On the Trinity 1.15

… "that to me every knee shall bow, and every tongue shall swear by God", that is, shall acknowledge God, or shall confess to God. The God and Father, then, is not before the Son: not in being without beginning, not in substance, not in glory, but on an equal footing; except, perhaps, by reason of fatherhood. For the inspired Paul made clear that these are the words of the only-begotten Son when he wrote to the Romans as follows: "For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ, as it is written: As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God." Likewise John the theologian said in the Gospel: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being that has come into being. In him was life, and the life was the light of men; and the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it"; and in the Apocalypse: "Who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Lord our God, the Almighty." "Who is" signifies the eternal being of the divine hypostasis, as we have said elsewhere too; for the expression has no limit; hence God said that his own name is "He who is". "In the beginning was" makes plain and very clear the absurdity of "when he was not", which is to be shunned. For the word "was" is indefinite … "In the beginning was the Word" … does not condemn those who say these things … "when he was not" … more than perfect. So it now requires that he be understood as above time, or without beginning. For he who was in the beginning, or whatever one might call a beginning, never at any time, without cause, was not. Or again, how can time, which did not yet exist, be the measure of the one who made it? "Was with God" presents the kinship of nature that the Son has with God the Father, and that from the moment the self-existent Father was, if it is right to speak so, the Son who is from him exists with him. "Was with God" could also be firmly understood to mean that he was as God is: without beginning, uncreated, uncontainable, good, immortal, king of all. For if it is not so with this wisdom that has sprung forth, it will not be so with the spring that poured the wisdom forth either. … firm, and free of idle curiosity, and looking to the divine alone, is the aim and the God-given word of John. "The Word was God" establishes that the Word is substantial and is God, such as is that God whose Word he is; and again that he is without cause. "All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being" shows him, as has already been said, all but the Creator; and also that he was not created. For if not a single created thing received its being without him, it is surely clear to everyone that he himself did not come into being, but was begotten in a divine manner. For it is impossible that the one who gave existence to the universe, and substance and immortality to rational beings, should have come from non-being into being. For nothing created can give substance, or immortality, or make rational beings; but from substance already brought by God out of non-being, gold or silver or bronze or iron or wood or stone, it fashions perhaps a lifeless and irrational statue, or something else; but to bring forth a substance that did not exist, or to make it living and rational, is proper to and distinctive of the one all-powerful and self-complete divine nature alone. The Father made all things through him as light through its own radiance, and as mind through word. "In him was life" teaches further that he is without beginning, being the life of the one supreme nature, and, when nothing at all existed, the cause of what exists. Hence he himself says, "I am the life"; "I am the light". And John is lavish with testimonies to his being without beginning, saying "was" so many times, so that by repeating such a word he might either open the deaf ears of the heretics, or that nothing about "There was when he was not" might in the future catholic and unalterable … "the life was the light of men" teaches the same things again. For he says: This uncreated life is what holds together the created nature of men. "And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it" does not tolerate the opinions of the heretics. For it shows, covertly and very sharply, that whatever one may suppose, a time before time, or a momentary instant, or an age before the ages, he shines eternally as the inseparable radiance of God, and the darkness of non-existence never overtook him. "The Almighty" needs no interpretation. For it shows that he holds the kingship undivided with God the Father and his Holy Spirit, and is God over all. "Who is to come" shows the Son, who is to come a second time and judge the living and the dead. … that "who is" is said of the Son, John the Baptist shows when he says to the Master: "Are you" (instead of: Are you the one who is, whom I myself, while I was in the womb of the barren woman, recognized as God while you were in the womb of the Virgin, and worshiped by leaping?) "or are we to look for another?" And in his first epistle John, the friend and apostle of the Lord, writes: "What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked upon and our hands have touched, concerning the word of life (and the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it, and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us), what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, so that you too may have fellowship with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ." Note again how many times "was" is used; and that those who do not confess that he is Son by nature, without beginning together with God, have no fellowship of salvation with the Father or