On the Trinity 12.6–12.13

We do not, then, reject this opinion because we fear to think of holy, inviolable, and unchangeable love as, so to speak, the wife of God the Father, coming into being from him, yet not as offspring, for the begetting of the Word through whom all things were made; but because divine Scripture plainly shows it to be false. For God said, “Let us make man in our image and likeness”; and a little later it was said, “And God made man in the image of God.” “Our,” certainly, since it is plural in number, would not rightly be said if man were made in the image of one person, whether of the Father or of the Son or of the Holy Spirit; but because he was being made in the image of the Trinity, for that reason it was said, “in our image.” And again, lest we should think that three gods are to be believed in the Trinity, since the same Trinity is one God, it says, “And God made man in the image of God,” as if it said, “In his own image.” For such expressions are common in those Scriptures; and some, even if they defend the catholic faith, nevertheless do not notice them carefully, so that they think “God made man in the image of God” was said as though it meant “The Father made him in the image of the Son”; wishing in this way to show that the Son also is called God in the holy Scriptures, as if other most true and most plain proofs were lacking, where the Son is called not only God but true God. For in dealing with this text, while they intend to solve another difficulty, they so entangle themselves that they cannot get free. For if the Father made man in the image of the Son, so that man is not the image of the Father but of the Son, the Son is unlike the Father. But if godly faith teaches, as it does teach, that the Son is like the Father to the point of equality of essence, then what was made in the likeness of the Son must also have been made in the likeness of the Father. Then, if the Father made man not in his own image but in that of the Son, why does he not say, “Let us make man in your image and likeness,” but says “our,” unless because the image of the Trinity was being made in man, so that in this way man would be the image of the one true God, because the Trinity itself is the one true God? Such expressions are innumerable in the Scriptures, but it will be enough to have brought forward these. In the Psalms it is said thus: “Salvation is the Lord's, and your blessing is upon your people,” as if it were said to another, not to him of whom he had said, “Salvation is the Lord's.” And again he says, “By you I shall be rescued from temptation, and hoping in my God I shall leap over the wall,” as if he said to another, “By you I shall be rescued from temptation.” And again, “Peoples shall fall under you, in the heart of the enemies of the king,” as if he said, “in the heart of your enemies.” For it was to that king, that is, to our Lord Jesus Christ, that he had said, “Peoples shall fall under you”; and he meant the same king to be understood when he said, “in the heart of the enemies of the king.” Such expressions are found more rarely in the writings of the New Testament. But yet the apostle says to the Romans, “Concerning his Son, who was made for him of the seed of David according to the flesh, who was predestined Son of God in power according to the Spirit of sanctification by the resurrection of the dead of Jesus Christ our Lord,” as though he were speaking of another above. For what is “the Son of God predestined by the resurrection of the dead of Jesus Christ” but the Son of the same Jesus Christ who was predestined Son of God in power? So, just as here, when we hear “Son of God in the power of Jesus Christ,” or “Son of God according to the Spirit of sanctification of Jesus Christ,” or “Son of God by the resurrection of the dead of Jesus Christ,” although it could have been said in the usual way, “in his own power,” or “according to the Spirit of his own sanctification,” or “by the resurrection of his dead,” or “of his own dead,” we are not compelled to understand another person, but one and the same, namely the Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ; so, when we hear “God made man in the image of God,” although it could have been said more usually, “in his own image,” we are not compelled to understand another person in the Trinity, but the one and same Trinity itself, which is one God, and in whose image man was made. This being so, if we take this same image of the Trinity to be not in one man but in three, father and mother and son, then man was not made in the image of God before a wife was made for him, and before they had a son; because there was not yet a trinity. Or does someone say: “There was already a trinity, because, although not yet in its proper form, yet in its original nature the woman was already in the man's side and the son in the father's loins”? Why then, when Scripture had said, “God made man in the image of God,” did it continue, saying, “God made him; male and female he made them, and he blessed them”? Or, if it is to be punctuated thus, “And God made man,” so that “in the image of God he made him” follows, and the third clause added is “male and female he made them.” For some have been afraid to say, “He made him male and female,” lest something monstrous should be understood, like those whom they call hermaphrodites; whereas even so both could be understood, not falsely, in the singular number, because of what was said, “Two in one flesh.” Why then, as I had begun to say, does Scripture, in the nature of man made in the image of God, mention nothing besides male and female? For to complete the image of the Trinity it ought to have added the son as well, although still placed in the father's loins, as the woman was in his side. Or was the woman perhaps already made, and had Scripture compressed into a brief summary what it would afterward explain more carefully, how it was done; and could the son not be mentioned for this reason, that he was not yet born? As if the Holy Spirit could not have included this too in that brevity, intending to relate the birth of the son afterward in its place, just as he afterward related in its place how the woman was taken from the man's side, and yet did not omit to name her here.

