One and One and One is both Three and One
THE ORIGIN OF SIN
O TRAITOR Cain![1]
Blasphemer! You who dare
divide our God in
two, now how far down
in hideous ruin does
madness hurl you? Don’t
you see that God is
one? Do thunderclouds
cover you in
darkness? Unhealthy sight
is always pulled in
two directions; double
vision plays tricks
on you and thwarts your sight.[2] 5
You fool! Earthly images deceive you
with their double
shape, and make you think
a God divided reigns
above the heavens.
But though this
filthy world, conglomerate,
confounds the
differences between good
and evil, Heaven
obeys a single God.
Two different kinds of actions, good and bad,
perplex the minds of humankind, and yet
it does not therefore follow that the heavens
lay claim to double monarchy. It is the outer 10
man made from the earth who, when he looks
around, becomes convinced that there must be
two gods to rule such great disparity.
Because he thinks there is a God who long
ago made evil while another fashioned
all good things and brought them into being, 15
he then asserts two Gods exist, supreme
but different in nature.
In the end,
what two-fold nature can exist or rule
for long if its hybrid essence keeps it
from the seat of power and cuts it off
by constant change of ruler? Either God
is one and holds the highest power, 20
or those that now are two are both diminished
by differences of substance. Now, it’s clear
that nothing is supreme if it’s not single and
omnipotent,
since separate things claim power
each
for itself, rejecting the other’s rule,
and
so are not supreme and not almighty.
Alternating
rule is not complete 25
for
what one holds, the other doesn’t.
Remove
one stone: the pile grows smaller.[3] We
testify
that God is whole and one
and
indivisible; in Him is Christ
who
is likewise whole and one, who lives
and
lived before all things, and will live, and
by
sworn agreement, never share his power. 30
The
ruler who holds sway over every thing,
the source sublime of virtue, universal
fountainhead,
the crown of nature, author
of
beginning and of birth, is one:[4]
light,
and time, and years, and number all
flow
from God, who granted that a second 35
would
follow after one: for numbers must begin
with one and one alone cannot be counted.
And since there is no other God and Father,
and Christ cannot be
second to the Father,
then He alone who has a single Son exists
before all number. He is God, and rightly God, 40
for He is first and one: first in power
and first in whom He sired. Now how does pure
generation make a difference?[5]
Both
begetter and the one begotten from one
in the darkness of primeval chaos,
free of time and number, will always
be one.
WHO HAS DARED to say the power 45
that governs in single majesty and is
proper to itself, eternal from
before the world began, is two? Who dares
rip apart the force of a single nature?
Did the Father adopt a son, a second
of external origin, to make the number
two, a different being to
introduce
a second godly power? The true Son 50
embodied in the form of the true Father
keeps that form and shows that he is one.
No adoptive love allies them, no
sworn oath unites them, but sure loyalty
and a single nature, which is God, make
them 55
a single whole.[6]
[1] Cain, whom we have seen in the preface making an improper division of
his sacrifice, stands in for Marcion and by extension for other heretical
thinkers who fail to comprehend the unity of God. The divisiveness that characterizes heretical
thought is compounded by the social effect of heresy, which destroys the unity of
the Church.
[2] The first appearance of one of the key thematic elements in the poem,
vision. Man’s imperfect vision leads him to incorrect perception of the true
nature of the universe.
[3] Literally, separation (discretio)
takes away from the heap (cumulum).
Here Prudentius seems to refer to the paradox of the “heap” (Greek sorites). If you were to place one bean on a table and
ask someone if it is a heap, he would answer “no.” What about two beans, or three, or five? At some point—say, 100 beans-- the viewer
will perceive the beans to be a heap. If
one were then to remove one bean, would the remaining 99 no longer be a
heap? The Stoic Chrysippus, according to
Cicero, dismissed this paradox, claiming that the wise man knows when to stop
replying to questions of the form ‘Are so many grains a heap?’
“That doesn’t harm me,” he
says, “for like a skilled driver, I shall restrain my horses before I reach the
edge, all the more so if what they are heading for is a precipice. In like manner I restrain myself in advance
and stop replying to sophistical questions.”
Cic. Acad. 2.94 (Ierodiakonou
2006, 526).
Asserting, as
dualist theologies do, that God’s power can be diminished is to formulate the
question of divine unity improperly.
[5] generatio simplex, “pure
generation” implies generation from a single source or through a single
channel, and is attributed only to God.
It is a key concept for Prudentius, who fills the Hamartigenia with examples of the problems that arise from generatio that is not simplex, which produces offspring that
are not identical in nature with their parent.
The problem of evil is closely related to the issue of reproduction, for
if God created man in his own image, how can we account for the presence of
evil? Dualists solve the problem by
positing two gods who are unlike.
Prudentius here attempts to prove the unity of God.
[6] In the next section (56-94) Prudentius argues that God has provided a
visible symbol of divine unity, the sun, to give man a way to comprehend the
divine unity.
