Two Senses of the Word Son

So they say what the others held and dared to maintain before them: “God was not always Father, and the Son was not always. For the Son did not exist before his generation, but, like the others, came to be from nothing. And so God was not always Father of the Son; but when the Son came to be and was created, then God was called his Father. For the Word is a creature and a work, in substance foreign to the Father and unlike him. The Son is neither by nature the Father’s true Word nor his only and true Wisdom. Being a creature and one of the works, he is called Word and Wisdom only in a loose sense, for he was made, as all things were, by the Word that is in God. Therefore the Son is not true God.” [a]

To help them understand what they are saying, it may serve to ask them first what a son actually is, and what that name signifies. Divine Scripture in fact shows us two senses of this word. One is the sense Moses sets before us in the Law: “When you listen to the voice of the Lord your God, to keep all his commandments which I command you today, to do what is right in the eyes of the Lord your God, you are children of the Lord your God.” So also in the Gospel John says, “But as many as received him, to them he gave power to become sons of God.” The other sense is the one in which Isaac is son of Abraham, and Jacob son of Isaac, and the patriarchs sons of Jacob. In which of these two senses, then, do they understand the Son of God, when they tell such fables as the ones above? For I am sure they will end in the same impiety as Eusebius and his party. If they mean the first sense, which belongs to those who gain the name by grace for their moral progress and receive power to become sons of God (for this is what their predecessors said), then he would seem to differ from us in nothing. Nor would he be the only Son, since, like others, he would have gained the title of Son for his virtue. For grant what they say: that because his qualities were known beforehand, he received grace from the first, the name and the glory of the name, from his very beginning. Still there will be no difference between him and those who receive the name after their deeds, so long as this is the ground on which he, like the others, bears the character of son. For Adam too received grace from the first, and as soon as he was created he was placed in paradise. Yet he differed in no way either from Enoch, who was taken there some time after his birth because he pleased God, or from the apostle, who likewise was caught up into paradise after his deeds; no, nor from the man who was once a thief, and who, because of his confession, received the promise that he would be in paradise at once.

When pressed this way, they will perhaps give an answer that has already got them into trouble many times: “We hold that the Son has this privilege over others, and is therefore called the only Son, because he alone was brought into being by God alone, while all other things were created by God through the Son.” Now I wonder who it was that suggested to you so empty and novel an idea, that the Father alone made the Son alone with his own hand, and that all other things were brought into being by the Son as by an assistant workman. If it was to spare himself the toil that God was content to make only the Son, instead of making all things at once, that is an impious thought, especially in those who know the words of Isaiah: “The everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, does not hunger and does not grow weary; there is no searching out his understanding.” Rather, it is he who gives strength to the hungry and through his Word refreshes those who labor. Again, it is impious to suppose that he disdained to form himself the creatures that came after the Son, as though it were a lowly task. For there is no pride in the God who goes down with Jacob into Egypt, who for Abraham’s sake corrects Abimelech because of Sarah, who speaks face to face with Moses, though Moses was a man, who comes down on Mount Sinai, and who by his secret grace fights for the people against Amalek. But you are wrong even in this claim, for “he made us, and not we ourselves.” It is he who through his Word made all things, small and great. We may not divide the creation and say that this is the Father’s and this the Son’s. They are all of one God, who uses his own Word as a hand and does all things in him. God himself shows us this when he says, “My hand has made all these things”; and Paul taught us, as he had learned, that “there is one God, from whom are all things, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things.” So he, always as now, speaks to the sun and it rises, and commands the clouds and it rains on one place, and where it does not rain, the ground dries up. He bids the earth yield her fruits, and he fashions Jeremiah in the womb. But if he does all this now, surely at the beginning too he did not disdain to make all things himself through the Word; for these are only parts of the whole. [f]

