Not the Father but the Son

But now that Christ has been proved from the sacred authority of the divine writings to be not man only but God as well, another set of heretics breaks out and sets about damaging the reverence we owe to Christ. From this very fact — that he is asserted to be not man only, but is declared to be God — they want to show that Christ is God the Father. Their argument runs like this. If God is asserted to be one, and Christ is God; if the Father and Christ are one God, then, they say, Christ will have to be called the Father. And here is where they are shown to be in error. They do not know Christ; they are following the sound of a name. They will not have him be the second person after the Father — they want him to be the Father himself. [a]

Since this is easily answered, a few words will do. Who does not admit that the person of the Son is second after the Father, once he reads that the Father said, and said it to the Son, “Let us make man in our image and our likeness,” and that after this it is recorded, “And God made man; in the image of God he made him”? Or when he holds in his hands, “The Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the Lord out of heaven”? Or when he reads words said to Christ: “You are my Son; today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will give you the nations for your inheritance, and the ends of the earth for your possession”? Or when that beloved writer says, “The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies the footstool of your feet”? Or when he unrolls the prophecies of Isaiah and finds it written, “Thus says the Lord to Christ my Lord”?

Or when he reads, “I came down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me”? Or when he finds it written, “Because he who sent me is greater than I”? Or when he weighs the passage, “I go to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God”? Or when he finds this set down beside the rest: “And in your law it is written that the witness of two is true. I bear witness about myself, and the Father who sent me bears witness about me”? Or when the voice from heaven says, “I have both glorified him, and I will glorify him again”? Or when Peter answers and says, “You are the Son of the living God”? Or when the Lord himself approves the sacred secret of that revelation and says, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, because flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven”?

Or when Christ himself puts it this way: “Father, glorify me with the glory I had with you before the world was made”? Or when the same one said, “Father, I knew that you always hear me; but I said it for the sake of those standing around, so that they may believe that you sent me”? Or when the terms of the rule are settled by Christ himself, and it is said, “And this is eternal life, that they should know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. I have glorified you on the earth; I have finished the work you gave me”? Or when the same one asserts and says, “All things are handed over to me by my Father”? Or when his sitting at the Father’s right hand is proved by apostles and prophets alike?

I would have my hands full if I tried to gather up every passage there is on this side. For the divine Scripture — the New Testament quite as much as the Old — everywhere shows him to be born of the Father: the one by whom all things were made and without whom nothing was made, the one who has always obeyed the Father and obeys him still, the one who always has power over all things, but as something handed over to him, granted to him, allowed him by the Father himself. And what could be plainer proof that this is not the Father but the Son, than that he is set out as obedient to God the Father? Unless, of course, if he is believed to be the Father, we are to say that Christ is subject to some other God the Father.

They keep pressing on us the passage where it says, “I and the Father are one.” Here too we will get the better of them just as easily. For if Christ were the Father, as the heretics think, he ought to have said, “I and the Father are one person.” But he says “I,” and then brings in the Father by saying “I and the Father.” So he cuts off and marks out what belongs to himself — that is, the Son’s person — from the Father’s authority; and he does it not only in the sound of the names, but in the order in which power is handed down. He could have said, “I, the Father,” if he had had it in mind that he himself was the Father. [l]

And since he said “one thing,” let the heretics understand that he did not say “one person.” The word “one” put in the neuter points to a shared agreement, not to one and the same person. It is said in the neuter, not the masculine, because the expression is not about number; it is spoken with reference to being joined to another. Finally he adds, and says, “we are,” not “I am” — so that by saying “I and the Father are,” he may show that they are two persons. And his saying “one” has to do with their agreement, with their sameness of judgment, and with the loving bond itself; for the Father and the Son are rightly one in agreement, in love, and in affection. And because he is from the Father, whatever he is, he is the Son — the distinction still standing, that the one who is the Son is not the Father, since the one who is the Father is not the Son. He would not have added “we are” if he had had it in mind that he, the one and only Father, had become the Son.

