The Eternal Triad and the True Image

This is in itself enough to refute the Arian heresy. But its false teaching will also appear from the following. God is Maker and Creator, and he creates his works through the Son, and we cannot think of things that come into being except as coming into being through the Word. Is it not blasphemous, then, since God is Maker, to say that his framing Word and his Wisdom once did not exist? It is the same as saying that God is not Maker, if he did not have his own framing Word, who is from him, but that the means by which he frames things comes to him from outside, and is foreign to him and unlike him in substance. Next, let them tell us this, or rather learn from it how irreverent they are in saying, “Once he was not,” and, “He was not before he was begotten.” For if the Word is not with the Father from everlasting, the Triad is not everlasting. A Monad came first, and afterward by addition it became a Triad; and so, it seems, as time went on, what we know about God grew and took shape. [a]

Further, if the Son is not the Father’s own offspring from his substance, but has come into being from nothing, then the Triad is made up out of nothing. Once there was no Triad but a Monad, and then a Triad that was once lacking and afterward complete: lacking before the Son came into being, complete once he had come to be. And from then on a thing that came into being is counted with the Creator, and what once was not shares divine worship and glory with the one who always was. Worse still, the Triad turns out to be unlike itself, made up of strange and foreign natures and substances. In other words, this is to say that the Triad came into being and was put together. What sort of religion is this, which is not even like itself, but is being completed as time goes on, and is now one way and then another? It will probably receive some fresh addition, and so on without limit, since from the first, at its very start, it was put together by additions. And no doubt it may also decrease, for what is added can plainly be taken away.

But it is not so. Perish the thought! The Triad did not come into being. There is an eternal and one Godhead in a Triad, and there is one glory of the Holy Triad. And you presume to divide it into different natures. The Father is eternal, yet of the Word who is seated beside him you say, “Once he was not.” The Son is seated beside the Father, yet you think to set him far from him. The Triad is Creator and Framer, and you are not afraid to bring it down to things that come from nothing. You do not hesitate to make servile beings equal to the nobility of the Triad, and to rank the King, the Lord of hosts, with his subjects. Stop this confusing of things that cannot be joined, or rather of things that do not exist with him who is. Such statements do not glorify and honor the Lord, but the opposite; for whoever dishonors the Son dishonors the Father too. For if the teaching about God is now perfect in a Triad, and this is the true and only religion, and this is the good and the truth, it must always have been so, unless the good and the truth came about later, and the teaching about God is completed by additions. I say it must have been so eternally. But if not eternally, then not now either; it would be now just as you suppose it was from the beginning, I mean, not a Triad now. But no Christian would put up with such heretics. It belongs to the Greeks to bring in a Triad that came into being and to put it on a level with things that come into being, for these do admit of lacks and additions. But the faith of Christians acknowledges the blessed Triad as unchangeable and perfect and always what it was. It adds nothing more to it and charges it with no loss, for both ideas are irreverent. And so it keeps the Triad apart from all things that have come into being; it guards as indivisible and worships the unity of the Godhead itself; it shuns the Arian blasphemies; and it confesses and acknowledges that the Son always was. For he is eternal, as the Father is, whose eternal Word he is. To that subject let us now return. [b]

God is, and is called, the Fountain of wisdom and life. He says through Jeremiah, “They have forsaken me, the Fountain of living waters”; and again, “A glorious throne on high from the beginning is the place of our sanctuary. O Lord, the Hope of Israel, all who forsake you will be ashamed, and those who depart from me will be written in the earth, because they have forsaken the Lord, the Fountain of living waters.” And in the book of Baruch it is written, “You have forsaken the Fountain of wisdom.” All this means that life and wisdom are not foreign to the substance of the Fountain, but belong to it, and were never without existence, but always were. Now the Son is all this, for he says, “I am the Life,” and, “I, Wisdom, dwell with prudence.” Is it not irreverent, then, to say, “Once the Son was not”? It is the same as saying, “Once the Fountain was dry, empty of Life and Wisdom.” But then it would cease to be a fountain, for what does not beget from itself is not a fountain. What a load of absurdity! For God promises that those who do his will will be like a fountain whose water does not fail, saying through Isaiah the prophet, “And the Lord will satisfy your soul in drought, and make your bones fat; and you will be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water whose waters do not fail.” And yet these men, although God is called and is a Fountain of wisdom, dare to insult him as barren and empty of his own Wisdom. [d]

But their teaching is false. The truth bears witness that God is the eternal Fountain of his own Wisdom; and if the Fountain is eternal, the Wisdom too must be eternal. For in it all things were made, as David says in the Psalm, “In Wisdom you have made them all”; and Solomon says, “The Lord by Wisdom formed the earth; by understanding he established the heavens.” And this Wisdom is the Word, and by him, as John says, “all things were made,” and “without him not one thing was made.” And this Word is Christ; for “there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we for him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through him.” And if all things are through him, he himself is not to be counted among those “all things.” For whoever dares to call the one through whom things exist one of those “all things” will surely speculate in the same way about God, from whom all things are. But if he shrinks from this as unfitting, and excludes God from those “all things,” it is only consistent that he should also exclude from them the only Son, since he belongs to the Father’s substance. And if he is not one of the “all things,” it is a sin to say of him, “He was not,” and, “He was not before he was begotten.” Such words may be used of the creatures. But as for the Son, he is such as the Father is, for he is the Offspring, Word, and Wisdom that belong to the Father’s own substance. For this is what belongs to the Son in relation to the Father, and it shows that the Father is the Son’s own, so that we may neither say that God was ever without his Word, nor that the Son ever did not exist. For why a Son, if not from him? Or why Word and Wisdom, if not always his own?

