Observe again that it is Jesus, not a son of a man but the Son of God, and revealed in the flesh by a symbol.^[1]

Since, however, they^[2] were going to say that the Messiah is the son of David, David himself, fearing and understanding the error of sinners, prophesied, The Lord said to my Lord, ‘Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.’ And again, Isaiah says as follows: The Lord said to the Messiah my Lord, whose right hand I held, that the nations would obey him, and I will shatter the strength of kings.^[3] Observe how David calls him Lord and does not call him son.

He [Christ] foretells that he would rise again from the dead: And in that day there shall be a root of Jesse and one who shall rise to rule the Gentiles: in me shall the Gentiles hope, and his resting place shall be worthy of honor.^[1] The time of his resurrection is indicated: We shall find him ready, as it were, at daybreak.^[2] He shall sit at the right hand of the Father: The Lord says to my Lord, ‘Sit at my right hand till I make your enemies your footstool,’ and he is represented as the possessor of all things: Ask of me, and I will give you the nations for your inheritance and the ends of the earth for your possession.^[3] Finally, he is shown to be the Judge of all: O God, give the King your judgment, and your justice to the king’s son.^[4] I shall not pursue the matter further at this point; for the things proclaimed about Christ are known to all heretics and are more than familiar to those who hold the truth.

So let us not be ashamed of the cross of Christ, but even if someone else keeps it secret, you should openly sign it upon your forehead, so that evil spirits beholding the royal symbol may fly far from you, terrified. Make this sign as you eat and drink, when you sit down, when you go to bed, when you get up again, while you are talking, while you are walking, in brief, at your every undertaking. He who was crucified then is now in heaven above. For we would have cause to be ashamed if, after he had been crucified and buried, he had remained in the grave. But now, he who was crucified on this very Golgotha ascended to heaven from the Mount of Olives there to the east. For from there he went down into hell and came again to us here. Again he went up from us into heaven, when the Father called him saying, Sit on my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.

God, when becoming a God and a defense and saying, I will be a God to them, does not then become God more than before, nor does he then begin to become God. Rather, what he had always been, that he then becomes to those who need him, when it pleases him. So Christ, also being by nature Lord and King everlasting, does not become Lord more than he was at the time he is sent forth, nor does he then begin to be Lord and King but what he has always been, that he then is made according to the flesh. Having redeemed all, he thereby becomes again Lord of the living and the dead. Thereafter everything serves him, and this is David’s meaning in the psalm, The Lord said to my Lord, ‘Sit on my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.’ For it was fitting that the redemption should take place through none other than him who is the Lord by nature, lest, though created by the Son, we should name another Lord, and fall into the Arian and Greek folly^[1] of serving the creature beyond the all-creating God.^[2]

If then they^[1] suppose that the Savior was not Lord and King, even before he became man and endured the cross, but then began to be Lord, let them know that they are openly reviving the statements of the Samosatene.^[2] But if, as we have quoted and declared above, he is the everlasting Lord and King, seeing that Abraham worships him as Lord and Moses says, Then the Lord rained on Sodom and on Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven;^[3] and David in the Psalms, The Lord said to my Lord, ‘Sit on my right hand’ ; and Your throne, O God, is forever and ever; a scepter of righteousness is the scepter of your kingdom;^[4] and Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom;^[5] it is plain that even before he became man, he was King and Lord everlasting, being Image and Word of the Father. And since the Word is everlasting Lord and King, it is very clear again that Peter did not say that the essence of the Son was made but spoke of his lordship over us, which became when he became man, and redeeming all by the cross, became Lord of all and King.

If reasoning does not move you, at least let the plain aspect of the judgment move you! Raise your eyes to the Judge, see who it is that is seated, with whom he is seated, and where. Christ is sitting at the right hand of the Father. If you cannot perceive this with your eyes, hear the words of the prophet: The Lord said to my Lord, ‘Sit on my right hand.’ The Son, therefore, sits at the right hand of the Father. Tell me now, you who hold that the things of God are to be judged as the things of this world are judged, whether you think that he who sits at the right hand is lower? Is it any dishonor to the Father that he sits at the Son’s left hand? The Father honors the Son, and you make it to be an insult! The Father would have this invitation to be a sign of love and esteem, and you would make it an overlord’s command! Christ has risen from the dead and sits at the right hand of God.

