Against Praxeas

Therefore, the Word Himself also takes on His own form and glorious clothing, His own sound and spoken utterance, when God says, "Let there be light," in Genesis 1:3. This is the perfect nativity of the Word, when He proceeds forth from God. First, He was formed by God to devise and think out all things under the name of Wisdom: "The Lord created or formed me as the beginning of His ways," in Proverbs 8:22. Then afterward, He was begotten to carry all into effect: "When He prepared the heaven, I was present with Him." Thus He makes Him equal to Himself. For by proceeding from Himself, He became His first-begotten Son, because begotten before all things, as Colossians 1:15 says. He is also His only-begotten, because He alone was begotten of God, in a way peculiar to Himself, from the womb of His own heart. As the Father Himself testifies: "My heart," He says, "has emitted my most excellent Word." The Father took pleasure evermore in Him, who also rejoiced with corresponding gladness in the Father's presence: "You are my Son, today I have begotten You," and, "even before the morning star did I beget You." The Son likewise acknowledges the Father, speaking in His own person under the name of Wisdom: "The Lord formed Me as the beginning of His ways, with a view to His own works; before all the hills did He beget Me." For if Wisdom in this passage seems to say that She was created by the Lord with a view to His works, and to accomplish His ways, yet another Scripture gives proof that all things were made by the Word, and without Him nothing was made, as John 1:3 says. Again, in another place it is said, "By His word were the heavens established, and all the powers of it by His Spirit"—that is, by the Spirit, or Divine Nature, that was in the Word. Thus it is clear that it is one and the same power which in one place is described under the name of Wisdom, and in another place under the name of the Word, which was initiated for the works of God in Proverbs 8:22, which strengthened the heavens, by which all things were made, as John 1:3 says, and without which nothing was made, as John 1:3 says. Nor do we need to dwell any longer on this point, as if this were not the very Word Himself who is spoken of under the name both of Wisdom and of Reason, and of the whole Divine Soul and Spirit. He also became the Son of God, and was begotten when He proceeded forth from Him. Do you then, you ask, grant that the Word is a certain substance, constructed by the Spirit and the communication of Wisdom? Certainly I do. But you will not allow Him to be truly a substantive being, having a substance of His own, so that He may be regarded as an objective thing and a person. And so He would be able, as one constituted second to God the Father, to make two: the Father and the Son, God and the Word. For you will say, "What is a word except a voice and sound of the mouth and, as the grammarians teach, air when struck, intelligible to the ear, but otherwise a sort of void, empty, and incorporeal thing?" I, on the contrary, contend that nothing void and empty could have come forth from God, since it is not put forth from that which is void and empty. Nor could that possibly be without substance which has proceeded from so great a substance, and has produced such mighty substances. For all things that were made through Him, He Himself personally made. How could it be that He Himself is nothing, without whom nothing was made? How could He who is void have made things that are solid? And He who is empty have made things that are full? And He who is incorporeal have made things that have body? For although a thing may sometimes be made different from him by whom it is made, yet nothing can be made by that which is a void and empty thing. Is the Word of God, then, a void and empty thing, when He is called the Son, and is Himself designated God? "The Word was with God, and the Word was God," in John 1:1. It is written, "You shall not take God's name in vain," in Exodus 20:7. This certainly is He who, "being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God," as Philippians 2:6 says. In what form of God? Of course, in some form, not in none. For who will deny that God is a body, although "God is a Spirit," as John 4:24 says? For Spirit has a bodily substance of its own kind, in its own form. Now even if invisible things, whatever they may be, have both their substance and their form in God, by which they are visible to God alone, how much more will that which has been sent forth from His substance not be without substance? Whatever, then, was the substance of the Word, I designate that a Person. I claim for it the name of Son. And while I recognize the Son, I assert His distinction as second to the Father.