with the Only-begotten. For it is with this faith, handed down in the mystagogy of illumination by the Master of all, that we have the fellowship of which Peter wrote: "that you may become partakers of the divine nature". For what is a creature and subject to time is not divine nature. And remember with regard to this … with the Father and with his Son, equal in honor, and not "through his Son". And Amos, prophesying, likewise names the Son Almighty, saying somewhere thus: "He who builds his ascent into heaven and founds his promise upon the earth; who calls the water of the sea and pours it out upon the face of all the earth: the Lord God the Almighty is his name." Of this ascent David too sings: "God has gone up with a shout, the Lord with the sound of a trumpet." … these things about the Son. For the Father neither descended nor ascended, as the apostle explains, writing thus: "What does 'he ascended' mean, except that he also first descended? He who descended is the very one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things." As being above all things, he says, rising over and surpassing them together with the Father who begot him, since he is uncreated. For it is plain that he understood it so, from the fact that the intellectual powers too, since they are measured creatures, are in heaven, but not far above the heavens, nor do they fill all things. And Zephaniah likewise proclaims him Almighty, saying: "This shall be theirs in return for their insolence, because they reproached and magnified themselves against the Lord Almighty. The Lord will appear against them, and the Lord will utterly destroy all the gods of the nations of the earth, and they shall worship, each from his own place." And Malachi accordingly says, in the person of the Master: "For from the rising of the sun to its setting my name has been glorified among the nations, and in every place incense is offered to my name, and a pure sacrifice; for my name is great among the nations, says the Lord Almighty; but you profane it." For the mention both of the appearing and of being glorified among the nations … the Jews profane it, together with the worshipers of creatures. And the very sequence of thought requires that he be Almighty, since, being the image and the Only-begotten of the Almighty, he must also in this respect be understood as the image of the Almighty. And Paul writes to the Hebrews: "Who, being the radiance of the glory of the Father", that is, without beginning together with him and consubstantial. For in order that what is beyond the mind may be shown to the mind by things not altogether unlike it, I will say (comparing the great, and the only great, with something small) that at one and the same time there is the sun, and from the nature of the sun and from the whole disk … and without interval and in equal measure the whole light gives warmth to those capable of sensation; and the light poured out immediately, not later, from the substance of what sends it forth, going forth with it and subsisting with it, displays in itself the whole of its quality. But if, for those who say "when he was not", there was a time when the radiance was not, where is the hypostasis of the light that radiates it? For this will surely slip away together with that. And indeed Daniel too said in prophecy: "And light was with him", instead of: the Son was with the Father. For this especially shows the incomparable greatness of the Godhead, that the Father impassibly begot him who is without beginning and rules together with him, and is at the same time perfect and exactly like him. For it is proper to a creature and not to a creator, to the changeable and not to the unchangeable, to one under judgment and not to the judge, to one made alive and not to the giver of life, to one under sin … For if he, before any other activity had yet taken place, made the ages, which are made up of times, and set a beginning for all things, and nothing can be conceived before the times and the ages except the incomprehensible and truly only first and first-working nature, which alone is without beginning and eternal, and has no inferiority to any other, how is he not to be believed to have been begotten without beginning from the hypostasis of the Father, and not from his activity? For where nothing marks off time, there is no before and after; but he who is not subject to time is without beginning, and he who is without beginning is uncreated. For just as there is no uncreated time, so there is no creation without time; it has time as its measure … all things are measured by the Creator as secondary, but he himself by nothing, since he is without beginning and God by nature. The same is to be seen with regard to the Holy Spirit as well. For it is not written "when he proceeded", but "he proceeds". And how is Life itself made alive, or the true Light enlightened? There was, then, at that time, divine light and eternal life always, and so the truthful and great God speaks of himself. There was no time when the Father did not have the radiance of his glory, and the imprint of his hypostasis, and the image of his goodness, and the power and wisdom and righteousness of God (all of which Paul testifies that the Only-begotten himself is), and then afterwards, which it is not fitting to say, acquired it in some way. But if he had them, the Only-begotten, who is these things, always was. For neither can the one who is these things ever be conceived outside God, nor God apart from the one who is these things for him. And the Only-begotten is these things not as a habit or an aptitude, but substantially, as has been said before. And if at the beginning