then do not believe me.’

He also said:
‘Just as the Father gives life to whom He wills and causes whomever He wills to die, so too the Son gives life to whom He wills and causes whomever He wills to die.’

This plainly shows that He both gives life and creates, and it refutes those who claim that He is not a Creator and that things merely came to be through Him without His actually creating them.

As for your assertion that ‘all things were fashioned through Him,’ we have never doubted that the Messiah is living and active. Indeed, He made this clear when He said, ‘Truly, I bring about creation and life.’ Your statement that ‘things were fashioned through Him’ therefore means in essence that He Himself fashioned them; they were brought into being by Him. Were it otherwise, the two statements would contradict one another.

He then added in rebuttal:
‘With respect to what some of Arius’s followers claim—that the Father wills a thing and the Son brings it into existence, so that willing belongs to the Father while bringing-into-being belongs to the Son—this too is invalid. For if, in their view, the Son is a created being, the creature’s share in the act of creation turns out to be greater than the Creator’s. Here we have one who wills and acts, while the other wills yet does not act; the former thus enjoys the larger portion in the deed. Inevitably, then, the Son’s role in carrying out what the Father wills becomes like that of any created agent in relation to what the Creator wants from him, and His status would be judged exactly as theirs is regarding compulsion and free choice. If