Letters 169.1–170.10

If Your Holiness sets so much store by knowing the works that occupy me more, from which I do not wish to be diverted to anything else, send someone to copy them for you. For several things have now been completed that I had begun this year before Easter, as Lent was approaching. To those three books On the City of God against its enemies, the worshipers of demons, I have added two more, and in these five books I think enough has been argued against those who suppose the gods are to be worshiped for the sake of happiness in this present life, and who, thinking that we hinder that happiness, are hostile to the Christian name. Next, as we promised in the first book, we must speak against those who think the worship of their gods necessary for the sake of the life that is to come after death, the life for whose sake we are Christians. I have also dictated an exposition of three psalms, in volumes of no small size: the sixty-seventh, the seventy-first, and the seventy-seventh. The rest, not yet dictated or treated, are eagerly awaited and demanded from us. I do not want to be called back and delayed from these by questions breaking in from the side, so much so that I am unwilling at present to attend even to the books On the Trinity, which I have long had in hand and not yet finished, since they are very laborious and I think can be understood by few. So the works we hope will be useful to more people press harder.

For the apostle did not say, as you write, “Whoever is ignorant will be ignored,” about this matter, as though that penalty were to strike whoever cannot distinguish in understanding the ineffable unity of the Trinity as memory, understanding, and will are distinguished in our mind. The apostle said this in another connection. Read, and you will see that he was speaking of things that would build up the faith or morals of many, not of things that would scarcely reach the understanding of a few, and that small, however little understanding of so great a matter there can be in this life: namely, that prophecy should be preferred to tongues; that these things should not be done in disorder, as though the spirit of prophecy forced people to speak even against their will; that women should be silent in the church; that all things should be done decently and in order. When he was dealing with these matters, he said: “If anyone thinks he is a prophet or spiritual, let him acknowledge that what I write to you is the Lord's commandment. But if anyone is ignorant, he will be ignored.” With these words he restrains and calls back to peaceful order the restless, who were the readier for sedition the more they seemed to themselves to excel in the Spirit, while by their pride they threw everything into confusion. “If anyone thinks he is a prophet or spiritual,” he says, “let him acknowledge that what I write to you is the Lord's commandment.” “If anyone thinks he is”: and certainly is not; for one who is, knows without doubt and has no need of admonition and exhortation, because “he judges all things and is judged by no one.” Those, then, were causing seditions and disturbances in the church who seemed to be what they were not. He teaches them to acknowledge that it is the Lord's commandment, because God is not a God of sedition but of peace. “But if anyone is ignorant, he will be ignored,” that is, he will be disapproved. For God, if you refer it to knowledge, is not ignorant of those to whom he is going to say, “I do not know you”; but their disapproval is suggested by this word.

Since the Lord says, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God,” and that vision is promised to us at the end as the highest reward, we need not fear, if we cannot now clearly behold what we believe about the nature of God, that the words “Whoever is ignorant will be ignored” were said on that account. For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the foolishness of preaching to save those who believe. This foolishness of preaching, and the foolishness of God that is wiser than men, draws many to salvation; so that not only those who cannot yet behold with sure understanding the nature of God which they hold by faith, but also those who do not yet distinguish incorporeal substance from the general class of body in their own soul, as surely as they are sure that they live, know, and will, are not strangers to the salvation which that foolishness of preaching confers on believers.

For if Christ died only for those who can distinguish these things with sure understanding, we labor almost in vain in the church. But if, as the truth is, the weak multitudes of believers run to the physician to be healed through Christ, and him crucified, so that where sin abounded grace may abound all the more, then in wonderful ways, through the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God and through his unsearchable judgments, it comes about that some who distinguish incorporeal from bodily things, thinking themselves great on that account and mocking the foolishness of preaching by which believers are saved, wander far from the one way that alone leads to eternal life; while many who glory in the cross of Christ and do not withdraw from that way, even those who are ignorant of these things that are discussed with great subtlety, come to the same eternity, truth, and love, that is, to stable, sure, and full happiness, because not one of the little ones for whom he died perishes; and there, abiding, seeing, and loving, all things are clear to them.

