* Retro.
CHAI'. XIV ■] AGAINST PRAXEAS.
its ray to be as much two things and two iornis' of one undivided substance, as God and His Word, as the Father and the Son.
CHAP. XIV. THE NATURAL INVISIBILITY OF THE FATHER, AND THE VISIBILITY OF THE SON WITNESSED IN MANY PASSAGES OF THE OLD TEST.\MENT. ARGUMENTS OF THEIR DIS- TINCTNESS, THUS SUPPLIED.
Moreover, there comes to our aid, when we insist upon the Father and the Son as being Jwo, that regulating principle which has de- termined God to be invisible. When Moses in Egypt desired to see the face of the Lord, saying, "If therefore I have foimd grace in Thy sight, manifest Thyself unto me, that I may see Thee and know Thee," - God said, " Thou canst not see my face; for there shall no man see me, and live: " ^ in other words, he who sees me shall die. Now we find that God has been seen by many persons, and ye? that no one who saw Him died (at the sight). The truth is, they saw God according to the , faculties of men, but not in accordance with the full glory of the Godhead. For the patri- archs are said to have seen God (as Abraham and Jacob), and the prophets (as, for instance Isaiah and Ezekiel), and yet they did not die. Either, then, they ought to have died, since they had seen Him — for (the sentence runs), " No man shall see God, and live; " or else, if they saw God, and yet did not die, the Scrip- ture is false in stating that God said, " If a man see my face, he shall not live." Either way, the Scripture misleads us, when it makes God invisible, and when it produces Him to our sight. Now, then, He must be a different Being who was seen, because of one who was seen it could not be predicated that He is invisible. It will therefore follow, that by Him who is invisible we must under- stand the Father in the fulness of His majesty, / while we recognise the Son as visible by reason / of the dispensation of His derived existence;" even as it is not permitted us to contemplate the sun, in the full amount of his substance which is in the heavens, but we can only en- dure with our eyes a ray, by reason of the tempered condition of this portion which is projected from him to the earth. Here some one on the other side may be disposed to con- tend that the Son is also invisible as being the Word, and as being also the Spirit; ^ and, while claiming one nature for the Father and the Son, to affirm that the Father is rather One and the Same Person with the Son. But ' Species.
2 Ex. xxxiii. 13.
4 Pro modulo derivationis.
iSpiritus here is the di\nne nature of Christ.
39 the Scripture, as we have said, maintains their difference by the distinction it makes between the Visible and the Invisible. They then go on to argue to this effect, that if it was the Son who then spake to Moses, He must mean it of Himself that His face was visible to no one, because He was Himself indeed the in- visible Father in the name of the Son. And by this means they will have it that the Visi!)lc and the Invisible are one and the same, jusi as the Father and the Son are the same; (and this they maintain) because in a preceding pas- sage, before He had refused (the sight of) His face to Moses, the Scripture informs us that "the Lord spake face to face with Moses, even as a man speaketh unto his friend;"* just as Jacob also says, " I have seen God face to face." 7 Therefore the Visible and the Invis- ible are one and the same; and both being thus the same, it follows that He is invisible as the Father, and visible as the Son.. As if the Scripture, according to our exposition of it, were inapplicable to the Son, when the Father is set aside in His own invisibility. We de- clare, however, that the Son also, considered in Himself (as the Son), is invisible, in that He is God, and the Word and Spirit of God; but that He was visible before the days of His flesh, in the way that He says to Aaron and Miriam, " And if there shall be a prophet amongst you, I will make myself known to him in a vision, and will speak to him in a dream; not as with Moses, with whom I shall speak mouth to mouth, even apparently, that is to say, in trutli, and not enigmatically " that is to say, in image; ^ as the apostle also expresses it, " Now we see through a glass, darkly (or enigmati- cally), but then face to face."^ Since, there- fore. He reserves to some future time His presence and speech face to face with Moses — a promise which was afterwards fulfilled in the retirement of the mount (of transfigura- tion), when as we read in the Gospel, " Moses appeared talking with Jesus " '° — it is evident that in early times it was always in a glass, (as it were,) and an enigma, in vision and dream, that God, I mean the Son of God, ap- peared— to the prophets and the patriarchs, as also to Moses indeed himself. And even if the Lord did possibly " speak with him face to face, yet it was not as man that he could behold His face, unless indeed it was in a glass, (as it w^ere,) and by enigma. Besides, if the Lord so spake with Moses, that Moses actually discerned His face, eye to eye," how *Ex. xxxiii. II.
