Fragments

That no name given to anyone on earth has become greater than Jesus is shown by the Gospel, where the angel said to Mariam: “Do not be afraid, for you have found grace with God. And look, you will conceive in the womb and bear a son, and you will call his name Jesus. He will be great, and will be called Son of the Most High.” It is also clear from the prophecy of Zechariah, which long ago prophesied about this name. For he says: “The Lord showed me Jesus the great priest, standing before the face of the angel of the Lord, and the devil stood at his right hand to oppose him. And the Lord said to the devil: May the Lord rebuke you, he who chose Jerusalem.” When did he rebuke him? When he joined the man he loved to his own Word. “He who chose Jerusalem,” it says, meaning of course this Jerusalem of ours, about which the apostle says: “But our Jerusalem is above; for she serves with her children.” For at that time, being in that great Jerusalem, that is, in our church, he rebuked the devil according to the prophecy, saying, “Get behind me, Satan, for you are an offense [to me].” This, then, is the great priest, of whom the Jesus of that time preserved a type. For that man could not have been called a great priest, though he became glorious in everyone’s eyes, unless Moses had first been named great. (Moses was not yet great, because he was called “servant” of God, [and was named “god” by God himself].) If anyone thinks Jesus was called great because he was thought worthy to bring the people into the holy land and did many other marvelous things, let him know from this too that the greatness spoken of in the case of Jesus was not distinguished so much by a deed of that typical kind. It was distinguished by the fact that he was about, a little later, to bring his own people into this great Jerusalem.

So the apostle says that he is firstborn not only of the “new creation” but also firstborn “from the dead,” and, it seems to me, for no other reason than this: that through his being firstborn “of the dead” we might be able to understand how he is also called “firstborn of all creation.” For our Lord Jesus Christ was not the first to rise from the dead. The man raised through the prophet Elisha rose earlier. Lazarus also rose before his resurrection. And at the time of the passion many bodies of those who had fallen asleep rose.

Now let us examine one statement from what Asterius wrote. He said: “For the Father is one, who begot from himself the only-begotten Word and firstborn of all creation.” He has joined both terms together, “only-begotten” and “firstborn,” though there is a great contradiction between these names, as even the very slow can easily see. For clearly the only-begotten, if he is truly only-begotten, can no longer be firstborn; and the firstborn, as firstborn, cannot be only-begotten.

So if he himself is “firstborn of all creation,” and “in him all things were created,” we should recognize that the apostle is here speaking of his dispensation in the flesh.

He was therefore named “firstborn of all creation” because of his birth in the flesh, not because of the first creation, as they themselves suppose.

So this most holy Word was not called “firstborn of all creation” before he became man. (How could the one who always is be firstborn of anything?) Rather, it is the first “new man,” in whom God willed “to sum up all things,” whom the divine Scriptures call “firstborn of all creation.”

You hear how it turns out that not only these things, but also the things that already existed “in the heavens and on the earth,” were “created in him” according to the new creation.

And let Asterius not think it unbelievable that a body younger than [the Word] should [have come to] such great antiquity. Let him consider that, although human flesh is in fact younger, the Word who deigned to take it up through a pure virgin, and united his own self to it, made the man created in himself the “firstborn of all creation.” And he also wills that this man be the beginning of all things, not only those on earth but also those in heaven.

So this chapter of Proverbs, where it says “The Lord created me,” is not meant to describe the beginning of our Savior’s deity, as they think, but the second dispensation, the one in the flesh. That is why it fittingly speaks of the creation of human flesh.

So the “creating” refers to his work as a man. That is why Scripture says, “He created me as the beginning of his ways, for his works.” “He created me” — that is, through the virgin Mary, through whom God had chosen to unite human flesh to his own Word.

Since this is so, the next step is to think carefully about this saying from Proverbs: “He created me as the beginning of his ways, for his works.” For the Lord God truly created, making what did not exist. The flesh that the Word took on was not in existence; it was something that did not exist, and he “created it as the beginning of his ways.”

So it is fitting that, when the old things had passed away and new things were about to come through the newness of our Savior, our Lord Christ cried out through the prophet, “The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways.”

For he has become for us, who are about to live righteously, the way of godliness, the beginning of all the ways that follow.

He rightly called our Lord and Savior “the beginning of ways” because he also became the beginning of the other ways we have, which come after the first way. I mean the teachings handed down through the holy apostles, who proclaimed this new mystery to us, as the prophecy says, “with a high proclamation.”

“He created me,” it says, “as the beginning of his ways, for his works.” What works does it mean? The ones the Savior speaks of: “My Father is still working until now, and I am working.” And again he says, “I have finished the work that you gave me.”

For before the facts proved it, who would have believed that the Word of God, born through a virgin, would take up our flesh and show in it all the fullness of deity bodily?

“Before the age he founded me.” He calls this a foundation: the plan of his life in the flesh, which was determined beforehand. So the apostle says, “For no one can lay any other foundation than the one that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.” Here he mentions one age, from which he says the things concerning Christ were founded, although many ages had already gone by. David likewise said, “the one who exists before the ages.”

Asterius said that the Word came into being before the ages, but the very text proves him wrong. So he misses the point and also the wording. For if Proverbs says, “Before the age he founded me,” how can he say that the Word came into being before the ages? To be founded before the age is one thing, and to have come into being before the ages is another.

Just as almighty God long ago determined the church beforehand, so he determined beforehand the plan of Christ in the flesh. Through Christ he determined beforehand to call the race of the godly “to adoption as sons,” having first laid the foundation in his own mind. For this reason the apostle, by the Holy Spirit, speaks plainly about the Son who was determined beforehand, saying: [text corrupt; the quotation is missing].

So even if this new mystery appeared at the very end of the times, it was nevertheless determined beforehand before this age. Therefore the prophet rightly said, “Before the age he founded me.” He means the flesh, because of its fellowship with his own true Son, the Word.

Then it says, “In the beginning, before he made the earth.” What earth is this, if not our flesh, which after the disobedience became earth again? For it says, “You are earth, and to earth you will return.” This flesh had to receive healing, by somehow sharing in the Holy [text breaks off].

Then it says, “Before he made the depths.” Here the prophet, speaking in the manner of a proverb, means the hearts of the saints, which hold the gift of the Spirit in their own depths.

What then is this next saying: “Before the springs of the waters came forth”? He says these are the holy apostles. The book of Exodus shows us this mystery, since it long ago foretold the types of the apostles. For since the apostles were twelve in number, it mentions twelve springs.

So it is fitting that the Lord did not speak about his birth in the flesh when he said through the prophet Solomon, “Before the springs of the waters came forth.”

For this is how the Savior spoke to the holy springs: “Go and make disciples of all the nations.”

It is clear from every side that the prophet figuratively named the holy apostles “springs.”

So then, since we have spoken about the points that came earlier, it follows that we should fill in what remains. What remains is the part about the mountains and hills. For he says, “Before the mountains were settled, and before all the hills, he begets me.” By mountains and hills he means the apostles and the successors of the apostles. In this figurative way he points to their righteous way of life, which sets them apart from other people.