But suppose that the other creatures could not bear to be made by the direct hand of the Unoriginate, and that this is why the Son alone was brought into being by the Father alone, and all other things by the Son as an assistant and helper. For this is what Asterius the sacrificer wrote, and Arius copied it out and handed it on to his own friends, and ever since then they have used this form of words. It is a broken reed, and the bewildered men do not know how brittle it is. For if it was impossible for things that have come into being to bear the hand of God, and you hold that the Son is one of them, how was he able to bear being formed by God alone? And if a mediator was needed in order that things that come into being might exist, and you hold that the Son came into being, then there must have been some go-between before him, for his creation. And since that mediator in turn was a creature, it follows that he too needed another mediator to bring him into being. And if we were to invent another, we would first have to invent his mediator, so that we would never come to an end. So, since a mediator would always be wanted, the creation would never be brought into being, because nothing that has come into being, as you say, can bear the direct hand of the Unoriginate. And if you see how absurd this is and begin to say that the Son, though a creature, was made able to be made by the Unoriginate, then it follows that other things too, though they have come into being, are able to be made directly by the Unoriginate. For in your judgment the Son too is only a creature, like all of them. And so the bringing into being of the Word is superfluous, by your impious and empty reasoning, since God is sufficient to form all things directly, and all things that have come into being are able to bear his direct hand. These impious men, then, have so little sense in their madness. Let us see whether this particular sophistry is not even more irrational than the others. Adam was created alone, by God alone, through the Word; yet no one would say that Adam had any privilege over other men or was different from those who came after him. Granted that he alone was made and fashioned by God alone, and that we all spring from Adam and exist by the succession of the race, still he was fashioned from the earth like the others, and at first did not exist and afterward came to be. [m]

But even if we allowed the first-formed man some privilege, as having been thought worthy of the hand of God, it must be a privilege of honor, not of nature. For he came from the earth, like other men; and the hand that fashioned Adam then is also now and always fashioning those who come after him and giving them their whole frame. God himself declares this to Jeremiah, as I said before: “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.” And so he says of all, “My hand has made all these things”; and again through Isaiah, “Thus says the Lord, your redeemer, he who formed you from the womb: I am the Lord who makes all things, who alone stretches out the heavens, who spreads out the earth by myself.” And David, knowing this, says in the Psalm, “Your hands have made me and fashioned me”; and the one who says in Isaiah, “Thus says the Lord, who formed me from the womb to be his servant,” means the same. So in nature Adam differs in nothing from us, though he comes before us in time, so long as we all exist and are created by the same hand. If, then, these are your thoughts about the Son of God too, Arians, that he exists and came to be in this way, then in your judgment he will differ in nature in nothing from the others, since he too did not exist and then came to be, and the name was joined to him by grace at his creation for the sake of his virtue. For by what you say, he is one of those of whom the Spirit says in the Psalms, “He spoke the word, and they were made; he commanded, and they were created.” If so, through whom did God give the command for the Son’s creation? For there must be a Word through whom God gave the command, and in whom the works are created. But you have no other to show than the Word you deny, unless you invent yet another new notion. “Yes,” they will say, “we have another.” (I once heard Eusebius and his party use it.) “On this ground we hold that the Son of God has a privilege over others and is called the only Son: he alone shares in the Father, and all other things share in the Son.” So they wear themselves out changing and varying their phrases like colors. But this will not save them from being exposed as men of the earth, who speak in vain and wallow in their own conceits as in mire. [p]

For if he were called God’s Son and we the Son’s sons, their invention might be plausible. But if we too are called sons of that God whose Son he is, then we too share in the Father, who says, “I have begotten and exalted children.” For if we did not share in him, he would not have said, “I have begotten”; but if he himself begot us, then no one other than he is our Father. And, as before, it makes no difference whether the Son has something more and was made first, while we have something less and were made later, so long as we all share in the same Father and are called his sons. For more or less does not mark a different nature; it belongs to each according to the practice of virtue. One is set over ten cities, another over five; some sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel; and others hear the words, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father,” and, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” With such ideas, however, no wonder they imagine that God was not always Father of such a Son, and that such a Son did not always exist, but was generated from nothing as a creature and did not exist before his generation. For such a one is other than the true Son of God. [r]