Therefore let us believe with firm piety in one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; so that the Son is not believed to be the one who is the Father, nor the Father the one who is the Son, nor either Father or Son the one who is the Spirit of both. Let nothing in this Trinity be thought to differ in time or place, but let these three be thought equal and coeternal and altogether of one nature; not one creation made by the Father, another by the Son, and another by the Holy Spirit, but all things, and each thing, that have been or are being created subsist by the creative act of the Trinity. And let us believe that no one is set free by the Father without the Son and the Holy Spirit, or by the Son without the Father and the Holy Spirit, or by the Holy Spirit without the Father and the Son, but by the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the one true and truly immortal, that is, in every way unchangeable, only God. Yet many things are also said in the Scriptures of each separately, to convey that though the Trinity is inseparable, it is still a Trinity; so that, just as they cannot be named together when they are mentioned with bodily sounds, though they exist together inseparably, so too in certain passages of Scripture and through certain creatures they are shown singly and in turn: as the Father in the voice that sounded, “You are my Son,” the Son in the man whom he took from the virgin, and the Holy Spirit in the bodily form of a dove. These show the three separately, yet in no way separated.

To understand this in some measure we take memory, understanding, and will. For though we utter each of these singly at its own separate time, we do or say nothing by any of them without the other two. Yet these three must not be thought to be compared with the Trinity in such a way that they correspond in every respect; for to what comparison in argument is such correspondence granted that it fits in every part the thing to which it is applied? Or when is anything taken from the creature as a likeness of the Creator? First, then, this likeness is found unlike in that these three, memory, understanding, and will, are in the soul, but are not the soul itself; whereas that Trinity is not in God, but is itself God. Therefore a wonderful simplicity is proclaimed there, because there it is not one thing to be and another to understand, or whatever else is said of the nature of God; but the soul, because it exists even when it does not understand, is one thing in that it is, another in that it understands. Next, who would dare to say that the Father does not understand by himself but by the Son, as memory does not understand by itself but by the understanding, or rather the soul itself, in which these are, understands only by the understanding, as it remembers only by memory and wills only by will? The likeness is applied, then, to this end: that it may be understood in some way that, just as with these three in the soul, when the single names are uttered by which each of them is indicated, yet each name is uttered by the cooperation of the three, since it is said by remembering, understanding, and willing; so there is no creature by which the Father alone, or the Son alone, or the Holy Spirit alone is shown, which the Trinity does not produce together, since it works inseparably; and so neither the Father's voice, nor the soul and flesh of the Son, nor the dove of the Holy Spirit, was made except by the cooperation of the same Trinity.

Certainly that sound of a voice, which at once ceased to be, was not joined into the unity of the person of the Father, nor was that bodily form of a dove joined into the unity of the person of the Holy Spirit; for it too, like that bright cloud which covered the Savior on the mountain with three disciples, or rather like that fire which showed the same Holy Spirit, ceased to exist as soon as its office of signifying was fulfilled. But the man alone, because all those things were done for the sake of freeing that very nature, was joined into the unity of the person of the Word of God, that is, of the only Son of God, by a wonderful and singular taking up, while the Word remained unchangeably in its own nature, in which nothing composite is to be imagined, with which any fantasy of the human mind could subsist. It is indeed written, “And the spirit of wisdom is manifold,” but it is rightly also called simple; manifold because the things it has are many, simple because it is nothing other than what it has, as the Son is said to have life in himself and is himself that same life. The man was added to the Word; the Word did not pass by change into the man; and thus he is called the Son of God together with the man taken up. Hence the same Son of God is unchangeable and coeternal with the Father, but in the Word alone; and the Son of God was also buried, but in the flesh alone.

Therefore, when words are said of the Son of God, we must see in respect of what they are said. For by the taking of a man the number of persons was not increased; the same Trinity remained. For just as in any man (except that one who was taken up in a singular way) soul and body are one person, so in Christ the Word and the man are one person. And just as a man is called, for example, a philosopher only with respect to his soul, and yet it is not absurd but a most fitting and usual way of speaking to say “the philosopher was beaten,” “the philosopher died,” “the philosopher was buried,” although all of it happens with respect to the flesh, not with respect to that by which he is a philosopher; so Christ is called God, Son of God, Lord of glory, and anything of this kind, with respect to the Word, and yet it is rightly said that God was crucified, since there is no uncertainty that he suffered this with respect to the flesh, not with respect to that by which he is the Lord of glory.

That sound of a voice, and the bodily form of a dove, and the tongues divided as of fire that sat upon each of them, like the things on Mount Sinai that were done in terrifying appearance, and like that pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night, were brought about and passed away by a signifying action. In these things we must above all beware lest anyone believe that the nature of God, whether of Father or Son or Holy Spirit, is changeable and convertible. Nor should anyone be troubled that sometimes the thing that signifies receives the name of the thing it signifies. The Holy Spirit is said to have descended in bodily form like a dove and to have remained on him; so too the rock was Christ, because it signifies Christ.