For this reason, then, it seems good to me to go through now what I have not yet covered. Most of what he wrote has already become clear to us from what has been said. He says, “From the womb, before the morning star, I begot you.” He supposed that if the preposition “from” were stolen away, the text would fall in with the opinion of the heresy. So he removed the most important part of the syllable, and wanted to indicate his ancient [begetting again].

How then do these men, who are “full of deceit and trickery,” to use the apostle’s words, carry this saying over to what they suppose was his first creation? And this when David had spoken plainly about his birth according to the flesh!

For there was darkness before, because of ignorance of true godliness, and the day was about to appear (“I am the day,” he says). So it is fitting that he names the star “the dawn-bearer.”

Therefore, since the prophet David fittingly named the star that signals the day “the dawn-bearer,” it is no longer right to ask who this dawn-bearer is. It was the star that appeared at that time, the one that brought and showed the day to the [Magi]. So it is plain that the words “Before the morning star I begot you” were spoken by the almighty Master about the Word who was born through the virgin together with human flesh. The gospel too makes this clear: first our Master was born through the virgin, and afterward the star appeared that showed the day.

For from the divine sayings, how will they be able to show us that there is one unbegotten and one begotten in the way they themselves believe he was begotten? Neither prophets nor evangelists nor apostles ever said this.

Now the holy apostle John, [the Lord’s] disciple, became a true witness to the Word’s eternity when he spoke of it, saying, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Here he mentions no begetting of the Word at all. Instead he uses three testimonies in a row, and so confirmed that the Word was in the beginning.

I will remind you of what he himself wrote, siding with what Eusebius wrote badly, so that you may know that he clearly departs from his earlier promise. For he wrote in these very words: “The main point of the letter is to refer the begetting of the Son to the Father’s will, and not to present God’s begetting as a [passion]. This is what the wisest of the Fathers declared in their own writings, guarding against the impiety of the heretics. These heretics falsely claimed that God’s begetting of children is bodily and subject to passion, and they laid down as doctrine that there were emissions.”

So Asterius, wanting to defend Eusebius, who wrote badly, mentioned the nature of the Father and the nature of the unbegotten, and so became his own accuser. For it would have been much better to leave the depth of Eusebius’s thought, as he himself wrote it, lying unexamined in its brevity, than to use this kind of interpretation and bring the craftiness of the writing into the light.

To say that he was begotten before the ages seems to be a consistent statement. For an offspring is what comes forth from the father who sent it forth. But the other point has not been taken up by him soundly or piously. For to say that the one who came forth from him is not the Word, and that this is the true manner of begetting, but simply and only a Son, usually gives hearers an impression of a human form.

Paulinus did not write this to remind us of the gospel’s teaching. He admitted that some are moved in this direction by themselves, while others have been led this way by reading the men mentioned above. Then at the end, adding what was like a crowning flourish to his proof, he put his signature to sayings of Origen in his own letter, as if Origen could persuade better than the evangelists and apostles. These are the sayings: “It is time to take up again the subject of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and to go through a few of the things that were left out then. Concerning the Father: being indivisible and without parts, he becomes Father of the Son, not by projecting him, as some suppose. For if the Son is a projection of the Father and an offspring from him, like the offspring of living creatures, then the one who projects and the one projected must be a body.”

Origen wrote these things. He did not want to learn from the holy prophets and apostles about the eternity of the Word. He gave himself over to his own speculation, and he presumes in vain to tell a second account of the Word.

It is plain that Origen, in writing such things, was using doctrines of his own, because he often overturns his own statements. So it is fitting to recall what he says about God in another passage. He writes as follows: “God did not begin to be Father after being held back, as human beings who become fathers are, because they are not yet able to be fathers. For if God is always perfect, and he has the power to be a Father, and it is good that he be the Father of such a Son, why does he put it off and deprive himself of what is good? And, so to speak, why is he not Father from the time he is able to be?” And the same must be said about the Holy Spirit. So when Origen wrote this too, how is it that the blessed Paulinus, following him, thought it not safe to conceal it, and yet used it against his opponents to support his own opinions, when I would say that not even Origen himself could give an account of them?

Paulinus, this man’s father, is persuaded by these sayings and does not hesitate to say and write the same things. Sometimes he calls Christ a second god, and says he became god in a more human way. Sometimes he declares him to be a created thing. That this is so, he once said to us as well, when he passed through Ancyra: that Christ was a created thing.

And for this reason he does not call himself Son of God, but everywhere calls himself Son of Man. By such a confession he means to bring it about that the human being, through fellowship with him, becomes by adoption a son of God. And after the end of his work he is again united with God as the Word. So he fulfills what the apostle said beforehand: “Then he himself will be subjected to the one who subjected all things to him, so that God may be all in all.” For at that time he will be what he was before.

For the Word “was in the beginning,” being nothing other than Word. But the human being who was united to the Word, who did not exist before, became a human being, as John teaches us when he says, “And the Word became flesh.” For this reason, then, Scripture appears to mention the Word alone. Whether the divine Scripture mentions the name Jesus or Christ, it seems to be naming the Word of God as he is with human flesh. But if someone claims he can show the name Christ or Jesus used of the Word alone even before the new covenant, he will find it said prophetically, as is clear from this: “The kings of the earth stood by,” it says, “and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against his Christ.”

So it is clear from every side that no other name fits the eternity of the Word except the one that the most holy disciple and apostle of God, John, gave at the beginning of the Gospel. After the taking up of the flesh he is proclaimed as Christ and Jesus, and as life, way, day, resurrection, door, bread, and whatever else the divine Scriptures may call him. Yet this does not mean we should be ignorant of his first name, that he was Word. For this reason the most holy evangelist and disciple of the Lord, fully alert in the Spirit, recalled the beginning from above and nothing more recent. He said, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” He did this to show that any name that is new and more recent came to him from the new and recent dispensation in the flesh.

Sabellius also slipped away from the right faith, and he knew neither God nor God’s holy Word accurately. For whoever has not known the Word has not known the Father either. For “no one knows the Father,” he says, “except the Son,” that is, the Word; for it is the Word who gives the knowledge of the Father through himself. So too, speaking to those Jews who at that time thought they knew God while rejecting his Word, through whom alone God is known, he said, “No one fully knows the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him.” Since it was impossible to know God in any other way, he teaches that people know him through his own Word. So that man also went astray, because he did not accurately know the Father and the Father’s Word.

So let him learn too that the Word of God has come, not a word named so only in a loose sense, as they themselves say, but one who is truly the Word.

He was not named Word in a loose sense (though those who teach otherwise and lie should burst with rage), but he is Word in the proper and true sense.

***** But those who teach them seem ashamed to mention the Word, whom all the divine Scriptures proclaim in this way. David says of him, “By the word of the Lord the heavens were [established],” and again the same writer says, “He sent out his word and healed them.” Solomon says, “Evil people will seek me, and they will not find me. For they hated wisdom, and they did not choose the word of the Lord.” Isaiah said, “For out of Zion will go forth a law, and the word of the Lord out of Jerusalem.” And again Jeremiah says, “The wise were put to shame, and were terrified and were caught, because they rejected the word of the Lord.” The prophet Hosea also said, “They hated the one who reproves in the gates, and they detested a holy word.” Micah likewise, also mentioning the Word, said, “Out of Zion will go forth a law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.”