He ascended into heaven, from where he had descended. No man has ascended into heaven, but he who descended from heaven, the Son of man who is in heaven.^[1] He sits at the right hand of the Father, according to what was said to David, typifying God the Father speaking to his Son: Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool. Thence he shall come to judge both the living and the dead. Believe that Christ himself, our God, will come with the angels and powers of heaven to judge both the living and the dead, to give to each according to his works, that is, to award eternal life to the just and to subject the wicked to eternal punishment.

But Christ the Lord does all these things^[1] in us. Before he returned to heaven, he promised his disciples and said, But when I ascend, I will ask my Father and he will send you another Paraclete, who will be with you forever, the Spirit of truth.^[2] Thus, we must believe that Christ went to the Father when we see that the Paraclete came down upon the apostles. We must believe, I say, (as David said about the Savior) that he sat down at the right hand of God, because we discern that the Holy Spirit moves freely among the disciples, just as the Lord promised. Therefore the prophetic psalm says, The Lord said to my Lord, ‘Sit at my right hand.’ In our custom a person is offered a seat when he has accomplished some task and comes as a victor and the favor of a seat of honor is offered to him. Thus, in the same way the man Jesus Christ also conquered the devil by his suffering, harrowed hell by his resurrection, came to heaven as a victor once his work was done, and heard from God the Father, Sit at my right hand. Nor is it astonishing if the Father offers the Son the right to sit on one seat with him, since he is by nature of one substance with the Father. But someone may be prompted to ask why the Son is said to sit at his right hand. Although there is no degree of worthiness wherever there is a fullness of divinity, nonetheless, the Son sits at the right hand not so that he may be held higher than the Father, but so that he may not be believed to be inferior. And so the Son sits at the right hand because in the gospel the sheep are stationed at the right hand while the goats are on the left.^[3]

That God the Father of the universe would bring Christ to heaven after his resurrection from the dead and would keep him there until he destroyed his enemies, the demons, and until the quota of those whom he foreknows to be good and virtuous was complete, because of whom he has always delayed the consummation of the world, listen to the words spoken through David the prophet: The Lord said to my Lord: ‘Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.’ The Lord shall send to you the scepter of power out of Jerusalem; and rule you in the midst of your enemies. With you is the government in the day of your power, in the brightness of your saints. From the womb have I begotten you before the morning star.^[1] The words he shall send to you the scepter of power out of Jerusalem signified the powerful teaching that the apostles, going out from Jerusalem, preached everywhere. And although those who teach, or even profess, the name of Christ, will be martyred, we everywhere both accept and teach it. But, if you also should read these words with hostile mind, you can do nothing more, as we already stated, than kill us, which does no real harm to us, but does bring the eternal punishment of fire to you and to all who unjustly hate and do not repent.

For instance, your teachers^[1] have presumed to refer the words, The Lord said, to my Lord: Sit at my right hand, till I make your enemies your footstool, to Hezekiah as if he were ordered to sit on the right side of the temple, when the Assyrian king sent men to him with menacing messages and he was warned by Isaiah not to be afraid. Now, we all know and acknowledge that what Isaiah predicted did actually happen, and that in the days of Hezekiah the Assyrian king was stopped from waging war on Jerusalem and that an angel of the Lord put to death about 185,000 in the Assyrian camp. But, it is evident that the quoted psalm does not refer to Hezekiah, for thus is it worded: The Lord said to my Lord: Sit at my right hand, till I make your enemies your footstool. He shall send forth the scepter of power on Jerusalem, and he shall rule in the midst of your enemies. In the brightness of the saints, before the morning star I begat you. The Lord has sworn, and he will not repent: You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.^[2] Now, who will not concede that Hezekiah was not a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek? And who is not aware that he was not the redeemer of Jerusalem? And who does not know that he did not send the scepter of power on Jerusalem and did not rule in the midst of his enemies? (For was it not God who turned his enemies away while he wept and moaned?) But, although our Jesus has not yet returned in glory, he has sent forth into Jerusalem the scepter of power, namely, the call to repentance to all the nations over which the demons used to rule, as David testifies: The gods of the Gentiles are demons.^[3] And the power of his word compelled many to abandon the demons whom they used to obey and through him to believe in almighty God, because the gods of the Gentiles are demons. Furthermore, we have proved earlier that the words, In the brightness of the saints, from the womb before the morning star I begot you, were addressed to Christ!