We ought not, therefore, to understand man to have been made in the image of the supreme Trinity, that is, in the image of God, in such a way that the same image is understood to be in three human beings; especially since the apostle says that the man is the image of God, and for that reason removes the covering from his head, which he warns must be put on the woman, speaking thus: “A man ought not to veil his head, since he is the image and glory of God. But the woman is the glory of the man.” What, then, shall we say to this? If the woman, in her own person, completes the image of the Trinity, why is the man still called the image after she has been taken from his side? Or if even one person of a human being out of three can be called the image of God, as in the supreme Trinity itself each person is God, why is the woman not also the image of God? For she is commanded to veil her head for this very reason, that he is forbidden to because he is the image of God. But we must see how what the apostle says, that not the woman but the man is the image of God, is not contrary to what is written in Genesis: “God made man; in the image of God he made him; male and female he made them, and he blessed them.” For it says that human nature itself, which is completed in both sexes, was made in the image of God, and it does not separate the woman from the understanding of the image of God. For having said that God made man in the image of God, it says, “He made him male and female,” or certainly, with another punctuation, “male and female he made them.” How, then, have we heard through the apostle that the man is the image of God, and therefore is forbidden to veil his head, but the woman is not, and therefore she is commanded to do so? Unless, I believe, it is as I have already said when I was treating of the nature of the human mind: that the woman together with her husband is the image of God, so that that whole substance is one image; but when she is assigned as a helper, which concerns her alone, she is not the image of God; but as for what concerns the man alone, he is the image of God, as fully and completely as when the woman is joined with him in one. As we said of the nature of the human mind: if it contemplates the truth as a whole, it is the image of God; and when something is assigned from it and drawn off, by a certain direction of attention, to the action of temporal things, it is nonetheless the image of God on the side by which it consults the truth it beholds; but on the side by which it is directed to doing lower things, it is not the image of God. And since the more it extends itself toward what is eternal, the more it is formed from there in the image of God, and therefore it is not to be restrained so as to hold itself back and moderate itself from that, for this reason the man ought not to veil his head. But because for that rational action which is engaged in bodily and temporal things too great an advance into lower things is dangerous, it ought to have authority over its head, which the veil indicates, by which it is signified that it must be restrained. For a sacred and godly sign is pleasing to the holy angels. For God does not see in time, nor does anything new happen in his vision and knowledge when something is done temporally and transiently, as the senses, whether the carnal senses of animals and men or even the heavenly senses of angels, are affected by it. That the apostle Paul figured the mystery of some more hidden thing in this manifest sex of male and female can be understood even from this: when in another place he says that a true widow is one who is left alone, without children and grandchildren, and yet she ought to hope in the Lord and persist in prayers night and day, here he indicates that the woman, who was deceived and fell into transgression, is saved through the bearing of children; and he added, “if they continue in faith and love and holiness with sobriety.” As if it could harm a good widow either not to have had children, or that those she had would not continue in good works! But because the things called good works are, as it were, the children of our life, according to which it is asked what manner of life each person has, that is, how he conducts these temporal affairs, which life the Greeks call not ζωή but βίος; and because these good works are usually practiced most in the duties of mercy; and works of mercy profit nothing, whether to pagans, or to Jews who do not believe in Christ, or to any heretics or schismatics, where faith and love and sober holiness are not found: it is clear what the apostle meant to signify; and he spoke figuratively and mystically because he was speaking about veiling the woman's head, which will remain empty unless it is referred to some secret of a sacrament. For, as not only the truest reason but also the authority of the apostle himself declares, man was made in the image of God not according to the form of the body but according to the rational mind. For it is a shamefully vain thought that supposes God to be bounded and limited by the outlines of bodily members. And further, does not the same blessed apostle say, “Be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new man, who is created according to God”; and elsewhere more plainly, “Putting off the old man with his deeds, put on the new, who is being renewed in the knowledge of God according to the image of him who created him”? If, then, we are renewed in the spirit of our mind, and that is the new man who is being renewed in the knowledge of God according to the image of him who created him, no one doubts that man was made in the image of him who created him, not according to the body, nor according to any part of the soul, but according to the rational mind, where the knowledge of God can be. And according to this renewal we are also made sons of God through the baptism of Christ, and, putting on the new man, we certainly put on Christ through faith. Who, then, would exclude women from this fellowship, since they are fellow heirs of grace with us; and in another place the same apostle says, “For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus”? Have believing women, then, lost the sex of their body? But because they are renewed in the image of God where there is no sex, man was made in the image of God where there is no sex, that is, in the spirit of his mind. Why then ought the man not to veil his head because he is the image and glory of God, while the woman ought to, because she is the glory of the man, as though the woman were not renewed in the spirit of her mind, which is renewed in the knowledge of God according to the image of him who created it? But because she differs from the man by the sex of her body, that part of reason which is turned aside to govern temporal things could fittingly be figured in her bodily veil; so that the image of God does not remain except on the side by which the mind of man clings to beholding or consulting the eternal reasons; and it is plain that not only males but also females have this.

