9) But the heretics are ready to object to this with their fabulous inventions, saying: "Not in the sense in which the Son and the Father are one and similar to one another, in which the Church preaches, but in whatever sense pleases us." For they say: "Since what the Father wills, the Son wills the same, and does not contradict the Father both in commands and in judgments, but on the contrary, agrees with Him in all things, observing the identity of the commands and teaching a teaching in accordance with and closely connected with the teaching of the Father, then in this sense He and the Father are one essence." And this some of the heretics dared not only to speak, but also to write. But can anything be said more incongruous and unreasonable? For if for this reason the Son and the Father are one, and in this sense alone the Word is like the Father, it follows that the angels and other beings higher than us, principalities, powers, thrones, dominions, even visible creatures, 381 the sun, moon, and stars, like the Son, are also sons, and of them it must be said that they and the Father are one, and each of these creatures is the image of God and the Word of God. For what God wills, they also will, they do not disagree either in judgment or in commands, but in everything they are subject to the Creator. They would not remain in their glory if they themselves did not desire what the Father wants. And to him who did not abide in this agreement, but neglected it, it is said, "How does the dawn of the morning fall from heaven" (Isaiah 14:12)? In the same case, why is this one the only-begotten Son, and Word, and Wisdom? And why, with so many like the Father, is He one image? For even among men there will be found many like the Father, many martyrs, and before them were the apostles and prophets, and even before these the patriarchs. Many even now have kept the commandment of the Saviour, having become merciful, as the Father who is in heaven (Luke 6:36), and have kept what is said: "Be ye imitators of God, as a beloved child: and walk in love, as Christ also loved to eat us" (Ephesians 5:1-2). Many were made like Paul, as he was like Christ (1 Corinthians 4:16). Yet none of them is the Word, nor Wisdom, nor the only-begotten Son, nor the Image, and none of them dared to say: I and the Father are one, or: I am in the Father, and the Father in Me. On the contrary, it is said of all, Who is like unto thee in God, O Lord, Psalm 85:8? Or: who will be like the Lord in the sons of God (88:7)? It is also said of Him that the one Son is the true and by nature the image of the Father. If we also are created in the image, and are called the image and glory of God (1 Corinthians 11:7), then again we have this grace of calling, not in ourselves, but because the image of God dwells in us, and the true glory of God, that is, the Word of God, which for our sake was finally made flesh.

11) Since even such wisdom of heretics turns out to be indecent and unreasonable, it is necessary to attribute likeness and unity to the very essence of the Son. But if it is not understood in this sense, then it will turn out, according to what has been said, that the Son is in no way superior to creatures, and He will not be like the Father, but will be like the commands of the Father and will be different from the Father, because the Father is the Father, and the commands and teachings are the Father's. Therefore, if the Son is like the Father only in command and teaching, then according to their words the Father will be the Father only in name, and the Son will not be indistinct, or rather, will not have any property or likeness to the Father at all. For what likeness and attribute does he have who is different from the Father? And Paul, who teaches like the Saviour, is not like Him in essence. For this reason heretics, by reasoning in this way, are deceived.

The Son and the Father are one in the sense in which it is said. The Son is like the Father and from the Father Himself, as only one can understand and conceive of the Son in relation to the Father, as one can understand radiance in relation to the sun. Since this is the existence of the Son, when the Son does what the Father also does, and when the Son comes to the saints, he who comes in the Son is the Father, as He Himself declared, saying, "Let us come, and the Father, and we will make our abode with him" (John 14:23). For in the Image the Father is contemplated, in radiance dwells light. Therefore, as we said a little above, when the Father gives grace and peace, the Son also gives them, as Paul expresses it, writing in every epistle: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. For there is one and the same grace given from the Father in the Son, as there is one light in the sun and radiance, and the sun shines by means of radiance. Thus again, praying for the Thessalonians, and saying, "May God and our Father Himself and the Lord Jesus Christ straighten our way to you" (1 Thessalonians 3:11), Paul preserved the unity of the Father and the Son. For He did not say that they should correct it as a twofold grace given by two, but that it should be corrected, desiring to show that the Father gives grace through the Son. Wicked heretics, although they could feel ashamed, do not want to.

