On the Trinity

Contents

Books 1 and 2 are staged; Book 3 follows.

Reading pages: 1.7–1.11 · 1.15 · 1.16 · 1.18–1.20 · 1.21–1.26 · 1.27–1.31 · 1.32–1.36 · 2.1–2.2 · 2.3 · 2.5 · 2.6 · 2.7 · 2.8 · 2.10 · 2.11 · 2.13–2.16 · 2.17–2.25 · 2.26–3.1 · 3.2 · 3.3 · 3.5–3.15 · 3.16–3.18 · 3.19–3.20 · 3.21 · 3.23–3.28 · 3.29–3.36 · 3.38–3.42

1. 1.7The fragmentary opening of the surviving text: Paul calls godless those who knew the Father without the Son, places salvation and reconciliation in Christ, and the Son's freedom shows that he is not a creature.
2. 1.8Didymus attacks the view that the Father made the Son as an instrument to make the rest of creation: it would charge God with envy, sloth, or weakness.
3. 1.9Didymus answers the heretics' questions 'when was the Son begotten?' and 'did God beget willing or unwilling?': the begetting and procession are beyond understanding, and the Son is not a product of the Father's will.
4. 1.10Using the image of light and its radiance, Didymus answers the claims that God cannot beget from his substance without changing it.
5. 1.11Against the claim that different names mean different substances, Didymus argues that Father and Son share every name except those that mark their relation, and so share one substance.
6. 1.15Didymus gathers Scripture to show that the Son and the Spirit are without beginning, Almighty, God and Lord, equal to the Father in every name except Father, and that the Son appeared to the patriarchs as God.
7. 1.16Didymus refutes the claim that the Father is incomparable with and greater than the Son: the Son is the true image and imprint of the Father, equal in every respect, and the 'greater' sayings concern his becoming man.
8. 1.18Scripture names sometimes one, sometimes two, sometimes all three divine hypostases, in varying order, and calls each of them good, showing one Godhead in three equal persons.
9. 1.19The same words of Scripture are ascribed now to the Father, now to the Son, now to the Spirit, as with Isaiah's vision, Psalm 95, and the leading of Israel from Egypt, which shows that the three share one Godhead.
10. 1.20Only God can dwell in a person by substance, and Scripture says that Father, Son and Spirit all dwell in the faithful; Satan 'fills' people only by deceiving them.
11. 1.21Father, Son and Spirit are each said to speak in the prophets and saints, which shows their equal nature and authority.
12. 1.22Scripture says that believers live to God, to Christ, and by the Spirit, which shows the three to be of one substance.
13. 1.23The law is called God's, Christ's, and the Spirit's, another sign of one substance in the Trinity.
14. 1.24Believers are called 'men of God', 'Christians' and 'spiritual', names taken from each of the three divine persons.
15. 1.25Things called God's, such as the Church, the Gospel and the ministry, are also called Christ's or the Spirit's, which shows one Godhead and lordship.
16. 1.26All that the Father has belongs to the Son: peace, glory, forgiveness, the oath to Abraham, and the seat at the right hand, so that only fatherhood distinguishes the Father.
17. 1.27The prophets and apostles speak of the Son in the same exalted terms as the Father: great God, true God, only Master, Lord of all; [ch. 28] he is the sun of righteousness and the source of every good, and those who believe in him become sons of light.
18. 1.29The Son is judge of the living and the dead and forgives sins by his own authority, since salvation is found in no one else.
19. 1.30The Father reveals the Son and draws people to him, and the Son and Spirit bring them to the Father; Peter's confession of the Son as true and consubstantial is the rock of the churches, and the keys mean that the penitent are to be received.
20. 1.31Against those who say the Son will hand over his kingdom to the Father after the resurrection, Scripture declares that his kingdom has no end and is shared with the Father and the Spirit.
21. 1.32The Son is to be glorified and worshiped with the same glory as the Father, as the psalms, prophets, apostles and Gospels show; those who give glory to the Father 'through the Son' as to a creature exchange the glory of God.
22. 1.34What Scripture says of the Father must not be used to make the Son or Spirit less: only the uncreated God does what Scripture ascribes to the Son, and faith in a created Son would break the commandment against foreign gods.
23. 1.35Didymus explains that in defending the Son and the Spirit he takes nothing from the Father; those who seem to honor the Father more in fact grieve him.