I am surprised that it seems to you that the sound of the voice in which it was said, “You are my Son,” could have been produced in this way, not through the mediation of a soul but by the divine will through bodily nature alone, and yet it does not seem to you that the bodily form of any living creature and motion like that of a living thing could have been produced in the same way by the divine will without any animal spirit placed in between. For if bodily creation obeys God without the ministry of a vivifying soul, so that sounds are produced such as are usually produced by an animate body, and the form of articulate speech is brought to the ears, why should it not obey so that, without the ministry of a vivifying soul, the shape and movement of a bird are presented to the eyes by the same power of the Creator? Or can the sense of hearing deserve this and the sense of sight not, when both are formed from the bodily matter at hand: what sounds in the ears and what appears to the eyes, the articulations of the voice and the outlines of the limbs, audible and visible motion; so that what is perceived by the bodily sense is a true body, and is nothing more than what is perceived by the bodily sense? For a soul is not perceived by any bodily sense, even in any living creature. There is no need, then, to ask how the bodily form of a dove appeared, just as we do not ask how the voices of an articulated body sounded. For if a soul could be absent as intermediary where a voice is said to have been made, not “as it were a voice,” how much more could it be absent where it is said “a dove,” a word signifying only a bodily form presented to the eyes, not the nature of a living animal! In this way too it is said, “Suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a violent wind rushing, and there appeared to them tongues divided as of fire,” where a certain appearance “as of” wind and “as of” fire, perceptible and like familiar and known natures, seems to be signified, not those familiar and known natures themselves made for a time.

But if a subtler reasoning or a more excellent investigation of the matter shows that the nature that moves neither in time nor in place does not move anything except through that nature which can move in time only, not in place, it will follow that all those things were brought about through the ministry of a living creature, as things are done through angels. To discuss this more carefully would be long and is not necessary. Add to this that there are visions which appear to the spirit as if to the bodily senses, not only to those asleep or raving, but sometimes to those awake and of sound mind, not through the deceit of mocking demons, but through some spiritual revelation that takes place through incorporeal forms like bodies. These cannot be distinguished at all unless they are revealed more fully by divine help and judged by the understanding of the mind; this rarely happens while they are taking place, but mostly afterwards, when they have passed. Since this is so, when Holy Scripture records such things, whether they appear in bodily natures, or only in bodily form but with a spiritual nature, to our spirit as if to the bodily senses, we ought not to judge rashly to which of these two kinds they belong, and whether, if they take place in a body, they are produced through the mediation of a living creature; provided that we either believe without any doubt, or grasp with whatever understanding we can, that the invisible and unchangeable nature of the Creator, that is, of the supreme and ineffable Trinity, is far removed and separated both from the senses of mortal flesh and from all change, whether for better or for worse or into one thing and another.

This is what I have been able to write to you on the two questions, that is, about the Trinity and about the dove, in which the Holy Spirit was shown not in his own nature but in a signifying form, just as the Son of God was crucified by the Jews not in his own birth, of which the Father says, “Before the morning star I begot you,” but in the man taken from the virgin's womb: written, as you see, at leisure, yet by me while extremely busy. Nor did I think it necessary to treat everything you put in your letter; but I think I have answered the two things you wished to hear from me, if not sufficiently for your eagerness, at least obediently to your love.

Besides the two books I mentioned above as added to the three, and the exposition of three psalms, I have also written a book to the holy presbyter Jerome on the origin of the soul, consulting him on how the opinion he wrote to Marcellinus of religious memory was his own, that new souls are made one for each person born, can be defended without undermining the well-founded faith of the church, by which we believe unshakably that in Adam all die and that, unless they are freed by the grace of Christ, which through his sacrament works even in little ones, they are drawn into condemnation. I wrote another to him also, asking how in his view we should take what is written in the letter of James: “But whoever keeps the whole law but stumbles in one point has become guilty of all.” In this one I also said what I think; but in the one on the origin of the soul I only asked, in a kind of consultative discussion, what he thinks. For I did not want to lose the opportunity offered by a very holy and studious young man, the presbyter Orosius, who came to us from farthest Spain, that is, from the shore of the Ocean, fired only by zeal for the Holy Scriptures. I persuaded him to go on to Jerome too. To this same Orosius, on certain questions that troubled him about the heresy of the Priscillianists and some opinions of Origen that the church does not accept, I replied in one book of no great size, as briefly and clearly as I could. I also wrote a large book against the heresy of Pelagius, at the urging of some brothers whom he had persuaded of an opinion harmful to the grace of Christ. If you want to have all these, send someone to copy them all for you. But allow me to give my time to investigating and dictating these things, which, since they are necessary for many, I think should be preferred to your inquiries, which concern very few.