(12) If there were no unity, if the Word is not its own generation from the Father's essence, like radiance from light, and the Son is by nature far from the Father, then the Father alone would be sufficient to bestow grace without partaking of any of the creatures in what is given to the Creator. Now such a giving shows the unity of the Father and the Son. No one will pray for the reception of anything from the Father and from the angels or from any other creature, no one will say: God and the angel grant you, but asks of the Father and the Son because of unity and one giving. For what is given is given through the Son, and whatever the Father does, He does it all through the Son. Therefore he who receives has undoubted grace. And if the patriarch Jacob, blessing his grandsons Ephraim and Manasseh, said, "God who nourishes me unto this day, the angel who delivereth me from all evil, that he may bless these offspring" (Gen. 48:15-16), then to Him who created them he added not one of the created and by nature angels, nor from the angel, and asked the blessing of his grandsons, forsaking God who nourishes him, but saying, "Who delivereth me from all evils," showing that he is not a created angel, but the Word of God, to whom he prayed 384 together with the Father, and through whom God delivers whom he wills. Knowing that He was also called the Angel of the great counsel of the Father, He called Him, and not someone else, to bless and deliver from evil. He did not desire God to bless him, but the angel to bless his grandchildren, but Whom he himself called, saying, "I will not let Thee go unless thou bless me" (32:26), and this was God, as Jacob himself says, "I saw God face to face" (v. 30), and he begged the same to bless the sons of Joseph. It is in the nature of an angel to serve God's command, and many times an angel precedes the people of God to drive out Amorite and is sent to guard the people on the way, but this is not his doing, but God who commanded him and sent him, Who alone can deliver whom He wills to deliver. Why did the Lord God Himself say to Jacob, "Behold, I am with thee, keep thee in every way; And if thou goest (28:15), again it was God who appeared to prevent Laban's wickedness, commanding Laban not to speak evil against Jacob (31:24), and Jacob himself called upon God to do no other, but to God, saying, "Deliver me from the hand of my brother Esau, for I fear him" (32:11), and conversing with the women, he said, "God will not allow Laban to do me evil" (31:7).

(13) For this reason David also besought God for deliverance: "To Thee, O Lord, I have cried out in sorrow, and Thou hast heard me." O Lord, deliver my soul from the walls of the unrighteous, and from the tongue of the flatterer (Psalm 119:1-2). To him he wrote thanksgiving, saying the words of the song in the seventeenth Psalm on the day, in which the Lord delivered him out of the hand of all his enemies, and out of the hand of Saul, and said, "I will love thee, O Lord, my strength, the Lord my strength, and my refuge, and my deliverer" (Psalm 17:1-3). And 385 Paul, having endured many persecutions, gave thanks to none other than God, saying, "The Lord has delivered me from all things, and will deliver me, in whom I trust" (2 Corinthians 1:10). None other than God blessed Abraham and Isaac. And Isaac, praying for Jacob, said, May my God bless thee, and increase thee, and multiply thee: and thou shalt be in the congregation of tongues. And may Abraham my father give thee the blessing (Genesis 28:3-4). If, however, to bless and deliver belongs to no one else, but to God, and the one who delivered Jacob was none other than the Lord Himself, and the patriarch called upon the grandchildren of Him who delivered him, then it is evident that in prayer he did not unite anyone else to God, but His Word, Which for this reason he also called an angel, because He alone reveals the Father to us.

The Apostle did the same, saying, "Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ." For in this case the blessing was also reliable because of the inseparability of the Son from the Father, and because the grace bestowed is one and the same. Though the Father gives, it is given through the Son. Although the Son is called the giver, yet through the Son and in the Son the Father gives. I thank my God, says the Apostle in his Epistle to the Corinthians, always for you, for the grace of God given to you in Christ Jesus (1 Corinthians 1:4). The same thing can be seen in light and radiance. What illuminates the light illuminates the radiance, and what illuminates the radiance, that is, the illumination of the light itself. In the same way, when we see the Son, we also see the Father, because the Son is the Father's radiance. And thus the Father and the Son are one.

(14) But no one can say this about created things and creatures. When the Father does, none of the angels or any other creature does the same, none of the creatures is a creative cause, but they are all among the created. Moreover, they are separated and far from the One, they are different from Him by nature, and being themselves works, they cannot do what God does, they cannot, as I said before, give gifts when God bestows. Looking at the angel, no one will say that he has seen the Father. For the angels, as it is written, are the ministers of the spirits that are sent out to serve (Hebrews 1:14), and they proclaim the gifts given from God by the Word to those who receive. And the angel himself confesses of himself that he was sent by the Lord: thus, Gabriel himself confessed this to Zacharias and to the Theotokos Mary. Whoever sees the appearance of angels knows that he sees an angel, and not God. Zechariah saw the angel, and Isaiah saw the Lord. Manoe, the father of the Sampsons, saw an angel, and Moses saw God. Gideon saw an angel, and God appeared to Abraham. And whoever saw God did not say that he saw an angel, and whoever saw an angel did not think that he saw God. For there are many, or rather, completely different in nature between created beings and the God who created them.

But if sometimes at the appearance of the angel the seer heard the voice of God, as it was at the bush, for the angel of the Lord appeared in a flame of fire from the bush, and the Lord called to Moses out of the bush, saying, I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob (Exodus 3:2, 4, 6), then the angel was not the God of Abraham, but in the angel was the God who spoke, and although we see that there was an angel, God spoke in him. For as God spoke to Moses in the Tabernacle in the pillar of cloud, so also in the angels He appears to speak. Thus also did He speak to Nun through the angel.

