Condemned by His Own Confession

But why are we arguing about words when the facts are clear enough, and looking for a ruling on the matter in the terms of the creed, when the creed itself deals with the question? Let us repeat the confession of the creed, and your own as well (for it is yours as well as the creed’s, since you made it yours by confessing it), so that you may see that you have departed not only from the creed but from yourself. “I believe,” then, says the creed, “in the one, only, true God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible; and in the Lord Jesus Christ, his only Son, and the firstborn of every creature; begotten of him before all ages, and not made; true God from true God; of one substance with the Father; through whom the ages were framed and all things were made. Who for us came and was born of the Virgin Mary.” “For us,” then, the creed says, our Lord Jesus Christ “came and was born of the Virgin Mary, and was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and was buried, and rose again according to the Scriptures.” The churches are not ashamed to confess this; the apostles were not ashamed to preach it. [a]

You yourself, you, I say, whose every word is now blasphemy, you who now deny everything, did not deny all these truths: that God was born, that God suffered, that God rose again. And what next? Where have you fallen? What have you become? What have you been brought down to? What are you saying? What are you vomiting out? Words that, as someone says, even mad Orestes himself would swear were the words of a madman. For what is it you say? “Who, then, is the Son of God who was born of the Christotokos? If, for instance, we were to say, ‘I believe in God the Word, the only Son of God, begotten of his Father, of one substance with the Father, who came down and was buried,’ would not our ears be shocked at the sound? God dead?” And again: “Can it possibly be,” you say, “that he who was begotten before all ages should be born a second time, and be God?” If all these things cannot possibly be, how is it that the creed of the churches says they did happen? How is it that you yourself said they did?

Let us compare what you say now with what you said before. Once you said: “I believe in God the Father Almighty; and in Jesus Christ his Son, true God from true God, of one substance with the Father; who for us came and was born of the Virgin Mary, and was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and was buried.” But now what do you say? “If we should say, ‘I believe in God the Word, the only Son of God, begotten of his Father, of one substance with the Father, who came down and was buried,’ would not our ears be shocked at the sound?” The bitterness and blasphemy of your words might well drive us to a fierce and furious attack in reply; but we must rein in our devout grief a little.