God the Father’s Witness That the Son Is God

What do you say now, heretic? Are these proofs of the faith, yes, and of all your unbelief, enough for you, or would you like more to be added to them? But what can be added after the prophets and apostles? Unless perhaps, as the Jews once demanded, you too might ask for a sign to be given you from heaven? If you ask this, we must give you the same answer that was given to them long ago: “An evil and adulterous generation seeks a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.” And indeed that sign would be enough for you, as it was for the Jews who crucified him: you might be taught to believe in the Lord God by this alone, through which even those who had persecuted him came to believe. But since we have mentioned a sign from heaven, I will show you a sign from heaven, and one of such a kind that even the demons have never contradicted it. Forced by the demands of the truth, though they saw Jesus in bodily form, they still cried out that he was God, as indeed he was. What, then, does the evangelist say of the Lord Jesus Christ? “When he was baptized,” he says, “he went up immediately out of the water. And look, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit descending like a dove and coming upon him. And look, a voice from heaven, saying, ‘This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.’” [a]

What do you say to this, heretic? Do you dislike the words spoken, or the person of the speaker? The meaning of what was said at any rate needs no explaining, nor does the worth of the speaker need words to commend it. It is God the Father who spoke, and what he said is clear enough. Surely you cannot make so shameless and blasphemous a claim as to say that God the Father is not to be believed about the only Son of God? “This,” he says, “is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” But perhaps you will try to call this madness and maintain that it was said of the Word and not of Christ. Tell me, then: who was it who was baptized? The Word or Christ? The flesh or the Spirit? You cannot possibly deny that it was Christ. That man, then, born of man and of God, conceived when the Holy Spirit came upon the Virgin and the power of the Most High overshadowed her, and so the Son of man and of God: he it was, as you cannot deny, who was baptized. If it was he who was baptized, it was he also who was named, for the person who was baptized was certainly the one named. “This,” he said, “is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” Could anything be said with more meaning or more clearly?

Christ was baptized. Christ went up out of the water. When Christ was baptized, the heavens were opened. For Christ’s sake the dove came down upon Christ; the Holy Spirit was present in bodily form. The Father spoke to Christ. If you dare to deny that this was said of Christ, all that is left for you is to maintain that Christ was not baptized, that the Spirit did not come down, and that the Father did not speak. But the truth itself presses hard on you and weighs you down, so that even if you will not confess it, you cannot deny it. For what does the evangelist say? “When he was baptized, he went up immediately out of the water.” Who was baptized? Most certainly Christ. “And look,” he says, “the heavens were opened to him.” Opened to whom, if not to the one who was baptized? Most certainly to Christ. “And he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming upon him.” Who saw? Christ, indeed. Upon whom did the Spirit come down? Most certainly upon Christ. “And a voice came from heaven, saying”—about whom? About Christ, indeed; for what follows? “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” So that it would be clear on whose account all this happened, the voice followed, saying, “This is my beloved Son,” as if to say: This is the one on whose account all this took place. For this is my Son. On his account the heavens were opened; on his account my Spirit came; on his account my voice was heard. For this is my Son. In saying, then, “This is my Son,” whom did he point out? Surely the one the dove touched. And whom did the dove touch? Christ, indeed. Therefore Christ is the Son of God. I think I have kept my promise.

Do you see now, heretic, a sign given you from heaven, and not just one, but many, and special ones? There is one in the opening of heaven, another in the coming down of the Spirit, and a third in the voice of the Father. All of them show most clearly that Christ is God. The opening of the heavens shows that he is God, the coming of the Holy Spirit upon him supports his divinity, and the Father’s address confirms it. For heaven would not have been opened except in honor of its Lord, nor would the Holy Spirit have come down in bodily form except upon the Son of God, nor would the Father have declared him to be the Son had he not truly been so, and especially not with such tokens of a divine birth as not only to confirm the truth of the right faith but also to shut out the wickedness of guilty and mistaken belief. For when the Father had said, plainly and pointedly, with the inexpressible majesty of a divine voice, “This is my Son,” he also added what follows, I mean, “my beloved, in whom I am well pleased.” He had already declared him by the prophet to be God the Mighty and God the Great. So when he says here, “my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased,” he adds to the name of his own Son the further title of his beloved Son, in whom he is well pleased. This was so that the added titles might mark the special properties of the divine nature, and so that what had never happened to any man might bring glory especially to the Son of God. So these special and unique things happened in the case of our Lord Jesus Christ: the heavens were opened, and in the sight of all, God the Father in a way touched him through the coming and presence of the dove, and all but pointed to him with his finger, saying, “This is my Son.” Just so, this too is special and unique to him: that he is specially beloved, and is specially named as well pleasing to the Father. These special accompaniments were to mark what is special in his nature, and the special character of his names was to support the special place of the only Son, which the honor of the signs given before had already confirmed.

But here this book comes to its end. For this saying of God the Father can be neither added to nor equaled by any words of men. For us, God the Father himself is a fully sufficient witness about our Lord Jesus Christ when he says, “This is my Son.” If you think these words of God the Father can be contradicted, then you are forced to contradict him who, by the clearest possible announcement, caused him to be acknowledged as his Son by the whole world.