Ad Armenium Epistola 'De Ratione Fidei'

In the year of the Lord 552, Agnellus, bishop of Ravenna. The letter of Agnellus to Armenius, on the rule of faith. Brother Martin has required that a letter be sent to your charity, asserting that your solicitude seeks the comfort of the defense of the catholic faith, which some have disturbed with various assertions. But when that disturbance has been brought together, all the filth is cast out; and that which has been purified is preserved. Before all things, therefore, it is necessary to believe God, that he is (Heb. 11:6); secondly, what God is. Why this? because the fool has said in his heart: There is no God (Ps. 13:1). Therefore he who is not a fool does not say this, but says: I believe in God. If anyone should say to you: What is the God you believe in? it is to be answered: This is God who cries out in Deuteronomy: See, see that I am God, and there is no other besides me (Deut. 32:39). Likewise when Moses asked whom he called that, he answered: I am who I am; and you will say to those to whom I send you: He who is, has sent me (Exod. 3:14): that is, immutable, and always the same: not only God yesterday, but today God and Father; but he was always God and Father, and there was always one of whom he was Father. For if it had accrued to him that he be Father, he would have suffered violence, so as to begin to be what he was not. But it is blasphemous to think thus.

But someone says: He did not suffer compulsion, but of his own will he begot the Son; because if he had not willed, he would not have begotten him. In response to this, it must be demanded that he say: When he willed to generate the Son, did he have the power of generating, and the wisdom of willing this very thing? If he says: He did not have it, he refutes the blasphemer; if he says: He had it, he obtains the victory. For the Son, as the Apostle says, is the power and wisdom of God the Father (1 Cor. 1:24). For he who says: He did not have power, blasphemes; he who says: He did not have wisdom, blasphemes. Why is this? Because in the beginning of his book Arius says: There was a time when God existed, when the Father did not exist, so that he might seem to introduce the Son as lesser in honor of the Father. Therefore he blasphemes the Father in many ways: first of all, because it cannot stand that it be said: He who sent me, because it can no longer be said: He who is, who yesterday was one thing, and today is another. Therefore if he is not another today, nor another tomorrow, and always remains immutable. Therefore the Father always existed, and there always existed one of whom he was Father. Then, even if one grants him this very point, that he begot by will, the Catholic can compel him either to say that before he willed to generate the Son, he did not will, and therefore did not beget; or that he willed and was not able. If he did not will, it is good that he did not will. But if he willed, it is blasphemous to say: There was a time when God willed the good and was not able; it is blasphemous to say that God at some time willed and was not able.

At this point Arius, though defeated, still holds to the Catholic position: Did he truly beget, or putatively? The Catholic answers: He truly begot. The heretic responds: If he truly begot, before he begot, that one whom he begot did not exist. To this it must be answered: There are many things in human frailty which arise from that very agility such that the begetter and the begotten begin simultaneously. For a human voice gives birth to speech, and speech is nothing other than the son of the voice. Now, because speech is the son of the voice, is speech therefore to be called lesser because it is the son of the voice? This cannot be said at all. Why? Because from the moment the voice exists, from that moment speech also exists. Add to speech itself efficacy, and you have completed the third person, which remains utterly indivisible. Thus the voice, having emerged, produces speech, and speech, having emerged, begets efficacy. For example, a command is given through the voice: Let that man be made consul, or let him be stripped, or let him be killed, or let him be freed from danger. Behold, the voice has given birth to the word, but the word has not given birth to efficacy; rather, from the voice and the word themselves, the power having emerged has made one man consul and killed another. And therefore from the Father comes the Son; from the Father and the Son proceeds the Holy Spirit. Nor, as some say, does God have two Sons, Christ and the Holy Spirit; but he has an invisible Son, just as he himself is invisible; who, in order to be visible, assumed the body of our frailty—not that he ceased to be invisible, but so that in Christ himself he would remain invisible to unbelievers.