So before he came down and was born through the virgin, he was only Word. For what else was it that, before taking human flesh, came down “in the last days,” as he himself has written, and was born of the virgin? It was nothing other than the Word.

It is reasonable, then, that before the coming down he was what we have often said: Word. But after the coming down and the taking of flesh he received various titles, since “the Word became flesh.”

For what else was the hidden mystery but the mystery concerning the Word? This mystery was so hidden “in God” before that no one of the earlier people clearly knew the things concerning the Word, but now we enjoy the riches “of the glory” and the hidden mystery.

But John, the holy apostle and disciple of the Lord, teaches clearly and explicitly at the beginning of the Gospel, as of something previously unknown among people, and names him the Word of the Almighty. He said this: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” He uses more than one testimony to show the eternity of the Word.

By saying “In the beginning was the Word,” he shows that the Word was in the Father in power. For God is the beginning of everything that has come into being, “from whom are all things.” By saying “and the Word was with God,” he shows that the Word was with God in active operation. For “all things came into being through him, and apart from him not one thing came into being.” By saying that the Word was God, he shows that the Godhead is not divided, since the Word is in the Father and the Father is in the Word. For he says, “The Father is in me, and I in the Father.”

[How great], then, is the harmony of the Holy Spirit, who through many different persons bears witness to the eternity of the Word! And for this reason John begins from the eternity of the Word, saying, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” By using three testimonies in succession he means to show the eternity of the Word.

What, then, was this that came down, before he became man? It was, he says, surely Spirit. For if anyone wanted to say anything other than this, the angel who spoke to the virgin would not agree with him: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you.” And if he says it was Spirit, let him hear the Savior saying, “God is Spirit.”

But it seems the Father is in the Word, even if Asterius and those who think as he does do not agree. This is what the inspired prophet Isaiah holds, who says by the Holy Spirit: “And they will worship you, and they will pray to you, because God is in you, and there is no other besides you. For you are God.” You see how he pulls up by the root the crafty mischief of those who teach something different.

Here too the prophet speaks in the same way about the Word, who took on our flesh.

A spirit could never be a maker of shadow. That God himself is spirit, the Savior said: “God is spirit.” And that God is light, he himself teaches us when he says, “I am the light.”

For who among the holy angels or righteous men was trustworthy enough to cancel the penalty that had been fixed against him from the person of God, if not the Word himself, who was present with him and formed with him? To him the Father said, “Let us make man in our image and likeness.” There was no other God able to form together with him. For he says, “I am God, the first, and I am after these things, and apart from me there is no other God.” So there was no younger god, and no other god “after these things” who was able to work together with God. But suppose someone used a small, human example like our own, to examine the divine work as in a picture. Take a skilled sculptor who wants to shape a statue. First he considers its patterns and features within himself. Then he thinks out how broad and how long it should be to look right, and he examines the proportion of the whole in each individual part. He prepares the suitable bronze, sketches the coming statue in his mind beforehand, and thinks he sees it with the mind. He is aware that his word works along with him, the word by which he reasons and by which he is accustomed to do everything. For nothing happens without a word. When he begins this work on material things, he urges himself on as though he were another person, saying, “Come, let us make, let us shape a statue.” In the same way God, the Master of all, when he made the living statue from the earth, urged on not someone else but his own Word, saying, “Let us make man.” Yet this was not in the same manner as the other things, for the whole creation came into being by the Word.

For God did not need preparation as a final step, such as material or anything else of a human kind, for the construction. He needed only this preparation in his own mind. Since, then, it was impossible for God to think out the construction of heaven apart from the Word and the wisdom that belongs to the Word, it is fitting that he said, “When he prepared heaven, I was present with him.”

For before the world existed, the Word was in the Father. But when almighty God set out to make everything in the heavens and on the earth, the coming into being of the world needed an active working. For this reason, since there was nothing else but God (for it is agreed that all things were made by him), then the Word came forth and became the maker of the world. He had already been preparing it beforehand inside, in thought. The prophet Solomon teaches us this when he says, “When he prepared heaven, I was present with him,” and “When he set the springs of what is under heaven on a firm footing, when he made the foundations of the earth strong, I was beside him, fitting things together. I was the one in whom he delighted.” For the Father naturally rejoiced, making all things with wisdom and power through the Word.

For just as everything that has come into being was made by the Father through the Word, so also what is spoken by the Father is made known through the Word. For this reason the most holy Moses here names the Word an angel: he appeared for no other purpose than to announce to Moses the things he knew would benefit the sons of Israel. And he knew it would benefit them to think that he is God. So he said to him, “I am the One who is,” in order to teach that there is no other God apart from himself. This is easy, I think, for those who think soundly to grasp even from a small and humble example like our own. For no one can separate a man’s word from him in power and substance. The word is one and the same with the man, and it is separated from him by nothing else than the activity of the action.

Here the Father says to Moses, “I am the One who is,” and he plainly says it through the Word. Wherever the Father speaks, he is clearly seen speaking through the Word. We can see this from our own case too, if we may compare small things with great and divine ones. We also say and do everything we wish, as far as we are able, by means of our own word.

Whom, then, does Asterius suppose is the one who says “I am the One who is”: the Son or the Father? For he looked to the human flesh that the Word of God took up, and because of it he formed his picture in this way. He said there are two hypostases, one of the Father and one of the Son. In this way he separates the Son of God from the Father, just as someone might separate a son of man from his natural father.

If, then, he says that the Father, separating himself from the Son, said this to Moses, he will be admitting that the Son is not God. For how can anyone who says “I am the One who is” avoid agreeing that he calls himself “the One who is” in contrast to what is not? But if he claims that it is the Son, divided off in hypostasis, who says “I am the One who is,” then the very same thing will be thought to be said about the Father. Each of these positions is impious.

So I will begin with the letter he wrote, and answer each of the points that were not rightly written. He wrote that we should believe in God the Father almighty, and in his only-begotten Son, God, our Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Spirit. And he says he learned this pattern of godliness from the divine Scriptures. When he says this, I welcome his words wholeheartedly, for this is the common pattern of godliness for all of us: to believe in the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. But when he misses the mark about the divine power, and in a rather human way, by some artful speculation, calls the Father “Father” and the Son “Son,” I can no longer praise such speculation as safe. For through such speculation the heresy they are now devising grows. I think it is easy to show this plainly from his own words. For he said that one must hold that the Father is truly Father, the Son truly Son, and the Holy Spirit likewise.

For it is impossible for three hypostases to be united in a unity, unless the Trinity first has its beginning from a unity. The holy Paul said that those things are summed up in a unity which differ from God in nothing as to oneness. For the Word and the Spirit differ from God only in oneness.

