Proverbs 8:25

Nor is He a mere man, by whom and in whom all things were made; for “all things were made by Him.” “When He made the heaven, I was present with Him; and I was there with Him, forming [the world along with Him], and He rejoiced in me daily.” And how could a mere man be addressed in such words as these: “Sit Thou at My right hand?” And how, again, could such an one declare: “Before Abraham was, I am?” And, “Glorify Me with Thy glory which I had before the world was?” What man could ever say, “I came down from heaven, not to do Mine own will, but the will of Him that sent Me?” And of what man could it be said, “He was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world: He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not. …

This power and disposition of the Divine Intelligence is set forth also in the Scriptures under the name of Σοφία , Wisdom; for what can be better entitled to the name of Wisdom than the Reason or the Word of God? Listen therefore to Wisdom herself, constituted in the character of a Second Person: “At the first the Lord created me as the beginning of His ways, with a view to His own works, before He made the earth, before the mountains were settled; moreover, before all the hills did He beget me;” that is to say, He created and generated me in His own intelligence. Then, again, observe the distinction between them implied in the companionship of Wisdom with the Lord. …

Then, therefore, does the Word also Himself assume His own form and glorious garb, His own sound and vocal utterance, when God says, “Let there be light.” This is the perfect nativity of the Word, when He proceeds forth from God, formed by Him first to devise and think out all things under the name of Wisdom, “The Lord created or formed me as the beginning of His ways;” then afterward begotten , to carry all into effect, “When He prepared the heaven, I was present with Him.” Thus does He make Him equal to Him: for by proceeding from Himself He became His first-begotten Son, because begotten before all things; and His only-begotten also, because alone begotten of God, in a way peculiar to Himself, from the womb of His own heart, even as the Father Himself testifies: “My heart,” says He, “hath emitted my most excellent Word.” The Father took pleasure evermore in Him, who equally rejoiced w …

In Solomon in the Proverbs: “The Lord established me in the beginning of His ways, into His works: before the world He founded me. In the beginning, before He made the earth, and before He appointed the abysses, before the fountains of waters gushed forth, before the mountains were settled, before all the hills, the Lord begot me. He made the countries, and the uninhabitable places, and the uninhabitable bounds under heaven. When He prepared the heaven, I was present with Him; and when He set apart His seat. …

2 But neither are they less to be blamed who think that the Son was a creation, and decided that the Lord was made just as one of those things which really were made; whereas the divine declarations testify that He was begotten, as is fitting and proper, but not that He was created or made. It is therefore not a trifling, but a very great impiety, to say that the Lord was in any wise made with hands. For if the Son was made, there was a time when He was not; but He always was, if, as He Himself declares, He is undoubtedly in the Father. And if Christ is the Word, the Wisdom, and the Power, for the divine writings tell us that Christ is these, as ye yourselves know, assuredly these are powers of God. Wherefore, if the Son was made, there was a time when these were not in existence; and thus there was a time when God was without these things, which is utterly absurd. …

XX . For even now, on the tenth day of the month Gorpiæus, when they assemble together, they read the Lamentations of Jeremiah, in which it is said, “The Spirit before our face, Christ the Lord was taken in their destructions;” and Baruch, in whom it is written, “This is our God; no other shall be esteemed with Him. He found out every way of knowledge, and showed it to Jacob His son, and Israel His beloved. Afterwards He was seen upon earth, and conversed with men.” And when they read them, they lament and bewail, as themselves suppose, that desolation which happened by Nebuchadnezzar ; but, as the truth shows, they unwillingly make a prelude to that lamentation which will overtake them. …

29. The answer is brief: Solomon not only did not say this, but, on the contrary, expressly said that God hath a Son. For in one of his writings Wisdom saith: “Before the mountains were settled, before the hills was I brought forth.” And what is Christ but the Wisdom of God? Again, in another place in the book of Proverbs, he says: “God hath taught me wisdom, and I have learned the knowledge of the holy. Who hath ascended up into heaven and descended? who hath gathered the winds in His fists? who hath bound the waters in a garment? who hath established all the ends of the earth? What is His name, and what is His Son’s name?” Of the two questions concluding this quotation, the one referred to the Father, namely, “What is His name?”, with allusion to the foregoing words, “God hath taught me wisdom,”, the other evidently to the Son, since he says, “or what is His Son’s name?”, with allusion …

24. According to the form of God, it is said “Before all the hills He begat me,” that is, before all the loftinesses of things created and, “Before the dawn I begat Thee,” that is, before all times and temporal things: but according to the form of a servant, it is said, “The Lord created me in the beginning of His ways.” Because, according to the form of God, He said, “I am the truth;” and according to the form of a servant, “I am the way.” For, because He Himself, being the first-begotten of the dead, made a passage to the kingdom of God to life eternal for His Church, to which He is so the Head as to make the body also immortal, therefore He was “created in the beginning of the ways” of God in His work. …

15. To which she adds: “The Lord created me in the beginning of his ways, for his works; before the world he established me, in the beginning, before he made the earth, before he made the depths, before the mountains were settled, before all hills he begat me. When he prepared the heavens I was present with him, and when he established the fountains of the region under heaven I was with him, disposing. I was the one in whom he delighted; daily I rejoiced before him at all times when he was rejoicing at having completed the world.”

3. He is then by nature an Offspring, perfect from the Perfect, begotten before all the hills ( Prov. viii. 25 ), that is before every rational and intelligent essence, as Paul also in another place calls Him ‘first-born of all creation’ ( Col. i. 15 ). But by calling Him First-born, He shews that He is not a Creature, but Offspring of the Father. For it would be inconsistent with His deity for Him to be called a creature. For all things were created by the Father through the Son, but the Son alone was eternally begotten from the Father, whence God the Word is ‘first-born of all creation,’ unchangeable from unchangeable. However, the body which He wore for our sakes is a creature: concerning which Jeremiah says, according to the edition of the seventy translators ( Jer. xxxi. …

13. Therefore let them tell us, from what teacher or by what tradition they derived these notions concerning the Saviour? “We have read,” they will say, “in the Proverbs, ‘The Lord created me a beginning of His ways unto His works;’” this Eusebius and his fellows used to insist on, and you write me word, that the present men also, though overthrown and confuted by an abundance of arguments, still were putting about in every quarter this passage, and saying that the Son was one of the creatures, and reckoning Him with things originated. But they seem to me to have a wrong understanding of this passage also; for it has a religious and very orthodox sense, which had they understood, they would not have blasphemed the Lord of glory. For on comparing what has been above stated with this passage, they will find a great difference between them. …

“Next, I may reasonably turn to those who divide and cut to pieces and destroy that most sacred doctrine of the Church of God, the Divine Monarchy, making it as it were three powers and partitive subsistences and god-heads three. I am told that some among you who are catechists and teachers of the Divine Word, take the lead in this tenet, who are diametrically opposed, so to speak, to Sabellius’s opinions; for he blasphemously says that the Son is the Father, and the Father the Son, but they in some sort preach three Gods, as dividing the sacred Monad into three subsistences foreign to each other and utterly separate. For it must needs be that with the God of the Universe, the Divine Word is united, and the Holy Ghost must repose and habitate in God; thus in one as in a summit, I mean the God of the Universe, must the Divine Triad be gathered up and brought together. …