But what God says, as we know, He speaks through the Word, and not through someone else. And what the Word, Who is inseparable from the Father, who is not unlike 387 and is not alien to the Father's essence, does, is the work of the Father, and the Word is one with the Father. And what the Son gives, that is, the Father's giving. And whoever has seen the Son knows that he has seen Him, not an angel, nor a being higher than the angels, nor any creature, but the Father Himself. And whoever hears the Word knows that he hears the Father, just as he who is illumined by radiance knows that he is illuminated by the sun.

(15) And the Divine Scriptures, desiring that we should understand this, have presented to us, as we have said before, such likenesses as could both shame the traitors to the Jews, and repel the accusation of the Greeks, when they say and think that in the doctrine of the Trinity we also recognize many gods. For, as the similitudes themselves show, we do not introduce three principles or three fathers, as the followers of Marcion and Manichaeus did. We do not represent the image of the three suns, but the sun and radiance, and one light from the sun in radiance. Thus we know the one principle, and we say that the founding Word has no other image of the Godhead, but the Divinity of the One God, because it is born of God.

For this reason the Arians can be much more justly accused of polytheism or godlessness, because they say that the Son is a creature from without, and also the Spirit from nothing. For they say that the Word is not God, or by calling Him God, because of what is written, but not properly belonging to the Father's essence, because of the heterogeneity of the Father and the Son, they introduce many gods, unless they dare to assert that the Word is also called God by communion, in what sense everything can be so called. But even thinking in this way, they are equally dishonored, saying that the Word is one of all creatures. And it would never have occurred to us! For there is one kind of Godhead, which is also in the Word, and one 388 God is the Self-existent Father, because He is over all things (Romans 9:5), who appears in the Son, because He sees through all things (Wis 7:24), and in the Spirit, because He works for Him in all through the Word. Thus, in confessing the Trinity, we confess the One God, and we reason about God much more piously than the heretics, who acknowledge the multiform and many-partite Divinity, because we recognize the one Divinity in the Trinity.

(16) For if it is not so, on the contrary, that the Word of non-beings is a creature and a product, then either He is not the true God, because He is one of the creatures, or if the heretics, ashamed of the Scriptures, call Him God, then they must of necessity call Him two gods, one Creator, and the other created, and serve two masters: one Uncreated, and the other created and creatures, to have two faiths: one in the true God, and the other in the created one, invented by them and called God. And being blind in this way, they must of necessity, when they worship the Uncreated, despise the created, and when they approach the creature, turn away from the Creator. For it is impossible to see one in the other, because their natures and actions are alien and different from each other. And those who think in this way necessarily unite many gods into one, to this leads the undertaking of those who fall away from the One God.

Why then do the Arians, reasoning and imagining in this way, not count themselves among the pagans? For both they and they serve the creature more than God, Who created all things. Though they avoid being called pagans in order to deceive the foolish, yet they secretly contain a thought similar to that of the pagans. For this wise saying, which they usually use, "We do not name two uncreated," seems to be used to deceive the simple-minded. When we say, "We do not name two uncreated," they call two gods, and gods who have different natures: one having a created nature, and the other having an uncreated nature. If the pagans serve one Uncreated and many created, and they serve one Uncreated and one created, then even in this case they do not differ from the Gentiles, because the one they call created is one of many created, and also many pagan gods have the same nature with this one, and this one and these are creatures. The heretics are pitiful, all the more so since they harm themselves by philosophizing against Christ; they have fallen away from the truth and, denying Christ, have surpassed the Jews in betrayal, and these God-haters sink along with the pagans, serving the creature and various gods.

One is God, and not many, and one is the Word of God, and not many. God is the Word. It alone has the Father's vision. Being a vision, the Saviour Himself puts the Jews to shame, saying: "The Father who sent Me, He bears witness to Me." Nor have you heard His voice anywhere, nor seen His vision: and His word dwelleth not in you, but His messenger, Whom ye have no faith in" (John 5:37-38). He beautifully added a vision to the Word, showing that the Word of God Himself is the image and image and vision of His Father, and that the Jews, who did not receive Him who spoke this, did not receive the Word, that is, God's vision. It was this vision that the patriarch Jacob saw, was blessed, and instead of Jacob he was called Israel by Him, as the Divine Scripture testifies, saying: "And the sun shone forth unto him, when the form of God shall pass away" (Gen. 32:31). But this form was He Who says: He who has seen Me is in the form of the Father, and I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me 390, and I and the Father are one. Thus, there is one God, and one faith in the Father and the Son. And since the Word is God, then again the Lord our God the Lord is one (Deuteronomy 6:4), because He is the Own and Indivisible Son of the One in nature and affinity of essence.