Consider, then, whether the Word is seen to have come out from the Father himself and to have come to us. As Asterius also confessed, the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father. And again the Savior says about the Spirit that he will not speak from himself, but will speak whatever he hears, and will announce to you the things that are coming. “That one will glorify me, because he will take from what is mine and will announce it to you.” Is it not clear and plain here, in a mystery beyond words, that the unity is seen being extended into a Trinity, yet in no way allowing itself to be divided? For if the Word proceeds from the Father, and the Spirit too is confessed to proceed from the Father, and again the Savior says about the Spirit, “That one will take from what is mine and will announce it to you,” is it not obvious that some hidden mystery is being uncovered? For how could he say about the Spirit at one time that he proceeds from the Father, and at another, “That one will take from what is mine and will announce it to you,” and again, after breathing on the disciples, say, “Receive the Holy Spirit,” unless the indivisible unity is extended into a Trinity? For if the Spirit proceeds from the Father, how does the Son promise that he will receive this service from him? If they were two separate persons, as Asterius said, then one of two things must follow. Either the Spirit, proceeding from the Father, does not need the service of the Son (for everything that proceeds from the Father must be perfect, needing no help from another). Or, if he receives from the Son and serves out grace from the Son’s power, he no longer proceeds from the Father.

But if the Gospel says that he breathed on the disciples and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit,” it is clear that the Spirit came forth from the Word. How then, if the Spirit proceeded from the Word, does the same Spirit again proceed from the Father?

So he did not speak rightly or fittingly when he said that there are three hypostases, and he said it not once only but a second time as well.

We know that the economy in the flesh differs in the case of the man, but we believe that the eternity in the Spirit is united to the Father.

If the Spirit alone were the subject of inquiry, the Word would naturally appear to be one and the same with God. But if the addition of the flesh in the case of the Savior is also considered, the Godhead seems to be extended only in activity. So it is natural that it is truly an undivided monad.

Asterius declared that the Father and the Son are one and the same only in this respect, that they agree in everything. For he spoke thus: “And because of the exact agreement in all words and works, ‘I and the Father are one.’”

If then he himself says, “I came forth from the Father and have come,” and again, “The word which you hear is not mine, but the Father’s who sent me,” and “All that the Father has is mine,” it is clear that he was naturally also saying, “The Father is in me and I in the Father.” The point is that the Word who says this is in God, and the Father is in the Word, because the Word is the power of the Father. For a trustworthy witness has called him “the power of God and the wisdom of God.” So the Savior does not say “I and the Father are one” because of exact agreement in all words and works, as Asterius said. He says it because it is impossible for God’s Word to be separated from God, or for God to be separated from his own Word. Now if Asterius thinks the Savior said this because of agreement in everything, and does not want to learn the truth by attending to the second economy, then we must remind him how at times a lack of agreement can be seen, at least in outward appearance. The written words teach us this. What agreement was there at the time of the passion, when he said, “Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass,” and then added, “Yet not as I will, but as you will”? To say “let this cup pass” was first of all not the mark of one who agrees. And what follows seems to have nothing to do with agreement either, for he says, “Not my will, but yours, Father, be done.” You hear how the text shows, in outward appearance, a lack of agreement: one willing, the other [not willing]. That the Father willed is clear from the fact that what he willed came about. That the Son did not will it is clear from the fact that he asks to be spared. And again he says, “I do not seek my own will, but the will of the Father who sent me.” How then can Asterius say that the Savior said “I and the Father are one” because of agreement in everything?

How can the Son have agreement with the Father, or the Father with the Son, when the Son says, “All that the Father has is mine”? To say “All that the Father has is mine” is plainly the Son claiming more than the Father. For that reason he passed over saying “All that the Father has is shared,” and said instead, “All that the Father has is mine.” Yet it is not the way of someone who is merely in agreement to speak like this; he would say, “All that the Father has is common property.” After all, the Acts of the Apostles praises the agreement of those who were then coming to the faith, and says that “all things were common to them.” If that is what we ought to think of human beings who are able to agree, how much more should the Father and the Son have shared everything, if they were divided into two [subsistences]! But as it stands, in saying “All that the Father has is mine,” the Son appears to have more than the Father. And in claiming that he is not even master of his own word, but that the Father is master of this too, since he says, “The word which you hear is not mine, but the Father’s who sent me,” he shows the Father taking away what belongs to the Son. On Asterius’s view, then, both statements appear to be inconsistent. For someone who agrees with another ought not to snatch away what belongs to the other, but ought to count what belongs to each as shared. So when we look at the human flesh, we might find the Savior saying “I and the Father are one” in the way Asterius has written. But the Savior did not say “I and the Father are one” because of exact agreement in all words and works, as Asterius has written.

For if that were so, he would surely have said, “I and the Father agree with each other in everything.” But as it is, he said, “I and the Father are one.” So if there was some disagreement in those matters (the Master must speak the truth), then the Savior must have known exactly that whenever he says “I and the Father are one,” he is not saying it with a view to the man whom he took up, but with a view to the Word who came forth from the Father. For if any disagreement seems to exist, it must be attributed to the weakness of the flesh, which the Word did not have before but took up. But if unity is spoken of, this is seen to belong to the Word. This is why he said, rightly, not only “I and the Father are one,” but also, “I have been with you so long, Philip, and you say, ‘Show me the Father.’” Clearly he meant that this is not seen with these eyes, but with the eyes of the mind, which can see what belongs to the mind. For both the Father and his Word are invisible to the eyes of the flesh. So he did not say this to Philip because of agreement in everything.

For he himself confesses it when he says, “The Father is in me, and I am in the Father.” That he did not say this carelessly or without purpose is clear from another saying of the apostle. The one who said, “One Lord, one faith, one baptism,” also said, “One God and Father, who is over all and through all and in all.” You see that here too he does not depart from agreement, and here too the same thing holds. For having said “one Lord,” he then said “one God,” so that when he mentions the one Lord he includes the Father, and when he speaks of the Father he testifies that the Word of God is not outside him.

And if you also want to hear another prophecy from the same prophet confirming that God is one for us, he says: “I am God, the first, and I am for the things that are coming.” The word “I” points to one person, and the two expressions together signify for us one person. For after saying “I,” he adds “am,” so that through the two parts of speech, the pronoun and the verb, the oneness of the Godhead is attested. If more testimony is needed, I will again bring the same prophet alongside him, saying: “I am first, and I am after these things, and apart from me there is no God.” If Asterius supposes that the Son of the Father is divided from him in substance, as a son of man is, because he is offended by the human flesh which the Son took on for our sake, let him show us who it is that says these things. For here too the statement belongs to one person. Who, then, is the one who says, “There is no God apart from me”? Let him also listen to another prophecy that says, “There is no righteous one and savior apart from me.” If he thinks there are two gods, he must admit that the other is neither righteous nor a savior. But if he is neither righteous nor a savior, how can he still be God? For [the one speaking] declares himself to be righteous and a savior. And again he says: “Before me no other came to be, and after me there will be none. I am God, and there will be no savior besides me.” And if he wishes to hear yet another prophetic saying, perhaps spoken against him and those who hold the same view of the Godhead as he does, let him listen to Isaiah himself saying: “Repent, you who are going astray; turn back in your heart, and remember the former things from of old, for I am God, and there is none besides me.”