7 Gen. xxxii. 30.
»o Mark ix. 4; Matt. xvii. 3.
" Si forte.
'- Cominus sciret.
OIO AGAINST PRAXEAS.
[chap. XV.
comes it to pass that immediately afterwards, on the same occasion, he desires to see His face,' which he ought not to have desired, because he had already seen it? And how, in like manner, does the Lord also say that His face cannot be seen, because He had shown it, if indeed He really had, (as our opponents suppose.) Or what is that face of God, the sight of which is refused, if there was one which was visible to man? "I have seen God," says Jacob, " face to face, and my life is preserved."^ There ought to be some other face which kills if it be only seen. Well, then, was the Son visible? (Certainly not,3) although He was the face of God, ex- cept only in vision and dream, and in a glass and enigma, because the Word and Spirit (of God) cannot be seen except in an imaginary form. But, (they say,) He calls the invisible Father His face. For who is the Father? Must He not be the face of the Son, by reason of that authority which He obtains as the be- gotten of the Father? For is there not a natural propriety in saying of some personage greater (than yourself), That man is my face; he gives me his countenance? " My Father," says Christy " is greater than I."-* Therefore the Father must be the face of the Son. For what does the Scripture say? " The Spirit of His person is Christ the Lord."^ As there- fore Christ is the Spirit of the Father's person, there is good reason why, in virtue indeed of the unity, the Spirit of Him to whose person He belonged — that is to say, the Father — pro- nounced Him to be His "face." Now this, to be sure, is ah astonishmg thing, that the Father can be taken to be the face of the Son, when He is His head; for " the head of Christ is God."'
CHAP. XV.— NEW TESTAMENT PASSAGES QUOTED. THEY ATTEST THE SAME TRUTH OF THE SON'S VISIBILITY CONTRASTED WITH THE FATHER'S INVISIBILITY.
If I fail in resolving this article (of our faith) by passages which may admit of dispute'' out of the Old Testament, I will take out of the New Testament a confirmation of our view, that you may not straightway attribute to the Father every possible (relation and condition) which I ascribe to the Son. Behold, then, I • Corap. ver. 13 with ver. 11 of Ex. xxxiii.
.^ Involved in the nunqiiid.
*John xiv. 28.
S lam. iv 20. Tertullian reads, "Spiritus person x (y'«i' Christus Dominus. ' This varies only in the pronoun from the SeptuaKint, which runs, IlftOfia 7rpo<riujrou ri^mv Xpiaro? Kvpiov. According to our A. v., " the breath of our nostrils, th« anointed of the I-.ord " (or, " our anointed Lord"), allusion is made, in the de- struction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, to the capture of the kinjj — the last of David's line, "as an anointed prince." Comp.
