The Unity of Glory and Nature

He presents all good things as being drawn toward the one divine peace, which has no limit, about which Isaiah cried out: 'Lord our God, give us peace; for you have given us all things. Lord, besides you we know no other' (Isa 26:3). This is given by Him through His power because of the shared nature and lordship. He said: 'Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you' (John 14:27).

Therefore, Paul also did not fail to provide this God-giving word to both the unbegotten hypostases without distinction (Rom 1:7), writing thus to the Romans: 'Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.' We are also provided the recognition of this in the same way by that: 'All that the Father has is mine' (John 16:15).

For these things are not understood ignorantly regarding creation, but are understood regarding the divine worth, if one is to say they belong to God. For the Father, he says, is God. I am also; for he is his only-begotten, true, and beloved Son. The Father is Lord. I am also lord of all and heir of the living Father, possessing the inheritance. And I inherit his own things, this as the maker of them, and this also as a genuine Son. And I was made heir as one having become man.

The Father is Creator and King. I am. For I said to you as, 'There was a king who went out to make marriages for his son the king' (Matt 22:2). The Father is unchangeable. I am also. For it has been prophesied concerning me: 'You are the same, and your years shall not fail' (Ps 70:5). The Father is impassible. I am, so as to let those who share in me partake of impassibility.

The Father is without beginning. I am. For there was not a time when the hypostatic radiance did not have the name of the Father and of his glory, and the 'character of the hypostasis' and the 'image of the deity,' which is me. Life and light and goodness and power and wisdom and truth and whatever is worthy of God, the Father is. I am, as you have heard by those who have perished.

And indeed I am also Savior, 'raising the sun upon the righteous and the sinners' (Matt 5:45) and not bringing 'evil for evil.' The Father is Philanthropic. I am, wherefore for your sake 'I emptied myself, having taken the form of a slave' (Phil 2:7), and being struck and spat upon and mocked and crucified by you.

We were not misled. All the things he said happen to be in accordance with the Fathers, so that he gives nothing more to God the Father than only being the father of a co-ruling and co-existing Son. Thus he persuades one to believe also that: 'All that is mine is yours, and all that is yours is mine, and I have been glorified in them' (John 17:10).

For if it were not said thus through the natural relation, and if the Son had not been essentially glorified in all the Fathers, unless kingdom and lordship are one, then—according to the logic—it would be heretical, that there is something accomplished not by the authority of the Father, but by the authority of the Son. And again: 'If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing; it is my Father who glorifies me' (John 17:5).

He says, speaking about his own divine glory, that 'I and the Father are one' (John 10:30), do not disbelieve; rather, there is the Father witnessing for me, that according to nature I am glorified, being his beloved and true Son, yet being God and Lord of you. Then he says: 'Father, glorify your Son, so that your Son also may glorify you' (John 17:5). Equal honor and glory have been preserved thus for the divine hypostases. For in whatever way we conceive of the Father glorifying his Son, by that same way he himself is glorified by him.

And he proceeds again: 'And now glorify me, Father, with the glory I had with you before the world existed' (John 17:5). It is terrible to hear, that he who has glory independently from his own Father—for this is what it means: to have had glory before the world existed—is not glorified according to the heretics. And what was this glory? Which, as I think, Mark also said: 'When the Son comes in the glory of his Father' (Mark 8:38), instead of: he possesses the Father's glory and in it he will come a second time.

Of which glory, being one, divinity, kingdom, and worship have been established, not one and another. Therefore he commands beforehand: 'Believe in God, and believe in me. In my Father's house there are many mansions' (John 14:1-2). He says, 'that they may know one faith concerning the Trinity, not having a difference of divinity, so that you may dwell in those three-blessed courts, all in harmony and sufficiency.'

Not only, indeed, those he led, but also, providing things of God, he says: 'Your sins are forgiven you' (Luke 7:48). You pay attention likewise to his authority, that as if...