On the Trinity 13.14–13.20

What, then, is the justice by which the devil was conquered? What but the justice of Jesus Christ? And how was he conquered? Because, although he found in him nothing worthy of death, he nevertheless killed him. And it is certainly just that the debtors whom he held should be let go free, believing in him whom he killed without any debt. This is what we mean when we say we are justified in his blood. For so that innocent blood was poured out for the remission of our sins. Hence in the Psalms he calls himself free among the dead. For he alone died free from the debt of death. Hence in another Psalm too he says, “Then I paid back what I did not steal,” wanting sin to be understood by theft, because it was usurped against what is lawful. Hence too, by the mouth of his own flesh, as we read in the Gospel, he says, “Behold, the prince of this world comes, and finds nothing in me,” that is, no sin; “but that all may know,” he says, “that I do the will of my Father, rise, let us go hence.” And from there he goes on to his passion, so that he might pay for us debtors what he himself did not owe. Would the devil have been conquered by this most equitable right if Christ had chosen to deal with him by power and not by justice? But he put aside what he could do, so that he might first do what he ought. And for this reason it was necessary that he should be both man and God. For unless he were man, he could not be killed; unless he were God, it would not be believed that he did not will what he could, but that he could not do what he willed; and we would think, not that justice had been preferred by him to power, but that power had been lacking to him. But as it is, he suffered human things for us, because he was man; but if he had not willed it, he could also have not suffered this, because he was also God. Justice was thus made more pleasing in humility, because, with so great a power in his divinity, he could have avoided enduring humility if he had not willed it; and so, by one so powerful dying, to us powerless mortals both justice was commended and power was promised. For of these two he did the one by dying and the other by rising again. For what is more just than to go as far as the death of the cross for justice? And what is more powerful than to rise from the dead, and to ascend into heaven with the very flesh in which he was killed? So justice first and power afterward conquered the devil: justice, because he had no sin and was most unjustly killed by him; power, because, having died, he came back to life, never to die afterward. But he would have conquered the devil by power even if he could not have been killed by him; although it belongs to greater power to conquer death itself by rising again than to avoid it by living. But it is something else for which we are justified in the blood of Christ, when we are rescued from the devil's power through the remission of sins: this belongs to the fact that the devil is conquered by Christ by justice, not by power. For Christ was crucified out of the weakness which he took on in mortal flesh, not out of his immortal power; yet of that weakness the apostle says, “The weakness of God is stronger than men.”

It is not difficult, then, to see that the devil was conquered when he who had been killed by him rose again. It is greater, and deeper to understand, to see that the devil was conquered when he seemed to himself to have conquered, that is, when Christ was killed. For then that blood, since it was his who had no sin at all, was poured out for the remission of our sins, so that, because the devil rightly held those whom, guilty of sin, he had bound by the condition of death, he might rightly let them go through him whom, guilty of no sin, he had undeservedly afflicted with the penalty of death. By this justice the strong man was conquered and by this chain he was bound, so that his vessels might be snatched away, which with him and his angels had been vessels of wrath, and turned into vessels of mercy. For the apostle Paul relates the very words of our Lord Jesus Christ spoken to him from heaven when he was first called. For among the other things he heard, he says that this too was said to him: “For this purpose I have appeared to you, to appoint you a minister and witness of the things you see from me, in which I also go before you, delivering you from the people and from the Gentiles, to whom I send you to open the eyes of the blind, that they may turn from darkness, and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive remission of sins, and a lot among the saints, and the faith that is in me.” Hence too the same apostle, exhorting believers to give thanks to God the Father, says, “Who rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of his love, in whom we have redemption for the remission of sins.” In this redemption the blood of Christ was given for us as a price, and by receiving it the devil was not enriched but bound, so that we might be loosed from his bonds, and he might not drag with him, entangled in the nets of sin, any of those whom Christ, free from all debt, had redeemed by pouring out his blood without owing it, to the ruin of the second and everlasting death; but that those who belong to the grace of Christ, foreknown and predestined and chosen before the foundation of the world, should die only so far as Christ himself died for them, by the death of the flesh only, not of the spirit.