of the making of the world the first trees came into existence together with their fruits (and it is nothing strange that the fruit rose together with the root), how is it impossible that in the beginning the all-capable Father was fruitful of his own Son, and that the radiance at once shone forth together with the glory of his hypostasis? Just as, then, his birth below in becoming man is not to be compared with any other birth (for it was from a virgin, without flux and without injury, which our nature does not have), so also his birth above is incomprehensible beyond all measure and different from every birth; and we must neither disbelieve it, nor is it safe for us, who cannot tell it, to search out or explain the manner. How a virgin gave birth and remained a virgin … nor our own … in "He who turns". For instead of "He who turns" … we knew, certainly not that of God as well, which is incomprehensible even to the heavenly powers. Therefore the prophet says in amazement, about the birth below: "He is also a man, and who will know him?", meaning: no one; and about the birth above: "Who will declare his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth": calling, most mystically, his begetting "generation", his existence "life", and his being lifted beyond measure above the earth and surpassing every mind "is taken away from the earth". For above every time that anyone may conceive, after circling much in thought, he stands endlessly highest, incomparably better than every quantity, his substance beyond comprehension, and altogether out of sight on every side, encompassing himself and having nothing outside himself; and the multitude of angels and the whole people of the heavenly orders give way before this great incomprehensibility of his. They cry out thus: David in the 17th psalm, "He made darkness his hiding place, and around him is his tent"; the song of Habakkuk, "His virtue covered the heavens"; and Matthew: "No one," he says, "knows the Son except the Father, nor does anyone know the Father except the Son." For what is born of creation is begotten by the union of one thing with another, and is not of one nature with what begot it; nor does it come forth perfect at once and without passion. With the Godhead it is the reverse. For since creation is of such a kind, the Author of generation is the opposite, and these things belong to the blessed Trinity alone. For it would not be incomprehensible if it were comprehended; nor a mystery, if it were known; nor divine, if it were contained; nor the Creator of all, if it were from a point in time; nor uncompounded and without parts, if it were like bodies. For just as, when we hear of the Father, "From everlasting to everlasting you are", and "His truth reaches to the clouds", we do not set limits to him but believe in his eternity (for the age is not his contemporary), so we ought to think also of the Son and of the Holy Spirit; for it is the one nature that rules over all, to which these all-honored hypostases belong. The same is sung of the Son: "You are the same, and your years will not fail." And if it is no small thing that it is written of the Father, "He who is before the ages", no small thing either is what was declared in prophecy of his Son, that he is "God before the ages"; and it is plain that he is beyond comprehension, as will be shown not much later. And just as the Father has immortality, or rather is himself immortality, so the Son is eternal life; and it is the same thing. And as the Father is called "One God", so the Son is named Only-begotten, God the Word, and "one Lord Jesus Christ". And as James writes of him, "There is one lawgiver and judge, who alone is able to save", so the Spirit is praised by Paul, writing to the Corinthians and the Ephesians, as "one", and "the same", and "alone"; so that by this very number, as it were, if one may put it so, these blessed hypostases are shown to bear the oneness, or rather the singleness, of the Father's Godhead. And if "God" and "Lord" are true of the Father, they are not false of his Son and of his Spirit either. For as we have recalled in many places, the Old Testament … said: "The Lord said to my Lord"; and "The Lord from the Lord"; and "God made man according to the image of God"; and "Who is God except the Lord?"; and "Who is God except our God?" And in the New Testament John said what has already been quoted; Thomas said, "My Lord and my God"; and Paul, "Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom"; and again, "as from the Lord, the Spirit"; and "May the Lord grant to the household of Onesiphorus to find mercy from the Lord." And Job: "The divine Spirit is what made me"; and "The divine Spirit that is in my nostrils." And to say "divine" or "God" is the same thing in Scripture, as they teach: Paul, writing to the Romans, "his eternal power and divinity"; and the Acts, "we ought not to think that the divine is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man"; and Peter in his second epistle, "that through these you may become partakers of the divine nature". And as the Father is incomprehensible, so the riches of Christ are unsearchable … God, who is in the bosom of the Father, he … "To me, the very least of all men, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ." But also "of his greatness there is no end", nor "of his understanding any number", according to David; nor any "limit of his peace", according to Isaiah. And "Your incorruptible spirit," it says, "is in all things"; and "The Spirit of the Lord has filled the world." For no one would be found so thick-witted and sluggish as not to perceive from these plain and pure testimonies the