Alone, Except for the Son

But they will be quick to twist this very statement of his into an argument that he is single. “I have stretched out the heaven alone,” he says. Alone, certainly, as against every other power — and in saying it he is warning us in advance against the guesses of the heretics, who hold that the world was put together by assorted angels and powers, and who make even the Creator himself out to be an angel, or some junior agent sent to shape the outward things, the parts the world is made of, while all along he knew nothing of God’s purpose. [a]

Now if that is the sense in which he stretches out the heavens alone, how can these people press their case so perversely? The aloneness they want cannot be allowed at all, since Wisdom says, “When he prepared the heaven, I was there with him.” The apostle does ask, “Who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?” — but he means, of course, to make an exception of the Wisdom that was present with him. In him, at any rate, and with him, Wisdom built the universe, and he was not ignorant of what she was making.

“Except Wisdom” means exactly the same thing as “except the Son,” who is Christ, “the wisdom and the power of God,” as the apostle says — the one who alone knows the Father’s mind. “For who knows the things that are in God except the Spirit that is in him?” Not, notice, without him. So there was one who kept God from being alone — alone, that is, only over against all other gods.

But if we are to follow the heretics, the Gospel itself will have to be thrown out, since it tells us that all things were made by God through the Word, and that without him nothing was made. And unless I am mistaken there is another passage too, where it is written, “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and all their host by his Spirit.” Now this Word, the power of God and the wisdom of God, must be the very Son of God. So if God made all things by the Son, then he stretched out the heavens by the Son, and did not stretch them out alone — except in the sense in which he is alone, and apart, from all other gods.

That is why he speaks about the Son immediately afterwards: “Who else is it that frustrates the signs of liars, and drives diviners mad, turning wise men backward and making their knowledge foolish, and confirming the words of his Son?” — as when he said, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; listen to him.” By fastening the Son to himself in this way, he becomes his own interpreter, and shows in what sense he stretched out the heavens alone: alone with his Son, since he is one with his Son.

So the saying “I have stretched out the heavens alone” will be the Son’s in the same way, because it was by the Word that the heavens were established. Since the heaven was prepared when Wisdom was present in the Word, and since all things were made by the Word, it is perfectly correct to say that the Son too stretched out the heaven alone, because he alone served the Father’s work. And it must be he who says, “I am the First, and for all that is to come, I am.”

The Word, no doubt, was before all things. “In the beginning was the Word” — and in that beginning he was brought forth by the Father. The Father, though, has no beginning, since he comes from no one; and he cannot be seen, since he was not born. One who has always been alone could never have had any order or rank at all.

So if they have settled it that the Father and the Son must be taken for one and the same, and have done it precisely in order to protect the oneness of God, then that oneness of his is left perfectly intact: he is one, and he has a Son, who is included in those same Scriptures just as much as he is. They are unwilling to allow that the Son is a distinct person, second after the Father, for fear that being second he would make people speak of two Gods. But we have shown above that two are actually described in Scripture as God and Lord. And so that they may not be offended at the fact, we give the reason why the two are not called two Gods and two Lords, but are two as Father and Son: not by any cutting apart of their substance, but by the arrangement in which we declare the Son undivided and inseparable from the Father — other in degree, not in condition. And though, when he is named on his own, he is called God, that does not make two Gods but one; and it is from his union with the Father, precisely, that he is entitled to be called God.

But I must take some further trouble to knock their arguments down, since they pick out passages of Scripture to prop up their opinion and refuse to consider the rest — the passages that plainly hold to the rule of faith without doing the least damage to the oneness of God, and with the full ring of the Monarchy left untouched. In the old Scriptures they lay hold of nothing but “I am God, and besides me there is no God”; and in the Gospel they simply keep their eye on the Lord’s answer to Philip, “I and my Father are one,” and “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father; and I am in the Father, and the Father in me.” They would have the whole revelation of both Testaments give way to those three passages, when the only proper course is to understand the few statements in the light of the many. [n]

But in arguing this way they are only doing what every heretic does. Since, out of the whole mass, only a few pieces of testimony can be found that make for them, they doggedly set the few against the many, and take the later against the earlier. The rule, however, which has been laid down from the beginning for every case, files its objection against the later assumptions, just as it does against the fewer ones.