And Paul has declared his [Christ’s] proper and peculiar, natural and excellent sonship when he thus says of God: Who spared not his own Son, but for us, who were not his natural sons, delivered him up.^[1] For to distinguish him from those who are not properly sons, he said that he was his own Son. And in the Gospel we read, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.^[2] Moreover, in the Psalms the Savior says, The Lord has said to me, You are my Son.^[3] Where, showing that he is the true and genuine Son, he signifies that there are no other genuine sons besides himself. And what, too, is the meaning of this: From the womb before the morning I begat you? Does he not plainly indicate the natural sonship of paternal begetting, which he obtained not by the careful framing of his manners, not by the exercise of and increase in virtue, but by property of nature? Wherefore, the only-begotten Son of the Father, indeed, possesses a flawless sonship; but the adoption of rational sons belongs not to them by nature but is prepared for them by the uprightness of their life and by the free gift of God. And it [human nature] is mutable, as Scripture recognizes: For when the sons of God saw the daughters of men, they took for themselves wives,^[4] etc. And in another place: I have nourished and brought up children, but they have rebelled against me,^[5] as we find God speaking by the prophet Isaiah.

And what follows in the psalm would agree with him alone, where it says, The Lord said to me, You are my Son. Today have I begotten you. Ask of me, and I will give you the heathen for your inheritance and the utmost parts of the earth for your possession.^[1] For surely only in him has this part of the prophecy received an indubitable fulfillment, since the voice of his disciples has gone forth into all the earth and their words to the ends of the world. And the passage distinctly names Christ, saying as in his own person, that he is the Son of God, when it says, The Lord said to me, You are my Son. Today I have begotten you.^[2] With which you may compare the words in the Proverbs, also spoken in his own person: Before the mountains were established, before all the hills he brings me forth.^[3] And also the address by the Father to him in Psalm 109 [LXX]: I begat you from my womb before the morning star. Understand then how the holy Scriptures prophesy that one and the same being, Christ by name, who is also Son of God, is to be plotted against by people, to receive the nations for his inheritance and to rule over the ends of the earth, showing his dispensation among people by two proofs: the one being the attacks on him and the other the subjection of the nations to him.

Meanwhile, I ask each one’s opinion about the interpretation of from him. Are we to understand these words in the sense of coming from another person, or from no one else, or are we to believe that he himself was the one to whom he was referring? They are not from another person, because they are from him, that is, in the sense that God does not come from anywhere else except than from God. They are not from nothing, because they come from him, for a nature is revealed from which the birth is derived. He himself is not meant, because from him refers to the birth of the Son from the Father. Moreover, when it is pointed out that he is from the womb, I ask whether it is possible to believe that he was born from nothing, since the true nature of the birth is revealed by applying the terminology of bodily functions? God was not composed of bodily members when he spoke of the generation of the Son in these words: From the womb before the day star I begot you. He spoke in order to enlighten our understanding while he confirmed that ineffable birth of the only-begotten Son from himself with the true nature of the godhead, in order that he might impart to the faculties of our human nature the knowledge of the faith concerning his divine attributes in a manner adapted to our human nature, in order that he might teach us by the expression from the womb that the existence of his Only-Begotten was not a creation from nothing but a natural birth from himself. Finally, has he left us in any doubt whatsoever that his words I came forth from the Father and have come are to be understood in the sense that he is God, that his being does not come from anywhere else except from the Father? When he came forth from the Father, he did not have a different nature or no nature, but he bears testimony to the fact that he is his author from whom, as he says, he has gone forth.