When we asked our holy brother and fellow bishop Peregrinus about your health and that of your household, not only bodily but above all spiritual, his answers made us glad about you but sad about your household, because they have not yet been joined to the Catholic Church by a salutary correction; and since we hoped this would soon happen, we grieve much that it has not yet been done, excellent lord, deservedly honorable and devout brother.

So, greeting your love in the peace of the Lord, we both instruct and ask you not to delay in teaching them what you have learned: namely, that there is one only God to whom is owed that service which is called by the Greek word latreia. For that very word is in the law, where it is written: “You shall worship the Lord your God and serve him alone.” If we say this God is only the Father, the answer will come back to us: “Then latreia is not owed to God the Son,” which it is wicked to say. But if it is owed, how then is it owed only to one God, if it is owed both to the Father and to the Son, unless the one God, whom alone we are commanded to serve with latreia, is called the only God in such a way that the Father is understood and the Son, and indeed the Holy Spirit too? For of him the apostle says: “Do you not know that your bodies are a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you were bought at a great price. Therefore glorify God in your body.” What God, if not the Holy Spirit, whose temple he had said our bodies are? Latreia is therefore owed to the Holy Spirit. For if we were commanded to make him a temple of wood and stone, as Solomon did, we would certainly be shown by making the temple to be offering latreia; how much more do we owe latreia to him for whom we do not make a temple, but are one!

And so, if latreia, of which it was said, “You shall worship the Lord your God and serve him alone,” is owed and offered by us to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, then without doubt the Lord our God, whom alone we must serve with latreia, is not the Father alone, nor the Son alone, nor the Holy Spirit alone, but the Trinity itself, one only God, Father and Son and Holy Spirit. This is not so that the Father is the same as the Son, or the Holy Spirit the same as the Father or the Son, since in that Trinity the Father is Father of the Son alone, and the Son is Son of the Father alone, while the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of both Father and Son; but because of one and the same nature and inseparable life, the Trinity itself, as far as a human being can, with faith going before, is understood to be the one Lord our God, of whom it was said, “You shall worship the Lord your God and serve him alone,” and whom the apostle proclaims when he says: “For from him and through him and in him are all things: to him be glory forever and ever.”

For the only-begotten Son is not from God the Father in the way that the whole creation is from him, which he created from nothing. Him he begot from his own substance; he did not make him from nothing. Nor did he beget him in time, through whom he founded all times; for just as a flame does not precede in time the brightness it produces, so the Father was never without the Son. For he is the Wisdom of God the Father, of which it is written, “For she is the brightness of eternal light.” So she is without doubt coeternal with the light whose brightness she is, that is, with God the Father; and therefore it is not said that, as “in the beginning God made heaven and earth,” so in the beginning he made the Word, but “in the beginning was the Word.” The Holy Spirit, too, was not made from nothing like a creature, but proceeds from the Father in such a way that he was made neither by the Son nor by the Father.

This Trinity is of one and the same nature and substance, not less in each than in all, nor greater in all than in each, but as great in the Father alone or in the Son alone as in the Father and Son together, and as great in the Holy Spirit alone as in the Father and Son and Holy Spirit together. For the Father did not diminish himself in order to have a Son from himself, but so begot from himself another self that he remained whole in himself and was in the Son as great as he is alone. Likewise the Holy Spirit, whole from whole, does not precede him from whom he proceeds, but is as great with him as from him; he neither diminishes him by proceeding nor increases him by cleaving to him. And all these are neither one in confusion nor three in separation; but while they are one they are three, and while they are three they are one. Therefore he who granted to so many hearts of his faithful that they should be one heart, how much more does he keep in himself that these three, each of them God, are all together not three gods but one God! This is the Lord our God, who is served with all piety, to whom alone that latreia is owed.

