Deny One Part of the Faith and You Deny It All

Since this is so, in denying that Jesus Christ the Son of God is one, you have denied everything. For the mysteries of the church and the catholic faith are so ordered that one who denies one part of the sacred mystery cannot confess the rest. All its parts are so bound up and united together that one cannot stand without the other, and if someone denies one point out of the whole number, it is of no use to him to believe all the others. [a]

So if you deny that the Lord Jesus Christ is God, the result is that in denying the Son of God you deny the Father also. For as Saint John says: “He who does not have the Son does not have the Father; but he who has the Son has the Father also.” By denying, then, the one who was begotten, you deny also the one who begot him. By denying that the Son of God was born in the flesh, you are led to deny also that he was born in the Spirit, for the one who was born in the flesh is the same person who was first born in the Spirit.

If you do not believe that he was born in the flesh, the result is that you do not believe that he suffered. If you do not believe in his passion, what is left for you but to deny his resurrection? For faith in one raised springs from faith in one dead, and mention of the resurrection cannot keep its place unless belief in his death has come first. By denying his passion and death, then, you deny also his resurrection from hell. It certainly follows that you deny his ascension too, for there can be no ascension without the resurrection. If we do not believe that he rose again, we cannot believe that he ascended either, as the apostle says: “For he who descended is the same one who also ascended.” So, as far as you are concerned, the Lord Jesus Christ did not rise from hell, nor ascend into heaven, nor sit at the right hand of God the Father; nor will he come on that day of judgment we look for, nor will he judge the living and the dead.