For when he says: "Blessed are the eyes that see what you see" (Luke 10:25), therefore all the Jews were blind, and those who crucified him, concerning whom David says: "But they indeed looked upon me and beheld me" (Psalm 21:18). You see, therefore, that he remains invisible, and is perceived by a pure and believing mind. Therefore, if the Father is invisible, the Son is invisible, the Holy Spirit is invisible. And to return to the point from which we began, so that we may teach this concerning frail man: These three are invisible and undivided, and conglobated into one, and overflowing with the efficacy of power, that is, the mother-voice of the word; from the word, indeed, together with the voice, proceeding efficacy which makes one man become consul, another be slain. Tell me, Arian, are these three one, or not? If they are not one, separate the voice from the word, and the efficacy from the voice and the word. But if in frail man these three are so one—voice, word, and efficacy—that they are indeed three persons, but one power of subsistence: in the frailest man, as we have said, if this is such great power, how much more in the omnipotence of God is it so, that the Father is the omnipotent begetter of the Son, and from the Father and the Son proceeds the power, which is the Holy Spirit? Perhaps frail man can have this; can omnipotent God not have this?

Thus far reason has been at work; now let authority be at work. The Apostle Paul posited two forms, such as he set forth in the Father and the Son, to express equality. For he speaks thus of the Son: "Who, though he was in the form of God, did not think it robbery to be equal to God, but emptied himself, taking on the form of a servant" (Phil. 2:6-7). Do you see form and equality declared by apostolic authority? But the Arian objects and says: "Like it or not, you cannot deny what the Lord himself says: 'The Father is greater than I' (John 14:28)." To this it must be answered what the Apostle said: "Though he was in the form of God, he did not think it robbery to be equal to God, but emptied himself, taking on the form of a servant." In this servile form, indeed, he is lesser; but that form remains intact in which he did not think it robbery to be equal to God. And thus it comes about that I, with you, may call God lesser in the assumption of humanity; and you, with me, may not deny that, with that form preserved, he could not cease to be equal to God the Father.

It remains to ask the heretic this: when the Son had taken on the form of a servant and had come into the world, did he leave the Father? To this it must be answered: If a little word that has gone out of my mouth and entered your ear, and through your ear has begun to dwell in your heart—tell me, is it not still in my heart because it dwells in your breast? If, therefore, a word, having gone out through my mouth and entered your mind, does not abandon my soul, how much more could the Word, having gone out from God the Father, not abandon the Father’s breast? For the Son himself says: “I came forth from the heart of the Father” (Ecclus. 24:25). And the Father says: “I have belched forth my good word” (Ps. 44:2). Again, they object from another quarter: He went elsewhere, that is, he truly came from heaven to earth; how could it happen that he did not withdraw from the Father’s bosom? To this it is said (Gen. 2:10): Consider the four rivers that go out from one source of paradise. The Father, therefore, is the source of the four rivers; and although they go around the whole earth, they do not withdraw from the bosom of their father, that is, from that source which is in paradise. Or, if you can, separate the source from the river. But if you cannot do this, cease to separate the Son from the Father, since you cannot do this with the element of water by any reasoning whatsoever. Again, the heretic will argue with you about passibility: whether God was there when the Lord suffered. If you say that God, undivided, suffered at the same time, you fall into Patripassianism. If you deny that the divinity was there at the same time, you commit heresy.

Since, therefore, you do not deny that God was on the cross at the same time in Christ reconciling the world (2 Cor. 5:19), you are compelled to teach whether God was crucified at the same time. To this you will bring forward that He Himself received the first blows, but remained impassible. For the splendor of the sun, remaining in the tree, at the time when the tree is cut, receives the first stroke of the axe; but remaining impassible, it continues whole; the tree, however, is cut. If, then, a creature of light possesses this power, that while it is struck in the wood together with the wood, it abandons the wood to suffering, but itself escapes injury: how much more will the Creator Himself, the omnipotent, true light, remain impassible in Christ?