Word, Wisdom, and the Other Names of the Son

This, then, is quite enough to expose the infamy of the Arian heresy. For, as the Lord has granted, their impiety is brought home to them out of their own words. But come now, let us take the offensive in our turn and call on them for an answer. Now is a fair time, when their own ground has given way, to question them on ours. Perhaps it may shame the perverse and show them where they have fallen from. We have learned from divine Scripture that the Son of God, as was said above, is the very Word and Wisdom of the Father. For the apostle says, “Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God”; and John, after saying, “And the Word became flesh,” at once adds, “And we saw his glory, the glory as of the only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth.” So, since the Word is the only Son, it was in this Word and in Wisdom that heaven and earth and all that is in them were made. And that God is the Fountain of this Wisdom we have learned from Baruch, where Israel is charged with having forsaken the Fountain of Wisdom. If, then, they deny Scripture, they are at once strangers to the name they bear, and everyone may rightly call them godless and enemies of Christ, for they have brought these names on themselves. But if they agree with us that the sayings of Scripture are divinely inspired, let them dare to say openly what they think in secret: that God was once without his Word and without his Wisdom. Let them say in their madness, “There was once when he was not,” and, “Before he was begotten, Christ was not.” And again let them declare that the Fountain did not beget Wisdom from itself but acquired it from outside, until they have the daring to say, “The Son came from nothing.” From this it will follow that there is no longer a Fountain at all, but a sort of pool, taking in its water from outside and laying false claim to the name of Fountain. [a]

How full of impiety this is, I think no one can doubt who has even the least understanding. But since they mutter something about Word and Wisdom being only names of the Son, we must ask them this. If these are only names of the Son, he must be something else besides them. And if he is higher than the names, it is not right to describe the higher by the lesser. But if he is less than the names, then he surely must have in himself the ground of this more honorable title, and that implies that he advanced to something better, which is an impiety equal to anything that has gone before. For he is in the Father, and the Father is in him; he says, “I and the Father are one”; and whoever has seen him has seen the Father. To say that such a one has been made better by something outside himself is the height of madness. However, when they are beaten back from this point, and find themselves, like Eusebius and his party, in these great straits, they have one plea left. Arius too told this tale in his songs and in his own Thalia, as though it were a new difficulty: “God speaks many words; which of these, then, are we to call Son and Word, the only Son of the Father?” Senseless men, and anything but Christians! For first, in using such language about God, they think of him almost as a man, speaking and then reversing his first words by his second, as if one Word from God were not enough for the framing of all things at the Father’s will and for his providential care of them all. For if he spoke many words, that would argue a weakness in them all, each needing the help of the others. But that God should have one Word, which is the true teaching, shows the power of God, and the perfection of the Word that is from him, and the reverent understanding of those who believe this. [e]

If only they would agree to confess the truth from this statement of their own! For if they once grant that God brings forth words, they plainly know him to be a Father. And granting this, let them consider: while they are unwilling to ascribe one Word to God, they imagine him to be the Father of many; and while they are unwilling to say that there is no Word of God at all, they still do not confess that he is the Son of God. That is ignorance of the truth and inexperience in divine Scripture. For if God is the Father of a word at all, why is the one who is begotten not a Son? And again, who should be the Son of God but his Word? For there are not many words, or each would be imperfect. The Word is one, so that he alone may be perfect, and because, since God is one, his Image too must be one, and that Image is the Son. For the Son of God, as may be learned from the divine oracles themselves, is himself the Word of God, and the Wisdom, and the Image, and the Hand, and the Power. For God’s offspring is one, and these titles are signs of his generation from the Father. If you say “the Son,” you have declared what is from the Father by nature. If you think of the Word, you are again thinking of what is from him and inseparable from him. Speaking of Wisdom, again you mean just as much: what is not from outside, but from him and in him. If you name the Power and the Hand, again you speak of what belongs to his substance. And speaking of the Image, you mean the Son; for what else is like God but the offspring that is from him? [g]

Certainly the things that came into being through the Word are “founded in Wisdom”; and the things “founded in Wisdom” were all made by the Hand and came into being through the Son. We have proof of this not from outside sources but from the Scriptures. For God himself says through Isaiah the prophet, “My hand also has laid the foundation of the earth, and my right hand has spanned the heavens.” And again, “And I will cover you in the shadow of my hand, by which I planted the heavens and laid the foundations of the earth.” And David, taught this and knowing that the Lord’s Hand was nothing else than Wisdom, says in the psalm, “In wisdom you have made them all; the earth is full of your creation.” Solomon also received the same from God and said, “The Lord by wisdom founded the earth.” And John, knowing that the Word was the Hand and the Wisdom, preached in this way: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him, and without him nothing was made.” And the apostle, seeing that the Hand and the Wisdom and the Word was nothing else than the Son, says, “God, who at many times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by his Son, whom he has appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the ages.” And again, “There is one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through him.” And knowing also that the Word, the Wisdom, the Son himself was the Image of the Father, he says in the letter to the Colossians, “Giving thanks to God and the Father, who has made us fit to share in the inheritance of the saints in light, who has delivered us from the power of darkness and has brought us into the kingdom of his dear Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. He is the Image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature. For by him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created by him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” For as all things are created by the Word, so, because he is the Image, they are also created in him. And so anyone who turns his thoughts to the Lord will avoid stumbling on the stone of offense, and will instead go forward to the brightness in the light of the truth. For this is truly the teaching of the truth, though these quarrelsome men burst with spite, being neither reverent toward God nor ashamed at being refuted.