Scripture Calls the Son Eternal

At his prompting, then, you have maintained, and you think, that “there was once when the Son was not.” This is the first cloak of your teaching that has to be stripped off. Tell us, then, you slanderous and ungodly men: what was there once, when the Son was not? If you say the Father, your blasphemy is only greater. For it is ungodly to say that he was “once,” or to describe him by the word “once.” He is always, and is now, and as the Son is, so is he; he is himself the One who is, and Father of the Son. But if you say that the Son was once, when he himself was not, the answer is foolish and meaningless. For how could he both be and not be? Caught in this difficulty, you can only answer that there was a time when the Word was not, for your very adverb “once” naturally means this. And your other phrase, “The Son did not exist before he was begotten,” is the same as saying, “There was once when he was not,” for both the one and the other mean that there is a time before the Word. Where, then, did you make this discovery of yours? Why do you, like “the nations, rage, and imagine empty phrases against the Lord and against his Christ”? For no Holy Scripture has used such language of the Savior, but rather “always,” and “eternal,” and “existing always with the Father.” For “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” And in the Apocalypse he speaks like this: “Who is and who was and who is to come.” Now who can rob “who is” and “who was” of eternity? Paul too wrote this in his letter to the Romans to refute the Jews: “Of whom, according to the flesh, is Christ, who is over all, God blessed forever.” And to silence the Greeks he said, “The invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead.” And what the power of God is, he himself teaches us elsewhere: “Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” Surely in these words he does not mean the Father, as you often whisper to one another, claiming that the Father is “his eternal power.” That is not so. For he does not say, “God himself is the power,” but “his is the power.” It is very plain to everyone that “his” is not “he”; yet it is not something foreign to him, but rather his own. Study the context too, and “turn to the Lord”—now “the Lord is the Spirit”—and you will see that it is the Son who is meant. [a]

For after mentioning the creation, he naturally speaks of the Maker’s power as seen in it; and that power, I say, is the Word of God, through whom all things were made. If the creation is enough by itself, without the Son, to make God known, take care that you do not fall into thinking that it came into being without the Son. But if it came into being through the Son, and “in him all things hold together,” it must follow that whoever contemplates the creation rightly is also contemplating the Word who framed it, and through him begins to grasp the Father. And as the Savior himself says, “No one knows the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son reveals him.” And when Philip asked, “Show us the Father,” he did not say, “Look at the creation,” but, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” Since this is so, Paul was right. He was accusing the Greeks of contemplating the harmony and order of the creation without reflecting on the Word who framed it and is within it, so as to grasp the true God through the creation and give up worshiping it; for the creatures bear witness to their own Maker. And he was right to say, “his eternal power and Godhead,” and in this way to point to the Son. And where the sacred writers say, “He who exists before the ages,” and “Through whom he made the ages,” they preach just as clearly the eternal and everlasting being of the Son, even while they are speaking of God himself. So, though Isaiah says, “The everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth”; and Susanna said, “O everlasting God”; and Baruch wrote, “I will cry to the Everlasting in my days,” and shortly after, “My hope is in the Everlasting, that he will save you, and joy has come to me from the Holy One”; yet since the apostle, writing to the Hebrews, says, “Who, being the radiance of his glory and the expression of his person”; and David too, in the eighty-ninth Psalm, says, “And may the brightness of the Lord be upon us,” and, “In your light we shall see light”; who, then, has so little sense as to doubt the eternity of the Son? For when did anyone see light without the brightness of its radiance, so as to say of the Son, “There was once when he was not,” or “He did not exist before he was begotten”? And the words addressed to the Son in the hundred and forty-fourth Psalm, “Your kingdom is a kingdom of all the ages,” forbid anyone to imagine any interval at all in which the Word did not exist. For every interval in the ages is measured, and the Word is King and Maker of all the ages. Therefore, since no interval at all exists before him, it would be madness to say, “There was once when the Everlasting was not,” and “The Son is from nothing.” And the Lord himself says, “I am the truth,” not “I became the truth”; but always “I am”: “I am the shepherd,” “I am the light,” and again, “Do you not call me Lord and Teacher? And you say well, for so I am.” Who, hearing such language from God, the Wisdom and Word of the Father, speaking of himself, will hesitate any longer about the truth, and not at once believe that the phrase “I am” means that the Son is eternal and without beginning? [e]

It is plain, then, from what has been said, that the Scriptures declare the Son’s eternity. It is equally plain from what follows that the Arian phrases “he was not,” and “before,” and “when,” are used in the same Scriptures of creatures. Moses, for instance, in his account of the origin of our world, says: “And every plant of the field, before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew; for the Lord God had not sent rain upon the earth, and there was no man to till the ground.” And in Deuteronomy: “When the Most High divided the nations.” And the Lord said in his own person: “If you loved me, you would rejoice because I said, I am going to the Father, for my Father is greater than I. And now I have told you before it happens, so that when it happens you may believe.” And about the creation he says through Solomon: “Before the earth was, when there were no depths, I was brought forth; when there were no springs abounding with water. Before the mountains were settled, before the hills, I was brought forth.” And: “Before Abraham was, I am.” And about Jeremiah he says: “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.” And David in the Psalm says: “Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever the earth and the world were made, you are God from everlasting and forever.” And in Daniel: “Susanna cried out with a loud voice and said, O everlasting God, who know the secrets, and know all things before they come to be.” So it is clear that the phrases “once was not,” and “before it came to be,” and “when,” and the like, belong to things brought into being and to creatures, which come out of nothing, but are foreign to the Word. But if such terms are used in Scripture of things brought into being, and “always” of the Word, it follows, you enemies of God, that the Son did not come out of nothing and is not among the things brought into being at all. He is the Father’s Image and eternal Word, who never was not, but always is, as the eternal radiance of a light that is eternal. Why, then, do you imagine times before the Son? Why do you blaspheme the Word as coming after times, when through him even the ages were made? For how could time or any age exist at all when the Word, as you say, had not yet appeared, the one “through” whom “all things were made, and without” whom “not one thing was made”? Or why, when you mean time, do you not say plainly, “There was a time when the Word was not”? You drop the word “time” to deceive the simple, but you do not hide your own mind at all; and even if you did, you could not escape being found out. For you still simply mean times when you say, “There was when he was not,” and “He did not exist before he was begotten.” [k]