One and the Same Christ

But there are some who say that Jesus was nothing more than a container for Christ. Christ, they say, came down on him from above in the form of a dove; and once he had made known the Father who has no name, he passed back into the Pleroma in a way that could not be seen or grasped — not grasped by human beings, and not even by the powers and mighty ones in heaven. On their account Jesus was the Son, but Christ was the Father, and the Father of Christ was God. Others say that he only appeared to suffer, since by nature he was beyond suffering altogether. The Valentinians, for their part, hold that the Jesus of the plan was the one who passed through Mary, and that the Savior from the higher region came down upon him. That Savior they also call Pan, because he held the names of all those who had produced him; and he shared his power and his name, they say, with the Jesus of the plan, so that by his means death was done away with, while the Father was made known by that Savior who had come down from above — the same Savior they claim is himself the container of Christ and of the whole Pleroma. With their tongues they confess one Christ Jesus, but in what they actually think they are divided. For, as I have already pointed out, these men are in the habit of saying that there was one Christ, produced by Monogenes to shore up the Pleroma; that another, the Savior, was sent out to glorify the Father; and that there was yet another, the one belonging to the plan, the one they present as having suffered, who also carried Christ inside him — that Savior who went back into the Pleroma. So I judge it necessary to take account of the whole mind of the apostles about our Lord Jesus Christ, and to show not only that they never held any such opinions about him, but further, that through the Holy Spirit they announced that the men who would teach such things are agents of Satan, sent out to overturn the faith of some and to drag them away from life. [a]

That John knew one and the same Word of God, that he is the only Son, and that he became flesh for our salvation — Jesus Christ our Lord — I have proved well enough out of John’s own words. Matthew too recognizes one and the same Jesus Christ. He sets out his birth as a man from the virgin, just as God promised David that he would raise up an eternal King from the fruit of his body, a promise he had made to Abraham long before; and he says: “The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” Then, to free our minds of any suspicion about Joseph, he says: “But the birth of Christ was in this way. When his mother was pledged to Joseph, before they came together, she was found to be pregnant by the Holy Spirit.” And then, when Joseph was thinking of sending Mary away, since she had proved to be pregnant, Matthew tells us of the angel of God standing beside him and saying: “Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for what has been conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. And she will bear a son, and you will call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. Now all this happened so that what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet might be fulfilled: Look, a virgin will conceive and bear a son, and they will call his name Emmanuel, which means, God with us.” This makes it clear that the promise made to the fathers had been carried out, that the Son of God was born of a virgin, and that he himself was Christ the Savior whom the prophets had foretold — not, as these men claim, that Jesus was the one born of Mary while Christ was the one who came down from above. Matthew could certainly have said, “Now the birth of Jesus was in this way.” But the Holy Spirit saw the corrupters of the truth ahead of time, and guarded against their deceit in advance, and so says through Matthew, “But the birth of Christ was in this way”; and that he is Emmanuel, in case we might take him for a mere man. For “not by the will of the flesh, nor by the will of man, but by the will of God was the Word made flesh.” We are not to imagine that Jesus is one and Christ another, but to know them as one and the same.

Paul explained this very point when he wrote to the Romans: “Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, marked out beforehand for the good news of God, which he had promised through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, about his Son, who was made for him of the seed of David according to the flesh, who was marked out beforehand as Son of God in power through the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead of our Lord Jesus Christ.” And writing to the Romans again about Israel, he says: “Theirs are the fathers, and from them is Christ according to the flesh, who is God over all, blessed forever.” And again in his letter to the Galatians he says: “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent out his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive the adoption.” He is plainly pointing to one God, who through the prophets made the promise of the Son; and to one Jesus Christ our Lord, who was of the seed of David according to his birth from Mary; and to that same Jesus Christ appointed Son of God in power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead, since he is the firstborn of all creation. The Son of God was made the Son of man, so that through him we might receive the adoption — man bearing and receiving and taking in the Son of God. That is why Mark says as well: “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, as it is written in the prophets.” He knows one and the same Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was announced by the prophets, who from the fruit of David’s body was Emmanuel, “the messenger of the great counsel” of the Father; through whom God made the dawn and the Righteous One rise for the house of David, and raised up for him a horn of salvation, and “set up a testimony in Jacob.” David says as much when he speaks of the reasons for his birth: “And he appointed a law in Israel, so that another generation might know him — the children who were to be born from them — and they in their turn would tell their children, so that they might set their hope in God and seek after his commands.” And again, the angel said, when he brought the good news to Mary: “He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord will give him the throne of his father David” — acknowledging that the one who is Son of the Most High is himself also the son of David. And David, knowing by the Spirit the plan of this Person’s coming, by which he is supreme over the living and the dead alike, confessed him as Lord, seated at the right hand of the Most High Father.