boundlessness of the Only-begotten and of the all-holy Spirit, and that what the apostle wrote about both hypostases is of equal weight and in like words: I mean both what he says of the Father: "God who is over all, and through all, and in all"; and "The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, he who is blessed for ever, knows that I am not lying"; and what was written to the Romans about the Son: "Who is God over all, blessed for ever. Amen"; and besides, "the fullness of him who fills all in all". Again, what was declared about the Father is similar, "that God may be all in all", to what was declared about his Son: "Where there is not Greek and Jew, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all." And elsewhere: "that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and things on earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is one Lord." And concerning the Spirit, both according to what was said of him just now, and in that all things are to be understood of him, it is due to him to be all that the Father is, as his Spirit, except, of course, being Father. For in this too, and in all things, he portrays God, as it declares: "By this we know that he is in us, from his Spirit, whom he has given us." And of equal force with what is sung of God the Father, "You alone are Most High over all the earth", is what was declared in prophecy of the Son in the 86th psalm, "Mother Zion, … in her, and the Most High himself has founded her"; and what is said of the Holy Spirit in the Gospel, "You will receive power from on high when the Holy Spirit has come upon you." And just as the Father is great, among other things, because he knows the Son, so the Son too is great because he knows the Father. Likewise the Holy Spirit. For it says: "So also no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God." And no different from what Paul wrote to the Hebrews about the Father, "For it was fitting for him, for whom are all things and through whom are all things", is what was declared of the Son, "All things came into being through him", and of the Spirit, "By the word of the Lord the heavens were made firm, and by the Spirit of his mouth all their host." These glorious hypostases, then, honored equally with God the Father, as having received by lot the rule over all things … "By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit" … how could they in all things be under God …? For just as it is impossible that the Father should not be Father without beginning and truly (for he did not have this name in time, nor as something added), so it is impossible that the Son and Word, and his Spirit, should not be from his hypostasis without beginning and by nature; for at the same moment as the Father (let it be allowed to speak so), without interval, the one was begotten and the other proceeded. And so he has not been deprived of being Father of the offspring, nor of having his Spirit proceeding from him; and because he is Father he differs from the Son and his Spirit neither in time nor in substance. For if later … which is alien to the Godhead, along with God's being found at some time not called Father, or not being Father, as not yet having begotten. And the apostle, writing to the Hebrews, presenting the beginninglessness and incomprehensibility of the begetting of the Son of God, writes about Melchizedek: … "having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made like the Son of God." He was made like him in that he was not given a genealogy, as it was the custom of the tribes of Israel to do for those held in honor among them, because he was a type and a kind of outline of the Master, who above is without mother and without time, and below is without father and from a point in time. And yet Melchizedek became a distinguished priest, so that Abraham was blessed by him and gave him tithes of the spoils, as the same apostle says: "See how great this man was, to whom Abraham gave a tenth of everything"; and again: "And, so to speak, even Levi, who receives tithes, paid tithes through Abraham", that is, through his forefather Abraham. "For he was still," he says, "in the loins of his father" (Levi, the descendant of Abraham, from whom the tithing to the Lord is understood in general) "when Melchizedek met him" (that is, met Abraham). What, then, is the intent of their empty talk, and where is its absurdity? Consider: all who wish to speak of a beginning also confess an end; and by asserting a coming into being they also accept the death that follows from it; and by supposing that he came into being from nothing, or from something unlike the divine substance, they declare him at once mortal and a stranger to the shared Godhead of the Father; which, merely to say, let alone to believe, is full of every godlessness. But against "In the beginning was the Word" they have their supposedly strong arguments. "'Was'", he says, "is written of creation too. For it runs: 'In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth; and the earth was invisible and unformed'; and, 'There was a man of Armathaim Sipha.'" But "In the beginning was" has nothing in common with "In the beginning he made", any more than the Creator with the creature. For "was", said of creation, is said and believed only … for creation was after it came into being from nothing. For he first said that he made it, and then added "was", so that it might not be thought to have come into being of itself. But of God the Word it signifies what is beyond any beginning. For "in the beginning," he says, "was"; and "was God"; and "in the beginning was" excludes his being from nothing. And they bear witness, on the Son's