For although the death of the flesh itself came originally from the sin of the first man, yet its good use has made the most glorious martyrs. And so not only death itself but all the evils of this world, the pains and labors of men, although they come from the deserts of sins, and above all of original sin, from which life itself was bound by the chain of death, nevertheless had to remain even when sins were forgiven, so that man might contend with them for the truth, and the virtue of the faithful might be exercised by them; so that the new man, through the new covenant, might be prepared amid the evils of this world for the new world, bearing wisely the misery which this condemned life has deserved, and rejoicing prudently because it will end; but waiting faithfully and patiently for the happiness which the future life, set free, will have without end. For the devil, cast out from rule over the faithful and from their hearts, in whose condemnation and unbelief he reigned, condemned though he was himself, is allowed to oppose them only so far as, under the condition of this mortality, he knows is good for them; of which the sacred writings sound forth through the apostle's mouth: “God is faithful, who will not let you be tempted beyond what you are able; but with the temptation he will also make a way out, that you may be able to endure.” And these evils which the faithful endure piously are of profit, either for correcting sins, or for exercising and testing righteousness, or for showing the misery of this life, so that that life where there will be true and everlasting happiness may be desired more ardently and sought more earnestly. But these things are kept in store for those of whom the apostle says: “We know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose as saints. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified.” Of these predestined none will perish with the devil; none will remain under the devil's power until death. Then follows what I have already mentioned above: “What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how has he not also with him given us all things?” Why, then, should the death of Christ not have taken place? Indeed, why should not this way above all have been chosen, passing over innumerable other ways which the Almighty could use to free us, in which nothing of his divinity was lessened or changed, and so great a benefit was conferred on men from the humanity he took up, that a temporal death which was not owed was rendered by the everlasting Son of God, who was also the son of man, by which he might free them from the everlasting death that was owed? The devil held our sins, and through them rightly fixed us in death. He who had none of his own forgave them, and was undeservedly brought to death by him. That blood was of such worth that he who killed Christ, even for a time, by a death not owed, ought not to keep anyone who has put on Christ in the everlasting death that was owed. “God therefore commends his love toward us, in that, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more, then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.” Justified, he says, by his blood: justified plainly in that we have been freed from all sins; and freed from all sins because the Son of God, who had none, was killed for us. We shall be saved, then, from wrath through him: from the wrath of God, certainly, which is nothing else than just retribution. For the wrath of God is not, as man's, a disturbance of mind; but it is the wrath of him to whom holy Scripture says in another place, “But you, Lord of hosts, judge with tranquillity.” If, then, just divine retribution has received such a name, how is the reconciliation of God rightly understood except as the ending of such wrath? Nor were we enemies to God except as sins are enemies to justice; when these are forgiven, such enmities are ended, and those whom the just one himself justifies are reconciled to him. Yet he certainly loved them even as enemies, since he did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all while we were still enemies. Rightly, then, the apostle went on to add, “For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son,” through which that remission of sins took place, “much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved in his life.” Saved in his life, who were reconciled through his death. For who would doubt that he will give his life to his friends, for whom as enemies he gave his death? “And not only so,” he says, “but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.” Not only, he says, shall we be saved, but we also boast; and not in ourselves but in God; and not through ourselves but through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation, according to what was argued above. Then the apostle adds, “Therefore, as through one man sin entered into this world, and through sin death, and so death passed through to all men, in whom all sinned,” and the rest, in which he argues at greater length about two men: the one, the first Adam, by whose sin and death we his descendants are bound as by hereditary evils; the other, the second Adam, who is not man only but also God, by whose paying for us what he did not owe we have been freed from debts both ancestral and our own. Accordingly, since because of that one the devil held all who were begotten through his vitiated carnal concupiscence, it is just that because of this one he should let go all who are regenerated through his immaculate spiritual grace.

There are also many other things in the incarnation of Christ, which displeases the proud, that are to be looked at and thought about for our health. One of them is that it has been shown to man what place he has in the things which God has made, since human nature could be so joined to God that from two substances there came to be one person, and so now from three, God, soul, and flesh; so that those proud, malignant spirits, who put themselves in between as mediators in order to deceive under the pretense of helping, may not dare to set themselves above man because they have no flesh; and above all because the Son of God deigned even to die in that same flesh, so that they may not persuade men to worship them as gods because they seem to be immortal. Next, that the grace of God might be commended to us in the man Christ without any preceding merits; because not even he attained by any preceding merits to being joined in so great a unity with the true God that he became, one person with him, the Son of God; but from the time he began to be man, from that time he is also God; whence it was said, “The Word was made flesh.” There is this too: that the pride of man, which is the greatest obstacle to clinging to God, might be refuted and healed by so great a humility of God. Man learns also how far he has departed from God, and what avails him for healing pain, when he returns through such a Mediator, who as God by his divinity comes to the help of men, and as man by his weakness comes alongside them. And what greater example of obedience could be given to us, who had perished through disobedience, than God the Son obedient to God the Father even to the death of the cross? And where could the reward of obedience itself be better shown than in the flesh of so great a Mediator, which rose again to eternal life? It belonged also to the justice and goodness of the Creator that the devil should be overcome by the same rational creature which he rejoiced to have overcome, and by one coming from that very race which, its origin vitiated through one man, he held entire.

