One God, One Beginning

So God the Father, the founder and maker of all things, who alone has no beginning — invisible, without limit, immortal, eternal — is one God. To his greatness, his majesty, his power, I will not say that nothing can be preferred; nothing can even be compared. From him, when he willed it, the Son was born, the Word: not a word taken in as a sound in struck air, or as a tone of voice forced out of the lungs, but recognized in the substance of the power God put forth. No apostle ever learned the secrets of that holy and divine birth; no prophet found them out; no angel knew them; no creature took them in. They are known to the Son alone, who has known the Father’s secrets. [a]

Since he was born from the Father, then, he is always in the Father. And I say “always” in order to show that he is not one who was never born, but one who was born. The one who is before all time has to be spoken of as always in the Father, for no date can be given to someone who is before all time. And he is always in the Father — otherwise the Father would not always have been Father. Only, the Father does come before him too, in a certain sense, since it must in some degree be true that he is, before he is Father. For the one who knows no beginning must necessarily go before the one who has a beginning. In that way the Son is the lesser, in knowing that he is in the Father: he has an origin, because he was born; by that birth he is in some measure of the same nature as his Father; and still he has a beginning, in that he was born — born of that Father who alone has no beginning.

So when the Father willed it, he came out from the Father. The one who was in the Father came forth from the Father. He who was in the Father, because he was from the Father, was afterward with the Father, because he had come out from him — that divine substance whose name is the Word, through whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made. Everything comes after him, because everything comes through him. And it follows that he is before all things but after the Father, since all things were made through him, and he came out from the one by whose will all things were made. He is certainly God coming out from God, making a second person after the Father in being the Son, and yet not taking from the Father what belongs to him: that he is one God.

For if he had not been born — set beside the one who was never born, with both shown to be equal — he would make two who were never born, and so would make two Gods. If he had not been begotten — set beside the one who was not begotten, and found his equal — then, with neither of them begotten, it would follow that there were two Gods, and Christ would be the cause of two Gods. Had he come to be without a beginning, as the Father is, and were he himself the beginning of all things, as the Father is, that would have made two beginnings, and so would have shown us two Gods as well. Or if he were not the Son but a Father, begetting another Son out of himself, then, measured against the Father and called as great as he is, he would have produced two Fathers, and so proved the existence of two Gods. Had he been invisible, set beside the Invisible and declared his equal, he would have displayed two Invisible Ones, and so proved them to be two Gods. And the same if he were beyond understanding, and the same for anything else that belongs to the Father: it would follow that he had given rise to the charge of two Gods, which is what these people pretend.

But as things are, whatever he is, he is not from himself, because he is not one who was never born; he is from the Father, because he was born — whether as the Word, or as the Power, or as the Wisdom, or as the Light, or as the Son. And whichever of these he is, since, as we have already said, he is from no other source than the Father, and owes his origin to his Father, he could not open a rift in the divinity by making the number of Gods two: he gathered his beginning by being born of the one who is one God. In that way, being both the only Son and the firstborn of the one who has no beginning, he alone is both the source and the head of all things. And so he declared that God is one, in that he showed the Father to be from no source and no beginning, but rather the beginning and source of all things.

What is more, the Son does nothing of his own will and nothing by his own decision. He does not come from himself; he obeys all his Father’s commands and instructions. So while his birth proves him a Son, his obedience, even to death, declares him the servant of the will of his Father, the Father he is from. Making himself obedient to his Father in everything, then, though he is God as well, he still shows by his obedience the one God the Father, from whom he also drew his beginning. And in this way he could not make two Gods, because he did not make two beginnings: from the one who has no beginning he received the source of his birth, before all time.

For what stands as the beginning to every other creature is the one who was never born — and God the Father alone is that, lying beyond any beginning, the one from whom the Son who was born comes. The Son, born of him, comes as is right from the one who has no beginning, and shows that to be the beginning which he himself is from; so that even though the one who was born is God, he still shows to be one God the one whom his own birth proved to be without a beginning. He is God, then, but born with this very outcome in view, that he should be God. He is the Lord as well, but born of the Father for exactly this purpose, that he should be Lord. He is also an angel — but he was appointed by the Father as the angel who announces the great counsel of God. And his divinity is stated in this way so that no clash or inequality of divinity should look as though it had produced two Gods.

For all things are put under him as Son by the Father, while he himself, together with everything put under him, is put under his Father. That proves him the Son of his Father — and yet he is found to be both Lord and God of everything else. And so, while everything placed under him is handed over to him who is God, and everything is made subject to him, the Son refers all he has received back to the Father, and hands the whole authority of his divinity back to the Father again. The true and eternal Father is shown to be the one God, from whom alone this power of divinity is sent out, and given, and directed onto the Son, and by the sharing of substance is returned to the Father. The Son is indeed shown to be God, since the divinity is seen to be given him and stretched out to him. And still, for all that, the Father is proved to be one God, while step by step, in a passing back and forth, that majesty and divinity are returned again and reflected back, sent by the Son himself to the Father who had given them.

So it rightly follows that God the Father is God of all, and the source of his own Son as well, whom he brought to birth as Lord; and the Son is God of everything else, because God the Father set the one he brought to birth ahead of all things. In this way Christ Jesus, the mediator between God and human beings, holding the power over every creature that his own Father put under him, since he is God — with every creature subdued to him, and himself found at one with his Father, God — has, by remaining in that condition in which he “was also heard,” shown briefly that God his Father is the one and only true God.