On the Christian Faith (De fide)

¹³² I would now go further. If our opponents are pleased to apply the teaching of this passage to the principle of the eternity of the Divine Substance, let them hear a third exposition: Does not our Lord plainly appear to say that as the Father is a living Father, so too the Son also lives?— and who can but observe that here we must understand a reference to unity of Life, forasmuch as the same Life is the Life of the Father and the Life of the Son? “For as the Father has Life in Himself, so has He given to the Son also to have Life in Himself.” He has given— by reason of unity with Him. He has given, not to take away, but that He may be glorified in the Son. He has given, not that He, the Father, might keep guard over it, but that the Son might have it in possession.

133. But the Arians think that they must oppose hereto the fact that He had said, “I live by the Father.” Of a certainty (suppose that they conceive the words as referring to His Godhead) the Son lives by the Father, because He is the Son begotten of the Father—by the Father, because He is of one Substance with the Father—by the Father, because He is the Word given forth from the heart of the Father, because He came forth from the Father, because He is begotten of the “bowels of the Father,” because the Father is the Fountain and Root of the Son's being.

134. But perhaps they may urge: “If you hold that the Son, in saying, 'And I live by the Father,' spoke of the unity of life subsisting between the Father and the Son, does it not follow that He discovered the unity of life between the Son and mankind in saying that 'he that eats Me, the same lives by Me'?”

135. Even so. Just as I confess the unity of celestial Life subsisting in Father and Son by reason of the unity of the substance of the Godhead, so too, save as concerns the prerogatives of the Divine Nature or those which are the effect of the Incarnation of our Lord, I affirm of the Son a participation of spiritual life with us by virtue of the unity of His Manhood with ours, for “as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly.” Further, even as in Him we sit at the right hand of the Father, not in the sense that we share His throne, but that we rest in the Body of Christ— even as, I say, we have part in Christ's session by reason of corporal unity, so too we live in Christ by reason of unity of our bodies with His Body.

136. Not only, then, have I no fears of the text, “I live by the Father,” but I should have none, even though Christ had said, “I live by help of the Father.”

137. Now another objection commonly urged by them starts from the text: “This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, to the end that His Son may be glorified by Him.” But not only is the Son glorified through the Father and by the Father, as it is written: “Glorify Me, Father;” and again: “Now has the Son of Man been glorified, and God has been glorified in Him, and God glorifies Him,” but the Father also is glorified through the Son and by the Son, for Truth has said: “I have glorified You upon earth.”

138. Even as the Son, therefore, is glorified through the Father, so too He lives by the Father. There are some who have been led by consideration of these words to the supposition that [the Greek] “δόξα” means “opinion, belief,” rather than “glory,” and therefore have interpreted as follows: “I have given you a δόξα upon earth, I have finished the work which You gave Me to do, and now, O Father, give me a δόξα;” that is to say: “I have taught men so to believe concerning You, as to know that You are the true God; do Thou also establish in them, concerning Me, the belief that I am Your Son, and very God.”