He did not say, “I am God,” but “I am *the* God,” so that by adding the article he might show plainly that he is God. And what of the prophet Hosea? Does he not bear the same witness, saying: “I brought you up out of Egypt, and you shall know no God besides me, and there is no savior except me”? And again Malachi says: “Did not one God create you? Is there not one Father of you all?” But Asterius will perhaps say that David said nothing about this, even though David, next to Moses, is the oldest of the prophets, and that for this reason he is in doubt whether we should think there are two gods divided in substance, or not. So that he may not say this, I think it fitting to show that David also says the same as the holy men already mentioned. He says: “Listen, my people, and I will speak to you; Israel, and I will testify to you. If you will listen to me, there shall be no new god in you, and you shall not worship a foreign god. For I am the Lord your God.” The one who points to himself and says “I am” – is it not clear that he is saying that there is only one God, that is, himself?

What then? If we do not attend to the Spirit and suppose that the unity is not divided in power, will we not be sinning, when the word teaches us plainly: “You shall worship the Lord your God, and serve him alone”? The Gospel according to Mark proclaims the same thing. A scribe came to him and asked which was the first of the commandments, and he answered him: “The first of all is: Hear, Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your soul and with all your strength. This is the first, and the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.” And the scribe said to him: “Well said, Teacher; you have said truly that God is one, and there is no other besides him.” Now the scribe, who seemed to have learned reverence for God from the law, is shown praising the Savior’s saying, “Hear, Israel, the Lord your God is one,” and confirming as it were with an oath that it was well spoken. For he says, “You have spoken truly that God is one and there is no other besides him.” But those who boast that they know the mysteries of the new covenant want to invent a second God, separated from the Father in substance and in power.

That the divine Scripture knows how to call the single One “Lord” and “God” has already become clear from what was said above, where God spoke to his servant Moses: “And God said again to Moses: Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel: The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.” You see how, showing us one person here, he calls that same one both Lord and God. Again, in the same way, Scripture says: “And the Lord spoke all these words, saying: I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods besides me.” You hear how, by the pronoun, he declares that there is only one God. And a little later you hear him say, “I am the Lord your God,” calling himself both Lord and God. What do we learn from another passage? “And you shall know today, and you shall not be turned aside in your mind, that the Lord your God, he is God in heaven above and on the earth below, and there is none besides him.” And again in the same Deuteronomy it says: “Hear, Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” And again in the same book: “See, see that I am, and there is no god besides me. I will kill and I will make alive; I will strike and I will heal.” How then did Asterius, who professes to approach the holy Scriptures simply and with fear, fail to notice this passage, which says, “The Lord your God, he is God in heaven above and on the earth below, and there is no other besides him,” and that “he is one” and “besides him there is no other”?

How then will the holy prophet Jeremiah not plainly refute him for teaching something different? For prophesying to us about the Savior, he spoke thus: “This is our God; no other will be reckoned alongside him. He found out every way of knowledge, and gave it to Jacob his servant and to Israel whom he loved. After this he appeared on earth, and lived among human beings.”

So even if someone says that there is a first God and a second, as Narcissus wrote in these very words (for he does not allow that the one who said, “Let us make man in our image and likeness”...), we have heard in part, from the Lord himself bearing witness and from the holy Scriptures, that he and his Father are two. If then Narcissus wants on this ground to divide the Word from the Father in power, let him know that the prophet who wrote it down, as though God had said, “Let us make man in our image and likeness,” himself wrote, “And God made man.”

I came across a letter of Narcissus, who presides over Neronias, which he wrote to a certain Chrestus, Euphronius and Eusebius. In it, the bishop Hosius had asked him whether he would say, as Eusebius of Palestine says, that there are two substances. From what he wrote, I learned that he answered that he believes there are three substances.

He dared to divide the Word of God and to name the Word another God, standing apart from the Father in substance and power. How far into blasphemy he has fallen, one can easily learn from the very words he wrote. He wrote in these very words: “Surely the image and the one whose image it is are not thought of as one and the same; rather there are two substances, two things, and two powers, as there are also that many names.”

The apostle writes such things about the faith of the Galatians. But Eusebius twists the apostle’s meaning, the reason for which the apostle said what he did, namely, “My children, with whom I am again in labor until Christ is formed in you.” He attacked the Galatians as though they did not hold a right opinion about God. For the apostle was truly in a sharp and bitter labor, because he knew that the Galatians did not think about godliness as that man does, nor speak of two substances, two things, two powers and two gods.

Eusebius of Caesarea wrote in the same way. He holds the same opinion about gods as Paulinus and those outside the church. For he wrote not as though there were only one God, but as though the only true God were one among several. Having learned this from him, Paulinus, the father of Asterius, also supposed that there were younger gods.

How, then, have these men not turned onto the same wretched road as those outside the church, when they set out to teach and write the same things? Eusebius has spoken like Valentinus and Hermes, and Narcissus like Marcion and Plato.

But Asterius abandoned the true knowledge, and even now he has offered us a contrived speculation. Since he cannot build his own purpose from the divine Scriptures, he runs back to the “wisest” fathers, as he thinks them, and speaks of what the wisest of the fathers declared in their own writings. Asterius says that his fathers made a declaration and wrote a doctrine about God out of their own choice. For the word “doctrine” belongs to human counsel and opinion. That this is so, the medical profession with its “doctrines” bears sufficient witness to us, and so do the so-called “doctrines” of the philosophers. And that even now the decrees of the senate are called “doctrines of the senate,” I think no one is unaware.

For he wished to speak in defense of Eusebius, who wrote the letter badly. First, he said, Eusebius did not compose the letter by setting out the doctrine in the manner of a teacher, for the writing was not directed to the church or to the uninformed, but to the blessed Paulinus. He called him “blessed” for this reason, that Paulinus held the same opinion as Asterius. Since, then, we have learned who Asterius’s wisest fathers are, I think it follows that we should also name the man who became the teacher of Paulinus and of the others. For from the letter of Paulinus, the one who was his teacher too would become plain to us.

And yet, if one must tell the truth about Origen, it is right to say this: he had only just withdrawn from the studies of philosophy and chosen to engage with the divine words before he had an exact grasp of the Scriptures. Because of the great ambition of his outside education, he began to write sooner than he should have, and he was led astray by the arguments of philosophy, and because of them he wrote some things badly. This is clear. For while he still had the doctrines of Plato in mind, and Plato’s differences of first principles, he wrote a book “On First Principles,” and gave that title to the work. The greatest proof of this is that he took neither the opening of his words nor the title of his book from anywhere else, but from words spoken by Plato. For he began to write like this: “Those who have believed and been persuaded.” You would find this saying worded exactly so in Plato’s Gorgias.

I ask those of the saints who read this, since they have truly received what are, as it were, the seeds and beginnings of this exposition, to add more proofs to what has been said, so that the purposes of those who pervert the faith may be exposed still more. For truly “they have forsaken” God who begot them, “and dug cisterns for themselves.”