24. 1.36Didymus closes Book 1 with rules for reading Scripture's statements about God: one person named, two, or three, the same names and works ascribed to each, all point to one nature, will and kingdom in three distinct hypostases.
25. 2.1The contents of Book 2 (partly lost in the scan), then chapter 1: the Trinity is beyond comprehension, works creation in common, and the Spirit is praised in a long litany of divine titles.
26. 2.2Didymus gathers Scriptures that call the Holy Spirit “my Spirit” or “the Spirit of God” and argues against heretics that this “my” shows kinship of nature, not mere ownership as with “my servant Isaiah.”
27. 2.3Didymus lists the many divine names Scripture gives the Spirit, rebuts the Macedonian argument that shared words like “good” and “holy” prove nothing, and then (chapter 4) answers how the Spirit can be the Spirit of God who is Spirit, and why angels are not spirits of God in the same sense.
28. 2.5Against heretics who argue that the Spirit cannot be God unless he is Father or Son, Didymus shows from parallel Scriptures that the Spirit is named, works, and is honored as the Father and the Son are, and that he is called “one Spirit” and “Utterance of God.”
29. 2.6Didymus goes through twenty-three marks of the Godhead (being uncreated, filling all things, incorruptibility, eternity, holiness, goodness, freedom, truth, knowledge of God, being hymned rather than hymning, being named with Father and Son, oneness, being the water of life, anointing Christ) and shows each to belong to the Holy Spirit and not to creatures.
30. 2.7Didymus sets out the divine works of the Holy Spirit (giving life, raising Christ, creating and re-creating, sanctifying, saving, forgiving sins, working with Father and Son, giving oracles, judging, foreknowing), answers Macedonian objections, and digresses into an address to the archangels Michael and Gabriel.
31. 2.8Didymus argues from the Spirit's distributing gifts “as he wills” that he acts with God's own free authority, answers a Macedonian who compared the Spirit's “working” with that of herbs and Satan and called him neither God nor creature, and shows from Scripture that the Spirit appoints and sends prophets and apostles, legislates like a king, and guides God's people.
32. 2.10Didymus defends the testimony of Elihu (Job 33:4) to the divine Spirit, argues from the indwelling of the Spirit that believers are God's temple in the proper sense, answers the Macedonian claim that 'temple' is said only by appellation, and shows from Paul, Peter, Isaiah, John, and the Psalms that the Spirit who teaches, is worshiped, and spoke in the prophets is God and Lord.
33. 2.11Didymus shows from Psalm 110, Daniel, Elisha, Ezekiel, Samson's story, and Paul's reading of Isaiah 6 that the Holy Spirit is Lord and God, answers the heretics' reading of 'the Spirit spoke through Isaiah,' accuses them of altering Scripture, and then sets out how the Spirit regenerates, frees, adopts, and glorifies the baptized, insisting that baptism profits nothing without confessing the Spirit's equal Godhead.
34. 2.13Didymus answers the Macedonian argument that 'born of water and the Spirit' would make water equal to the Spirit, explains why water is joined to the Spirit in baptism, and calls the font the virgin mother of the baptized, in which Christ betroths the soul and feeds it with his body and blood.
35. 2.14Didymus argues that the Spirit sanctified the waters from creation and reads the flood, the Red Sea, the healing of Marah, Elisha's floating axe-head, the healing of the Jericho spring, Naaman's seven washings, Zechariah's lampstand and seven eyes, and the pool of Bethesda as types of baptism, the gift of the consubstantial Trinity.
36. 2.15Didymus shows that Scripture often names the Holy Spirit alone in speaking of baptism and sealing, because the Spirit shares the substance and operation of the Father and the Son, and states the rule that Eunomians and Montanists coming to the church are baptized, not re-baptized, and that converts from every heresy receive the chrism from the bishop.
37. 2.16Didymus reads the Israelite feasts of Unleavened Bread, Pentecost, and Tabernacles as types of Christ's Pascha, the coming of the Holy Spirit, and the church's assemblies that lead to the heavenly tents.
38. 2.17Didymus argues that Scripture shows the Spirit always present and working with the Father and the Son, provoked by sin as God is, governing and teaching the prophets and apostles, and equal to the Father and the Son, since things equal to the same are equal to one another.