7 Quaistionibus.
find both in the Gospels and in the (writings of the) apostles a visible and an invisible God (revealed to us), under a manifest and per- sonal distinction in the condition of both. There is a certain emphatic saying by John: "No man hath seen God at any time;"' meaning, of course, at any previous time. But he has indeed taken away all question of time, by saying that God had never been seen. The apostle confirms this statement; for, speaking of God, he says, "Whom no man hath seen, nor can see;"^ because the man indeed would die who should see Him.'° But the very same apostles testify that they had both seen and "handled" Christ." Now, if Christ is Himself both the Father and the Son, how can He be both the Visible and the In- visible? In order, however, to reconcile this diversity between the Visible and the Invisi- ble, will not some one on the other side argue that the two statements are quite correct: that He was visible indeed in the flesh, but was invisible before His appearance in the flesh; so that He who as the Father was in- visible before the flesh, is the same as the Son who was visible in the flesh? If, however. He is the same who was invisible before the incarnation, how comes it that He was actu- ally seen in ancient times before (coming in) the flesh? And by parity of reasoning, if He is the same who was visible after (coming in) the flesh, how happens it that He is now de- clared to be invisible by the apostles? Hcnv, 'J repeal, cati all this be, unless it be that He is one, who anciently was visible only in mystery and enigma, and became more clearly visible py His incarnation, even the Word who was also made flesh; whilst He is another whom no man has seen at any time, being none else than the Father, even Him to whom the Word belongs? Let us, in short, examine who it is whom the apostles saw. " That," says John, " which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life." '" Now the Word of life became flesh, and was heard, and was seen, and was handled, because He was flesh who, before He came in the flesh, was the " Word in the beginning with God " the Father,'^ and not the Father with the Word. For although the Word was God, yet was He with God, be- cause He is God of God; and being joined to the Father, is with the Father. "» " And we have seen His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father; " '5 that is, of course, ■" Ex. xxxiii. 2Q; Deut. v. 26; Judg. xiii. 22.
'4 Quia cum Palre apud Pa^rem. 'Sjohni. 14.
CUM'. XVJ.]
AGAINST PRAXEAS.
6ii (the glory) of the Son, even Him who was visible, and was glorified by the invisible Father. And therefore, inasmuch as he had said that the Word of God was God, in order that he might give no help to the presumption of the adversary, (which pretended) that he had seen the Father Himself and in order to draw a distinction between the invisible Father and the visible Son, he makes the additional assertion, ex abiindanti as it were: " No man hath seen God at any time." ' What God does he mean? The Word? But he has al- ready said: ""Him we have seen and heard, and our hands have handled the Word of life." Well, (I must again ask,) what God does he mean? It is of course the Father, with whom ivas the Word, the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, and has Himself declared Him.'' He was both heard and seen, and, that He might not be supposed to be a phantom, was actually handled. Him, too, did Paul behold; but yet he saw not the Father. " Have I not," he says, " seen Jesus Christ our Lord?" ^ Moreover, he expressly called Christ God, saying: " Of whom are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever."* He shows us also that the Son of God, which is the Word of God, is visible, because He who became flesh was called Christ. Of the Father, however, he says to Timothy: *' Whom none among men hath seen, nor in- deed can see;" and he accumulates the de- scription in still ampler terms: "Who only hath immortality, and dwelleth in the light which no man can approach unto."^ It was of Him, too, that he had said in a previous passage: "Now unto the King eternal, im- mortal, invisible, to the only God;"* so that we might apply even the contrary qualities to the Son Himself — mortality, accessibility — of whom the apostle testifies that " He died according to the Scriptures," ' and that " He was seen by himself last of all,"^ — by means, of course, of the light which was accessible, although it was not without imperilling his sight that he experienced that light. » A like danger to which also befell Peter, and John, and James, (who confronted not the same light) without risking the loss of their reason and mind; and if they, who were unable to endure the glory of the Son,'° had only seen the Father, they must have died then and ajohn i. i8.
9 Acts xxii. II. ^■Matt. xvii. 6; Mark ix. 6.
there: " For no man shall see God, and live."" This being the case, it is evident that He was always seen from the beginning, ^^ who became visible in the end; and that He, (on the contrary,) was not seen in the end who had never been visible from the beginning; and that accordingly there are two — the Visi- ble and the Invisible. It was the Son, there- fore, who was always seen, and the Son who always conversed with men, and the Son who has always worked by the authority and will of the Father; because "the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He seeth the Father do " "— " do " that is, in His mind and thought. '3 For the Father acts by mind and thought; whilst the Son, who is in the Father's mind and thought,'-* gives effect and form to what He sees. Thus all things were made by the Son, and without Him was not anything made.'^ CHAP. XVI. EARLY MANIFESTATIONS OF THE SON OF GOD, AS RECORDED IN THE OLD TES- TAMENT; REHEARSALS OF HIS SUBSEQUENT INCARNATION.