I think it follows that I should say a few words about the image. For Asterius wrote: “The one begotten from him is another, ‘who is the image of the invisible God.’” Asterius mentions the image of the invisible God for this reason: to teach that God differs from the Word as much as a man is thought to differ from his own image.

For this reason he reasonably adds, “who is the image of the invisible God.” When did he become an image? Was it when he took up the molded creature, made “according to the image and likeness”? For before that, as I have often said, he was nothing other than Word.

It is therefore plain that before he took up our body, the Word, in himself, was not the image of the invisible God. For an image must be seen, so that through the image what until then was not seen can be seen.

How then did Asterius write that the Word of God is the image of the invisible God? For images show the things they are images of, even when those things are absent, so that the absent one seems to appear through them. But if God is invisible and it follows that the Word is invisible too, how can the Word, in himself, be the image of the invisible God, when he himself is invisible? For it is impossible for what is not visible ever to be made manifest through what is invisible.

So it is clear from every side that the holy apostle called the flesh which the Word took on “the image of the invisible God,” so that through what is visible the invisible might also be seen. “He is,” says the apostle, “the image of the invisible God.” Plainly he means now, when the Word has taken the flesh that was made in the image of God, and has become the true image of the invisible God. For if we have been counted worthy to know the Word of God through this image, we ought to believe the Word himself when he speaks through the image: “I and the Father are one.” For no one can know either the Word or the Father of the Word apart from this image.

So too the apostle says, as we said a little earlier, “He emptied himself, taking the form of a servant.” By the form of a servant he means for us the human flesh, which our Lord and God shaped by his own wisdom when he said, “Let us make man in our image and likeness.” He rightly calls human flesh an image, for he knew precisely that it would be, a little later, the image of his own Word.

What, then, will he say to this? I do not think he has anything to say about it. Nor do I think he would confess openly and plainly, even to others, what he keeps hidden in his own mind, as one can plainly learn from what he has written. For he says that the Father who begot his only-begotten Word, the firstborn of all creation, is one being and the Son another: alone begot alone, perfect begot perfect, king begot king, Lord begot Lord, God begot God, the unvarying image of his being, will, glory and power. These very words clearly expose his worthless opinion about the Godhead. For how can the one who was begotten as Lord and God, as he himself said earlier, be the image of God? An image of God is one thing, and God is another. So if he is an image, he is not Lord or God, but the image of the Lord and God. But if he is truly Lord and God, then the Lord and God can no longer be the image of the Lord and God.

So by his own account he does not want him to be any of the things he listed before, for he says he is the image of all of them. Then if he is the image of the being, he cannot be being itself. If he is the image of the will, he cannot be will itself. If he is the image of the power, he is no longer power. And if he is the image of the glory, he is no longer glory. For an image is not an image of itself, but of something other than itself.

For look: what grieves us about Asterius is not so much that he was led to write such things, but that some of those who are thought to preside over the church have forgotten the apostolic tradition. They have preferred things from outside the divine writings, and have dared to write and teach things that are no less bound up with the error of those already mentioned.

They should have cried out the opposite to the Lord, with tears and mourning: “We have sinned, we have acted impiously, we have broken the law, and we have done evil in your sight; and now that we have repented, we ask to receive your kindness.” This was fitting for him, and it was to his advantage to say it, because of God’s measureless goodness and kindness. And yet it would have followed that God, who cares for us with both kindness and justice, would reply: “If an enemy had reproached me, I would have borne it, and if one who hates me had spoken boastfully against me, I would have hidden from him. But you, a man of like soul, my leader and my familiar friend, you who shared sweet food with me, we walked together in the house of God in harmony.” For we know from his own saying that he is with us, his servants: “Look,” he said, “I will be with you all the days” of your life “until the end of the age.” Then, following on from this, he would surely have added the words that come next after the earlier ones: “Let death come upon them, and let them go down alive into Hades, for wickedness is in their hearts.” For Scripture says that those who are in ignorance of the truth about godliness are swallowed up by Hades as dead men; for they were dead, even while they seemed to be alive.

For they want the Savior to be a mere man. This is clear from the way Eusebius cunningly bent the apostle’s words to suit his own purpose. As though bringing to birth, after long labor pains, some enormous blasphemy, he “poured out from his own treasure,” as the Savior’s saying puts it, “the evil.” Wanting to show that the Savior is only a man, and as if uncovering for us a great secret mystery of the apostle, he spoke as follows: “That is why the divine apostle, handing down to us the hidden and mystical teaching about God, cries out and shouts, ‘There is one God,’ and then, after ‘one God,’ he says, ‘one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.’” So if he says that Christ is a man, fixing his attention only on his incarnate dispensation in the flesh, then he must also agree that no one has any hope in him. For the prophet Jeremiah said, “Cursed is the man who puts his hope in man.”

But the man I mentioned gave little thought to the holy prophets. He explains what he calls a secret and hidden teaching of the apostle about God, and says, “There is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” And even though he boasts loudly of his memory of the Scriptures, he never considered that the most holy apostle who wrote this also wrote that other passage: “who, being in the form of God, did not regard being equal with God as something to be seized, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of man, and found in appearance as a man.” Do you see how the holy apostle, as if he had foreseen by the Spirit the mischief of these men, wrote in another place “as a man” and “born in the likeness of man,” so as to put an end to this great blasphemy of theirs?

How then can Eusebius, who pays no attention to these words, want the Savior to be only a man? He does not dare to say this openly, but he wants it, and he is convicted by his own statements.

For before the whole creation there was, as one would expect, a kind of stillness, since the Word was in God. For if Asterius believes that God is the maker of all things, it is clear that he will agree with us that God always exists and never received a beginning of his being, while created things have been made by him and made out of things that did not exist. For I do not suppose he believes, with the one who says so, that some things are also uncreated; rather, he is thoroughly persuaded that heaven and earth and everything in the heavens and on the earth were made by God. If then he believes this, he must also agree that apart from God nothing else existed. So the Word, being in the Father, had his own glory.

Asterius calls the authority given to him “glory,” and not only glory but glory “before the world.” He does not realize that when the world had not yet come to be, nothing else existed except God alone.

For the man received not only authority over things on earth but also over things in heaven, and reasonably so. For if, when he became “man” and “mediator between God and men,” “all things were created” for him then, as the apostle said, “both those in heaven and those on earth,” it follows that we should know precisely that authority was given to him not only over things on earth but also over things in heaven.

For if the holy Gospel speaks of some glory given to him by the Father, it is evident that the man received it through the Word. For having become “mediator between God and men,” as the holy apostle says, he glorified godly human beings with the glory given to him by the Father.

And he thought it worthy that the man who had fallen through disobedience be joined, through the virgin, to his own Word. For what other glory among men could be greater than this glory? Having said, “I glorified you,” he adds, “and I will glorify you again.” In his surpassing love for humanity, he would in the second glory, after the resurrection of the flesh, set free the man who had formerly been mortal, making him immortal, and would glorify him with such glory that he would be released not only from his former slavery but also be counted worthy of a glory above man.