So consider how many passages in this very Gospel lodge their objection against you before Philip ever asks his question, and before you have opened any discussion at all. First of all, right to hand, is John’s opening to his Gospel, which shows us what he was beforehand who had to become flesh: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him nothing was made.” [r]

Now since these words cannot be taken any other way than as they are written, there is plainly one who was from the beginning, and also one with whom he always was: the one the Word of God, the other God — though the Word is also God, but God regarded as the Son of God, not as the Father. One through whom all things were, another by whom all things were. In what sense we call him another we have already described often enough. In calling him another we must mean that he is not identical — not identical, and yet not separate either: other by the arrangement, not by division. So the one who became flesh was not the very same as the one from whom the Word came.

“His glory was seen — the glory as of the only Son of the Father” — not, notice, as of the Father. It was he who told out what was in “the bosom of the Father alone”; the Father did not give away the secrets of his own bosom. And this is preceded by another statement: “No one has ever seen God.”

Again, when John the Baptist points him out as “the Lamb of God,” he is not described as being himself the same as the one whose beloved Son he is. He is, no doubt, always the Son of God; but he is not himself the one whose Son he is. Nathanael recognized this in him at once, as Peter did on another occasion: “You are the Son of God.” And he confirmed that they were quite right in what they thought. To Nathanael he answered, “Because I told you I saw you under the fig tree, do you believe?” And in the same way he pronounced Peter blessed, on the ground that “flesh and blood had not revealed it to him” — that he had perceived the Father — “but the Father who is in heaven.” By saying all this he settled the distinction there is between the two persons: the Son, at that moment on earth, whom Peter had acknowledged to be the Son of God; and the Father in heaven, who had revealed to Peter the discovery he had made, that Christ is the Son of God.

When he went into the temple he called it “his Father’s house,” speaking as the Son. To Nicodemus he says: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” And again: “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but so that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned; but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.” And when John the Baptist was asked what he knew about Jesus, he said: “The Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hand. Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; and whoever does not believe the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.”

And whom did he reveal to the Samaritan woman? Was it not “the Messiah, who is called Christ”? So of course he showed that he was not the Father but the Son; and elsewhere he is expressly called “the Christ, the Son of God,” and not the Father. So he says, “My food is to do the will of the one who sent me, and to finish his work”; while to the Jews he remarks, about the cure of the man who could not walk, “My Father is working still, and I am working.” “My Father and I” — those are the Son’s words.

And it was for that very reason that “the Jews tried all the harder to kill him, not only because he broke the sabbath, but also because he said that God was his Father, making himself equal with God. Then he answered and said to them: The Son can do nothing of himself, but only what he sees the Father do; for whatever things he does, these the Son does likewise. For the Father loves the Son and shows him everything that he does himself; and he will also show him greater works than these, so that you may marvel. For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so the Son also gives life to whom he will. For the Father judges no one, but has handed all judgment over to the Son, so that everyone should honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father, who sent the Son. Truly, truly, I tell you, whoever hears my words and believes the one who sent me has eternal life, and does not come to judgment, but has crossed over from death to life. Truly I tell you, the hour is coming when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God; and when they have heard it, they will live. For as the Father has eternal life in himself, so he has also given the Son to have eternal life in himself; and he has given him authority to carry out judgment as well, because he is the Son of man” — that is, according to the flesh, just as he is also the Son of God through his Spirit.

Afterwards he goes on to say: “But I have a greater witness than John’s; for the works the Father has given me to finish — those very works bear witness about me, that the Father has sent me. And the Father himself, who sent me, has borne witness about me.” But he adds at once, “You have never heard his voice at any time, nor seen his form” — which is to say that in earlier times it was not the Father but the Son who used to be seen and heard. Then at last he says, “I have come in my Father’s name, and you have not received me.” So it was always the Son who stood under the titles of Almighty and Most High God, and King, and Lord.

To the people who asked “what they should do to work the works of God,” he answered, “This is the work of God, that you believe in the one he has sent.” He also declares himself to be “the bread which the Father sent down from heaven,” and adds that “all that the Father gave him would come to him, and that he himself would not throw it out, because he had come down from heaven not to do his own will but the will of the Father; and that the Father’s will was that everyone who saw the Son and believed in him should have eternal life, and the resurrection on the last day. Indeed no one was able to come to him unless the Father drew him, whereas everyone who had heard and learned from the Father did come to him.” Then he goes on to say expressly, “Not that anyone has seen the Father” — showing us that it was through the Father’s Word that people were instructed and taught.

Then, when many left him, and he turned to the apostles and asked whether “they too would go away,” what was Simon Peter’s answer? “To whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we believe that you are the Christ.” Now tell me: did they believe him to be the Father, or the Father’s Christ?