But Simeon too — the man who had been told by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death until he had first seen Christ Jesus — took him, the firstborn of the virgin, into his hands, blessed God, and said: “Lord, now you are letting your servant go in peace, according to your word, because my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared before the face of all peoples: a light for the nations to see by, and the glory of your people Israel.” In saying that, he was confessing that the infant he was holding in his hands — Jesus, born of Mary — was Christ himself, the Son of God, the light of all, the glory of Israel itself, and the peace and refreshment of those who had fallen asleep. For he was already stripping men of their ignorance, handing them his own knowledge instead, and scattering abroad those who came to know him, as Isaiah says: “Call his name: Take the spoil quickly, plunder fast.” These are the works of Christ. So he himself was the Christ. Simeon carried him and blessed the Most High. The shepherds saw him and glorified God. John, still in his mother’s womb while Christ was in Mary’s, knew him as the Lord and greeted him with a leap. The Magi saw him and worshiped and offered their gifts, as I have said already, and bowed down before the eternal King, and went home by another way, no longer returning by the road of the Assyrians. “For before the child knows how to call out Father or mother, he will take the power of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria against the king of the Assyrians” — declaring, in a hidden way but with force, that the Lord did fight with a hidden hand against Amalek. This is also why he suddenly took away those children of the house of David whose good fortune it was to have been born at that time, so that he might send them on ahead into his kingdom. He was himself an infant, and he so arranged it that human infants should be martyrs, killed, as the Scriptures say, for the sake of Christ, who was born in Bethlehem of Judah, in the city of David.

So after the resurrection the Lord said to his disciples as well: “You foolish men, slow of heart to believe everything the prophets have spoken! Did not Christ have to suffer these things and enter into his glory?” And again he says to them: “These are the words I spoke to you while I was still with you: that everything written about me in the law of Moses and in the prophets and in the Psalms had to be fulfilled. Then he opened their understanding, so that they could understand the Scriptures, and he said to them: This is what is written, and this is how Christ had to suffer and to rise again from the dead, and how repentance for the forgiveness of sins was to be preached in his name among all the nations.” Now this is the one who was born of Mary. For he says: “The Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.” So the Gospel knew no other Son of Man than the one who came of Mary and also suffered; and it knew no Christ who flew off from Jesus before the suffering. The one who was born is the one it knew as Jesus Christ the Son of God, and it knew that this same one suffered and rose again. John, the Lord’s disciple, confirms it when he says: “But these things are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have eternal life in his name” — seeing ahead of time these blasphemous schemes that split the Lord in two, so far as it lies in their power, and say that he was made up of two different substances. For that same reason he testified to us in his letter: “Little children, it is the last hour; and as you have heard that Antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have appeared, and by this we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have stayed with us. But they left, so that it might be made plain that they are not of us. Know, then, that every lie is from outside and is not of the truth. Who is a liar, but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is Antichrist.”

Now all the men I named at the start do confess one Jesus Christ with their tongue, and yet they make fools of themselves, thinking one thing and saying another. Their theories differ from one another, as I have already shown. One being suffered and was born, they allege, and this was Jesus; but there was another who came down upon him, and this was Christ, who went up again. They argue that the one who came from the Demiurge, or the one who belonged to the plan, or the one who sprang from Joseph, was the being capable of suffering; and that upon him there came down, out of the invisible and unspeakable regions, that other one, who they say cannot be grasped, cannot be seen, and cannot suffer. So they wander away from the truth, because their teaching departs from the one who is truly God. They do not know that his only Son, the Word — who is always present with the human race, joined to his own creation and mixed into it as the Father was pleased to have it, and who became flesh — is himself Jesus Christ our Lord: the one who suffered for us and rose again on our behalf, and who will come again in his Father’s glory to raise up all flesh, to make salvation plain, and to apply the measure of just judgment to everyone he made. There is therefore, as I have pointed out, one God the Father and one Christ Jesus, who came by way of the whole ordered plan and gathered all things into one in himself. But in every respect he is man too, the thing God formed; and so he took man up into himself — the invisible becoming visible, the ungraspable made able to be grasped, the one beyond suffering becoming able to suffer, the Word becoming man — gathering all things into one in himself. So that as the Word of God holds the highest place among things above the heavens, things spiritual and invisible, he might hold the highest place among things visible and bodily as well; and, taking first place to himself and making himself head of the church, he might draw all things to himself at the proper time.