So that, as I said, he might prepare the man who was first deceived by the devil to defeat the devil himself in turn. For this reason he took up the man, so that he might consequently make him receive the first share of the authority.

For this is the beloved, the man united to the Word, about whom the evangelist said, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”

The Word of the invisible God was going to be born of a virgin and take up human flesh. Through that flesh he would overcome the devil, who had earlier gained mastery over man. He would do this so that he might make man not only incorruptible and immortal, but also a sharer of God’s throne in the heavens.

So the one who came down and took flesh from the virgin was established as king over the church. Clearly this was so that through the Word man, who had earlier fallen from the kingdom of heaven, might be able to obtain the kingdom. God wished this man, who had earlier been cast out of the kingdom because of disobedience, to become lord and god, and so he worked out this plan. The most holy prophet David therefore says prophetically, “The Lord has reigned; let the earth rejoice.”

For this reason, as though our Master Christ had received the beginning of his kingdom at some point in time, the prophecy says, “But I was established as king by him.”

For this is why he will reign, having come to be in human flesh. And once man, who was earlier deceived, has been made king through the Word, he will “destroy every rule and power and authority” of the devil. For he says, “He must reign until he puts the enemies under his feet.” The holy apostle says that this is the end of the kingdom of our Master Christ: that all things be subjected under his feet.

Here the apostle reveals to us a very great mystery. He says that there will be an end to Christ’s kingdom. And the end comes then, when everything has been subjected under his feet.

In our earlier statements we said that our Master Christ has had a beginning of his kingdom, and we used proofs from the divine Scriptures. There is one passage that says, “But I was established as king by him on Zion, his holy mountain.” Another says, “The Lord has reigned; let the peoples be angry,” and again, “The Lord has reigned; let the earth rejoice.” In short, there is an abundance of countless passages to testify that man received the beginning of a kingdom through the Word. If, then, he received the beginning of a kingdom not many more than four hundred years ago, it is no surprise that the apostle says the one who obtained this kingdom so short a time ago will hand over the kingdom. Clearly he will hand it over to God, who, as the Scripture says, established him as king.

So it is clear that, by activity alone, because of the flesh, he has been separated from the Father until the coming time of judgment appears. Then those who pierced him, in accordance with the prophecy, will see the one they pierced, and the rest will follow accordingly. For when at the time of the end all things are about to be subjected to Christ, as the apostle said, then “he himself will be subjected to the one who subjected all things to him.” What, then, are we to learn about the human flesh, which the Word took up for our sake not quite four hundred years ago? Does the Word keep it also in the ages to come, or only until the time of judgment? For what the prophet said must be confirmed in fact. For he says, “They will look on the one whom they pierced.” And clearly what they pierced was flesh.

For the Savior did not take on our flesh so that the Word might gain something. He took it so that the flesh, through its fellowship with the Word, might receive immortality. This is clear from the Savior’s own declaration. Speaking of the flesh he had when he talked with the disciples, he says: “Does this offend you? Then what if you see the Son of Man going up to where he was before? The Spirit gives life; the flesh is of no benefit.” If, then, he admits that the flesh is of no benefit to him, how can it be right that this flesh, which is from the earth and benefits nothing, should remain with the Word in the ages to come, as though it were useful to him? For this is why, it seems to me, the Almighty God, the Master, says to him: “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.” God appears to separate him only in activity, because of the human flesh. He sets what looks like a fixed time for his sitting at the right hand, and so says to him, “until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.” The holy apostle explains this prophetic saying of David more clearly for us, speaking somewhat like this: “For he must reign until he has put his enemies under his feet.” So his saving work as a man, and his kingdom as a man, appear to have a limit. For the apostle’s words, “until he has put his enemies under his feet,” mean nothing else. So when he has his enemies as a footstool for his feet, he no longer needs this partial kingdom, since he is king over all. For he reigns together with “God and Father,” whose Word he was and is.

For the Word did not take up the beginning of a kingdom for himself, by himself. Rather, the man who was deceived by the devil became king through the power of the Word, so that, having become king, he might defeat the devil who had deceived him before. This is why the Acts of the Apostles also teaches about this man, whom the Word of God took up, and who, having been taken up, sits at the Father’s right hand. It says: “whom heaven must receive until the times of restoration.” These words too, as if setting a boundary and a deadline, say how long the saving work as a man is to remain united to the Word. For what else does “until the times of restoration” mean, if not that it points us to the coming age, in which all things must reach complete restoration? Now Paul said that at the time of the restoration of all things, creation itself will be changed from slavery to freedom. For he says: “that the creation itself will be set free from slavery to decay into the freedom of the glory of the children of God.” If that is so, how could the form of a slave, which the Word took up, being a slave’s form, still remain with the Word? So the inspired Paul has said clearly and plainly that this saving work of the Word in the flesh, done for our sake, took place within a short span of the ages past and the ages to come, and that it has an end just as it had a beginning. He says: “Then comes the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God and Father.”

He touched the human body, and showing it to those who were watching, he said: “Does this offend you? Then what if you see the Son of Man going up to where he was before? The Spirit gives life; the flesh is of no benefit.”

So he took up human flesh not for his own sake but for ours. And if it is clear that he took it up for our sake, and everything that concerns us will reach its end by his care and working at the time of the judgment, then there will no longer be any need even for this partial kingdom.

Suppose someone says that human flesh is worthy of the Word because he made it immortal through the resurrection. Let him know that not everything that is immortal is worthy of God. For God is greater even than immortality itself, since by his own will he can make even things that do not exist immortal. And it is also clear that not everything immortal is worthy to be united to God, because the rulers, the authorities and the angels are immortal, and yet they make no difference to the oneness of God.

Suppose someone asks about this flesh, which became immortal in the Word. What do we say to him? We say that we think it unsafe to lay down doctrine about things we have not learned exactly from the divine Scriptures. How could those who overturn the teachings of others do this safely? But to those who want to learn from us the exact account of this matter, we will say the following. We trust the holy apostle, and so we know that we should look at hidden mysteries as he himself said: “For now we see,” he says, “through a mirror, in a riddle, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall fully know, just as I was also fully known.” So do not ask me about things I have not clearly learned from the divine Scripture. For this reason I will not be able to speak clearly about that divine flesh which shared in the divine Word. But as things stand, I believe the divine Scriptures: there is one God, and his Word proceeded from the Father so that “all things” might come to be “through him.” After the time of judgment, the setting right of all things, and the destruction of every opposing power, “then he himself will be subjected” to the one who “subjected all things to him,” to “God and Father.” In this way the Word will be in God just as he was before the world existed. For before anything else existed there was God alone, and all things were to come into being through the Word. So this Word, who belongs to the Father, proceeded with active power.

This is the one of whom Paul said, “the Son of God, appointed beforehand.”

For this reason the most holy prophet Solomon said, “to receive the turnings of words,” and again, “the sayings of the wise and riddles.”

For this reason it seems to me that this very wise prophet also spoke the first words of the prophecy in the manner of proverbs.

