Begotten, Not Made

The creed, then, heretic, whose text we gave above, though it is the creed of all the churches (for the faith of all is one), is especially that of the city and church of Antioch, that is, of the church in which you were brought up, instructed and born again. The faith of this creed brought you to the fountain of life, to saving new birth, to the grace of the eucharist, to the communion of the Lord. And what more? Alas for the grievous and mournful complaint! It brought you even to the ministry, to the height of the presbyterate, to the dignity of the priesthood. Do you think, you wretched madman, that this is a light or trivial matter? Do you not see what you have done, into what a pit you have thrown yourself? In losing the faith of the creed you have lost everything you were. For the mysteries of the priesthood and of your salvation rested on the truth of the creed. Can you possibly deny that? I say that you have denied your very self. [a]

But perhaps you think you cannot deny yourself. Let us look at the text of the creed. Then, if you say what you used to say, you need not be refuted; but if you say things far different and contrary, you need not expect to be refuted by me, since you have condemned yourself already. For if you now maintain something other than what is in the creed and what you once maintained yourself, how can you blame your punishment on anyone but yourself, when you see that everyone else’s opinion of you is the same as your own? “I believe,” the creed says, “in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible; and in the Lord Jesus Christ, his only Son, the firstborn of every creature; begotten of him before all ages, and not made.” It would be well for you to answer this first. Do you confess this of Jesus Christ the Son of God, or do you deny it? If you confess it, all is well. But if not, how can you now deny what you yourself once confessed? Choose, then, which you will. One of two things must follow: either that same confession of yours, if it still stands, will alone set you free; or, if you deny it, it will be the first to condemn you.

For you said in the creed, “I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, his only Son, and the firstborn of every creature.” If the Lord Jesus Christ is the only Son and the firstborn of every creature, then by our own confession he is certainly God. For no one else is the only Son and the firstborn of every creature but the only Son of God; and as he is the firstborn of creatures, so he is also God the Creator of all. How, then, can you say that he was a mere man at his birth from the Virgin, when you confessed him to be God before the world? Next the creed says: “Begotten of the Father before all ages, and not made.” These words of the creed were spoken by you. You said in your creed that Jesus Christ was begotten of God the Father before the ages, and not made. Does the creed say anything about those fantasies you now rave about? Did you yourself say anything about them? Where is the statue? Where, I ask, is that instrument of yours? God forbid that it should belong to anyone else and not to you! Where is what you assert: that the Lord Jesus Christ is like a statue, so that you think he ought to be worshiped not because he is God but because he is the image of God; that you make the Lord of glory into an instrument, and blasphemously say that he ought to be adored not for his own sake but for the sake of the one who, as it were, breathes in him and sounds through him?

You said in the creed that the Lord Jesus Christ was begotten of the Father before all ages, and not made. This certainly belongs to no one but the only Son of God: that his birth should not be a creation, and that he could be said simply to be begotten, not made. For it is against the nature of things, and against his honor, that the Creator of all should be believed to be a creature, and that he, the author of all things that have a beginning, should himself have a beginning, since all things began from him. And so we say that he was begotten, not made; for his begetting was unique, and no ordinary creation. And since he is God, begotten of God, the Godhead of him who is begotten must have, complete, everything that the majesty of him who begot him has.