Four Discourses Against the Arians

⁶⁵ Moreover, if they say that the Son is by will, they should say also that He came to be by understanding; for I consider understanding and will to be the same. For what a man counsels, about that also he has understanding; and what he has in understanding, that also he counsels. Certainly the Saviour Himself has made them correspond, as being cognate, when He says, 'Counsel is mine and security; mine is understanding, and mine strength.' For as strength and security are the same (for they mean one attribute), so we may say that Understanding and Counsel are the same, which is the Lord. But these irreligious men are unwilling that the Son should be Word and Living Counsel; but they fable that there is with God, as if a habit, coming and going, after the manner of men, understanding, counsel, wisdom; and they leave nothing undone, and they put forward the 'Thought' and 'Will' of Valentinus, so that they may but separate the Son from the Father, and may call Him a creature instead of the proper Word of the Father. To them then must be said what was said to Simon Magus; 'the irreligion of Valentinus perish with you;' and let every one rather trust to Solomon, who says, that the Word is Wisdom and Understanding. For he says, 'The Lord by Wisdom founded the earth, by Understanding He established the heavens.' And as here by Understanding, so in the Psalms, 'By the Word of the Lord were the heavens made.' And as by the Word the heavens, so 'He has done whatsoever pleased Him.' And as the Apostle writes to Thessalonians, 'the will of God is in Christ Jesus. ' The Son of God then, He is the 'Word' and the 'Wisdom;' He the 'Understanding' and the Living 'Counsel;' and in Him is the 'Good Pleasure of the Father.' He is 'Truth' and 'Light' and 'Power' of the Father. But if the Will of God is Wisdom and Understanding, and the Son is Wisdom, he who says that the Son is 'by will,' says virtually that Wisdom has come into being in wisdom, and the Son is made in a son, and the Word created through the Word; which is incompatible with God and is opposed to His Scriptures. For the Apostle proclaims the Son to be the own Radiance and Expression, not of the Father's will, but of His Essence Itself, saying, 'Who being the Radiance of His glory and the Expression of His Subsistence.' But if, as we have said before, the Father's Essence and Subsistence be not from will, neither, as is very plain, is what is proper to the Father's Subsistence from will; for such as, and so as, that Blessed Subsistence, must also be the proper Offspring from It. And accordingly the Father Himself said not, 'This is the Son originated at My will,' nor 'the Son whom I have by My favour,' but simply 'My Son,' and more than that, 'in whom I am well pleased;' meaning by this, This is the Son by nature; and 'in Him is lodged My will about what pleases Me.'

66. Since then the Son is by nature and not by will, is He without the pleasure of the Father and not with the Father's will? No, verily; but the Son is with the pleasure of the Father, and, as He says Himself, 'The Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things. ' For as not 'from will?' did He begin to be good, nor yet is good without will and pleasure (for what He is, that also is His pleasure), so also that the Son should be, though it came not 'from will,' yet it is not without His pleasure or against His purpose. For as His own Subsistence is by His pleasure, so also the Son, being proper to His Essence, is not without His pleasure. Be then the Son the object of the Father's pleasure and love; and thus let every one religiously account of the pleasure and the not-unwillingness of God. For by that good pleasure wherewith the Son is the object of the Father's pleasure, is the Father the object of the Son's love, pleasure, and honour; and one is the good pleasure which is from Father in Son, so that here too we may contemplate the Son in the Father and the Father in the Son. Let no one then, with Valentinus, introduce a precedent will; nor let any one, by this pretence of 'counsel,' intrude between the Only Father and the Only Word; for it were madness to place will and consideration between them. For it is one thing to say, 'Of will He came to be,' and another, that the Father has love and good pleasure towards His Son who is His own by nature. For to say, 'Of will He came to be,' in the first place implies that once He was not; and next it implies an inclination two ways, as has been said, so that one might suppose that the Father could even not will the Son. But to say of the Son, 'He might not have been,' is an irreligious presumption reaching even to the Essence of the Father, as if what is His own might not have been. For it is the same as saying, 'The Father might not have been good.' And as the Father is always good by nature, so He is always generative by nature; and to say, 'The Father's good pleasure is the Son,' and 'The Word's good pleasure is the Father,' implies, not a precedent will, but genuineness of nature, and propriety and likeness of Essence. For as in the case of the radiance and light one might say, that there is no will preceding radiance in the light, but it is its natural offspring, at the pleasure of the light which begot it, not by will and consideration, but in nature and truth, so also in the instance of the Father and the Son, one might rightly say, that the Father has love and good pleasure towards the Son, and the Son has love and good pleasure towards the Father.