Against Praxeas 15
Summary: The New Testament too distinguishes the invisible Father, whom no one has seen, from the visible Son, whom the apostles saw and touched; the Son was always the one seen and always acted by the Father's will.
Textual problem in this passage: the printed text is uncertain or disputed here. See the notes.
Latin text · CSEL 47:253–256
Si hunc articulum quaestionibus scripturae ueteris non expediam, de nouo testamento sumam confirmationem nostrae interpretationis, ne quodcumque in filium reputo, in patrem proinde defendas. ecce enim et in euangeliis et in apostolis uisibilem et inuisibilem deum deprehendo sub manifesta et personali distinctione condicionis utriusque. exclamat quodammodo Iohannes: deum nemo uidit umquam, utique nec retro; ademit enim temporis quaestionem dicendo deum numquam uisum. confirmat et apostolus de deo: quem nemo uidit hominum, sed nec uidere potest, scilicet quia morietur qui uidebit. idem ipsi apostoli et uidisse se Christum et contrectasse testantur. porro si ipse est Christus et pater et filius, quomodo et uisus est et inuisus? ad hanc diuersitatem uisi et inuisi in unum conferendam quis ex diuerso non argumentabitur recte utrumque dictum, uisibilem quidem in carne, inuisibilem uero ante carnem, ut idem sit pater inuisibilis ante carnem qui et filius uisibilis in carne? atquin si idem ante carnem inuisibilis, quomodo uisus etiam retro inuenitur ante carnem? aeque si idem post carnem uisibilis, quomodo et nunc inuisibilis pronuntiatur ab apostolis. nisi quia alius, quem, et retro uisum in aenigmate, plenius uisibilem caro effecit, sermo scilicet, qui et caro factus est. alius, quem numquam quisquam uidit, [nisi] pater scilicet, cuius est sermo? denique inspiciamus, quem apostoli uiderint. quod uidimus, inquit Iohannes, quod audiuimus, oculis nostris uidimus, et manus nostrae contrectauerunt de sermone uitae. sermo enim uitae caro factus est. auditus et uisus et contrectatus, quia caro, qui ante carnem sermo tantum, in primordio apud deum patrem, non (deus) pater. [apud sermonem] nam etsi deus sermo, sed, quia ex deo deus, apud deum, quia cum patre, apud patrem. et uidimus gloriam eius, tamquam unigeniti a patre. utique filii, scilicet uisibilis, glorificati a patre inuisibili. et ideo, quoniam sermonem dei deum dixerat, ne adiuuaret aduersariorum praesumptionem, quasi patrem ipsum uidisset. ad distinguendum inter inuisibilem patrem et filium uisibilem superdicit ex abundanti: deum nemo uidit umquam. quem deum? sermonem? atquin: uidimus et audiuimus et contrectauimus de sermone uitae praedictum est. sed quem deum? scilicet patrem, apud quem deus erat sermo. unigenitus filius, qui sinum patris ipse disseruit. ipse et auditus et uisus et, ne phantasma crederetur, etiam contrectatus. hunc et Paulus conspexit, nec tamen patrem uidit. nonne, inquit, uidi Iesum? Christum autem (si) et ipse deum cognominauit: quorum patres, et ex quibus Christus secundum carnem, qui est super omnia deus benedictus in aeuum, ostendit et ipse uisibilem deum filium, id est sermonem dei, quia qui caro factus est Christus dictus est. de patre autem ad Timotheum: quem nemo uidit hominum, sed nec uidere potest, exaggerans amplius: qui solus habet inmortalitatem et lucem habitat inaccessibilem, de quo et supra dixerat: regi autem saeculorum, inmortali, inuisibili, soli deo, ut et contraria ipsi filio adscriberemus, mortalitatem, accessibilitatem, quem mortuum contestatur secundum scripturas et a se nouissime uisum, per accessibilem utique lucem, quamquam et illam neque ipse sine periculo luminis expertus est, neque Petrus et Iohannes et Iacobus sine rationis, [et amentia, qui] credo, morituri ibidem, si non passuri filii gloriam, sed patrem uidissent. deum enim nemo uidebit et uiuet. si haec ita sunt, constat eum semper uisum ab initio, qui uisus fuerit in fine, et eum nec in fine uisum, qui nec ab initio fuit uisus, et ita duos esse uisum et inuisum. filius ergo uisus est semper, et filius conuersatus est semper, et filius operatus est semper, ex auctoritate patris et uoluntate, quia filius nihil a semetipso potest facere, nisi uiderit patrem facientem, in sensu scilicet facientem. pater enim sensu agit, filius, qui in patris sensu est, uidens perficit. sic omnia per filium facta sunt et sine illo factum est nihil.
