Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] Why, they will even seize on this saying of his as proof of a bare singularity: "I alone," he says, "stretched out the heaven" — alone, that is, with respect to the other powers, prefacing his case against the guesswork of the heretics, who want the world built by angels and by rival powers, and who make the Creator himself either an angel or someone kept in the dark about other things too, such as the works of the world, and suborned into the job. [2] But if he alone stretched out the heaven in that sense, how do these heretics presume, perversely, that as though it were a bare singular, that Wisdom is not admitted who says, "When he was preparing the heaven, I was present with him"? And if he said, "Who has known the mind of the Lord, and who has been his counselor?" — he certainly means someone other than Wisdom, who was present with him. Yet it was in him and with him that he was framing the universe, not ignorant of what he was doing. And besides Wisdom, he also means besides the Son — that is Christ, God's own might and skill, as the apostle puts it — alone knowing the mind of the Father: for who knows the things that are in God except the spirit that is in him? — not one outside him. There was therefore one who kept him from making God alone, except in the sense that he was alone as against all the others. [3] But then let the Gospel be repudiated too, which says the whole universe came into being through the Word issuing from God, and apart from him not a single thing came into being. For unless I am mistaken, it is written elsewhere as well: "By his word the heavens were established, and by his spirit all their powers." And the Word, moreover — power and wisdom — will be the very Son of God. [4] So if all things exist through the Son, then in stretching out the heaven too, the Son did not stretch it out alone — except by that same reckoning by which he was alone as against the others. And indeed he goes straight on to speak of the Son: "Who else brought down the signs of the ventriloquists and the divinations of the heart, turning the wise back and making their counsel foolish, setting up the words of his own son?" — meaning, by saying, "This is my beloved Son, hear him." [5] So by adding the Son he is himself the interpreter of how he stretched out the heaven alone — namely, alone with the Son, just as with the Son he is one. Accordingly it will be the Son's voice too that says, "I stretched out the heaven alone," because by the Word the heavens were established. Since Wisdom, standing by in the Word, is how the heaven was prepared, and all things were made through the Word, it is fitting that the Son too alone stretched out the heaven, since he alone served as minister to the Father's undertaking. [6] The same one will be speaking when he says, "I am the first, and in what is coming I am" — first, that is, of all things, the Word: "In the beginning was the Word," in which beginning he was brought forth from the Father. As for the Father, having no beginning, as one brought forth by none, as unbegotten, he cannot be seen as "first": he who alone has always been could not have any order about him. [7] So then, if for that reason they have thought the same person must be believed to be both Father and Son, in order to claim one God, his unity stands safe, since he who is one has a Son too, equally comprehended by those same scriptures. If they refuse to have the Son reckoned second from the Father, for fear a second should make two gods spoken of, we have shown that two gods, and two lords, are indeed reported in scripture. [8] And yet, so they may not be scandalized on that score, we give the reasoning by which two are not called gods, nor lords, but by which Father and Son are two — and this not by separation of substance but by disposition, since we hold that the Son remains undivided from, and never severed from, the Father, distinct from him not in rank but in measure; who, even if he is called god when named as a singular, does not thereby make two gods but one, by this very fact — that he too has the right to be called god out of the unity of the Father.