De Ratione Fidei

FAUSTUS THE BISHOP: ON THE REASON FOR THE FAITH. What is to be answered to those who, reading in the Gospel, understand it thus: “The Father is greater than I,” so that they blasphemously assert that the Son is lesser in divinity? Response. According to the authority of all the Scriptures, there are two nativities in Christ: one from the Father, knowing no beginning, because we read: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” and that which was in the beginning contains within itself every beginning. The other, from the mother, took a beginning, as we read through Isaiah: “Behold, a virgin will conceive in her womb and will bear a son, and they will call his name Emmanuel,” which is interpreted: “God with us,” that is, majesty hidden in human frailty, as we read in the Evangelist John: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us”: “among us,” that is, in the frailty of our body. Likewise concerning the generation from the Virgin Mary: “And the door was closed and was not opened,” as if one were to ask why it was not opened, he added: “Because the Lord passed through it.” The closed door, that is, the seal of modesty, the integrity of immaculate flesh. For she was not violated by the birth, she who was rather sanctified by the conception.

Again concerning the double substance of Christ, both divine and human: "And they will be two in one flesh," that is, God and man, one Christ, which the apostle commanded to be understood concerning Christ and the Church, that is, concerning the body of Christ, as he says: "And they will be two in one flesh." I, however, say this concerning Christ and concerning the Church. This he clearly expounded in Romans: "Our fathers, from whom Christ according to the flesh," he asserted the flesh of man, and consequently asserts the parts of God, saying: "Who is God blessed above all things forever." So perfect is the eminence of the Son declared here that greater things cannot be said of the Father. For if he had a beginning, he would not be above all things, but among all things, which by the condition of creation are contained within a beginning. But Christ, because he is equal to the Father, is confined by no law of time, no law of age. Evidently, the apostle also preaches two nativities and two substances of Christ to the Philippians, saying: "He who, when he was in the form of God, took on the form of a servant." With these rules the volumes of the New and Old Testament are filled. Similarly, the eminent prophet Job also preaches: "And in my flesh I will see God." This he prophesied concerning that time when the divinity of Christ was clothed in the habit of our flesh.

Because, as we said above, the Word became flesh and it is established that there are two, man and God, in one flesh, now he speaks to the Father as man, now as God, now visible from his mother, now invisible from his Father. Give the words of the man. He himself says in the Gospel: "The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head." Let this poor Son of Man here display his riches in the glory of his divinity: "Everything," he says, "that the Father has is mine." When he says "everything," he has left nothing here that he would have less from the Father. "Everything," that is, the power, substance, and majesty of the one deity. Who would not tremble to call him lesser, who declares himself equal to the Father generally and in all things as a truthful witness, just as the Evangelist proclaims concerning him: "Therefore the Jews did not want to kill him, because he called God his Father, making himself equal to God," and to the Philippians: "He did not consider it a usurpation to be equal to God," that is, the equality of divinity, which the rebellious angel wished to assume by usurpation, Christ possesses by nature.

Therefore, when you believe him when he says he is lesser in the substance of man, believe him when he professes himself equal in the substance of divinity. Let the Son of man speak: "Father," he says, "is greater than I"; let the Son of God speak: "I and the Father are one." As man he hungers; as God he satisfies five thousand of the hungry with five loaves through the service of his creature. As man he hangs on the cross; as God he leads the thief from the cross into paradise by deeds that speak throughout the whole world, saying: "Truly I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise." At the time when the Lord's body was in the tomb, his soul was in hell, his divinity in paradise and in heaven, everywhere encompassing all things within itself by the overwhelming immensity of his majesty. According to his humanity he is called lesser when he is seized, scourged, crucified, dies, and is buried; according to his divinity, exalted into the heavens by the power of the resurrection, as man he undergoes death, as God he is above death. According to this rule, he is at one time poor, at another rich, at one time lesser, at another equal, at one time lord, at another servant.

Then, therefore, let him be believed lesser than the Father when the creator of angels is diminished a little less than the angels, as we read in the eighth psalm: "You have diminished him a little less than the angels." Then, therefore, let him be called lesser than the Father when he is recorded to have taken on the form of a servant, when he is found younger even than his mother, when in the twenty-first psalm he says of himself: "They have dug through my hands and my feet, they have numbered all my bones." That he is called lesser than the Father according to the flesh and according to man is declared by countless testimonies of the Scriptures. Concerning his divinity, the apostle says thus to Titus: "The grace of our God and Savior has appeared," and again: "Beholding the blessed hope and the coming of the glory of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ." It is an immense impiety that he should be said to be lesser through the blasphemies of unbelieving men, whom the truth itself professes to be the great God. For the apostle Thomas in the Gospel of John, where after the resurrection he recognized the body of the crucified man by the marks of the nails, confessed with apostolic and evangelical authority the God who lay hidden within the man, saying thus: "My Lord and my God." If faith is present, the reason is clear by which Christ is asserted in the sacred volumes now lesser, now equal to the Father, just as he says of himself: "I am the first and the last." Acknowledge without doubt that he who is first cannot have a predecessor.

