One beginning of the Word — not three causes (John 1:1–5)

The Word knows one beginning, not two, as the Manichaeans say, nor a first cause and a second cause and a third cause, as Plato, Basilides, Marcion, Arius, and Eunomius say. For the Father is called beginning, and the Son beginning, and the Spirit beginning, because of the co-eternity of the Trinity, not because there are three beginnings; since we also call the Father God and the Son God and the Spirit God, not as worshipping three gods, but because of the consubstantiality of the one Godhead of the three hypostases.

Through this he overthrows Sabellius’s heresy by signifying the hypostases of Father and Son; for the Church does not glorify a son-fatherhood, as the Libyan myth-teller said. Sabellius, Noetus, Novatus, Paul of Samosata, and Marcellus say one hypostasis of the Trinity. He was not uttered-forth, but hypostatic, and not only hypostatic but also God. Photinus says that from the Father a Word without hypostasis, like ours, was changed into flesh. Since some heretics, hearing that the Father begot the Son, take offense and think a flowing or passion happens to the Father—such as naturally sometimes happens with thick bodies—the evangelist, anticipating their folly, from the preface called the Son Word once and twice and thrice, to present the passionlessness of the begetting; for as our word is begotten from the mind without flowing, without diminishment, and without passion (likewise also our spirit), so also is the begetting of the Son. Therefore it was also said: “My heart has belched forth a good word” (Psalm 45:1), which is God, who alone “is good.”

That is: he was co-eternal with the Father, existing in the Father’s nature, having as most ancient place the nature of the one who begot him; for the beginning surpasses the ages. For the Father is called beginning of the Son only according to the “from whom”; for in cause the Father will be conceived before the Son, but not in existence contemplated before him. And everywhere he inserts the “was,” sending the Son on toward the beginningless; for he did not say he had a beginning, but “in the beginning he was” (John 1:1–2).

He casts out another heresy by teaching that through the Son all things that came to be were created, not through good or evil angels, as some wrongly supposed—among them Plato, Simon, Basilides, Nicolas, Menander, the Borborian, Saturnilus, and Cerinthus. Therefore some also forbid marriage and begetting: Saturnilus and the Apostolics.

The wording has emphasis that not the Son alone created all things, but also the Father and the Spirit; for whatever the Father does, he works through the Son in the Holy Spirit, and where one of the three hypostases is said to act, the remaining hypostases of the one essence are conceived with it.

All things whatever the Father made through the Son were made alive from him.

The Word did not come to be in a man, but in a certain way he himself, strengthening the virgin through the Spirit and dwelling in her womb, became a foundation; and in him he built the rational ensouled flesh united to him from Mary, which is life. For as he himself is life, so also is the flesh united to him, of which those who partake are made alive, freed from death and corruption and sent into the enjoyment of the unceasing goods of the age to come, which is truly life.

The incarnation of the Only-begotten leads people by light toward true knowledge of God and toward every kind of virtue, through which life-giving happens, that is, the enjoyment of the goods.

Darkness is the whole world by comparison with the inexpressible and unapproachable light. Yet the Son also enlightens the mind toward what must be done, and truth always prevails; falsehood does not overcome the truth. Therefore he himself also said: “I have overcome the world” (John 16:33)—meaning that I have refuted every