out of the understanding without cutting off any part of it and without being separated or divided from it, in some such way the Father is to be thought of as having brought forth the Son, his own image — so that, being himself invisible by nature, he brought forth an image that is invisible as well.

For the Son is the Word, and so we are not to suppose that anything in him can be picked up by the senses. He is wisdom, and in wisdom there can be no suspicion of anything bodily. He is the true light that gives light to everyone coming into this world — but he has nothing in common with the light of this sun.

So our Savior is the image of the invisible God: set beside the Father himself he is the truth, and set beside us, to whom he reveals the Father, he is the image through which we come to know the Father, whom no one knows except the Son, and the one to whom the Son is pleased to reveal him. And the way of revealing him is through the understanding. For whoever understands the Son understands the Father too, as a result, according to his own words: “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.”

But since we quoted Paul’s words about Christ, where he says of him that he is “the brightness of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his being,” let us see what we are to make of this. In John’s words, “God is light.” The only Son, then, is the glory of this light. He comes from God himself inseparably, as brightness comes from light, and he lights up the whole of creation. [t]

We have already explained how he is the Way and leads to the Father; how he is the Word, interpreting the secrets of wisdom and the mysteries of knowledge and making them known to reasoning creatures; and how he is also the Truth, and the Life, and the Resurrection. In the same way we ought to understand what it means that he is the brightness, for it is by its splendor that we understand and feel what light itself is.

And this splendor offers itself gently and softly to the frail, weak eyes of mortal people. Little by little it trains them, as it were, and gets them used to bearing the brightness of the light. It takes away from them every hindrance and blockage to seeing, following the Lord’s own command: “Take the plank out of your own eye.” In this way it makes them able to bear the splendor of the light — and in this respect too it is made a kind of mediator between people and the light.

But since the apostle calls him not only the brightness of God’s glory but also the exact imprint of his being — his substance, or his subsistence — it does not seem idle to ask how there can be said to be another imprint of that being besides God’s own being, whatever “substance” and “subsistence” mean. Consider, then, whether the Son of God — since he is God’s Word and Wisdom, and alone knows the Father, and reveals him to whomever he wishes, that is, to those able to take in his word and wisdom — may not be called the imprint of God’s being at precisely this point, where he makes God understood and acknowledged. That is: when that Wisdom, wanting to make known to others the means by which God is acknowledged and understood by them, describes himself first of all, he may by doing that be called the exact imprint of God’s being. [v]

But to reach a fuller understanding of how the Savior is the imprint of God’s being or subsistence, let us take an example. It does not describe our subject fully or even suitably, but it may be seen to be used for this one purpose: to show that the Son of God, who was in the form of God, emptied himself, and that by this very emptying he aims to demonstrate to us the fullness of his divine nature.

Suppose there were a statue so enormous in size that it filled the whole world, and for that very reason could be seen by no one. And suppose another statue were made exactly like it — the same shape of limbs, the same features of the face, the same form and the same material — but without that immense size, so that those who could not look at the huge one would, on seeing this one, admit that they had seen the huge one, because it kept every feature of its limbs and face, and even its very form and material, so exactly that the two could not be told apart.

By some such comparison, the Son of God, emptying himself of his equality with the Father and showing us the way to the knowledge of him, is made the exact imprint of his being. We were unable to look at the glory of that marvelous light while it stood in the greatness of his divine nature; but since he has been made brightness for us, we get, by looking at the brightness, the means of seeing the divine light.

This comparison with statues, of course, belongs to material things, and it is used for no other purpose than this: to show that the Son of God, though set in the very small form of a human body, showed by the likeness of his works and his power to the Father that there was in him an immense and invisible greatness. For he said to his disciples, “Whoever sees me sees the Father also,” and, “I and the Father are one.” And the same kind of saying belongs with these: “The Father is in me, and I am in the Father.”