How Christ Differs from the Saints

Moreover, between him and all the saints there is the same difference as between a dwelling and the one who dwells in it. Certainly, if a house is lived in, that is the doing of the one who lives there, not of the house; for it depends on him both to build the house and to occupy it. I mean that he can choose, if he wishes, to make it a dwelling, and once he has made it, to live in it. “Or do you seek a proof,” says the apostle, “of Christ speaking in me?” And elsewhere: “Do you not know that Jesus Christ is in you, unless you fail the test?” And again: “in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith.” [a]

Do you not see what a difference there is between the apostle’s teaching and your blasphemies? You say that God dwells in Christ as in a man. He testifies that Christ himself dwells in men, which, as you yourself admit, flesh and blood certainly cannot do. So Christ is shown to be God by the very fact by which you deny him to be God. For since you cannot deny that he who dwells in man is God, it follows that we must believe that he whom we know to dwell in men is most certainly God.

All of them, then, whether patriarchs or prophets or apostles or martyrs or saints, had God within them, every one; all were made sons of God, and all were receivers of God, Theodochoi; but in a very different and distinct way. For all who believe in God are sons of God by adoption, but the only Son alone is Son by nature. He was begotten of his Father, not out of any material substance, for all things, and the substance of all things, exist through the only Son of God; and not out of nothing, because he is from the Father; and not in the way of a birth, for there is nothing in God that is empty or changeable. Rather, in a way that cannot be spoken of or understood, God the Father, in which he himself was born anew, begot his only Son. And so from the Most High, Unbegotten and Eternal Father comes forth the Most High and Eternal only Son. He must be considered the same Person in the flesh as he is in the Spirit, and must be held to be the same Person in the body as he is in glory. For when he was about to be born in the flesh, he made no division or separation within himself, as if one part of him was born while another part was not, or as if some portion of divinity came upon him afterward that had not been in him at his birth from the Virgin. For according to the apostle, “all the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Christ bodily.” Not that it dwells in him at times and at times does not, nor that it was there at a later date and not at an earlier one. Otherwise we are entangled in that ungodly heresy of Pelagius, and say that God dwelt in Christ from a fixed moment, and came upon him then, when he had won by his life and conduct this: that the power of the Godhead should dwell in him.

These things, then, belong to men; to men, I say, not to God: that, as far as human weakness can, they should humble themselves before God, be subject to God, make themselves dwellings for God, and by their faith and devotion win this, to have God as their guest and as the one who dwells within them. For in proportion as anyone is fit for God’s gift, so divine grace rewards him; in proportion as a man seems worthy of God, so he enjoys God’s presence, according to the Lord’s promise: “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word; and I and my Father will come to him and make our home with him.”

But the case is very different with Christ, in whom all the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily. He has the fullness of the Godhead within him in such a way that he gives to all from his fullness. And he, since the fullness of the Godhead dwells in him, himself dwells in each of the saints in proportion as he judges them worthy of his presence. He gives of his fullness to all, yet in such a way that he himself remains in all that fullness. Even when he was on earth in the flesh, he was present in the hearts of all the saints, and filled heaven, earth, the sea, yes, the whole universe, with his infinite power and majesty; and yet he was so complete in himself that the whole world could not contain him. For however great and inexpressible anything that is made may be, nothing is so boundless and infinite as to be able to contain the Creator himself.