By Water & Blood

Book 1, Chapter 12: That his generation from the Father is ineffable

But if anyone should curiously inquire how God could beget, and how the one who is beyond the universe will be a Father, the boldness of the question will be silenced by the one who said, “Seek not out the things that are too deep for thee, neither search the things that are above thee. But what is commanded thee, think thereupon; for it is not needful for thee to see the things that are in secret.” And let Paul too, who said, “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!” persuade the one who dares to go further not to attempt what is beyond reach. Or else let him first tell us himself how, and in what manner, the things which he says came into being from things that are not came to subsist, when they did not exist at all, in any way, before.

For God did not, like the craftsmen among us, take some pre-existing matter and fashion the universe with hands. But just as that which is by nature impossible, so far as men are concerned (I mean, to bring what does not exist at all out of non-being into being), was possible for him, and he became the Maker of the universe not in a human way but in ways unspeakable and inexpressible to us; so also, and much more, the generation of his Only-begotten would be unsearchable and past finding out—not, as one might say, for us alone, but also for all the powers that are higher than we.

For how could things that stand far below in nature, set beneath and very far removed from the ineffable and divine essence, attain to a comprehension that is beyond and highest of all? And how could things that formerly were not, but were brought by him out of non-being into being, have knowledge of the first generation of the one who brought them forth and became for them the cause of their existence? Or shall we, who are of yesterday, clothed with “skin and flesh,” fenced together “with bones and sinews,” and not knowing even what pertains to ourselves, conduct a safe inquiry into ineffable things, busying ourselves over how the Father begot the Son? That countless things even at our feet escape our knowledge would be plain from the following.

For who could say how the soul is confined in the body, how it goes out, how it was introduced at the first, what is its kind, what its figure, what its form, what its essence? I do not yet speak of inquiring curiously into the matter of demons, nor into the essence of angels, nor into principalities and thrones and dominions, nor into powers and world-rulers. But if we are at a loss in all these, why must we search out knowledge of the unoriginate and unbegotten Godhead? Why ask about things beyond reach—how God came to subsist as Father of an only-begotten Son—as though the Father’s voice were not sufficient for us as testimony to the Beloved, whom he proclaimed, saying, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him”?

If, then, he commands us to hear him, let us obey the royal law and hear the beloved Son. And what he wishes us to know about himself he will set forth, saying, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should have everlasting life.” We must, then, believe in him, so that we may attain eternal life; for, he says, “he that believeth on him hath everlasting life”—

not the one who knows how he has been begotten from the Father. For no one would have any share in eternal life, if indeed it has been said that “no man knoweth the Father, but the Son; neither knoweth any man the Son, but” only the “Father” who begot him. Faith, therefore, suffices us for salvation—the faith which grants us to know God the Father Almighty and to inscribe as Saviour his only-begotten Son, who, besides other things, delivered this also, saying, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” And “God is a Spirit.”

Hence it follows that we should understand that what has been begotten of God would also be God. But as far as the God who is beyond the universe is estranged and separated by nature from earthly flesh, so far must we understand the manner in which the Father begot the Son to be estranged from the generation of fleshly things. For it was not by emitting anything, nor by being altered, nor by being moved passibly, nor by undergoing at all any of the things known to us, that he caused him to subsist.

For neither was he a body, that one should reckon in his case an effluence, or diminution, or extension, or change, or alteration, or flow, or part, or passion. Rather, apart from all these, he brought about the generation in a way ineffable to us and beyond reckoning—or rather, unsearchable and past finding out for every created nature. The sun, indeed, begets its radiance, and the Son is also called “the brightness of the everlasting light” and “the brightness of his glory,” yet not according to the sensible image of light. For beyond every example he caused him to subsist in ways ineffable and incomprehensible, and him as one and only-begotten.

But let every mouth be stopped of those impious and godless men, sick with the error of many gods, who, casting down the unique and peculiar generation of the only-begotten Son into a multitude, have named a “father of men and gods,” at once mixing men with gods and introducing the same father as of one nature with them. These men, by demonic working, put forth this impious and godless saying, positing gods of one nature and of like passions with the mortal, passible, and sinful race of men, and a common father of these who is surely made like to his children. But the herald of the Church proclaims to all one only-begotten Son of one God, whom he caused to subsist for the salvation and providential care of all things that have come into being.