For wisdom is more moving than any motion: she passeth and goeth through all things by reason of her pureness.
All Commentaries on Wisdom of Solomon 7:24 Go To Wisdom of Solomon 7
Quodvultdeus
AD 450
For other heretics [the Arians], Christ, who is the very way by which one goes to the Father, is not equal to the Father according to his divinity. And even if he says, "I and the Father are one," they say, "If he was sent by the Father, he is inferior. The one who sends is greater than the one who is sent." This is a human argument, not a divine testimony. O heretic, the Trinity"s way of doing things is different from yours, and you do not understand it, because you understand it carnally. Your heart is not pure, even regarding God. In fact, Christ is called "sent" in that he assumed human existence. As God, he is equal to the Father. Where did the Father send the Son that he himself would not be, together with him? Where did the Son go, that he would not be with the Father, as he says, "I am in the Father and the Father in me," and, "Philip, one who has seen me has seen the Father." He is the one who says through the prophet, "I fill heaven and earth," and of whom Solomon says, "He reaches from one end of the earth to the other with power, governing all things well. By his purity he pervades and penetrates all things." But you, heretic, say that the one who sends is greater and the one who is sent less, because you think in terms of intervals of time. But you err greatly by placing within time the one who made time. If you profess that the Father is God and that the Son is God and believe that the Father and the Son are eternal, do not consider the Son inferior because he made you, just because he made himself inferior to redeem you. But, you reply, he said, "The Father is greater than I." If you mean this phrase regarding the humanity he assumed, you err no longer. He says, "The Father is greater than I" in the same way that the prophet said of him, "You have made him a little less than the angels." Tell me, under what aspect do you consider him to be inferior? Power? "The Father judges no one, only the Son." Works? "Everything was made through the Son." If you believe, regarding time, that because you are older than your son, it is like this with God and his Son"may God keep the faithful from hearing these words! It is unworthy to believe such things of God. If in fact the Son is the Word according to the divinity of God, as John the Evangelist says, "In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word was God," could there have been a time when the Father was without the Word, or was there a beginning before the beginning itself, given that the Son said that he was the beginning? Indeed, when the Jews asked him, "Who are you?" he replied, "The beginning." Thus what is written in Genesis, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth," refers to the Son, who is the beginning. So, the Father is always God and the Son is always God, because the former has never not been Father and the latter has never not been Son. The Father did not diminish himself in generating the Son but generated from himself another like him, so that he would remain entirely in him. The Holy Spirit is not separated out as though he were a portion of that from which he proceeds; rather he is complete from another who is himself complete. And by proceeding from him, the Spirit does not diminish him, nor by being united to him does the Spirit make him any greater. And these three are one God, of whom the prophet says, "You are the only great God."
