40. Thus God is in God, and it is God in Whom God dwells. But how is There is no God beside Thee true, if God be within Him? Heretic! In support of your confession of a solitary Father you employ the words, There is no God beside Me; what sense can you assign to the solemn declaration of God the Father, There is no God beside Thee, if your explanation of There is no God beside Me be a denial of the Godhead of the Son? To whom, in that case, can God have said, There is no God beside Thee? You cannot suggest that this solitary Being said it to Himself. It was to the King Whom He summoned that the Lord said, by the mouth of the men of stature who worshipped and made supplication, For God is in Thee. The facts are inconsistent with solitude. In Thee implies that there was One present within range, if I may say so, of the Speaker's voice. The complete sentence, God is in Thee, reveals not only God present, but also God abiding in Him Who is present. The words distinguish the Indweller from Him in Whom He dwells, but it is a distinction of Person only, not of character. God is in Him, and He, in Whom God is, is God. The residence of God cannot be within a nature strange and alien to His own. He abides in One Who is His own, born from Himself. God is in God, because God is from God. For Thou art God, and we knew it not, O God of Israel, the Saviour.
41. My next book is devoted to the refutation of your denial that God is in God; for the prophet continues, All that resist Him shall be ashamed and confounded and shall walk in confusion. This is God's sentence, passed upon your unbelief. You set yourself in opposition to Christ, and it is on His account that the Father's voice is raised in solemn reproof; for He, Whose Godhead you deny, is God. And you deny it under cloak of reverence for God, because He says, There is no other God beside Me. Submit to shame and confusion; the Unoriginate God has no need of the dignity you offer; He has never asked for this majesty of isolation which you attribute to Him. He repudiates your officious interpretation which would twist His words, There is no other God beside Me, into a denial of the Godhead of the Son Whom He begot from Himself. To frustrate your purpose of demolishing the Divinity of the Son by assigning the Godhead in some special sense to Himself, He rounds off the glories of the Only-begotten by the attribution of absolute Divinity:--And there is no God beside Thee. Why make distinctions between exact equivalents? Why separate what is perfectly matched? It is the peculiar characteristic of the Son of God that there is no God beside Him; the peculiar characteristic of God the Father that there is no God apart from Him. Use His words concerning Himself; confess Him in His own terms, and entreat Him as King; For God is in Thee, and there is no God beside Thee. For Thou art God, and we knew it not, O God of Israel, the Saviour. A confession couched in words so reverent is free from the taint of presumption: its terms can excite no repugnance. Above all, we must remember that to refuse it means shame and ignominy. Brood in thought over these words of God; employ them in your confession of Him, and so escape the threatened shame. For if you deny the Divinity of the Son of God, you will not be augmenting the glory of God by adoring Him in lonely majesty; you will be slighting the Father by refusing to reverence the Son. In faith and veneration confess of the Unoriginate God that there is no God beside Him; claim for God the Only-begotten that apart from Him there is no God.
42. As you have listened already to Moses and Isaiah, so listen now to Jeremiah inculcating the same truth as they:--This is our God, and there shall be none other likened unto Him, Who hath found out all the way of knowledge, and hath given it unto Jacob His servant and to Israel His beloved. Afterward did He shew Himself upon earth and dwelt among men [738] . For previously he had said, And He is Man, and Who shall know Him [739] ? Thus you have God seen on earth and dwelling among men. Now I ask you what sense you would assign to No one hath seen God at any time, save the Only-begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father [740] , when Jeremiah proclaims God seen on earth and dwelling among men? The Father confessedly cannot be seen except by the Son; Who then is This who was seen and dwelt among men? He must be our God, for He is God visible in human form, Whom men can handle. And take to heart the prophet's words, There shall be none other likened to Him. If you ask how this can be, listen to the remainder of the sentence, lest you be tempted to deny to the Father His share of the confession. Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is One. The whole passage is, There shall be none likened unto Him, Who hath found out all the way of knowledge, and hath given it unto Jacob His servant and to Israel His beloved. Afterward did He shew Himself upon earth and dwelt among men. For there is one Mediator between God and Men, Who is both God and Man; Mediator both in giving of the Law and in taking of our body. Therefore none other can be likened unto Him, for He is One, born from God into God, and He it was through Whom all things were created in heaven and earth, through Whom times and worlds were made. Everything, in fine, that exists owes its existence to His action. He it is that instructs Abraham, that speaks with Moses, that testifies to Israel, that abides in the prophets, that was born through the Virgin from the Holy Ghost, that nails to the cross of His passion the powers that are our foes, that slays death in hell, that strengthens the assurance of our hope by His Resurrection, that destroys the corruption of human flesh by the glory of His Body. Therefore none shall be likened unto Him. For these are the peculiar powers of God the Only-begotten; He alone was born from God, the blissful Possessor of such great prerogatives. No second god can be likened unto Him, for He is God from God, not born from any alien being. There is nothing new or strange or modern created in Him. When Israel hears that its God is one, and that no second god is likened, that men may deem him God, to God Who is God's Son, the revelation means that God the Father and God the Son are One altogether, not by confusion of Person but by unity of substance. For the prophet forbids us, because God the Son is God, to liken Him to some second deity.
