Against Praxeas

But why should I spend time on things that are so clear, when I should be attacking the points where they try to hide the plainest proof? They have been refuted from every side on the distinction between the Father and the Son, which we maintain without destroying their inseparable union, as shown by the examples of the sun and its ray, and the fountain and the river. Yet, by using their idea of an indivisible number, with the results of two and three, they try to explain this distinction in a way that still fits their own opinions. So, while keeping all things in one Person, they divide that one into two, Father and Son. They understand the Son to be flesh, that is, man, that is, Jesus; and the Father to be spirit, that is, God, that is, Christ. In this way, while they argue that the Father and the Son are one and the same, they actually begin by dividing them rather than uniting them. For if Jesus is one thing and Christ another, then the Son will be different from the Father, because the Son is Jesus and the Father is Christ. I suppose they learned this kind of monarchy in the school of Valentinus, making two, Jesus and Christ. But this idea of theirs has in fact already been refuted by what we said earlier, because the Word of God or the Spirit of God is also called the power of the Highest, whom they make to be the Father. Yet these relations are not themselves the same as the One whose relations they are said to be. Rather, they proceed from Him and belong to Him. However, another refutation is waiting for them on this point of their heresy. “See,” they say, “it was announced by the angel: ‘Therefore that Holy Thing which shall be born of you shall be called the Son of God.’ Luke 1:35” Therefore, they argue, since it was the flesh that was born, it must be the flesh that is the Son of God. No, I answer, this is spoken about the Spirit of God. For it was certainly by the Holy Spirit that the virgin conceived, and what she conceived, she brought forth. Therefore, what had to be born was what had been conceived and was to be brought forth, that is, the Spirit, whose name would be called Emmanuel, which means, “God with us.” Matthew 1:23 Besides, the flesh is not God, so it could not have been said about the flesh, “That Holy Thing shall be called the Son of God.” It could be said only about that divine Being who was born in the flesh, of whom the psalm also says, “Since God became man in the midst of it, and established it by the will of the Father.” Now what divine Person was born in it? The Word, and the Spirit which became incarnate with the Word by the will of the Father. The Word, therefore, became incarnate, and this must be the point of our inquiry: How did the Word become flesh? Was it by being changed, as it were, into flesh, or by truly clothing Himself in flesh? Certainly it was by truly clothing Himself in flesh. For we must believe that God is unchangeable and incapable of form, since He is eternal. But a change of form is the destruction of what existed before. For whatever is changed into something else stops being what it had been, and begins to be what it had not been before. God, however, neither stops being what He was, nor can He be anything other than what He is. The Word is God, and “the Word of the Lord remains forever,” even by continuing unchangeably in His own proper form. Now, if He does not admit of being changed in form, it follows that He must be understood to have become flesh in this sense: that He came to be in the flesh, and was manifested, and was seen, and was handled by means of the flesh, since all the other points also must be understood in this way. For if the Word became flesh by a change and transformation of substance, then it follows at once that Jesus must be a substance made up of two substances, flesh and spirit, a kind of mixture, like electrum, made of gold and silver. Then it begins to be neither gold, that is, spirit, nor silver, that is, flesh. One is changed by the other, and a third substance is produced. Therefore, on this view, Jesus cannot be God, for He has stopped being the Word, which was made flesh. Nor can He be Man incarnate, for He is not truly flesh, and it was flesh that the Word became. Being made up of both, then, He is actually neither one. He is rather some third substance, very different from either. But the truth is that we find Him clearly presented as both God and Man. The very psalm we quoted indicates, concerning the flesh, that God became man in the midst of it. “He therefore established it by the will of the Father.” Certainly, then, He is in every respect both the Son of God and the Son of Man, being God and Man. No doubt they differ according to each substance and its own special property, since the Word is nothing other than God, and the flesh is nothing other than Man. In this way the apostle also teaches about His two substances, saying, “who was made of the seed of David,” Romans 1:3 and in these words He is Man and Son of Man. And, “who was declared to be the Son of God, according to the Spirit”; in these words He is God, and the Word, the Son of God. We plainly see the twofold condition, not confused but joined in one Person, Jesus, God and Man. As for Christ, I am postponing what I have to say. I remark here that the property of each nature is so fully preserved that the Spirit, on the one hand, did in Jesus all things suitable to itself, such as miracles, mighty deeds, and wonders. And the Flesh, on the other hand, showed the feelings that belong to it. It was hungry under the devil’s temptation, thirsty with the Samaritan woman, wept over Lazarus, was troubled even to death, and at last actually died. If, however, He were only a third thing, some combined essence formed out of the two substances, like the electrum I mentioned, then there would be no clear proofs of either nature. Instead, by a transfer of actions, the Spirit would have done things belonging to the Flesh, and the Flesh things worked by the Spirit. Or else there would have been things suited neither to Flesh nor Spirit, but confusedly of some third kind. More than that, on that supposition either the Word underwent death, or the flesh did not die, if indeed the Word was changed into flesh. Because either the flesh was immortal, or the Word was mortal. Since, however, the two substances acted distinctly, each in its own character, there necessarily came to each of them its own operations and its own results. Learn then, together with Nicodemus, that “that which is born in the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit.” John 3:6 Neither does the flesh become Spirit, nor the Spirit flesh. In one Person, however, they are certainly able to exist together. Jesus consists of them both: as Man, of the flesh; as God, of the Spirit. And the angel called Him the Son of God, Luke 1:35 with respect to that nature in which He was Spirit, while reserving for the flesh the name Son of Man. In the same way, the apostle again calls Him “the Mediator between God and Men,” 1 Timothy 2:5 and so declares His sharing in both substances. Now, to finish the matter, you who interpret the Son of God to mean flesh, please show us what the Son of Man is. Will He then, I want to know, be the Spirit? But you insist that the Father Himself is the Spirit, on the ground that “God is a Spirit,” as if we did not also read that there is “the Spirit of God,” in the same way that we find that just as the Word was God, so also there is the Word of God.