39. 2.18Didymus describes how the apostles, once clothed with the Spirit's power, stood boldly against the world, healed, despised wealth and rank, and spoke in many tongues, and cites Peter's words to Ananias as a proclamation of the Spirit's divine substance.
40. 2.19Didymus explains that God revealed the Trinity step by step, the Spirit last, as people could bear it, and argues that the one name into which believers are baptized, 'God' and 'Lord,' belongs equally to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
41. 2.20Didymus explains Paul's division of people into spiritual, psychical, and fleshly: the spiritual are those in whom the Holy Spirit dwells and who confess and contemplate his incomprehensible Godhead; the psychical are pagans, Jews, and heretics who deny it; the fleshly are those given over to the passions.
42. 2.21Didymus argues that 'worship in spirit and truth' and 'no one can say Jesus is Lord except in the Holy Spirit' do not make the Spirit a mere instrument of worship, but show that the Spirit, like the Son, is worshiped and glorified with the Father, and he begins to attack the heretics' altered doxology.
43. 2.24Didymus compares the heretics, who set their own traditions against God's commandment, with the Pharisees rebuked by Christ for the Corban rule, which he explains as a priestly device that let sons avoid supporting their parents.
44. 2.25Didymus sums up the proofs of the Holy Spirit's Godhead (his co-eternal origin, divine attributes, names, and works, his equal honor with the Father and the Son) and concludes that those who call him a creature or servant share the lot of Hagar, Ham, and Simon the Magus.
45. 2.26Didymus applies the New Testament warnings against scoffers, apostates, and those who grieve or insult the Spirit to the deniers of the Spirit's Godhead, and argues that the unforgivable blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is refusing to confess him God, consubstantial with the Father and the Son.
46. 2.27Didymus closes Book 2 by citing Greek verses ascribed to an oracle, Orpheus, and Plato the comic poet, Hermetic sayings of the 'Good Daemon,' and Porphyry's account of Plato's three divine principles as partial witnesses to the Trinity, then ends with a long personal prayer (built on Psalm 71) for forgiveness, protection from the Antichrist, peace, plenty, and a quiet life of study, almsgiving, and worship.
47. 3.1Didymus opens Book 3 on the soul’s longing for knowledge, the heretics’ misuse of the texts on Christ’s incarnation, and his plan to recapitulate and answer their arguments.
48. 3.2A numbered series of fifty-five short arguments that the Son and the Holy Spirit are true God, uncreated and consubstantial with the Father, with lines from pagan poets cited as partial witnesses.
49. 3.3Didymus answers the Arian use of Prov 8:22 (“The Lord created me”) and Col 1:15 (“firstborn of all creation”), referring them to created wisdom, the Church, or the incarnation, and never to the Son’s divine nature.
50. 3.5Didymus answers two further Arian proof-texts, “I am the beginning and the end” and “God has made him Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:36), referring “made” to Christ’s incarnation and to relation, not to his divine substance.
51. 3.7Against the Arian reading of “Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God,” Didymus refers the title Christ to the incarnation and reads the phrase as proof of the Son’s consubstantiality.
52. 3.8Didymus answers the argument from the vine and the branches: the Son is of the Father’s nature by his Godhead and ours by his flesh, and his flesh is truly human.
53. 3.9Didymus answers Arian readings of texts on Christ as servant, as “designated” Son, as having a God, and as given the name above every name (Phil 2), referring them to the incarnation.
54. 3.11Didymus answers the Arian use of “I live because of the Father” (John 6:57): the Son is life from life, and one who lives only through another could not be eternal life.
55. 3.12Didymus explains John 6:38: the Son and the Father have one will, and he came down by his own choice, undoing our disobedience by his obedience.
56. 3.13Didymus refers Christ’s anointing (Ps 45:7) and sanctification (John 10:36) to the incarnation, by which he makes us partakers of his holiness.
57. 3.14Didymus explains that texts saying God raised Christ do not make his resurrection a favor received, since Christ himself raises his own body and gives us resurrection.
58. 3.15Didymus reads “No one is good except God alone” as a call to confess Christ as God, and shows his natural goodness from his deeds and his teaching.
59. 3.16Didymus answers the claim that texts calling God “alone,” “only true,” and “alone immortal” exclude the Son and the Spirit, and explains in what sense souls and angels are immortal and invisible.
60. 3.17Didymus explains that texts in which the Son “receives” life, authority, or disciples from the Father refer to the incarnation, or, if to his Godhead, mean that he has by nature what the Father has.