being before the ages and the maker of the ages, as follows: Paul, writing to the Hebrews: "In many parts and in many ways God spoke of old to the fathers by the prophets; in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom also he made the ages." He inherits, then, what is his own, as their maker; and it is impossible to conceive a beginning of the Son, for in him and through him is every beginning. And David, singing in the 73rd psalm of the one without beginning: "But God is our king before the ages; he has worked salvation in the midst of the earth." He means Golgotha, naming it the most central place, as it were the center of the world under heaven; there the Son, by his divine foreknowledge, worked salvation for us before the age in his becoming man; and in deed, when out of goodness the impassible one suffered for us, as he knew and willed, and came, so to speak, to the heart of the earth; as Ezekiel too prophesies thus: "This is Jerusalem; I have set her in the midst of the nations"; and in the 118th psalm: "For ever, Lord, your word abides in heaven." And the Master himself, shutting the heretics out altogether, said of himself: "Truly, truly, I say to you, before the ages came to be, I am." And concerning his being the Creator of all things bodiless and bodily, not a servant or a go-between, and at the same time without beginning, besides the testimonies already set out, David too sings in the 113th psalm: "Our God is in heaven and on earth; he has done all things whatever he willed." He did not say, "whatever he was commissioned to do". Who, then, would deny that all things run together without delay at the mere nod of the self-determining and all-powerful substance of the Monad? And in the 101st psalm: "In the beginning, Lord, you founded the earth, and the heavens are the works of your hands; they will perish, but you remain; and they will all grow old like a garment, and like a cloak you will roll them up, and they will be changed; but you are the same, and your years will not fail"; that is, you are without beginning and without end. And Paul writes the same, to the Ephesians, "in God who created all things", and to the Colossians, "for in him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities; all things were created through him and for him …" Otherwise: if he is before all things, alone from the Alone, and in a unique way, he was begotten ineffably before every activity, and is Son of the Father substantially. For he who is before all things, and governs every nature in a way beyond nature, must be none of all these things; nor can he be conceived as a creature by comparison with the things brought into being by him, which hold every difference from him. Otherwise: one whom anyone would declare to be the maker of everything made, and the bearer of all creation, and would name the image of God and the Son, attending to the truth and fully persuaded by the divine oracles, how could he, unless he were mad, also confess him to be a thing made, or less than God who bears all things, or as having someone earlier than himself? Concerning his being called God and Lord, the prophets declare it: Malachi, saying thus: "The Lord whom you seek will come to his temple, and the angel of the covenant whom you desire. Behold, the Lord comes; and who will endure the day of his coming? Or who will stand at his appearing?" The beginning of the saying shows his dispensation in the flesh; what follows shows his fearful and loving second coming. And Isaiah, crying out in the way that those who share in a joy are accustomed to announce it to those who have not yet heard what has happened: "A child is born to us, and a Son is given; and his name is called Angel of great counsel, Wonderful, Counselor, God, Mighty, Ruler, Prince of peace." This God the Word … "And behold, a ladder set up on the earth, whose top reached to heaven; and the angels of God were going up and down on it; and the Lord stood firmly on it, and said: I am the Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac; do not fear; the land on which you sleep, I will give it to you and to your offspring; and I will be with you, and will keep you in every way that you go, and will bring you back in safety to your father's house; and your offspring will spread abroad to the south and the sea and the north and the east." By the ladder the cross was prophesied, by which the faithful go up to the heavenly dwellings; and the God who stood firmly on the ladder is the very one who was willingly nailed to the cross for us. And after other things: "Jacob," it says, "made a vow: If the Lord God is with me, and keeps me in this way that I go, and gives me bread to eat and clothing to wear, and brings me back in safety to my father's house, then the Lord shall be my God; and this stone which I have set up as a pillar shall be to me a house of God; and of all that you give me I will give the tenth to you." Then, having prospered with Laban, he saw, at the breeding of the flocks, again in a vision, the God who had appeared to him earlier; and he told it thus: "The angel of God said to me in my sleep: Jacob, lift up your eyes and see the rams and the he-goats mounting the sheep and the she-goats; for I know all that Laban will do to you. I am the God who appeared to you on the way by which you came, where you set up a pillar to me and made a vow to me there." And in Egypt the same Jacob asks the blessing of this Angel and great God for the sons of Joseph, saying: "The God to whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac were pleasing, the God who has fed me from my youth to this day, the Angel who delivers me from all my evils …"