When, then, was God without what is his own? Or how can anyone regard what is his own as foreign and alien in substance? Other things, as is the nature of things that come into being, have no likeness in substance to their Maker. They are outside him, made by the Word through his grace and will, and so they can cease to be, if it pleases the one who made them; for such is the nature of things that come into being. But as for what belongs to the Father’s substance (and we have already found this to be the Son), what daring irreverence it is to say that “this comes from nothing,” and that “it was not before it was begotten,” but was added from outside, and can at some time cease to be again! Let a person only dwell on this thought, and he will see how this heresy impairs the perfection and fullness of the Father’s substance. But he will see how unfitting it is still more clearly if he considers that the Son is the Image and Radiance of the Father, his Exact Imprint, and his Truth. For when light exists, there is with it its image, the radiance; when a hypostasis exists, there is its complete Imprint; when a father exists, there is his Truth, the Son. So let them consider into what depths of irreverence they fall who make time the measure of the Image and Form of the Godhead. For if the Son was not before he was begotten, the Truth was not always in God, which it would be a sin to say. For since the Father was, there was always in him the Truth, who is the Son, who says, “I am the Truth.” And since the hypostasis existed, there was at once its Imprint and Image. For God’s Image is not drawn from outside; God himself has begotten it, and seeing himself in it, he delights in it, as the Son himself says, “I was his delight.” When, then, did the Father not see himself in his own Image? Or when did he not have delight, that anyone should dare to say, “The Image is out of nothing,” and, “The Father had no delight before the Image came into being”? And how could the Maker and Creator see himself in an substance that was created and came into being? For as the Father is, so must the Image be. [h]

Let us go on, then, to consider what belongs to the Father, and we will come to know whether this Image is truly his. The Father is eternal, immortal, powerful, light, King, Sovereign, God, Lord, Creator, and Maker. These must be in the Image, if it is to be true that whoever “has seen” the Son “has seen the Father.” If the Son is not all this, but, as the Arians think, came into being and is not eternal, this is not a true Image of the Father, unless indeed they give up all shame and go on to say that the title of Image given to the Son is not a sign of a like substance, but only his name. But this in turn, you enemies of Christ, is neither an Image nor an Imprint. For what likeness is there between what is out of nothing and the one who brought what was nothing into being? Or how can what is not be like him who is, when it falls short of him by once not having been, and by having its place among things that came into being? However, the Arians, wanting him to be such, made up arguments like this for themselves: “If the Son is the Father’s offspring and Image, and is like the Father in all things, then it necessarily follows that as he is begotten, so he begets, and he too becomes the father of a son. And again, the one begotten from him begets in his turn, and so on without limit; for this is what it means for the Begotten to be like the one who begot him.” [j]

Authors of blasphemy indeed are these enemies of God! Sooner than confess that the Son is the Father’s Image, they form material and earthly ideas about the Father himself, attributing to him cuttings off, and outflowings and inflowings. If, then, God is like man, let him also become a parent as a man does, so that his Son should be father of another, and so on in succession one from another, until the series they imagine grows into a multitude of gods. But if God is not like man, as he is not, we must not attribute to him what belongs to man. For animals and men, after a Creator has given them their beginning, are begotten in succession. The son, begotten of a father who was himself a son, becomes in his turn a father to a son, inheriting from his father that by which he himself came to be. So in such cases there is not, properly speaking, either father or son, nor do the father and the son stay in their own characters; for the son himself becomes a father, being the son of his father but the father of his son. But it is not so in the Godhead, for God is not as man. The Father is not from a father, and so he does not beget one who will become a father. Nor is the Son from an outflowing of the Father, nor is he begotten from a father who was begotten; and so neither is he begotten in order to beget. Thus it belongs to the Godhead alone that the Father is properly father and the Son properly son; and in them, and in them only, does it hold that the Father is always Father and the Son always Son.

So whoever asks why the Son is not to beget a son must ask why the Father did not have a father. But both suggestions are unfitting and full of impiety. For as the Father is always Father and could never become Son, so the Son is always Son and could never become Father. In this, rather, he is shown to be the Father’s Exact Imprint and Image: he remains what he is and does not change, and so receives from the Father to be one and the same. If, then, the Father changes, let the Image change; for that is how the Image and Radiance stands toward the one who begot it. But if the Father does not change, and continues to be what he is, then necessarily the Image too continues to be what he is, and will not change. Now he is Son from the Father; so he will not become other than what belongs to the Father’s substance. So these foolish men have devised this objection too in vain, wanting to separate the Image from the Father so that they might put the Son on a level with things that come into being.