The meaning of these words is very obscure and clothed in no small difficulty. Yet it does not wholly escape inquiry, for it can be understood and received by those who desire to think rightly.
When the Son says that He has been sent, He indicates His Incarnation, and nothing else. When we say that He was incarnate, we affirm that He became perfect man.
It is as though He said: The Father made Me man. Since I, being God the Word, as Life was born of Life by nature, and, becoming man, filled My temple, that is, My body, with My own nature, so also he who eats My Flesh “shall live because of Me.”
I assumed flesh subject to death. Yet as soon as I dwelt in it, being Life by nature, because I am from the living Father, I transformed it wholly into My life. I was not overcome by the corruption of the flesh. Rather, I conquered it as God.
Therefore, as I shall at once say again for our profit, although I became flesh, for this is what being sent means, yet I “live because of” the living “Father.” That is, I preserve in Myself the nobility of Him Who begot Me.
So also he who receives Me through participation in My flesh will preserve life in himself. He is wholly transformed into Me, Who can give life because I am from the life-giving root, that is, God and the Father.
He says that He was incarnate by the Father, although Solomon says that “Wisdom built herself a house” (Prov 9:1). Likewise, blessed Gabriel ascribes the creation of the divine body to the power of the Spirit.
He speaks to the Holy Virgin in these words: “The Holy Spirit shall come upon you, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow you” (Lk 1:35).
This is so that you may understand again that the Godhead is one by nature. It is understood as one in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Therefore each does not act separately in anything that exists.
Even if something is said to have come to be through one Person, it is certainly the work of the whole divine Nature. For if the Holy Trinity is one in consubstantiality, then without doubt the power also must be one in all things.
All things are from the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit.
What we have often said already, we shall say again. To say the same thing is burdensome, yet it gives firmness.
It was the custom of Christ the Savior, for our good, to ascribe to the Father’s operation all that surpasses the power proper to man. He did this because He humbled Himself and became man.
Since He took the form of a servant (Phil 2:7-8), He does not disdain the manner of speech proper to the servant’s condition. Yet He does not remove from Himself the activity that He has in all things together with the Father.
He Who begot Him accomplishes all things through Him, according to the word of the Savior: “The Father, Who dwells in Me, He does the works” (Jn 14:10).
Thus, giving what is due to the divine economy with the flesh, He ascribes to God the Father what is above human power. To create a temple in the Virgin exceeds human power.
But our opponent will again say to this: How otherwise could the Son reveal “what He is by nature”? Or how could He clearly show “that the Father is greater,” except by the saying, “I live because of the Father”?
For if the Father is the giver of life to the Son, who will finally reach such folly as not to understand this? That which participates in life is not the same as Life by nature, nor the same as Him Who can give life.
To this we also, setting against it the word of truth, shall fittingly say: “The fool will speak folly, and his heart will think vain things, to commit lawlessness and to utter falsehood against the Lord” (Isa 32:6).
Indeed, what could be more lawless than such a thought of the heretics? Is not the utmost falsehood uttered by them against Christ, Who gives life to all?
These madmen are not ashamed to say that He lives by participating in life from another, just as things brought into being through Him live in such a life.
In that case, will the Son not finally be for us a living creature? For He would be shown to participate in life, and not to be Life itself by nature.
A living creature must without doubt be something other than the life that is in it. Yet I do not think that anyone of sound mind could say this.
Therefore the Only-begotten must by no means be thought of by us as a living creature, but as Life by nature. For does He not speak the truth when He says, “I am the resurrection and the life” (Jn 11:25)?
That which gives life must be Life. It does not need life from another. So too, by wisdom we understand the power to make wise, not the capacity to be made wise.
Therefore, according to you, the Truth will lie. Christ will not speak the truth when He says, “I am the life.”
The glorious choir of the saints also will prove to be telling fables, when it speaks words through the Spirit and calls the Only-begotten Life.
Thus the divine Psalmist is found saying to the Father: “For with You is the fountain of life” (Ps 36:9). The wondrous Evangelist John also says in his Epistles:
“That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we beheld and our hands handled, concerning the Word of Life; and the Life was manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and declare to you the eternal Life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us” (1 Jn 1:1-2).
Do you see from these words of John that the Psalmist is also shown to be true, when he says to God the Father of all, “For with You is the fountain of life”?
For the fountain of life was and is with Him, namely, the Son. That the Spirit-bearer speaks of Him in precisely this sense he will confirm by other words in the same Epistle:
“And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, that we may know the True One. And we are in the True One, in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal Life” (1 Jn 5:20).
Tell me, then, who can finally endure such empty talk from the heterodox? Who will not justly accuse them?