61. 3.18Didymus explains “the Father is greater than I” and the language of sending as said of Christ’s incarnation and condescension, since God is everywhere and the Son is equal to the Father.
62. 3.19Didymus explains that “I do not speak on my own” and “the Spirit will not speak on his own” show the one will and teaching of the Trinity, against false prophets, Montanus and Mani, not a creature’s obedience.
63. 3.20Didymus answers the claim from 1 Cor 15:24–28 that the Son will hand over his kingdom and be subjected, referring it to his humanity and showing from Daniel and Paul that his kingdom has no end.
64. 3.21Didymus answers the Arian argument that Christ’s fear, prayer, tears, weariness, hunger, sleep and ignorance of the last day belong to his Godhead, referring them to his real human soul and flesh and to the economy.
65. 3.23Didymus answers the claim that “from whom,” “through whom,” and “in whom” (1 Cor 8:6) rank the Father, Son, and Spirit in descending order, showing from many texts that each phrase is used of each person, and rejects the heretics’ doxology.
66. 3.24Didymus answers the pagans’ appeal to “many gods” in 1 Cor 8:5 and the Arian reading of Christ’s prayer “Glorify me” (John 17), which he refers to the Son’s eternal glory or to the glory given to his servant’s form.
67. 3.25Didymus explains that Christ’s coming “in the glory of his Father” shows that the Son’s glory is the same as the Father’s.
68. 3.27Didymus rejects the claim that the Son’s nature lies between the divine and the created, explaining his mediation (1 Tim 2:5) as belonging to the economy of the incarnation.
69. 3.28Didymus refutes the claim that God’s gifts before Christ’s coming were given by the Father alone, without the Son, since all things, gifts included, came to be through the Son.
70. 3.29Didymus explains that Christ’s “It is not mine to give” (Matt 20:23) was said to check a boastful request, not because the Son lacks authority to grant places in the kingdom.
71. 3.30Didymus reads “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit” as Christ commending redeemed humanity to the Father, as proof that he had a human soul, and as a model prayer for the dying.
72. 3.31Against the claim from Amos 4:13 (“he who creates wind [pneuma]”) that the Holy Spirit is a creature, Didymus shows that the verse speaks of the wind and is uttered by the Spirit, announcing the Father’s Christ.
73. 3.32Didymus answers the argument that the Spirit must be among the “all things” made through the Son: “all things” means created things, and the Spirit does what no servant or creature can do.
74. 3.33Against the claim that in Ps 110:1 the Holy Spirit calls Christ its Lord, Didymus shows that David, speaking in the Spirit but in his own person, calls his descendant Lord according to his Godhead.
75. 3.34Didymus explains John 7:39 (“the Spirit was not yet”) as referring to the Spirit’s not yet being known and given to all, as Jesus was not yet glorified, not to the Spirit’s coming into being.
76. 3.35Didymus explains that the Spirit’s “intercession with groanings” (Rom 8:26–27) expresses its compassion, not inferiority, as the Son’s intercession does not make him less than God.
77. 3.36Against the Macedonians, Didymus argues that texts naming only the Father and the Son (John 17:3; Matt 11:27) do not exclude the Holy Spirit, which knows and “searches” the depths of God as one with him in nature.
78. 3.38Didymus explains the Paraclete sayings of John 14–16: the name is common to the Son and the Spirit, the Spirit proceeds consubstantially from the Father, and its “sending” implies neither inferiority nor change of place, against Macedonius and Montanus.
79. 3.39Didymus explains that the Spirit’s crying “Abba, Father” in our hearts (Gal 4:6; Rom 8:15) shows its compassion in speaking for us, and that the Spirit of adoption is the Holy Spirit, not our own spirit.
80. 3.40Didymus explains “He will glorify me, for he will take from what is mine” (John 16:14) as the Spirit’s agreement and shared glory with the Son, not as receiving what it lacks.
81. 3.41Didymus refutes three Montanist errors: that the Trinity is one person speaking in Montanus, that Montanus brought the “perfect” promised in 1 Cor 13 and the coming of the Paraclete, and that Priscilla and Maximilla were prophetesses whose books carry authority.
82. 3.42Didymus begins his account of the Manichaean doctrine by tracing it to Simon Magus, Menander, Basilides, Carpocrates and Valentinus; the rest of the chapter is lost in the scan.