I am, and just as no letter precedes the first, so the Son of God is manifestly second to none, because he is God. II. What shall we answer to those who say that the Holy Spirit is a lesser God, or—what is more wicked—who with abject impiety declare Him to be a minister rather than a God? Response. How shall He be called a creature, who is proved to be the creator of the Lord from Mary, as we read: conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary? For Christ was conceived not from the substance of the Holy Spirit, but from His power; not from generation, but by command and blessing. And just as from the Father, so also from the Holy Spirit He was sent for the redemption of our wickedness, as He Himself says of Himself through Isaiah: "The Father and His Spirit sent me." If the Holy Spirit is believed to be lesser, how does the Son testify that He was sent by the Holy Spirit just as by the Father? The Holy Spirit Himself spoke in the apostles, Himself burned in the prophets, as the blessed apostle Peter says in his epistle: "Prophecy," he says, "was not brought by men, but holy men of God spoke inspired by the Holy Spirit." And the Savior in Matthew says thus to His disciples: "It is not you," he says, "who speak, but the Holy Spirit." Similarly, David, full of the Holy Spirit, and He who spoke through him, declares with a clear voice, saying: "Let me hear what the Lord God says in me.

When, therefore, the vessels of God speak, drunk with the Holy Spirit, and say: “Thus says the Lord God” or “The Lord God of gods has spoken,” it is manifest that this Lord God is the Holy Spirit. And to the Corinthians he clearly shows that the Holy Spirit is God, when he says: “You are the temple of God.” And who this God was, he subsequently taught by saying: “The Holy Spirit,” he says, “dwells in you.” Therefore the God of the temple and the Holy Spirit, the dweller of the temple, are one person. And in the Acts of the Apostles, Peter clearly speaks of the divinity of the Holy Spirit to Ananias thus: “Who compelled you to lie to the Holy Spirit? You have not,” he says, “lied to men, but to God.” What could be more evident? Behold, he is recorded as having promised a vow to God, and is convicted of lying to the Holy Spirit. If the Holy Spirit were not God, the injury of sacrilegious falsehood would by no means have reached him. Likewise, there is the voice of the apostle to the Corinthians: “Do you not know that your members are the temple of the Holy Spirit? Glorify and carry God in your body.” They are commanded to carry that God, of whom they are said to be temples.

III. What shall we answer to those who say: the Father cannot but be prior, because he is named first in baptism? Response. The Holy Spirit also is first, without whom having named the first does not suffice. For he who is one and alone in the substance of the three admits neither number nor order. IV. What shall we answer to those who blaspheme with impious mouth, saying: the Holy Spirit is not God because he has done nothing as God? Response. Let us see whether nothing of divinity appears in his works. In the first place, the remission of sins is not granted unless the Holy Spirit is invoked. And because sins are not forgiven without the Holy Spirit, we should know that it has been stated most plainly also concerning him: No one, it says, can forgive sins except the one God. Therefore, whom you see as the restorer of man, do not doubt that he is the author of man. He himself first made man without sin, who in the second instance, together with the Father and the Son, absolves man from the bond of sin as regenerator. See how the apostle, in the epistle to the Corinthians, celebrates the works and powers of the Holy Spirit, saying thus: To one is given through the Spirit a word of wisdom, to another a word of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith in the same Spirit, to another the grace of healings in the one Spirit, to another kinds of tongues, the working of miracles, to another prophecy. All these things one and the same Spirit works, distributing to each as he wills.

And how do we say that he is a minister, who has exercised the miracles of such great charisms by the judgment of his own will and by the right of dominion? concerning whom we read under the distinction of the Trinity through the prophet: "the heavens were strengthened by the word of the Lord, and all their power by the spirit of his mouth." The prophet said "by the spirit of his mouth," not "of his work," so that you might know that he proceeded as from the substance of the Father. And therefore he says: "the Spirit, who proceeds from the Father." "All their power by the spirit of his mouth": the powers of the heavens, that is, the angels, dominations, thrones, and principalities, truth speaks of as having been created through the Father and the Son and also through the Holy Spirit. Therefore, you will not call a creature, without monstrous sacrilege, him whom you perceive to be the creator of the whole heavenly host. According to these things, in the property and number of three persons, recognize one power, one glory, one nature, lest with the Jews and Patripassians you deny the Son or the Holy Spirit without three persons, or without one substance you be proven to believe in three gods with the Gentiles.