“Believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me.”
He now speaks clearly, and more than this, He commands at last that we should think in no other way than the Word of truth Himself wills. He is consubstantial (ὁμοούσιος) with His Begetter, without any intermediary between Them and without any division of the One from the Other by a difference of nature.
He is one with Him, so that the nature (φύσις) of the Son is in the essence (οὐσία) of Him Who begot Him. Likewise the nature of God the Father is found and shines forth in the essence of the Begotten. This, without doubt, may also be seen among us.
We are not different in nature from our children, nor are we separated from them by a difference of nature, though we are divided by the distinction of bodies. Therefore one who looks upon the son born of blessed Abraham can see Abraham himself.
Yet among men there is a very great division. Each appears in his own form and is, as it were, gathered into himself as a separate individual. In his body he is not inwardly joined to others, although the nature common to all is one.
But one must not think so concerning the true God. The Father is personally and distinctly Father, not Son. Likewise He Who is begotten of Him is Son, not Father, and the Spirit is personally Spirit.
Yet since the Holy Trinity is united and gathered into one nature of Godhead, we have one God. Let no one introduce a complete division of each of those so designated, nor suppose that Their being is wholly separate.
Rather, we believe that each is what He is, and is named by us according to His particular hypostasis. We understand the Son as being from the Father, that is, proceeding ineffably from His essence and abiding in Him.
We understand the Holy Spirit in the same way. He is truly from God by nature, yet He is in no way separated from His essence. He proceeds from Him and always abides in Him, being given to the saints through Christ. All things are through the Son in the Holy Spirit.
The mind of the holy fathers taught us this rightness and truth of dogmas. We have also been taught to speak and think in this way by the Holy Scriptures themselves. The Lord assures us that we come to this blameless faith rightly when He says, “Believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me.”
“But if not, believe Me for the works’ sake.”
Here He clearly declares that He would never have done or accomplished what belongs to the divine nature alone, unless He also belonged to it by nature. Notice with what firmness and truth He says this.
He demands faith not so much on account of His words, though He knew no falsehood, as on account of His works. I will say why. It is not hard for a frenzied or deranged man to use words fitting to God and to utter something senseless.
But who could ever make use of the deed and power proper to God? To which creature can the Father give His glory? Do we not reckon it the Father’s glory to possess the power to accomplish all things and to have almighty strength?
This belongs to nothing else numbered among creatures. Therefore Christ, wishing to give assurance concerning Himself through necessary and irrefutable proofs, commands faith from His works themselves.
He commands us to believe that He is in the Father and, in turn, has the Father in Himself. This means that in His own existence He bears the Father’s nature, as His true offspring, as the true fruit, as the Son Who has appeared from the Father by nature.
The Church of Christ, glorious in the rightness of her dogmas, holds this view of the Only-begotten. Yet the God-fighting heretics persuade those who hear and accept their destructive words to think otherwise.
Raging against Christ with their accusations, the wretched ones strive to surpass one another not in zeal for piety, but in being more impious than another and in saying something most absurd.
They drink wine from Sodom and gather bitter grapes from Gomorrah (Deut 32:32). They do not receive their thoughts about Him from the Divine Spirit or from revelation from the Father, but from the dragon’s head (cf. Ps 73:13).
Therefore they have no sound thoughts at all. They say things that make the souls of their hearers miserable, dragging them down into Hades and the abyss below.
They even dare to set this forth in books, thereby making the wickedness within them, as it were, immortal.
Since enough has been said here to help hearers think rightly about the Son, we should not have mentioned their teaching at all. Yet simple souls may be carried away by their pitiful words.
For this reason I considered it necessary to overthrow their harmful chatter with true dogmas and to show how easily refuted is the slander with which they try to surround the Son, or rather the whole divine nature.
I found this in the book of our opponents. While examining the words under interpretation, after certain other arguments I found these exact words: “Thus the Son, being essentially encompassed by the Father (οὐσιωδῶς περιεχόμενος ὑπὸ τοῦ Πατρός), has the Father in Himself speaking the words and working the signs. This He explains in the words, ‘What I speak to you, I do not speak from Myself, but the Father Who abides in Me does the works Himself’ (Jn 14:10).”
Such is their empty chatter. If we too must present something able to oppose their words and expose their reprobate mind (Rom 1:28), I will say this.
I do not quite understand what their expression means when they say that “the Son is essentially encompassed by the Father.” It has, to tell the truth, a very great obscurity. Their argument seems ashamed and hides itself in darkness, lacking courage to be expressed clearly.
As the Savior says, “He who does evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest he be exposed” (Jn 3:20). So every speech that signifies evil usually turns to dark expressions and avoids clear disclosure.
It does this lest the baseness and folly within it be revealed. What does this mean, then: “The Son is essentially encompassed by the Father”?
