{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/003/0030666.htm","path":"chr/ecf/003/0030666.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/003/0030666.htm","text":"Chapter XIX.\u2014The Son in Union with the Father in the Creation of All Things. This Union of the Two in Co-Operation is Not Opposed to the True Unity of God. It is Opposed Only to Praxeas\u2019 Identification Theory.\nBut this very declaration of His they will hastily pervert into an argument of His singleness. \u201cI have,\u201d says He, \u201cstretched out the heaven alone.\u201d Undoubtedly alone as regards all other powers; and He thus gives a premonitory evidence against the conjectures of the heretics, who maintain that the world was constructed by various angels and powers, who also make the Creator Himself to have been either an angel or some subordinate agent sent to form external things, such as the constituent parts of the world, but who was at the same time ignorant of the divine purpose. If, now, it is in this sense that He stretches out the heavens alone, how is it that these heretics assume their position so perversely, as to render inadmissible the singleness of that Wisdom which says, \u201cWhen He prepared the heaven, I was present with Him?\u201d 7989 \u2014even though the apostle asks, \u201cWho hath known the mind of the Lord, or who hath been His counsellor?\u201d 7990 meaning, of course, to except that wisdom which was present with Him. 7991 In Him, at any rate, and with Him, did (Wisdom) construct the universe, He not being ignorant of what she was making. \u201cExcept Wisdom,\u201d however, is a phrase of the same sense exactly as \u201cexcept the Son,\u201d who is Christ, \u201cthe Wisdom and Power of God,\u201d 7992 according to the apostle, who only knows the mind of the Father. \u201cFor who knoweth the things that be in God, except the Spirit which is in Him?\u201d 7993 Not, observe, without Him. There was therefore One who caused God to be not alone, except \u201calone\u201d from all other gods. But (if we are to follow the heretics), the Gospel itself will have to be rejected, because it tells us that all things were made by God through the Word, without whom nothing was made. 7994 And if I am not mistaken, there is also another passage in which it is written: \u201cBy the Word of the Lord were the heavens made, and all the hosts of them by His Spirit.\u201d 7995 Now this Word, the Power of God and the Wisdom of God, must be the very Son of God. So that, if (He did) all things by the Son, He must have stretched out the heavens by the Son, and so not have stretched them out alone, except in the sense in which He is \u201calone\u201d (and apart) from all other gods. Accordingly He says, concerning the Son, immediately afterwards: \u201cWho else is it that frustrateth the tokens of the liars, and maketh diviners mad, turning wise men backward, and making their knowledge foolish, and confirming the words 7996 of His Son?\u201d 7997 \u2014as, for instance, when He said, \u201cThis is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye Him.\u201d 7998 By thus attaching the Son to Himself, He becomes His own interpreter in what sense He stretched out the heavens alone, meaning alone with His Son, even as He is one with His Son. The utterance, therefore, will be in like manner the Son\u2019s, \u201cI have stretched out the heavens alone,\u201d 7999 because by the Word were the heavens established. 8000 Inasmuch, then, as the heaven was prepared when Wisdom was present in the Word, and since all things were made by the Word, it is quite correct to say that even the Son stretched out the heaven alone, because He alone ministered to the Father\u2019s work. It must also be He who says, \u201cI am the First, and to all futurity I AM.\u201d 8001 The Word, no doubt, was before all things. \u201cIn the beginning was the Word;\u201d 8002 and in that beginning He was sent forth 8003 by the Father. The Father, however, has no beginning, as proceeding from none; nor can He be seen, since He was not begotten. He who has always been alone could never have had order or rank. Therefore, if they have determined that the Father and the Son must be regarded as one and the same, for the express purpose of vindicating the unity of God, that unity of His is preserved intact; for He is one, and yet He has a Son, who is equally with Himself comprehended in the same Scriptures. Since they are unwilling to allow that the Son is a distinct Person, second from the Father, lest, being thus second, He should cause two Gods to be spoken of, we have shown above 8004 that Two are actually described in Scripture as God and Lord. And to prep. 615 vent their being offended at this fact, we give a reason why they are not said to be two Gods and two Lords, but that they are two as Father and Son; and this not by severance of their substance, but from the dispensation wherein we declare the Son to be undivided and inseparable from the Father,\u2014distinct in degree, not in state. And although, when named apart, He is called God, He does not thereby constitute two Gods, but one; and that from the very circumstance that He is entitled to be called God, from His union with the Father.\nOn this reading, see our Anti-Marcion, p. 207, note 9. Edin.\n614:7998 614:7999 614:8000 614:8001\nIsa. xli. 4 (Sept.).\n614:8002 614:8003 614:8004","title":"Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol III: Tertullian: Part II: The So...","type":"page"}