For I think it is not out of place at this point to remind you briefly of some proverbs from outside our Scriptures. Take this one: “EITHER DEAD OR TEACHING LETTERS.” From the surface of the words, someone might suppose it was said against those who teach letters, since another of their writers also said, “You were teaching letters, while I was attending school.” But those who wrote the commentaries said it is not so. They say that when the Sicilians had beaten the Athenians in war, they spared only those who claimed to have education, and they took these as teachers for their children. All the others they killed. Some of these Athenians escaped and returned home, and when the Athenians questioned them about certain matters that concerned them, they said, “Either dead or teaching letters.” And what of “THE GOAT—THE KNIFE”? One might suppose it was said [so that what is said about it comes first], surely because the goat being sacrificed looks at the knife, and that this is why the proverb was spoken. But the ancients did not say that. If it were so, it would not be a proverb at all, since it would follow that one could understand it from the plain appearance. They say instead that it is said of those who bring evils on themselves. For they say that Medea, after killing her children in Corinth, hid the knife there. The Corinthians, following an oracle given to them, were offering a black goat, and they had no knife. The goat, scraping with its foot, uncovered Medea’s knife, and was sacrificed with it. And what does “ENOUGH OF OAK” mean? Someone asks, because one cannot know this proverb offhand. The ancients, they said, ate acorns before grain was cultivated. When grain was later discovered, as they supposed, they turned their minds to it and rejoiced in the change. They said “Enough of oak” [the text here is corrupt], and they said this was the proverb. Again, there is another proverb, spoken by very many of their wise men in very many different books. What those who undertook to explain proverbs have written about it must be mentioned here. * * * But I do this in order to refute Asterius. He knew exactly, from his outside learning, what is special about the proverb, yet here he pretended ignorance, so that by using the proverbial saying he might seem to build up his own purpose persuasively.

But there is also “the craft of Glaucus.” The outside scholars who mention this proverb explained it in different ways. One of them said that a certain Glaucus had become skilled in some craft [† very marvelous †], and that he perished at sea together with it, before anyone had learned it from him. Another, who testifies to Glaucus’s supreme skill in music, says that he made four bronze discs which, when struck, produced a tuneful harmony of notes, and that this is where the proverb comes from. Another says that among the offerings of Alyattes there was a wonderful mixing bowl with its stand, the work of Glaucus of Chios. Another says that Glaucus himself dedicated a bronze tripod at Delphi, made in such a way that when it was struck [† thickly †], the feet it stands on, the [part] fitted around it, the rim on the cauldron, and the rods set across the middle all sounded with the voice of a lyre. And again, [the text here is uncertain: “summer”] the proverb is said to come from a certain Glaucus who was thought to have done something extraordinary. You see how the difficulty of the proverb is shown by this very thing: those who wanted to explain it could not settle on one interpretation. So hard to track down is the meaning of a proverb, even among outsiders. That is why one of their scholars collected the proverbs spoken by many people in many forms and wrote six books on them, two in verse and four in prose. And the outsiders called these “proverbs” for no other reason, I think, than this: they came across the Proverbs of the very wise Solomon and saw from them that nothing said there can be clearly understood at first glance. They wanted to imitate the prophetic writing, so they wrote in the same manner. Then, unable to think of any more fitting name, they called these also “proverbs.”

So this is the meaning of “The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways for his works.”

He said that the Word of God prepared human flesh to become immortal through the resurrection. Having bound it around himself like a crown of victory, he sits at the right hand of the Father.

[He] composed one [. . .] treatise, [and did] this so that [they] might know God. [The Greek here is broken and uncertain.]

To my most blessed fellow minister Julius, Marcellus sends greetings in Christ. Some men were earlier condemned for not believing rightly, and I refuted them at the council held at Nicaea. These men have now dared to write against me to your Godliness, as though I did not think rightly or in agreement with the church. They are eager to shift their own charge onto me. For this reason I thought it necessary to come to Rome and remind you to summon those who wrote against me. They would then come and be refuted by me on both counts: first, that what they have written against me is false; and second, that even now they persist in their former error and have dared terrible things against the churches of God and against us who lead them. Since they were unwilling to come, even though you sent presbyters to them, and even though I have spent a year and three full months in Rome, I thought it necessary, now that I am about to leave, to give you my faith in writing, set down in my own hand with all truthfulness. It is the faith I learned and was taught from the divine Scriptures. I also thought it necessary to remind you of the wrong things they say, so that you may know the arguments they use to deceive their hearers and hide the truth. For they say that the Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, is not the proper and true Word of almighty God, but that there is another Word of his, and another wisdom and power. They say that this one came into being through him and was called Word, wisdom and power. Because they think this, they say he is another hypostasis, standing apart from the Father. Furthermore, by what they write they declare that the Father existed before the Son, and that he is not truly Son [the Greek here is broken]. And even if they say “from God,” they say it in the same sense in which all things are from God.

They also dare to say that “there was once a time when he was not,” and that he is a created thing and a made thing, separating him from the Father. I am convinced that those who say such things are strangers to the catholic church. But I follow the divine Scriptures, and I believe that there is one God, and that his only-begotten Son is the Word, who always exists together with the Father and has never had a beginning of his being. He is truly from God. He was not created and not made, but always is, always reigning together with God and Father, and of his kingdom, according to the testimony of the apostle, “there will be no end.” This is the Son, this is the power, this is the wisdom. This is the true Word that belongs to God, our Lord Jesus Christ, the indivisible power of God, through whom everything that has come into being came into being. So the Gospel testifies when it says: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things came into being through him, and apart from him not one thing came into being.” This is the Word about whom Luke the evangelist also testifies, saying: “just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the Word handed them down to us.” About him David also said: “My heart has poured out a good word.” So also our Lord Jesus Christ teaches us through the Gospel, saying: “I came out from the Father and have come.” In “the last days” he came down for our salvation, was born of the virgin Mary, and took on the man. So I believe in God almighty; and in Christ Jesus his only-begotten Son, our Lord, who was born of the Holy Spirit and Mary the virgin, who was crucified under Pontius Pilate and buried, and on the third day rose from the dead, went up into the heavens and sits at the right hand of the Father, from where he is coming to judge the living and the dead; and in the Holy Spirit, the holy church, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the flesh, and eternal life.

We have learned from the divine Scriptures that the Godhead of the Father and of the Son is indivisible. For if someone separates the Son, that is, the Word, from almighty God, he must either suppose that there are two Gods (which is held to be foreign to divine teaching), or confess that the Word is not God (which also is plainly foreign to the right faith, since the evangelist says, “and the Word was God”). But I have learned with precision that the Son is indivisible and inseparable from the Father, as his power. For the Savior himself, our Lord Jesus Christ, says: “The Father is in me, and I am in the Father,” and “I and the Father are one,” and “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” This is the faith I received from the divine Scriptures and was taught by my godly forefathers. I preach it in the church of God, and I have now written it to you, keeping a copy of it with myself. And I ask you to copy the text of this into your letter to the bishops, so that none of those who do not know us accurately may be deceived by paying attention to what those men have written. Farewell.