With all the strength I can, I will try to unfold this obscure expression. Perhaps it fears that, once clearly understood, it will reveal the malice of its author.
If it wishes to say that the Son appears in the Father’s essence as consubstantial with Him, and Himself has the Father wholly shining through in the nature of His Son, then we also agree with such reasoning.
Only the term “encompassing” (περιοχή), used of the Son, seems very inappropriate to us. But if it does not mean this, then the one who has spewed such blasphemy against Him is plainly blaspheming.
For such a man never admits the Son’s birth from the Father’s essence. He claims that the Son’s nature is enclosed by the Father’s nature like some limited body.
Is he not manifestly filled with madness carried to the utmost extreme? Though they call the Son God, they irrationally try to attribute bodily properties to Him.
Whatever is wholly bounded by some definition and measurement conceived in extension, so that it has a beginning and an end, must also be in some place. It must have quantity, form, and shape. Are these not properties of bodies?
Will He Who is above us then be conceived with us, as like us? Will He not prove akin to every other creature, having nothing more than it as regards limitation?
If so, according to our opponents’ senseless supposition, why does He frighten us in vain with the words, “You are from below, I am from above,” and again, “You are of this world, I am not of this world” (Jn 8:23)?
When He says of Himself that He is “from above” (ἄνωθεν), He does not simply mean “from heaven.” What advantage would He then have over the holy angels, if we find that they too are “from above,” taking the expression locally?
Rather, it indicates that He was begotten from the highest Essence, which rules over all. How then can He be true if He has bodily properties common with another creature?
How can He, together with things brought from non-being into being, be encompassed by the Father, if we must acknowledge that nothing can be outside Him?
The divine Psalmist, speaking by the Spirit the wholly true and hidden mysteries, says that the Son is absent from absolutely no place. By this he bears witness to His bodilessness and infinity, and to the fact that as God He is not contained by place.
“Where shall I go from Your Spirit, and where shall I flee from Your face? If I ascend into heaven, You are there. If I descend into Hades, You are present. If I take my wings in the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there Your hand shall guide me, and Your right hand shall hold me” (Ps 138:7-10).
These false teachers senselessly oppose their opinion to the revelations of the Spirit and subject the Only-begotten to limitation, though they ought to reason rightly and fittingly about this.
If His face, that is, the Spirit, fills the heavens, the ends of the earth, and even Hades, how is it not the height of folly to apply to Him the term “enclosure”?
If the Spirit is called the face of the Son and fills all things, how could He Himself be within the enclosure of His God and Father?
It is no less senseless to ascribe circumscription to the bodiless and to subject the infinite to measure. To say that He is essentially encompassed by God the Father means that He has a limited essence.
This is true of each of His creatures, to which we may boldly and truly ascribe being encompassed, since they are bodies, even if not like ours.
One must also consider this. If what is encompassed by something must be inside that which encompasses it, then it necessarily follows that the encompassed is conceived as smaller than the encompassing.
It appears limited, as though enclosed by the extent of something greater. What then will you say, most dear one? Having presented Himself as the image of God the Father and plainly said, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father,” He immediately added, “I am in the Father and the Father is in Me” (Jn 14:9-10).
If, according to you, He says that while being the imprint and image of Him Who begot Him, He is nevertheless essentially encompassed by Him, then does He not wish us to have the same conceptions of the Father that we have received concerning Him?
Therefore the Father too must be limited, since this exists in the Son. Let the heretic decide who is greater than Him. It is not fitting for me to say or think such a thing.
For the Son is not partly the Father’s image and partly not. If He has anything that alienates or mediates His complete likeness to the Father, He will be a partial image and not a complete one.
Can you show where Holy Scripture says this? We will certainly not follow your words and reject the rightness of the sacred dogmas.
I am amazed that they were not afraid to say this also: “As Paul had Christ in himself speaking and working miracles, in precisely the same way the Son had the Father in Himself speaking and working signs. Therefore He says, ‘Believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me. If not, believe for the works themselves.’”
Who will call a man a Christian who reasons and thinks in this way about Christ? He now clearly says that He is not truly God.
Having senselessly attributed to Him the measure proper to creatures, he proclaims Him to be some God-bearing and God-participating being, or a God born from God only by grace.
His aim is by every means and method to exclude Him completely from the essence of God the Father and to separate Him from the natural and essential unity that He has with His Father and God.
Can there be a higher degree of madness? Should we not shed tears of love over those surrendered to such unbridled impiety, as over the already dead and lost?
It is fitting to say, “Who will give water to my head and a fountain of tears to my eyes, that I may weep day and night for this people?” (Jer 9:1). Unceasing tears should indeed be shed over those who have adopted such a way of thinking.
THEOSIS