In their minds, then, a common nature is recognized; but in their bodies the distribution of that one mind is figured. So, as we ascend inward by certain steps of consideration through the parts of the soul, from the point where something begins to meet us that is not common to us with the beasts, there reason begins, where the inner man can now be recognized. And if he too, through that reason to which the administration of temporal things has been delegated, slides too far into outward things by an immoderate advance, with the consent of his head, that is, if that which presides in the watchtower of counsel, as the masculine portion, does not restrain and rein it in, he grows old among his enemies, the demons who envy virtue, with their prince the devil; and that vision of eternal things is withdrawn even from the head itself, eating the forbidden thing with his wife, so that the light of his eyes is not with him; and so, both stripped of that illumination of truth, and with the eyes of conscience opened to see how dishonorable and unseemly they have been left, like leaves of sweet fruits but without the fruits themselves, so they weave together good words without the fruit of good work, so that, living badly, they may as it were cover their shame by speaking well.

For the soul, loving its own power, slides away from the common whole to a private part; and by that apostate pride which is called the beginning of sin, although, following God as ruler in the whole of creation, it could have been governed best by his laws, seeking something more than the whole and striving to govern it by its own law, since there is nothing greater than the whole, it is thrust into care for a part, and so, by craving something more, it is made less; whence avarice also is called the root of all evils. And all that in which it strives to do something of its own against the laws by which the whole is administered, it does through its own body, which it possesses as a part; and so, delighted by bodily forms and motions, since it does not have them with itself within, it is wrapped up with their images, which it has fixed in the memory, and is shamefully defiled by an imaginary fornication, referring all its functions to those ends by which it curiously seeks bodily and temporal things through the senses of the body, or with swollen arrogance affects to be higher than other souls given over to the bodily senses, or is plunged into the muddy whirlpool of carnal pleasure.

When, then, with a good will, it takes counsel for itself or for others toward perceiving inner and higher things, which are possessed in a chaste embrace, not privately but in common, by all who love such things, without any narrowness or envy; even if it is deceived in something through ignorance of temporal things, because it also conducts this temporally, and does not keep the measure of acting that it ought, it is a human temptation. And it is a great thing so to spend this life, which we travel like a road on our way back, that no temptation takes hold of us except what is human. For this sin is outside the body, and is not reckoned as fornication, and therefore it is very easily forgiven. But when it does something for the sake of obtaining the things that are perceived through the body, out of a desire of experiencing or excelling or handling, so as to place the end of its good in them, whatever it does, it does shamefully; and it commits fornication, sinning against its own body; and snatching inward the deceptive images of bodily things and putting them together by vain meditation, so that nothing even divine seems to it to be other than such, privately greedy it is made fruitful in errors, and privately prodigal it is emptied of its strength. Nor would it leap into so shameful and wretched a fornication all at once from the beginning; but, as it is written, “He who despises small things will fall little by little.”

For as a snake creeps not with open steps but with the tiniest efforts of its scales, so the slippery movement of falling away takes hold of the negligent little by little, and, beginning from a perverse desire for likeness to God, it arrives at likeness to the beasts. Hence it is that, stripped of their first robe, they earned by their mortality garments of skins. For the true honor of man is the image and likeness of God, which is not kept except in relation to him by whom it is impressed. So the less one loves what is one's own, the more one clings to God. But by the desire of experiencing its own power, by a certain inclination of its own it falls headlong to itself as to a middle point. So, while it wants to be like him, under no one, it is driven as a punishment from its very middle point down to the lowest things, that is, to the things in which beasts delight; and so, since its honor is the likeness of God and its disgrace the likeness of the beast, “man, set in honor, did not understand; he was compared to senseless cattle, and became like them.” By what way, then, would it pass so far from the highest things to the lowest, except through its own middle? For when, neglecting the love of wisdom, which always remains the same, knowledge is craved from the experience of changeable and temporal things, it puffs up, it does not build up; so the mind, weighed down as if by its own weight, is driven out of happiness, and through that experience of its own middle it learns by its punishment what difference there is between the good forsaken and the evil committed; and, its strength poured out and lost, it cannot return except by the grace of its Maker, calling it to repentance and forgiving its sins. For who will deliver the unhappy soul from the body of this death, except the grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord? Of this grace we will speak in its place, as far as he himself grants.