Since by his goodness he has granted to things born in time that each should beget offspring of its own substance, see how impious it is to say that he himself did not beget what he himself is, when a man by his gift begets what he himself is, that is, a man, not of another nature but of that of which he himself is, although he does not beget the father of his own son, which is what he himself is. For these are names of relationship, not of nature, and so they are called “toward something,” or relative terms, which are sometimes the same and sometimes different. The same, when brother is referred to brother, friend to friend, neighbor to neighbor, kinsman to kinsman, and the like, which it would be endless to go through. For in these, what this one is to that one, that one is to this one. But they are different, as father to son, son to father, father-in-law to son-in-law, son-in-law to father-in-law, master to slave, slave to master. This one is not to that one what that one is to this one, yet both are men. The relation is different, not the nature: for if you consider what one is to the other, this one is not to that one what that one is to this one, because this one is father, that one son, or this one father-in-law, that one son-in-law, or this one master, that one slave; but if you consider what each is with respect to himself or in himself, this one is what that one is, because that one is a man as this one is. Hence your prudence understands that those from whose error the Lord has freed you do not argue reasonably that the nature of God the Father and of God the Son is different because the one is Father and the other Son, and that therefore the Father did not beget what he himself is, because he did not beget the father of his son, which is what he is in relation to him. For who does not see that these names do not show natures in themselves but signify persons in relation to one another?

Of the same kind is what they say with a similar error, that the Son is of another nature and a different substance because God the Father is not from another God, while the Son is indeed God, but from God the Father. For here too what is indicated is not substance but origin, that is, not what each is, but from whom each is or is not. For Abel and Adam were not therefore not of one nature and substance because the one was a man from that man, the other from no one. So if the nature of each is asked, Abel is a man, Adam is a man; but if the origin, the first man is the one from whom Abel came, and no man is the one from whom Adam came. So in God the Father and God the Son, if the nature of each is asked, each is God, and neither is more God than the other; but if the origin, the Father is the God from whom the Son is God, but there is no God from whom the Father is.

In vain, then, do they try to answer this by saying: “But a man begets with passion, while God begot the Son without passion.” This not only does nothing for them but helps us very much. For if God granted to temporal and passible things that they should beget what they are, how much more did he himself, eternal and impassible, beget nothing other than what he himself is, the one begetting the only one, to our great wonder, since with no passion of his own, and with such equality to himself that he preceded him neither in power nor in age! But the Son attributes all that he has and all that he can do not to himself but to the Father, because he is not from himself but from the Father. For he is equal to the Father, but this too he received from the Father; and he did not receive it so as to become equal, as though he had first been unequal, but was born equal; as he was always born, so he was always equal. So the Father did not beget him unequal and then add equality to him once born, but gave it in begetting him, because he begot an equal, not an inferior. Therefore to be in the form of God equal to God was not robbery for him but nature, since he took it by being born, not by presuming in pride.

But he says the Father is greater because he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, not losing the form of God. On account of this form of a servant he was made less not only than the Father but also than himself and the Holy Spirit; and not only than this most excellent Trinity, but he was also made a little lower than the angels. He was also less than men, when as a boy he was subject to his parents. So on account of this form of a servant, which, emptied, he received when the fullness of time came, he said, “The Father is greater than I”; but on account of that form of God, which even when emptied he did not lose, he said, “I and the Father are one”: made man, that is, and remaining God; for man was taken up by God, God was not consumed in man. Therefore, very reasonably, Christ as man is less than the Father, and the same Christ as God is equal to the Father.

Since, then, we rejoice that you have been joined to this right and Catholic faith in our presence, to the great exultation of God's people, why are we still sad about the sluggishness of your household? We implore you by the mercy of Christ that, with his help, you remove this grief from our hearts. For it is not to be believed that your authority could have had great weight in leading your household astray and has none in correcting them. Or do they perhaps despise you because you have come into the communion of the Catholic Church at this age, when they ought rather to admire and revere you the more, because with a kind of youth in old age you have overcome a very old error? God forbid that they should resist you when you speak the truth, who agreed with you when you strayed from the truth; God forbid that they should refuse to think rightly with you, with whom they delighted to err. Only pray for them and press them; or rather, bring them with you into the house of God, since they are with you in your house. Let it shame or grieve you not to come into the house of God with those who were accustomed to gather in your house, especially since the Catholic mother asks some of you and asks back others: she asks for those she found with you, and asks back those she lost through you. Let her not be tormented by losses, but rather rejoice in gains. Let her acquire sons she did not have, and not mourn those she had. We pray to God that you may do what we urge, and we hope from his mercy that by letters from our holy brother and fellow bishop Peregrinus, and by the reply of your love, our heart will soon be filled with joy over this, and our tongue with exultation.