By Water & Blood

Chapter 7: How the Church proclaims the monarchy of the Father

But are you afraid, O man, that by confessing two hypostases you may bring in two first principles and fall away from the monarchical Godhead? Learn, then, that since there is one God without beginning and unbegotten, and the Son has been begotten from him, there will be one first principle, one monarchy and one kingdom, since the Son himself also inscribes his own Father as his first principle. For “the head of Christ is God,” according to the Apostle.

But are you anxious lest the one who confesses that there are two hypostases, of Father and of Son, must of necessity accept two gods? Then know this also: that the one who grants two hypostases, of Father and of Son, is not compelled to speak of two fathers, nor of two sons; rather, he will grant that the one is Father and the other Son. In the same way, then, the one who sets down the two hypostases is under no necessity to grant two gods.

For neither do we define them as equal in honor (ἰσότιμοι), nor both as without beginning and unbegotten; but the one as unbegotten and without beginning, and the other as begotten and having the Father as its beginning. Wherefore the Son himself also teaches that his Father is his own God as well, where he says, “I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.” The God and Father, then, is shown to be God even of the Son himself;

wherefore one God is proclaimed by the Church of the Son. But the Son, when he is compared with the Father, will no longer be God of the Father himself, but his only-begotten and beloved Son, and “the image of the invisible God,” and the “brightness” of the Father’s glory; and he reveres and worships and glorifies his own Father, inscribing him as his own God also (to whom, too, he is recorded to have prayed, to whom he gives thanks, to whom he became “obedient unto death”);

and he confesses that he lives “by the Father,” and that he can do nothing without the Father, and that he does not do his own will but that of the Father. He says, at any rate, in these very syllables, “For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me”; and again, “I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is just; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of him which hath sent me.” And that the one who sent him was other than himself, he shows next, saying, “If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true.

There is another that beareth witness of me.” Then, having made mention of the Baptist, he teaches that the Father is his witness, saying, “And the Father himself, which hath sent me, hath borne witness of me”; and he adds, “If ye loved me, ye would rejoice, because I said, I go unto the Father: for my Father is greater than I.”

Through all these things he shows himself to be other than the Father. And he presents the pre-eminence of the Father’s glory by saying that the one has sent, while he himself has been sent and has come down from heaven “not to do his own will, but the will of him that sent” him. And what would Marcellus say to these things, when he hears the one who came down from heaven teaching them? For surely he will not say that here too it is the Saviour’s flesh that says these things; for the flesh did not come down from heaven.

Whom, then, will he say it is that came down from heaven and teaches these things? God himself, or the Word joined to him? But if he should say the Father, laying Sabellius nakedly bare, the Saviour himself will convict him of falsehood, saying, “I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me”; and, “I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge”; and, “I seek not mine own will, but the will of him which hath sent me”; and, “My Father is greater than I.” For to suppose that the Father says these things would be the height of madness.

But if he says that it is the Word innate (συμφυής) in God—that is, his mind, by which he reasons and thinks within himself—that goes through the things set out above, how could the thought of God and the mind within him have come down from heaven? And how, having come to be in the flesh which it assumed, did it go through these things? And how will the Word in God say that he came down “not to do his own will, but the will of him that sent” him?

Through these words, then, the Son of God sets forth his own reverence toward the Father. But when he leads all begotten things that have come into being through him—as being Saviour and Lord and Creator of all (“for all things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made”)—then he would be proclaimed both God and Master and Saviour and King. Wherefore his Church has been taught to revere and worship and honor him as God, having learned to do this from him.

The Saviour himself says, at any rate, “For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son: that all men should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father”—expressly bidding that he be honored not like the prophets, nor like angels or the powers that surpass them, but in a manner closely like the Father himself. For the Father himself, willing this, “hath committed all judgment unto the Son: that all men should honour him, even as they honour the Father.”

Thomas called Didymus, knowing these things exactly, since he had become one of the company of the twelve disciples, inscribed him in splendid words as both God and Lord, saying, “My Lord and my God.” Wherefore it befits us also to revere with divine honor the Son alone and no other, even as we honor the Father—the Father being honored in this also through the Son. This very thing he teaches, saying, “He that honoureth the Son honoureth the Father which hath sent him.” For just as, in honoring an image of a king that has been sent out, we would be honoring the king himself, the prototype of the image, in the same way the Father would be honored through the Son, as also being seen through him.

For “he that hath seen” the Son “hath seen the Father,” beholding the unbegotten Godhead stamped in the Son as in an image and a mirror: “For he is the brightness of the everlasting light, the unspotted mirror of the activity of God, and the image of his goodness.” But all these things he has received from the Father, and possesses them as received—from him also the glory of the Godhead—as a genuine and only-begotten Son. The Father, however, has not received from anyone; but being himself the first principle and fountain and root of all good things, he would fittingly be proclaimed the one and only God.