But you must not suppose that only the works which relate to the (creation of the) world were made by the Son, but also whatso- ever since that time has been done by God. For " the Father who loveth the Son, and hath given all things into His hand," '* loves Him indeed from the beginning, and from the very first has handed all things over to Him. Whence it is written, " From the be- ginning the Word was with God, and the Word was God; " '^ to whom " is given by the Father all power in heaven and on earth."'* " The Father judgeth no man, but hath com- mitted all judgment to the Son " '» — from the very beginning even. For when He speaks of all power and all judgment, and says that all things were made by Him, and all things have been delivered into His hand. He allows no exception (in respect) of time, because they would not be all thifigs unless they were the things of all time. It is the Son, therefore, who has been from the beginning administer- ing judgment, throwing down the haughty tower, and dividing the tongues, punishing the v/hole world by the violence of waters, raining upon Sodom and Gomorrah fire and brimstone, as the Lord from the Lord. For " Ex. xxxiii. 20.
" Ex. xxxiii. 20.
'3 In sensu.
'4 The reading is, "in Patris sensu;" another reading substi- tutes " smu" for " sensu;" q.d. " the Father's bosom."
"JJohn iii. 35. TertuUian reads the last clause (according ta Oehler), " in sinu ejus," q. d. " to Him who is in His bosom."
AGAINST PRAXEAS.
[chap. XVII.
He it was who at all times came down to hold converse with men, from Adam on to the patriarchs and the prophets, in vision, in dream, in mirror, in dark saying; ever from the beginning laying the foundation of the course of His dispe?isations, which He meant to follow out to the very last. Thus was He ever learning even as God to converse with men upon earth, being no other than the Word which was to be made flesh. But He was thus learning (or rehearsing), in order to level for us the way of faith, that we might the more readily believe that the Son of God had come down into the world, if we knew that in times past also something similar had been done.' For as it was on our account afid for our learnitig that these events are de- scribed in the Scriptures, so for our sakes also were they done — (even oitrs, I say), " upon whom the ends of the world are come."- In this way it was that even then He knew full well what human feelings and affections were, intending as He always did to take upon Him man's actual component substances, body and soul, making inquiry of Adam (as if He were ignorant),^ "Where art thou, Adam?"'* — repenting that He had made man, as if He had lacked foresight; ^ tempting Abraham, as if ignorant of what was in man; offended with persons, and then reconciled to them; and whatever other (weaknesses and imper- fections) the heretics lay hold of (in their as- sumptions) as unworthy of God, in order to discredit the Creator, not considering that these circumstances are suitable enough, for the Son, who was one day to experience even human sufferings — hunger and thirst, and tears, and actual birth and real death, and in respect of such a dispensation " made by the Father a little less than the angels."* But the heretics, you may be sure, will not allow that those things are suitable even to the Son of G 3d, which you are imputing to the very Father Himself, when you pretend ^ that He made Himself less (than the angels) on our account; whereas the Scripture informs us that He who was made less was so affected by another, and not Himself by Himself. What, again, if He was One who w^as " crowned with glory and bonour," and He Another by whom He was so crowned,^ — the Son, in fact, by the Father? Moreover, how comes it to pass, that the Almighty Invisible God, "whom no man hath seen nor can see; He who dwelleth in light unapproachable;"' "He who dwelleth not 3.See the treatise, Against Marcion. ii. 25, supra, J Gen. vi.6.