In fact the apostle Paul grasped this same agreed unity, with the distinction of persons still standing. Writing to the Corinthians he said, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither the one who plants is anything, nor the one who waters, but God who gives the growth. Now the one who plants and the one who waters are one.” And who does not see that Apollos is one person and Paul another, and that Apollos and Paul are not one and the same person? The work named for each of them is different too: one is the man who plants, the other the man who waters. Yet the apostle Paul put these two forward not as being one person, but as being “one thing.” Although Apollos is one man and Paul another, so far as the distinction of persons goes, still, so far as their agreement goes, both are “one.”

For when two people have one judgment, one truth, one faith, one and the same religion, and one fear of God as well, they are one even though they are two persons; they are the same because they are of the same mind. Those whom the reckoning of persons divides from each other are brought together again as one by the reckoning of religion. They are not literally the same men, and yet by feeling the same they are the same; they are two, and still one, since they have a partnership in faith, even while they differ in persons.

Besides — when at these words of the Lord the ignorance of the Jews was stirred up, so that they ran off in a hurry to pick up stones and said, “We are not stoning you for a good work, but for blasphemy, and because you, being a man, make yourself God,” the Lord settled the distinction. He gave them the ground on which he had either said that he was God, or wanted it so understood, and says, “Do you say of him whom the Father made holy and sent into this world, You blaspheme, because I said I am the Son of God?” Here too, then, he said that he had a Father. So he is the Son, not the Father. He would have admitted that he was the Father, had he thought himself the Father; and he states that he was made holy by his Father.

In receiving that consecration from the Father, then, he is less than the Father. And the one who is less than the Father is not the Father but the Son; for had he been the Father, he would have given the consecration, not received it. As it is, by declaring that he has received consecration from the Father — by the very fact of proving himself less than the Father in receiving it from him — he has shown that he is the Son and not the Father. Besides, he says that he is sent. So by that obedience with which the Lord Christ came, having been sent, he is proved to be not the Father but the Son. He would surely have been the sender, had he been the Father; but being sent, he was not the Father — otherwise the Father would be proved, by being sent, to be under some other God.

And after this he added something that breaks up every ambiguity and puts out the whole quarrel of that error. He says, in the last part of what he was saying, “You say, You blaspheme, because I said I am the Son of God.” So if he plainly testifies that he is the Son of God and not the Father, it is enormous nerve and sheer madness to stir up a quarrel about God and about religion against the testimony of the Lord Christ himself, and to say that Christ Jesus is the Father, when he is seen to have proved himself not the Father, but the Son.

To this I will add the passage the heretic crows over as though it gave him some special sight of truth and light, while in fact he is confessing that his error is stone blind. Again and again, over and over, he throws at us the words, “Have I been with you so long, and you do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father as well.” But let him learn what he does not understand. Philip is rebuked — rightly, and deservedly too — for saying, “Lord, show us the Father, and that is enough for us.” When had he ever heard from Christ, or learned, that Christ was the Father? On the contrary, he had heard again and again, and learned often enough, that he was the Son and not the Father. [p]

When the Lord said, “If you have known me, you have known my Father too; and from now on you have known him and have seen him,” he did not say it as though he wanted himself to be taken for the Father. He meant that whoever comes to the Son of God thoroughly and completely, with full faith and full devotion, will certainly reach the Father through the Son himself, in whom he so believes, and will see him. “For no one,” he says, “can come to the Father except through me.” And so such a man will not only come to God the Father and know the Father himself; he ought also to hold it, and count on it in mind and heart, that from now on he has not only known but seen the Father.