For God could certainly have taken up a man from elsewhere, in whom to be the Mediator between God and men, not from the race of that Adam who bound the human race by his sin; just as he did not create the one he created first from the race of anyone. He could, then, either in this way or in any other way he willed, have created another, by whom the conqueror of the first might be conquered. But God judged it better both to take up from the very race that had been conquered the man through whom he would conquer the enemy of the human race, and yet from a virgin, whose conception was preceded by the spirit, not the flesh, by faith, not lust. Nor was there present the concupiscence of the flesh, through which all the rest, who contract original sin, are sown and conceived; but with that wholly and utterly removed, holy virginity was made fruitful by believing, not by lying with a man; so that what was born from the stock of the first man should derive only the origin of the race, not also of the guilt. For there was born a nature not vitiated by the contagion of the transgression, but the sole medicine of all such vices. There was born, I say, a man having no sin at all, and never to have any, through whom those were to be reborn, to be freed from sin, who could not be born without sin. For although conjugal chastity makes good use of the carnal concupiscence which is in the genital members, yet it has involuntary motions, by which it shows either that it could not have existed in paradise before sin, or, if it did, that it was not such as ever to resist the will. But now we feel it to be such that, fighting against the law of the mind, even if there is no reason for begetting, it thrusts in the goads of intercourse; and there, if it is yielded to, it is sated by sinning; if it is not yielded to, it is reined in by refusing consent. Who could doubt that these two things were foreign to paradise before sin? For neither did that honorable state do anything unseemly, nor did that happiness suffer anything unquiet. It was fitting, then, that this carnal concupiscence should not be there at all when the virgin's offspring was conceived, in whom the author of death would find nothing worthy of death, and whom he would nevertheless kill, to be conquered by the death of the author of life: the conqueror of the first Adam, who held the human race, conquered by the second Adam and losing the Christian race, set free out of the human race from human guilt through him who was not in the guilt, although he was of the race; so that that deceiver might be conquered by that race which he had conquered by guilt. And this was done in such a way that man might not be exalted, but “he who boasts, let him boast in the Lord.” For he who was conquered was only man, and he was conquered because he proudly desired to be a god; but he who conquered was both man and God; and so he conquered, born of a virgin, because God in humility did not rule that man, as he rules other saints, but bore him. These great gifts of God, and any others there are which it would be long for us to seek and discuss now on this subject, would none of them exist unless the Word had been made flesh.

But all these things which the Word made flesh did and endured for us in time and place belong, according to the distinction we undertook to show, to knowledge, not to wisdom. But the Word as he is without time and without place is coeternal with the Father and everywhere whole; and if anyone can, as far as he can, speak truly of him, that speech will be the word of wisdom; and so the Word made flesh, who is Christ Jesus, has the treasures both of wisdom and of knowledge. For the apostle, writing to the Colossians, says: “For I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you and for those who are at Laodicea, and for all who have not seen my face in the flesh, that their hearts may be comforted, joined together in love and in all the riches of the fullness of understanding, for the knowledge of the mystery of God, which is Christ Jesus, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” How far the apostle knew these treasures, how much of them he had penetrated, and to how great things he had come in them, who can know? Yet I, according to what is written, “To each of us is given the manifestation of the Spirit for profit: to one is given through the Spirit the word of wisdom, to another the word of knowledge according to the same Spirit,” if these two differ from each other in such a way that wisdom is attributed to divine things and knowledge to human, recognize both in Christ, and with me every one of his faithful. And when I read, “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us,” in the Word I understand the true Son of God, in the flesh I recognize the true son of man, and both joined together into one person of God and man by the ineffable bounty of grace. For this reason it continues and says, “And we saw his glory, the glory as of the Only-begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.” If we refer grace to knowledge and truth to wisdom, I think we do not depart from that distinction between these two things which we have commended. For among things that arose in time, the highest grace is that man was joined to God in unity of person; but among eternal things the highest truth is rightly attributed to the Word of God. And that the same one is the Only-begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth, has come about so that the same one is in the things done for us in time, through whom we are cleansed by the same faith, so that we may contemplate him steadfastly in eternal things. But those foremost philosophers of the Gentiles, who were able to see the invisible things of God, understood through the things that are made, nevertheless, because they philosophized without the Mediator, that is, without the man Christ, whom they neither believed the prophets that he would come nor the apostles that he had come, held back the truth, as was said of them, in unrighteousness. For, placed among these lowest things, they could only seek some means by which they might reach those lofty things which they had understood; and so they fell among deceiving demons, through whom it came about that they changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of an image of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed beasts and serpents. For in such forms they also set up or worshiped idols. Our knowledge, then, is Christ, and our wisdom also is the same Christ. He plants in us faith concerning temporal things; he shows us the truth concerning eternal things. Through him we go to him; we press on through knowledge to wisdom; yet we do not depart from one and the same Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. But now we are speaking of knowledge; afterward we will speak of wisdom, as far as he grants. Nor let us take these two as though it were not permitted to speak either of that wisdom which is in human things or of that knowledge which is in divine things. For in the broader custom of speech both can be called wisdom and both knowledge. Yet in no way would it have been written in the apostle, “To one is given the word of wisdom, to another the word of knowledge,” unless these were also properly called each by its own name, of whose distinction we are now treating.