But since there are poorly instructed people^[1] who, while resisting the doctrine of a Son, think little of the words from the womb before the morning star I begat you, as if this referred to his relation to Mary, alleging that he was born of Mary before the morning star. Since to say that womb could not refer to his relation toward God, we must address the issue briefly here. If then, because the womb is human, therefore it is foreign to God; heart too clearly has a human meaning, for that which has heart has womb also. Since then both are human, we must deny both or seek to explain both. Now as a word is from the heart, so is an offspring from the womb; and as when the heart of God is spoken of, we do not conceive of it as human, so if Scripture says from the womb, we must not understand it in a corporeal sense. For it is usual with divine Scripture to speak and signify in the way of humankind what is above humankind. Thus speaking of the creation it says, your hands made me and fashioned me, and, your hand made all these things, and, he commanded, and they were created.^[2] Scripture’s language is suitable then about everything; attrib-uting to the Son propriety and genuineness and to the creation the beginning of being. For the one God makes and creates, but him [the Son] he begets from himself, Word or Wisdom. Now womb and heart plainly declare what is proper and the genuine, for we too have this from the womb, but our works we made by our hands.

Plainly, divine Scripture, which knows better than any the nature of everything, says through Moses, of the creatures, In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth;^[1] but of the Son it introduces not another but the Father himself saying, I have begotten you from the womb before the morning star; and again, You are my Son, this day have I begotten you.^[2] And the Lord says of himself in Proverbs, Before all the hills he begets me;^[3] and concerning things originated and created John says, All things were made by him;^[4] but speaking of the Lord, he says, The only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he declared him.^[5] If then he is a son, therefore he is not a creature; if a creature, his is not a son; for the difference between them is great, and son and creature cannot be the same, unless his essence is considered to be at once from God and external to God.

We read that the Son is begotten, inasmuch as the Father says, I brought you forth from the womb before the morning star. We read of the firstborn Son,^[1] of the only-begotten^[2]—firstborn, because there is none before him; only-begotten, because there is none after him. Again, we read, Who shall declare his generation?^[3] Generation, mark you, not creation. What argument can be brought to meet testimonies so great and mighty as these?

Again, immediately before the declaration the Lord created me, he says, I will tell of the things that are from eternity, and before saying, he begat, he said, In the beginning, before he made the earth, before all hills. In its extent, the preposition before reaches back into the past without end or limit, and so Before Abraham was, I am,^[1] clearly need not mean after Adam, just as before the morning star need not mean after the angels. But when he said before, he intended not that he was included in anyone’s existence but that all things are included in his, for thus it is the custom of holy Scripture to show the eternity of God. Finally, in another passage you may read, Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever the earth and the world were made, you are from everlasting to everlasting.^[2]

Before all created things, then, the Son is begotten; within all and for the good of all is he made; begotten of the Father, above the law, brought forth of Mary, under the law.

Just as, therefore, from the side of Adam Eve was created, so also from the side of Christ was created the church, which has no spot or blemish. In him, therefore, God has opened an entrance to all the sons of Abraham, and Isaac and Jacob, in order that they may profess their faith in him and have life and salvation in his name. Turn, therefore, and enter into the joy of your father Abraham, because God has fulfilled what he promised to him. Whence also the prophet says, The Lord has sworn, and will not repent: You are a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek. Christ became a priest on the cross, when he offered the whole burnt offering of his own body and blood as a sacrifice for all the world.

He is named Christ from being as man anointed with the Holy Spirit, and called our high priest, apostle, prophet and king. Long ago the divine Moses exclaimed, The Lord your God will raise up to you a prophet, from the midst of you, of your brethren, like to me.^[1] And the divine David cries, The Lord has sworn and will not repent, you are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. This prophecy is confirmed by the divine apostle.^[2] And again seeing then that we have a great high priest who has passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess.^[3]

So, dearly beloved, he rejoiced as a strong man to run the course.^[1] Which course, if not the course of our mortality, which he was willing to share with us? This course is the way along which the human race passes. They all pass along it, you see, starting on it when they are born, finishing it when they die. And this stream of the human race from beginning to end is constantly issuing from the hidden sources of nature. It was from this rapid and turbulent stream that Christ was willing to drink. You heard just now in the psalm, From the torrent he drank in the way. This torrent has brought us to birth, has carried us on to death. As though from the hidden source of a spring, Christ has taken to himself the very depths of the sea. Each for our sake—he was both born and died.