English · Claude translation
If I do not settle this point by questions from the Old Scripture, I will take confirmation of our interpretation from the New Testament, so that you may not claim for the Father whatever I ascribe to the Son. For see, both in the Gospels and in the apostles I find a visible and an invisible God, under a clear and personal distinction of the condition of each. John, as it were, cries out: “No one has ever seen God”; not in former times either, of course, for he removed the question of time by saying that God has never been seen. The apostle too confirms concerning God: “whom no man has seen, nor can see,” because, of course, he who sees him will die. Yet the same apostles testify that they have seen and handled Christ. Now if Christ himself is both Father and Son, how was he both seen and unseen? To bring this difference of seen and unseen into one, who on the other side will not argue that both are rightly said, visible in the flesh but invisible before the flesh, so that the same one is the Father invisible before the flesh who is also the Son visible in the flesh? But if the same one was invisible before the flesh, how is he found to have been seen in former times, before the flesh? Likewise, if the same one is visible after the flesh, how is he now also declared invisible by the apostles? Unless because one is he whom the flesh made more fully visible, though he had been seen in a riddle before, namely the Word, who was also made flesh; and another he whom no one has ever seen, namely the Father, whose Word he is? Let us look, then, at whom the apostles saw. “What we have seen,” says John, “what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life.” For the Word of life was made flesh, heard and seen and handled because flesh, he who before the flesh was only the Word, in the beginning with God the Father, not the Father. For though the Word is God, yet, because he is God from God, he is “with God,” and because with the Father, with the Father. “And we saw his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten from the Father”: of the Son, that is, the visible one, glorified by the invisible Father. And so, since he had called the Word of God God, lest he should assist the presumption of the adversaries, as though he had seen the Father himself, to distinguish between the invisible Father and the visible Son he adds besides, for good measure: “No one has ever seen God.” What God? The Word? But “we have seen and heard and handled concerning the Word of life” was said before. Which God, then? The Father, of course, with whom the Word was God. The only-begotten Son, who himself declared the bosom of the Father, was himself both heard and seen and, lest he be believed a phantom, even handled. Him Paul too beheld, yet he did not see the Father. “Have I not,” he says, “seen Jesus?” And when he himself also called Christ God, “of whom are the fathers, and from whom is Christ according to the flesh, who is God over all, blessed forever,” he too shows that God the Son, that is, the Word of God, is visible, since he who was made flesh is called Christ. But of the Father he says to Timothy: “whom no man has seen, nor can see,” amplifying it further: “who alone has immortality and dwells in light unapproachable,” of whom he had also said above, “to the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God”; so that we might ascribe the contrary to the Son himself, mortality and approachability, whom he testifies died according to the Scriptures and was seen last of all by himself, through an approachable light, of course; though he himself did not experience even that without danger to his sight, nor did Peter, John, and James without danger to their reason, who would, I believe, have died on the spot if they had seen not the glory of the Son, who was to suffer, but the Father. For “no one shall see God and live.” If this is so, it is clear that he who was seen at the end was always seen from the beginning, and that he who was not seen from the beginning was not seen at the end either; and so there are two, the seen and the unseen. It was the Son, then, who was always seen, the Son who always conversed with men, the Son who always acted, by the authority and will of the Father; since “the Son can do nothing of himself unless he sees the Father doing it”: doing it, that is, in his mind. For the Father acts by mind, and the Son, who is in the Father's mind, seeing, brings it to completion. So all things were made through the Son, and without him nothing was made.
About this passage
Notes
Translation notes
- The quotations are John 1:18, 1 Tim 6:16, 1 John 1:1, John 1:14, 1 Cor 9:1, Rom 9:5, 1 Tim 1:17, Exod 33:20, John 5:19, and John 1:3; the allusions are 1 Cor 15:3-8, Acts 9:3-9, and Matt 17:1-6. The editor deletes “nisi,” “apud sermonem,” and “et amentia, qui”; they are omitted. The digital text's “es deo,” “que m,” and “pei-ficit” are corrected.
Notes on the original text
- Digital text corrected (letter misread in the digital text; letters misread in the digital text; split word in the digital text): quia es deo deus → quia ex deo deus; que m nemo → quem nemo; uidens pei-ficit → uidens perficit.
Cite this passage
Tertullian, Prax. 15 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-praxean/15/).
Plain text
Tertullian, Prax. 15 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-praxean/15/).
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