Now let us carry through, as far as the Lord helps, the consideration we have undertaken of that part of reason to which knowledge belongs, that is, the knowledge of temporal and changeable things that is necessary for carrying out the actions of this life. For just as in that manifest marriage of the two human beings who were made first, the serpent did not eat of the forbidden tree but only persuaded them to eat, and the woman did not eat alone but gave to her husband and they ate together, although she alone spoke with the serpent and she alone was deceived by him; so too in this which is carried on and discerned even within one human being, by a kind of hidden and secret marriage, the carnal, or, so to speak, the sensual movement of the soul, which is directed to the senses of the body and is common to us and the beasts, is shut off from the reason of wisdom. For bodily things are perceived by the sense of the body; but eternal, unchangeable, spiritual things are understood by the reason of wisdom. And appetite is near to the reason of knowledge; since that which is called the knowledge of action reasons about the very bodily things which are perceived by the sense of the body: well, if it refers that knowledge to the end of the supreme good; badly, if it does so in order to enjoy them as goods such that it rests in them in a false happiness. When, then, to this direction of the mind, which is engaged with lively reasoning in temporal and bodily things for the sake of the duty of action, that carnal or animal sense presents some enticement to enjoy itself, that is, as some private good of its own, not as the public and common good, which is the unchangeable good, then, as it were, the serpent speaks to the woman. And to consent to this enticement is to eat of the forbidden tree. But if this consent is content with the delight of thought alone, while the members are so restrained by the authority of the higher counsel that they are not yielded to sin as weapons of iniquity, then, I think, it is to be regarded as if the woman alone had eaten the forbidden food. But if in consenting to make wrong use of the things that are perceived through the bodily sense, any sin is so decided upon that, if there is opportunity, it is also carried out in the body, then that woman must be understood to have given her husband the unlawful food to eat together with her. For a sin cannot be decided upon by the mind, not only to be thought of with pleasure but also to be effectively committed, unless that direction of the mind too, which has the supreme power of moving the members to the act or restraining them from it, yields to and serves the evil action. Certainly, when the mind is delighted by unlawful things in thought alone, not indeed deciding that they are to be done, yet holding and turning over with pleasure things that ought to have been rejected the moment they touched the mind, it is not to be denied that it is a sin, but far less than if it were also resolved to carry it out in act. And therefore pardon must be asked for such thoughts as well, and the breast must be struck, and we must say, “Forgive us our debts”; and we must do what follows and join it in the prayer, “as we also forgive our debtors.” For it cannot be said, as in those first two human beings each bore his own person, and so, if the woman alone had eaten the unlawful food, she alone would certainly have been punished with death, that likewise in one human being, if thought alone feeds with pleasure on unlawful delights, from which it ought to turn away at once, and evils are not decided upon to be done but only held pleasantly in recollection, the woman, as it were, can be condemned without the man. God forbid that we believe this. For here there is one person, one human being, and the whole will be condemned, unless these things, which are recognized as sins of thought alone, without the will to act but yet with the will to delight the mind with such things, are forgiven through the grace of the Mediator. This discussion, then, in which we have sought in the mind of each human being a certain rational marriage of contemplation and action, with functions distributed to each, yet with the unity of the mind kept in both, while the historical truth which divine authority hands down about the first two human beings, namely the man and his wife, from whom the human race has been propagated, remains intact, is to be heard only for this purpose: that it may be understood that the apostle, in attributing the image of God to the man only and not also to the woman, meant, although in the different sex of two human beings, to signify something to be sought in one human being.

Nor does it escape me that some who were before us, distinguished defenders of the catholic faith and expounders of the divine word, when they sought these two things in one human being, whose whole good soul they took to be a kind of paradise, said that the man was the mind and the woman the bodily sense. And according to this distribution, in which the man is taken as mind and the woman as bodily sense, everything seems to fit aptly if the matter is examined carefully; except that it is written that among all the beasts and birds no helper like him was found for the man, and then the woman was made for him from his side. For this reason I did not think the bodily sense, which we see to be common to us and the beasts, should be taken for the woman; but I wanted something which the beasts do not have; and I thought the bodily sense should rather be understood by the serpent, which we read was wiser than all the beasts of the earth. For among those natural goods which we see to be common to us and the irrational animals, sense excels by a certain liveliness: not that sense of which it is written in the Letter to the Hebrews, where we read that solid food belongs to the perfect, who by practice have their senses trained to distinguish good from evil; for those senses belong to the rational nature and pertain to understanding; but this fivefold sense in the body, through which bodily appearance and motion are perceived not only by us but also by the beasts. But whether in this way or in that, or in some other way, we are to understand what the apostle said, that the man is the image and glory of God and the woman the glory of the man, it is plain that when we live according to God, our mind, directed to his invisible things, ought to be formed progressively from his eternity, truth, and love; but that something of our rational direction, that is, of the same mind, must be directed to the use of changeable and bodily things, without which this life is not carried on; not so that we may be conformed to this world by setting our end in such goods and twisting the desire for happiness toward them, but so that whatever we do rationally in the use of temporal things we may do with a view to attaining eternal things, passing through these, clinging to those.