With him there is nothing incomplete and nothing out of season, just as with the Father there is nothing out of keeping. All these things were foreknown by the Father, and the Son works them out at the proper time in perfect order and sequence. That is why, when Mary was pressing him on toward the astonishing sign of the wine, and wanted before the time to share in the cup that gathers it all up, the Lord checked her untimely haste and said, “Woman, what have I to do with you? My hour has not yet come” — waiting for the hour the Father had foreknown. And that is why, when men often wanted to seize him, it is said, “No one laid hands on him, because the hour of his being seized had not yet come”; nor had the time of his suffering, which the Father had foreknown. The prophet Habakkuk says the same: “By this you will be known when the years have drawn near; you will be shown forth when the time comes; because my soul is troubled with anger, you will remember your mercy.” And Paul says: “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent out his Son.” This makes it plain that everything the Father had foreknown, our Lord carried out in its own order, its own season, its own hour, the hour foreknown and fitting; and that he is indeed one and the same, but rich and great. For he fulfills his Father’s generous and far-reaching will, since he is himself the Savior of those who are saved, the Lord of those who are under his rule, and the God of everything that has been formed: the only Son of the Father, the Christ who was announced, the Word of God, who became flesh when the fullness of time had come, at which point the Son of God had to become the Son of man.

So they all stand outside the ordered plan — everyone who, under the pretense of knowledge, holds that Jesus was one and Christ another, and the Only Son another again, from whom in turn comes the Word, and the Savior yet another, whom these students of error claim to be a product of Aeons that were made in a state of decay. Such men look like sheep from the outside, since they seem to be like us in what they say in public, repeating the same words we do; but inside they are wolves. Their teaching is murderous. It conjures up a crowd of gods and pretends to many Fathers, while it lowers the Son of God and divides him up in a number of ways. These are the people the Lord warned us about beforehand, and his disciple, in the letter I have already mentioned, orders us to keep away from them when he says: “For many deceivers have gone out into the world, who do not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh. Such a one is a deceiver and an antichrist. Watch them, so that you do not lose what you have worked for.” And again he says in the letter: “Many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit that separates Jesus Christ is not of God, but is of antichrist.” These words agree with what was said in the Gospel, that “the Word became flesh and lived among us.” And so he cries out again in his letter, “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God” — knowing Jesus Christ to be one and the same: the one for whom the gates of heaven were opened, because he took flesh upon himself, and who will also come in the same flesh in which he suffered, revealing the glory of the Father.

Paul agrees with all this. Speaking to the Romans he declares: “Much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and of righteousness for life reign through one, Christ Jesus.” It follows that he knew nothing of that Christ who flew off from Jesus, and nothing of the Savior above whom they hold to be beyond suffering. For if one of them really suffered while the other stayed unable to suffer, and one was born while the other came down on the one who was born and then left him again, then what is being shown is not one but two. But the apostle knew him as one, the one who was both born and suffered, Christ Jesus. He says again in the same letter: “Do you not know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? So that just as Christ rose from the dead, we too should walk in newness of life.” And again, showing that Christ did suffer, and was himself the Son of God, who died for us and redeemed us with his blood at the time appointed beforehand, he says: “For why is it that Christ, while we were still without strength, died in due time for the ungodly? But God shows his own love toward us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more, then, now that we have been counted righteous by his blood, we will be saved from wrath through him. For if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, having been reconciled, we will be saved by his life.” He declares in the plainest way that the very one who was seized, and underwent suffering, and shed his blood for us, was both Christ and the Son of God, and that he also rose again and was taken up into heaven. As Paul says himself: “But at the same time it is Christ who died — or rather, who has risen again — who is even at the right hand of God.” And again: “Knowing that Christ, rising from the dead, dies no more.” For he foresaw through the Spirit how the evil teachers would subdivide the Lord, and he wanted to cut away from them every excuse for quibbling; and so he says what I have already quoted, and this as well: “But if the Spirit of him who raised up Jesus from the dead lives in you, he who raised up Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies.” He is not saying this only to those who are willing to listen. Do not be deceived, he says to everyone: Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is one and the same, who by suffering reconciled us to God and rose from the dead, who is at the Father’s right hand and perfect in every way; “who, when he was struck, did not strike back; who, when he suffered, made no threats”; and when he was handled with violence, he prayed his Father to forgive those who had crucified him. For he himself truly brought salvation in, since he is himself the Word of God, himself the only Son of the Father, Christ Jesus our Lord.