The Word Cannot Change

As for their question whether the Word is alterable, there is no need to examine it. It is enough simply to write down what they say, and so to show its reckless impiety. How they trifle can be seen from these questions of theirs: ‘Does he have free will, or does he not? Is he good by choice, according to free will, and can he change if he wishes, being of an alterable nature? Or, like wood or stone, does he not have the freedom to be moved and to lean this way and that?’ It is quite in keeping with their heresy to speak and think like this. For once they have made up for themselves a God out of nothing and a created Son, naturally they adopt such terms as suit a creature. But when, in their disputes with members of the church, they hear from them about the real and only Word of the Father, and still dare to speak of him like this, does not their teaching then become the most loathsome that can be found? Is it not enough to unsettle a person merely to hear it, even if he cannot answer, and to make him stop his ears in astonishment at the novelty of what he hears them say, when even to mention it is blasphemy? [a]

For if the Word is alterable and changing, where will he stop, and what will be the end of his development? How can the alterable possibly be like the Unalterable? How could someone who has seen the alterable be thought to have seen the Unalterable? What state must he reach before we can see the Father in him? For plainly we will not see the Father in the Son at all times, because the Son is always altering and of a changing nature. For the Father is unalterable and unchangeable, and is always in the same state and the same. But if, as they hold, the Son is alterable, and not always the same, but of an ever-changing nature, how can such a one be the Father’s Image, when he does not have the likeness of the Father’s unalterableness? How can he be truly in the Father, if his purpose is unsettled? Indeed, perhaps, being alterable and advancing day by day, he is not yet perfect.

But away with such madness of the Arians! Let the truth shine out and show them to be fools. For must not he be perfect who is equal to God? And must not he be unalterable who is one with the Father, and his Son, belonging to his substance? And since the Father’s substance is unalterable, the Offspring that is its own must be unalterable too. And if they slanderously charge the Word with alteration, let them learn how much their own reason is in danger, for the tree is known by its fruit. For this is why whoever has seen the Son has seen the Father, and why the knowledge of the Son is the knowledge of the Father.

So the Image of the unalterable God must be unchangeable, for ‘Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.’ And David says of him in the Psalm, ‘You, Lord, in the beginning laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you remain; they will all grow old like a garment. You will fold them up like a cloak, and they will be changed; but you are the same, and your years will not fail.’ And the Lord himself says of himself through the prophet, ‘See now that I, even I, am he,’ and, ‘I do not change.’ Someone may say that what is meant here refers to the Father. Yet it fits the Son also to say this, especially because, when he was made man, he shows his own sameness and unalterableness to those who suppose that because of the flesh he has been changed and become other than he was. The saints, or rather the Lord, are more to be trusted than the perversity of the impious. For Scripture, in the passage of the Psalter just quoted, signifies under the name of heaven and earth that the nature of all things originated and created is alterable and changeable. Yet it excepts the Son from these, and so shows us that he is in no way a thing originated. Indeed, it teaches that he changes everything else and is not changed himself, when it says, ‘You are the same, and your years will not fail.’ [d]

And with reason. For things originated come from nothing and did not exist before they came into being; since in truth they come to be after not being, they have a nature that is changeable. But the Son, being from the Father and belonging to his substance, is unchangeable and unalterable as the Father himself is. For it would be a sin to say that from that substance which is unalterable there was begotten an alterable word and a changeable wisdom. For how is he still the Word, if he is alterable? Or can that be Wisdom which is changeable? Unless perhaps they would have it be like an accident in an substance: as in some particular substance a certain grace and habit of virtue is present by accident, which is called Word and Son and Wisdom, and can be taken away from it and added to it. For they have often expressed this opinion. But it is not the faith of Christians, since it does not declare that he is truly the Word and Son of God, or that the wisdom meant is true Wisdom. For how can what alters and changes, and never stays in one and the same condition, be true? Yet the Lord says, ‘I am the Truth.’ If, then, the Lord himself speaks this way about himself and declares that he is unalterable, and the saints have learned this and bear witness to it, and our own thoughts about God acknowledge it as reverent, where did these men of impiety get this novelty? They vomited it out of their own heart, as from a seat of corruption.