Now, then, let us see what this long discourse has accomplished, what it has gathered, where it has arrived. To want to be happy belongs to all men; yet faith, by which, as it cleanses the heart, one arrives at happiness, does not belong to all. So it comes about that through this, which not all want, one must press on to that which there is no one who does not want. That they want to be happy all see in their own hearts; and so great is the agreement of human nature in this matter that a man is not deceived who infers this from his own mind about another's; finally, we know that all want it. But many despair of being able to be immortal, although no one can be otherwise what all want, that is, happy; yet they want to be immortal too, if they could; but by not believing that they can, they do not live in such a way that they could. Faith, then, is necessary in order that we may attain happiness with all the goods of human nature, that is, of both soul and body. And this same faith holds that this faith has been defined in Christ, who rose in the flesh from the dead, never to die again; and that no one is freed from the devil's dominion except through him, through the remission of sins; and that in the devil's party life must be wretched and everlasting, which should rather be called death than life. Of this faith I have argued in this book too, as I could, for the time available, although I had already said much about it in the fourth book of this work; but there for one purpose, here for another: there, namely, to show why and how Christ was sent by the Father in the fullness of time, because of those who say that the one who sent and the one who was sent cannot be equal in nature; here, to distinguish active knowledge from contemplative wisdom. For it pleased us, ascending as it were by steps, to seek in both, in the inner man, a certain trinity of its own kind in each, as we sought it before in the outer man; so that we might come, with a mind more practiced in these lower things, to behold, in our small measure, if indeed we can even do this, at least in an enigma and through a mirror, that Trinity which is God. Whoever, then, has committed the words of this faith to memory only as sounds, not knowing what they mean, as those who do not know Greek are accustomed to hold Greek words in memory, or Latin words likewise, or those of any other language of which they are ignorant, does he not have a certain trinity in his mind, because the sounds of the words are in his memory even when he is not thinking of them, and the gaze of his recollection is formed from there when he thinks of them, and the will of the one remembering and thinking joins the two? Yet in no way would we say that such a one, when he does this, acts according to the trinity of the inner man, but rather of the outer; because he remembers only that which belongs to the sense of the body called hearing, and looks at it when he wills and as much as he wills, and in such thinking he turns over nothing but images of bodily things, that is, of sounds. But if he holds and recalls what those words mean, then he does indeed do something of the inner man; but he is not yet to be said or thought to live according to the trinity of the inner man if he does not love the things that are proclaimed, commanded, and promised there. For he can hold and think of them even for this purpose, that, thinking them false, he may also try to refute them. That will, then, which there joins what was held in memory and what has been impressed from it on the gaze of thought, does indeed complete some trinity, since it is itself the third; but one does not live according to it when the things thought of do not please, as being false. But when they are believed to be true, and the things that are to be loved there are loved, then one lives according to the trinity of the inner man; for each lives according to what he loves. But how are things loved which are not known but only believed? This question has already been treated in the earlier books, and it was found that no one loves what he is wholly ignorant of, but that, when things unknown are said to be loved, they are loved from things that are known. Now we close this book with the reminder that the just man lives by faith; and this faith works through love, so that even the virtues by which one lives prudently, bravely, temperately, and justly are all referred to the same faith; for otherwise they could not be true virtues. Yet in this life they do not avail so much that there is not sometimes need here of some kind of remission of sins; which does not come about except through him who by his blood conquered the prince of sins. From this faith and such a life, whatever notions are in the mind of the faithful man, when they are contained in the memory, and looked at by recollection, and please the will, yield a certain trinity of its own kind. But the image of God, of which we will speak afterward with his help, is not yet in it; which will appear better when it has been shown where it is; and this the reader may expect in the coming volume.