Chapter XI.
It cannot be proved from Scripture that the Father
existed before the Son, nor yet can arguments taken from human
reproduction avail to this end, since they bring in absurdities without
end. To dare to affirm that Christ began to exist in the course
of time is the height of blasphemy.
68. ask me
whether it is possible that He Who is the Father should not be prior in
existence. I ask you to tell me when the Father existed, the Son
as yet being not; prove this, gather it from argument or evidence of
Scripture. If you lean upon arguments, you have doubtless been
taught that God’s power is eternal. Again, you have read
the Scripture that saith: “O Israel, if thou wilt hearken
unto Me, there shall be no new God in thee, neither shalt thou worship
a strange God.” The first
of these commands betokens [the Son’s] eternity, the second His
possession of an identical nature, so that we can neither believe Him
to have come into existence after the Father, nor suppose Him the Son
of another Divinity. For if He existed not always with the
Father, He is a “new” [God]; if He is not of one Divinity
with the Father, He is a “strange” [God]. But
He
is not after the
Father, for He is not “a new God;” nor is He “a
strange God,” for He is begotten of the Father, and because, as
it is written, He is “God above all, blessed for
ever.”
69. But if the Arians believe Him to be a strange
God, why do they worship Him, when it is written: “Thou
shalt worship no strange God”? Else, if they do not worship
the Son, let them confess thereto, and the case is at an
end,—that they deceive no one by their professions of
religion. This, then, we see, is the witness of the
Scriptures. If you have any others to produce, it will be your
business to do so.
70. Let us now go further, and gather the
truth in conclusion from arguments. For although arguments
usually give place, even to human evidence, still, heretic, argue as thou wilt. “Experience teaches us,” you say, “that the being which generates is prior to that which is generated.” I answer: Follow our customary experience through all its departments, and if the rest agree herewith, I oppose not your claim that your point be granted; but if there be no such agreement, how can you claim assent on this one point, when in all the rest you lack support? Seeing, then, that you call for what is customary, it comes about that the Son, when He was begotten of the Father, was a little child. You have seen Him an infant, crying in the cradle. As the years passed, He has gone forward from strength to strength—for if He was weak with the weakness of things begotten, He must also have fallen under the weakness, not only of birth, but of life also.
71. But perchance you run to such a pitch of folly
as not to flinch from asserting these things of the Son of God, measuring Him, as you do, by the rule of human infirmity. What, then, if, while you cannot refuse Him the name of God, you are bent to prove Him, by reason of weakness, to be a man? What if, whilst you examine the Person of the Son, you are calling the Father in question, and whilst you hastily pass sentence upon the Former, you include the Latter in the same condemnation!
72. If the Divine Generation has been subject to
the limits of time,—if we suppose this, borrowing from the custom
of human generation, then it follows, further, that the Father bare the
Son in a bodily womb, and laboured under the burden whilst ten months
sped their courses. But how can generation, as it commonly takes
place, be brought about without the help of the other sex? You
see that the common order of generation was not the commencement, and
you think that the courses of generation, which are ruled by certain
necessities whereunto bodies are subject, have always prevailed. You require the customary course, I ask for difference of sex: you demand the supposition of time, I that of order: you enquire into the end, I into the beginning. Now surely it is the end that depends on the beginning, not the beginning on the end.