7 Quasi.
*Ps. viii. 6.
in temples made with hands; " '° " from before whose sight the earth trembles, and the moun- tains melt like wax; " " who holdeth the whole world in His hand " like a nest;" " "whose throne is heaven, and earth His footstool;" '^ in whom is every place, but Himself is in no place; who is the utmost bound of the universe; — how happens it, I say, that He (who, though) the Most High, should yet have walked in paradise towards the cool of the evening, in quest of Adam; and should have shut up the ark after Noah had entered it; and at Abra- ham's tent should have refreshed Himself under an oak; and have called to Moses out of the burning bush; and have appeared as " the fourth " in the furnace of the Babylonian monarch (although He is there called the Son of man), — unless all these events had hap- pened as an image, as a mirror, as an enigma (of the future incarnation)? Surely even these things could not have been believed even of the Son of God, unless they had been given us in the Scriptures; possibly also they could not have been believed of the Father, even if they had been given in the Scriptures, since these men bring Him down into Mary's womb, and set Him before Pilate's judgment- seat, and bury Him in the sepulchre of Joseph.
Hence, therefore, their error becomes mani- fest; for, being ignorant that the entire order of the divine administration has from the very first had its course through the agency of the Son, they believe that the Father Himself was actually seen, and held converse with men, and worked, and was athirst, and suffered hunger (in spite of the prophet who says: "The everlasting God, tJie Lord, the Crtator of the ends of the earth, shall never thirst at all, nor be hungry;"'-' much more, shall neither die at any time, nor be buried! ), and there- fore that it was uniformly one God, even the Father, who at all times did Himself the things which were really done by Him througii the agency of the Son.
CHAP. XVII. — SUNDRY AUGUST TITLES, DESCRIP- TIVE OK DEITY, APPLIED TO THE SON, NOT, AS PRAXEAS WOULD HAVE IT, ONLY TO THE FATHER.
They more readily supposed that the Father acted in the Son's name, than that the Son acted in tlie Father's; although the Lord says Himself, " I am come in my Father's name;" '^ and even to the Father He declares, " I have manifested Thy name unto these ■3 Isa. Ixvi. I. Misa. xl. 28.
CHAP. XVIII.]
AGAINST PRAXEAS.
men;"' whilst the Scripture likewise says, *' Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord,"^ that is to say, the Son in the Father's name. And as for the Father's names, God Almighty, the Most High, the Lord of liosts, the King of Israel, the "One that is," we say (for so much do the Scriptures teach us) that they belonged suitably to the Son also, and that the Son came under these designa- tions, and has always acted in them, and has thus manifested them in Himself to men. "All things," says He, "which the Father hatii are mine."^ Then why not His names also? When, therefore, you read of Almighty God, and the Most High, and the God of hosts, and the King of Israel the "One that is," consider whether the Son also be not in- dicated by these designations, who in His own right is God Almighty, in that He is the Word of Almighty God, and has received power over all; is the Most High, in that He is "exalted at the right hand of God," as Peter declares in the Acts;'* is the Lord of hosts, because all things are bv the Father made subject to Him; is the King of Israel, because to Him has especially been committed the destiny of that nation; and is likewise " the One that is," because there are many who are called Sons, but are not. As to the point maintained by them, that the name of Christ belongs also to the Father, they shall hear (what I have to say) in the proper place. Meanwhile, let this be my immediate answer to the argument which they adduce from the Revelation of John: " I am the Lord which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Al- mighty; " 5 and from all other passages which in their opinion make the designation of Al- mighty God unsuitable to the Son. As if, indeed, He which is to come-^tx^ not almighty; whereas even the Son of the Almighty is as much almighty as the Son of God is God.
CHAP. XVIII. THE DESIGNATION OF THE ONE GOD IN THE PROPHETIC SCRIPTURES. IN- TENDED AS A PROTEST AGAINST HEATHEN IDOLATRY, IT DOES NOT PRECLUDE THE COR- RELATIVE IDEA OF THE SON OF GOD. THE SON IS IN THE FATHER.
But what hinders them from readily per- ceiving this community of the Father's titles in the Son, is the statement of Scripture, whenever it determines God to be but One; as if the selfsame Scripture had not also set forth Two both as God and Lord, as we have shown above. ^ Their argument is: Since we ' John xvii. 6. » Ps. cxviii. 26.