On the Trinity 3.19–3.20

They did not understand, in the way that is right for the highest and incomprehensible hypostases, the words, “The Father has given me a commandment, what to say and what to speak”; and concerning the Holy Spirit, “He will not speak on his own, but will take what is mine and declare it to you”; and elsewhere, “I have not spoken on my own”; and again, “As the Father commanded me, so I do”; and again, “The word that you hear is not mine, but his who sent me”; and the like. For the Master used such words, as being the Word of the Father, wishing to show us the union of nature and the ineffable concord of the holy Trinity, and that its teachings are common, not divided. For every creature, if it is rational, has a will … [unless it] speaks the will of God. Therefore it sometimes speaks and does its own things, and sometimes those of God; and in some things it agrees with a man like itself, while in others it wills differently. But God the Word, being holder of authority and wisdom, and moreover the Holy Spirit of God, which proceeds from him and, according to the Apostle, searches his depths and alone knows the things of God, bestowing the divine gifts by authority, does not wait to hear and then to speak or act, as creatures do. For creatures are apt not only to be ignorant of God’s will, but sometimes even not to do it: as when Abraham, hesitating, says, “Lord, what if I speak?” and Moses, declining, “I am weak in voice and slow of tongue”; and, “I beg you …” [and the] Lord [was angry] …. And David too, doing his own will and numbering the people, is rebuked. And Jeremiah, having said, contrary to the purpose of the forbearing God who bears no grudge, “I am too young and cannot prophesy,” hears, “Do not say, I am too young.” And Jonah, doing his own will and not God’s, boards a ship and flees to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord who is everywhere. And Paul says of the apostles to the Galatians: “But when I saw that they were not walking straight according to the truth of the Gospel, I said to Cephas before them all” these things.

So that the unbelieving may be fully convinced, if indeed they ever will be, the argument must be lengthened. Before the coming of the Son of God into the world, false christs and false prophets appeared, such as Judas the Galilean, as the Acts of the Apostles has it, leading people astray and not teaching the things of God and of his law; about whom Ezekiel too prophesies: “As I live, he says to the prophets who lead my people astray, I did not send them; they spoke of themselves.” When the true Christ came, then, he was suspected of being a deceiver. For the Gospel has it that at the feast of Tabernacles the crowds were seeking Jesus, saying, “Where is he?” “And there was division about him; some said, He is good; others said, No, he leads the crowd astray.” And again the chief priests say to Pilate: “Sir, we know that that deceiver said while he was still alive, After three days I will rise.” So the Savior said of those men: “All who came before me were thieves and robbers; but the sheep did not hear them. My sheep hear my voice, and they know my voice and follow me”; and of himself: “I do not speak on my own,” as those [spoke on their own] …, clearly. And foreknowing what was to come, as God, and that after his ascent into heaven and the coming of the Holy Spirit there would again be deceivers, like Simon, like Montanus, like Mani, he secured the matter beforehand, saying, “When the Paraclete comes, the [Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father], he will remind you of my words and guide you into all the truth; he will not speak on his own”; in place of: Do not disbelieve the Holy Spirit, who says and teaches the same things as I; for it is not of another will nor of another substance. But those who say they have the Holy Spirit and do not speak my words and those of the prophets, do not believe them; nor indeed bear with Mani, who does not accept the Old Testament but condemns as inhuman the good Father, who speaks with me and does the works of love for humankind. Besides this, the Son, being the subsistent Word of God, and being in the Father and having the Father in himself, fittingly does not speak on his own; but, as was written before, … in the will of the Father; and the Holy Spirit likewise, since it is the divine Spirit. It may be understood in another way too: when the Word of the Father says, “The Spirit will not speak on his own, but will take what is mine,” the bond of the substance and of the one will of the Trinity is seen. And by his not saying, “He does not speak on his own,” but, “he will not speak,” it is shown that “he will not speak” was said with reference to a particular time and matter. Indeed, when Moses declined, as was said before, God says to him: “Choose seventy elders, and I will take of the Spirit that is on you and put it upon them”; and yet he did not take from the Spirit that was in Moses as one in need. Again, then, at other times Scripture attests [the Son] and the Spirit of God as holding authority, thus. Concerning the Son: as when David says, “Our God in heaven and on earth has done all that he willed”; and Isaiah, “Mighty, holder of authority”; and as when he worked divine power by his own authority and performed wonders, as was said before. Concerning the Holy Spirit: as when the Lord teaches, “The Spirit blows where it wills”; and Paul, “All these are worked by one and the same Spirit, distributing to each individually as it wills.”