[656] § 19.
[657] St. Luke xxiv. 39.
[658] In § 4.
[659] Deut. vi. 4.
[660] St. Mark xii. 29.
[661] 1 Tim. ii. 5.
[662] Rom. xvi. 25-27.
[663] Omitting solus innascibilis et, which are out of place here.
[664] Is. lxv. 16.
[665] St. John xvii. 3.
[666] St. Mark x. 18.
[667] 1 Tim. vi. 15.
[668] Mal. iii. 6.
[669] i. 17.
[670] Ps. vii. 12.
[671] St. Matt. vi. 26.
[672] Ib. x. 29, 30.
[673] Susanna (Daniel xiii.) 42.
[674] Isai. lxvi. 1, 2.
[675] Acts xvii. 28.
[676] Ps. cxxxix. 6-9 (cxxxviii. 7-10).
[677] St. John iv. 24.
[678] 1 Tim. vi. 16.
[679] St. John i. 18.
[680] Exod. iii. 14.
[681] i. 6 (LXX).
[682] Prov. viii. 22.
[683] Heb. i. 4.
[684] Ib. iii. 1.
[685] St. John xiv. 28.
[686] St. John i. 3.
[687] Of Alexandria.
[688] Omitting aut aliqui.
[689] This Epistle of Arius to Alexander is translated substantially as in Newman's Arians of the Fourth Century, ch. II., § 5, though there are differences of some importance between Hilary's Latin version and the Greek in Athanasius de Synodis, § 16, from which Newman's version is made.
[690] Deut. vi. 4.
[691] 1 Cor. viii. 6.
[692] Gen. i. 6, 7.
[693] 2 Macc. vii. 28.
[694] St. John i. 1-3.
[695] Ps. clxviii. 5.
[696] Gen. i. 26.
[697] Reading Filii.
[698] Gen. i. 27.
[699] Ib. ix. 6.
[700] I.e. by the word Our.
[701] Prov. viii. 28-31.
[702] Gen. xvi. 9, 10, 13.
[703] The parenthesis which follows: "Now angel of God has two senses, that of Him Who is, and that of Him Whose He is" interrupts the sense and seems quite out of place. The same distinction in the case of the word Spirit, in Book II. § 32 may be compared.
[704] Isaiah ix. 6 (LXX).
[705] Gen. xvii. 19, 20.
[706] Gen. xviii. 10.
[707] Ib. 17.
[708] Ib. 20.
[709] Ib. 25, 26.
[710] Ib. xix. 24.
[711] Ib. xxi. 1, 2.
[712] Ib. 17, 18.
[713] St. John viii. 56.
[714] Gen. xviii. 25.
[715] Ib. xix. 1, 2.
[716] Ib. xviii. 13, 14.
[717] St. John v. 22.
[718] Gen. xxxv. 1.
[719] Exod. iii. 2, 4-6.
[720] Deut. vi. 4.
[721] Ib. xxxii. 39.
[722] Ib. 43 (LXX.)
[723] Dei naturalis: cf. Book ix. § 39.
[724] Deut. xxxiii. 16.
[725] Ps. xlv. 7 (xliv. 8).
[726] Is. xliii. 10.
[727] His human nature also; cf. next §, and Book xi. § 18.
[728] St. Matt. xii. 18.
[729] Hos. i. 6, 7.
[730] Ps. ii. 8.
[731] I.e. We cannot say Thy God of the Father.
[732] Is. xlv. 11-16.
[733] Reading ex for et.
[734] Ps. lxxi. (lxxii.) 9, 10.
[735] 2 Cor. v. 19.
[736] 1 Cor. viii. 6.
[737] Rom. ix. 5.
[738] Baruch iii. 35-37.
[739] Jer. xvii. 9 (LXX.).
[740] St. John i. 18.