But to persist in such teaching is not consistent with godliness, for it is rather the way of thinking of the Sadducees and of the man of Samosata. It remains, then, to say that the Son of God is so called in the other sense, the one in which Isaac was son of Abraham. For what is begotten by nature from someone, and does not come to him from outside, is by the nature of things a son, and that is what the name means. Is the Son’s generation, then, a matter of human passion? (For perhaps they too, like their predecessors, will be ready to raise this objection in their ignorance.) Not at all. For God is not like man, nor are men like God. Men were created from matter, and from matter that is subject to passion; but God is without matter and without body. And if the same terms are used of God and of man in divine Scripture, still the clear-sighted, as Paul commands, will study it and so tell them apart. They will take what is written according to the nature of each subject and avoid any confusion of sense, so as neither to think of the things of God in a human way nor to ascribe the things of man to God. For that would be to mix wine with water, and to set strange fire on the altar along with the fire that is divine.

For God creates, and creating is also said of men; and God has being, and men are said to be, having received this gift too from God. Yet does God create as men do? Or is his being like man’s being? Far from it. We understand the terms in one sense of God and in another of men. For God creates by calling what does not exist into being, needing nothing for it. But men work on some material that already exists, after first praying and so receiving the skill to make it from the God who framed all things by his own Word. Again, men, who cannot exist of themselves, are enclosed in place and hold together in the Word of God. But God exists of himself, enclosing all things and enclosed by none. He is within all things by his own goodness and power, yet outside all things in his own nature. As, then, men do not create as God creates, since their being is not like God’s being, so men’s generation is of one kind, and the Son is from the Father in another. For the offspring of men are portions of their fathers, since the very nature of bodies is not simple but in a state of flux and made up of parts. Men lose substance in begetting, and they gain substance again by taking in food. That is why men in their time become fathers of many children. But God, being without parts, is Father of the Son without division and without passion. For there is no outflow from what is without matter, nor any inflow from outside, as there is among men. And being simple in nature, he is Father of one only Son. This is why the Son is the only Son, and alone in the Father’s bosom, and alone acknowledged by the Father as being from him, when he says, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” And he is also the Father’s Word, from which we may understand that the Father’s nature is not subject to passion and is not divided; for not even a human word is begotten with passion or division, much less the Word of God. That is why he sits, as Word, at the Father’s right hand; for where the Father is, there also is his Word. But we, as his works, stand before him in judgment. And while he is worshiped, because he is Son of the Father who is worshiped, we worship, confessing him Lord and God, because we are creatures and other than he. [y]

Since this is so, let any of them who will consider the matter, so that one may put them to shame with this question: Is it right to say that what is God’s offspring and his very own is from nothing? Or is it reasonable even to think that what is from God has been added to him from outside, so that a man should dare to say that the Son did not always exist? For in this too the generation of the Son goes beyond and transcends the thoughts of man. We become fathers of our own children in time, since we ourselves first did not exist and then came into being; but God, because he always is, is always Father of the Son. The origin of mankind is made clear to us from things like it. But since “no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him,” the sacred writers, to whom the Son has revealed him, have given us a certain image drawn from things that are seen. They say, “who is the radiance of his glory and the expression of his person”; and again, “For with you is the well of life, and in your light we shall see light.” And when the Word rebukes Israel he says, “You have forsaken the fountain of wisdom”; and it is this Fountain that says, “They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters.” Lowly indeed and very dim is the illustration compared with what we long for; yet from it we can understand something above man’s nature, instead of thinking that the Son’s generation is on a level with ours. For who can even imagine that the radiance of light ever did not exist, so as to dare to say that the Son did not always exist, or that the Son did not exist before his generation? Or who can separate the radiance from the sun, or think of the fountain as ever empty of life, so as madly to say, “The Son is from nothing,” of him who says, “I am the life,” or “alien to the Father’s substance,” of him who says, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father”? For the sacred writers gave these illustrations because they wanted us to understand in this way. And when Scripture contains such images, it is unfitting and most impious to form ideas about our Lord from other images, which are neither in Scripture nor have any godly meaning. [aa]