They imagine that the Only-begotten lays aside the kingdom and is not an eternal king, that he is subjected to God as a kind of rival god (may he be gracious to us!), and that the Father alone is “all in all,” from what Paul wrote to the Corinthians: “When he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, when he has abolished every rule and authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be abolished is death. For he has put all things in subjection under his feet. But when it says, All things have been put in subjection, it is plain that he is excepted who put all things in subjection to him. When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will be subjected to him who put all things in subjection to him, that God may be all in all.” Here too we must direct the mind precisely to the form of the servant, if one reckons that, were he subjected in his divinity, he would have been subjected from the beginning. And moreover from the prophecy of Daniel, which reads, word for word, more or less thus: “I saw in the vision of the night, and behold, with the clouds of heaven one like a Son of Man coming, and he came as far as the Ancient of Days; and he was brought to him, and to him was given the rule and the honor and the kingdom; and all peoples, tribes, tongues will serve him; his authority is an eternal authority, which will not pass away; and his kingdom will not be destroyed.” For he calls the Father the Ancient of Days; “there was given the rule and the honor and the kingdom” shows the one conformed to our lowliness. If then they do not grant that what has been set out was said by the Apostle and by the prophet for this reason, it remains for them to strike out one or the other. For from the apostolic saying, according to them, the Son reigns now but lays it aside after the resurrection; but from the prophecy, the King of kings and Lord of lords does not yet reign now, but begins then; and after this the opposite would appear with respect to God the Father.

Besides this it is found that he was subject to the Virgin his Mother and to Joseph for the economy: willingly, clearly, and not by necessity, nor laying aside anything of his royal dignity, but rather showing by his condescension the surpassing greatness of the Godhead and the gentleness of the creative power, and arranging that we should obey our fathers. To them he said, “Why were you seeking me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” And he went down, it says, “to Nazareth, and was subject to them.” But to the Father and God, according to them, he has not yet been subjected; and Paul lied when he wrote to the Philippians, “Becoming obedient unto death, even death on a cross.” So just as, though equal to God and existing in the form of God, he became sin and a curse, not for his own sake but for ours, so, not for his own sake but for ours, he is written to be going to hand over the kingdom and to be subjected; since out of love for humankind he became, without confusion, what we are, apart from sin, remaining one and the same. For how can the maker of all and ruler of all (and in all things, now and in what follows, the Almighty) not rule and reign in the ages to come with the Father and the Spirit, as now and always? That his kingdom is endless (for the kingdom of the Trinity is one and undivided) was attested more fully in the first book, where Gabriel is seen to have said well, “He will reign over the house of Israel for ever, and of his kingdom there will be no end”; and David: “Your throne, O God, is for ever and ever; a scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom; you have loved righteousness …” … “your ….”

As for its being written, “That God may be all in all”: above all it has “God” without distinction; yet the same Apostle writes similar things about the Son: to the Romans, “From them is the Christ according to the flesh, who is God over all”; and to the Colossians, discussing the age to come, he says, “Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all in all”; and again, writing about the Church, he says, “Which is his body, the fullness of Christ who fills all in all”; and elsewhere, “Christ is the same yesterday and today and for ever”; and again, “That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess, One Lord Jesus Christ.” For if there is no error in “In him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead,” and in “In him [God was] reconciling the world,” and in “In him all the fullness was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile all things to himself,” and not to another, then these fighters for heresy have made plain [their hostility] to his Godhead, granting him not only no fellowship as a Son with a Father, but not even equal joint ownership as a friend with a friend. For Jehoshaphat king of Judah, showing the fellowship of friendship toward Ahab king of Israel, said: “As you are, so am I; and as your people, so my people; and as your horses, so my horses”; and to one not begotten from him he offered equal honor in his own kingdom. Likewise, it says, according to the Scripture, the disciples had all things in common and undivided because of Christ.

The heretics’ words, then, are more shameless than those of the devil. For that God-hater, not yet having learned the economy, which was made known to the angels at the same time as to us (I say “not yet” rather boldly, since it was even through us, trusting Paul, who says plainly, “So that through the Church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities”), and therefore daring to tempt him, left the matter to the authority of the Savior, saying, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down.” But these men, undoing as far as lies with them the dignity of the divine and ineffable generation, in a way pry loose the eternal throne, and, separating [him from the Father], say: “We disbelieve you when you say, I and the Father are one, and, All that the Father has is mine. And we disbelieve no less God the Father when he says, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Come down from the royal throne.” For this reason in Luke, in a parable, terrible things are declared about them. For he says to the attendants …