For the divine Scripture often announces things not yet done as already done, because that is how they will be; and things that are bound to happen it does not foretell as if they were future, but tells as if they were done. And so, although Christ had not yet been born in the days of Isaiah the prophet, he said, “For to us a child is born.” And although no one had yet come to Mary, he said, “And I came to the prophetess, and she conceived and bore a son.” And when Christ had not yet made the Father’s mind known, it is said, “And his name shall be called the Angel of Great Counsel.” And when he had not yet suffered, he declared, “He is like a sheep led to the slaughter.” And although the cross had never yet existed, he said, “All day long I have stretched out my hands to an unbelieving people.” And although he had not yet been given sour wine in mockery, the Scripture says, “In my thirst they gave me sour wine to drink.” And although he had not yet been stripped, he said, “For my clothing they cast lots, and they counted my bones; they pierced my hands and my feet.” For the divine Scripture, seeing ahead, speaks of what it knows will be as already done, and speaks as finished of things it looks at as still to come, but which will beyond any doubt come to pass.

And so the Lord in this passage said, “From now on you have known him and have seen him.” Now he said that the Father would be seen by whoever had followed the Son — not as though the Son himself were the Father who is seen, but that whoever was willing to follow him and be his disciple would win the reward of being able to see the Father. For he is also the image of God the Father; and so this is added on top of it, that “as the Father works, so the Son works too.” And the Son is an imitator of all the Father’s works, so that anyone may reckon it just as if he saw the Father, when he sees the one who always imitates the invisible Father in everything he does.

But if Christ is the Father himself, in what manner does he immediately add and say, “Whoever believes in me will do the works that I do; and he will do greater works than these, because I go to my Father”? And he goes on to add, “If you love me, keep my commandments; and I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate.” After which he adds this too: “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word; and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.” And he added this as well: “But the Advocate, that Holy Spirit whom the Father will send, he will teach you, and will bring to your mind everything I have said to you.” Further, he speaks that passage in which he shows himself to be the Son, and adds, reasonably enough, “If you loved me, you would be glad that I go to the Father, for the Father is greater than I.”

And what are we to say when he keeps on in these words: “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that bears no fruit he takes away; and every branch that bears fruit he prunes, so that it may bring more fruit”? Still he keeps at it and adds, “As the Father has loved me, so I too have loved you: remain in my love. If you have kept my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept the Father’s commandments and remain in his love.” And he says further, “But I have called you friends, because everything I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.” And to all this he adds, “But they will do all these things to you for my name’s sake, because they do not know the one who sent me.”

All of this, coming after what went before, plainly testifies that he is not the Father but the Son. The Lord would never have added it if he had had it in mind either that he was the Father or that he wanted to be understood as the Father — except that he might declare this: that from now on every man, when he sees the image of God the Father through the Son, ought to reckon it as if he saw the Father. For everyone who believes in the Son is being trained by looking at the likeness, so that, getting used to seeing the divine in a likeness, he may go forward and grow up to the full sight of God the Father Almighty. And whoever has taken this truth into mind and soul, and has believed that all of it will be so, already sees, in a manner and in some measure, the Father whom he will see later on; and he may treat it as though he already held what he knows for certain he will one day hold.

But if Christ himself had been the Father, why did he promise as still to come a reward he had already granted and given? When he says, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God,” that is taken as a promise of the sight and vision of the Father. So he had not given it — for why should he promise if he had already given? And he would have given it, if he were the Father, because he was seen and he was touched. But since Christ himself is seen and touched and still promises, and says that the man who is pure in heart shall see God, he proves by that very saying that the one who was present then was not the Father — seeing that he was seen, and yet promised that whoever was pure in heart should see the Father.

It was therefore not the Father but the Son who promised this, because the one who was the Son promised what was still to be seen; and his promise would have been pointless unless he had been the Son. For why did he promise the pure in heart that they should see the Father, if the people who were present then were already seeing Christ as the Father? But because he was the Son and not the Father, he was rightly seen then as the Son, since he was the image of God; and the Father, because he is invisible, is promised and pointed out as the one whom the pure in heart are to see. Let it be enough, then, to have put forward even this much against that heretic — a few words about a great many things. A wide and open field would lie before us if we wanted to argue with him more fully; but robbed of these two passages, as though his eyes had been plucked out, he is beaten outright in the blindness of his teaching.