So let them tell us from what teacher or by what tradition they got these notions about the Savior. “We have read,” they will say, “in the Proverbs, ‘The Lord created me a beginning of his ways for his works.’” Eusebius and his party used to insist on this. And you write to tell me that the present men too, though overthrown and refuted by a wealth of arguments, were still spreading this passage everywhere, saying that the Son was one of the creatures and counting him among the things brought into being. But they seem to me to misunderstand this passage too. For it has a godly and thoroughly orthodox sense, and had they understood it, they would not have blasphemed the Lord of glory. For if they compare what has been said above with this passage, they will find a great difference between them. For what man of right understanding does not see that what is created and made is external to the maker, but that the Son, as the argument so far has shown, exists not externally but from the Father who begot him? For a man too both builds a house and begets a son, and no one would turn things around and say that the house or the ship was begotten by the builder, but the son created and made by him; nor again that the house was an image of its maker, but the son unlike the one who begot him. Rather, he will confess that the son is an image of the father, but the house a work of skill, unless his mind is disordered and he is beside himself. Plainly divine Scripture, which knows the nature of everything better than anyone, says through Moses of the creatures, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” But of the Son it brings in not someone else but the Father himself, saying, “I have begotten you from the womb before the morning star”; and again, “You are my Son; today I have begotten you.” And the Lord says of himself in the Proverbs, “Before all the hills he begets me.” And of things brought into being and created John says, “All things were made by him”; but in preaching of the Lord he says, “The only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has declared him.” If son, then not creature; if creature, then not son. For great is the difference between them, and son and creature cannot be the same, unless his substance is to be thought of as at once from God and external to God. [ac]

“Has the passage no meaning, then?” This is what they keep droning about us like a swarm of gnats. Surely it is not without meaning; it has a very fitting one. For it is true to say that the Son was created too, but this took place when he became man, for being created belongs to man. Anyone may find this sense properly given in the divine oracles who does not treat their study as a secondary matter, but looks into the time, the character speaking, and the purpose, and so studies and ponders what he reads. As to the time spoken of, he will find for certain that, while the Lord always is, at length, in the fullness of the ages, he became man; and while he is Son of God, he became Son of man also. As to the purpose, he will understand that, wishing to abolish our death, he took on himself a body from the Virgin Mary, so that by offering it to the Father as a sacrifice for all, he might set free all of us who through fear of death were subject to slavery all our lives. As to the character, it is indeed the Savior’s, but it is said of him when he took a body and said, “The Lord created me a beginning of his ways for his works.” For just as it belongs properly to God’s Son to be everlasting and in the Father’s bosom, so when he became man the words fitted him, “The Lord created me.” For it is then that this is said of him, just as it is said that he hungered and thirsted, asked where Lazarus lay, suffered, and rose again. And as, when we hear of him as Lord and God and true Light, we understand him as being from the Father, so when we hear “The Lord created,” and “Servant,” and “He suffered,” we shall rightly ascribe this not to the Godhead, for it has nothing to do with it, but must interpret it by the flesh that he bore for our sakes. For these things are proper to the flesh, and this flesh was no one else’s but the Word’s. And if we want to know the purpose achieved by this, we shall find it to be this: the Word was made flesh in order to offer up this body for all, and so that we, sharing in his Spirit, might be made divine. This gift we could not have gained in any other way than by his clothing himself in our created body. This is why we bear the names “men of God” and “men in Christ.” But as we, by receiving the Spirit, do not lose our own proper substance, so the Lord, when he was made man for us and bore a body, was no less God. For he was not lessened by being clothed in the body; rather, he made it divine and rendered it immortal. [af]