They dare to call the Son a participant in life from another, although the holy and God-inspired Scripture says nothing of the kind about Him.
On the contrary, it clearly says that He is God by nature, and the True One, and the Fountain of life, and also eternal Life.
Can one imagine as true God someone who needs life from another, and is not rather Himself Life by nature? Or how could He still be called the fountain of life?
Would He be so called if, through communication from another, He received help for Himself so that He might be able to live?
Let it be so, the opponent says. We can agree that the Son is Life, and therefore He Himself can give life, since He has the living Father in Himself.
Yet this, beloved, will not suffice to defend you from the charge of blasphemy against the Only-begotten. This word of yours also proves ignorant and powerless.
For you claim that the Son is called Life because He can give life to what is capable of life, since He has the Father in Himself. Is this not filled with measureless ignorance?
It seems that you do not know at all the difference between what it means to be “by nature” and what it means to be “from what is by nature,” as something joined to it by communication.
For example, fire is hot by nature. Yet other things also become hot by receiving from it this power of heat, such as iron or wood.
Still, they are not called fire because they have become hot. They have this property in themselves as something foreign and not natural.
The meaning of these examples applies also to ourselves. Grammar, for example, or geometry, is reckoned as a form of rational science.
Yet one who is skilled in grammar or another science is by no means presented as grammar itself or geometry itself. From the grammar he has acquired he is called a grammarian, and from geometry a geometer.
So also Life by nature is certainly something other than that in which it comes to be. It transforms into itself what is not such by nature.
Therefore, when you say that the Father is present in the Son as in matter, so that the Son also may give life because the Father is Life by nature, you will no longer reasonably confess that He is Life.
Rather, you will say that He participates in life from another, by communication and not by essence. You say that He is called to receive the dignity of the Giver, the Father.
It is unfounded to call heated iron fire, although it has the property of fire because it has been heated by it. Likewise, no one with understanding calls a grammarian grammar because he can guide others in that science.
So, I think, no one of sound mind should call the Son Life merely because He can give life to others. According to their teaching, He has this “being Life” not by nature.
Rather, He has been endowed with it from the power of the Father, or “because of” the Father Who lives in Him.
But tell me, what then prevents one from thinking of the Son as one of us, clearly of corruptible nature, if He lives “because of the Father,” that is, as endowed with life by Him Who begot Him?
According to the sequence of their thoughts, He would have had to suffer destruction if He did not have the living Father in Himself.
And if we acknowledge as true His words, “I am in the Father and the Father in Me” (Jn 14:11), then not only does He have in Himself the Father, Who is Life by nature.
He Himself is also in the Father, although He is not, according to them, Life by nature.
I will now pass over the blasphemy, although it should have been discussed in order to expose the impiety of those who fight against God.
For the Father would be found to have in Himself something without life, that is, corruption or a nature subject to dissolution.
Since our purpose is to clarify the question with proper precision, we must again examine it. By varied reasonings we must disclose that the nature of the matter compels us to think thus about the Son.
You say that God the Father is Life by nature. Excellent. This is indeed so. But this is also in the Son, as your own words also agree.
Here is what I would then rightly ask, desiring to know: what will the Father do in the Son by being present in Him?
Will He communicate His own life to His own Offspring, as to one in need and without life from Himself? And is it not altogether necessary to think the Son bereft of life?
But what finally will that which is bereft of life be, if not subject to corruption?
Yet the Father does not communicate His life to the Son in this way. The Son is Life, although He does not receive it from Him by an external communication.
Why then do some people rashly and boldly slander Him further? Why do they say that the Son lives precisely because He has in Himself the Father, Who is Life by nature?
If He lives even without the Father, as possessing being by essence and as self-life, then He no longer lives “because of the Father,” that is, by reason of receiving life from the Father.
But if He has the Father as the giver of His life, then He will be shown not to have His own life. He receives it from another.
As we said at the beginning, He is then rather a living creature than Life, and already of corruptible nature.
But how then did He call Himself Life? For then perhaps we too could say of ourselves, “I am life,” though such speech is false.
It is impossible for a creature to intrude upon the divine dignities.
Therefore the Son knew Himself to be Life by nature. Otherwise, how could He be “the express image of the hypostasis” (Heb 1:3) of Him Who begot Him?
How could He be the exact image and likeness? Would Philip not have acted rightly when he said, “Show us the Father, and it is enough for us” (Jn 14:8)?
For then one could truly think that he who had seen the Son had not yet seen the Father. One would be Life by nature, while the Other would participate in life from Him.
It is altogether impossible to see the Life-giver in that which is given life, or the One Who lacks nothing in one who is in need.
THEOSIS