On the Trinity 3.23–3.28

They gird themselves up to the utmost, and they have [what Paul writes in the first] Letter [to the Corinthians]: “That there is no God but one. For although there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as indeed there are many gods and many lords), yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through him.” For, he says, “from whom” and “God” fit the Father alone, as superior in their worship, and as being, as it were, prior in time to both hypostases; but “through whom” and “Lord” fit the Son, as a subordinate holding second place, through whom all things came to be; and “in whom” fits the Holy Spirit, third in descending order; for in him, he says, all glory is sent up. They take their start for this too from Paul’s writings, in these words: “Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, in whom you were sealed for the day of redemption”; and from the Letter to the Corinthians, which has this teaching: “For the kingdom of God is not food and drink, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” But this of theirs too is nothing at all. For the interchanges of words are not for the diminution of the Son and of the Holy Spirit; for both words belong properly to each hypostasis. For if all things are from God, as is indeed true, how are all things from above through the Son? And if he knew him to be numbered among the adopted gods, why did he not mix him with the others, rather than unite him with the Father? But they are said in this way, partly so that we might not conceive a confusion of the divine hypostases, but each might be clearly distinguished; partly so as to cast out the polytheism of the Greeks by “one God, the Father”; the Jews’ rejection of Christ by “one Lord Jesus Christ”; the folly of the Montanists, who were going to worship the three all-praised hypostases as one person, by “one,” and “one,” and “one”; and the madness of Sabellius, who imagined that God the Word is without substance, like the spoken word that is dissolved and poured out into the air; thus: that the Apostle, keeping the bond of the divine peace, again brings both these words together and refers them to the one most ineffable God, writing to the Romans, “[For from him and through him and to him are all] things; to him be glory for ever. Amen”; and to the Ephesians, “One God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all”; saying that “through all” is not foreign to “over all,” nor “in all” to “through all.” For the creation is not separated from the one “over all,” the creation which God the Word, “through all,” brought into being, and which the Spirit of God, “in all,” fills, holds together, sanctifies, and gives life. For this reason, following the Master’s oracle concerning baptism, writing to the same Corinthians the second time, he kept the equal honor of the Trinity, saying, “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” Here, [showing] the sameness of the Godhead and the simplicity of the faith, he all but places the Son before the Father, and assigns equal worship to the Holy Spirit, saying that there is unity and fellowship with him. What kind of fellowship? Of substance, of kingdom, of will, and of the glory sent up.

Let us recall the problem from the beginning. He writes, “one God, the Father,” and “one Lord Jesus Christ,” not as though the name of “Godhead” surpassed, or the name of “lordship” held first place, nor as though being called “God” fitted the Father alone, and being called “Lord” the Son alone (for the two belong to both), but so as to declare both the distinct subsistence of the hypostases and their being in one Godhead and lordship. Otherwise, according to them, if the Son is not God by nature, neither is the Father Lord (may he be gracious to us, who say such things of necessity because of their madness). But since “God” and “Lord” are the same, and the one does not differ from the other nor is in any way separated from it, Scripture places “the Lord” before “God,” as Moses says, “The Lord your God, the Lord is one”; and again, “How will one chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight, unless the Lord had given them up, and God had sold them?”; and as the psalmist says in the seventh psalm, “O Lord my God, if I have done this.” And according to Joshua the son of Nun, the service which is owed to God alone is offered to the Lord, and certainly as to God. For it has, “You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen for yourselves the Lord, to serve him.” One may see also from another Scripture that “the Lord” does not fit one hypostasis only. For David sings in the eighty-second psalm, “Let them be put to shame and troubled for ever …, and let them know that your name is Lord; you alone are the Most High over all the earth.” If he says this of the Father, how does Paul write, “One Holy, one Lord Jesus Christ”? and again, “The Lord is the Spirit”? But if he writes it of the Son, then, according to them, the Father is not Lord, not Most High, not holy; or they will accuse David, who sings in the hundred and ninth psalm, “The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand,” and in the ninety-ninth, “Know that the Lord, he is God; he made us, and not we ourselves.” He means him through whom all things came to be. And in the sixty-seventh, “Make a way for him who rides upon the west; the Lord is his name.” By “west” he means the last times; by “Lord” the one who appeared …. [And let them reproach] Isaiah too, who prophesies the Son as God and Lord alike, thus: “Behold our God; behold, the Lord comes with strength, and his arm with lordship; behold, his reward is with him, and his work before him. Like a shepherd he will tend his flock, and with his arm he will gather the lambs.” And further James, who made this the opening of his letter, “James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus,” and in what follows, “and of the Lord God.” And Paul, who wrote, assuring the Romans, “For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” Or let them agree that “God” and “Lord” are a name common to the three hypostases, as are King, and Most High, and undefiled, and incomprehensible, and holy, and whatever it is fitting to say of God; and neither is the Father estranged from lordship, even though it is written, “One Lord Jesus Christ,” and, “Now the Lord is the Spirit”; nor are the Son or the Holy Spirit thrust out of the Godhead, even though it is said, “One God, the Father.” The truth, then, is thus, as has been shown, and this is how we give glory.

But the heretics, having composed the doxology on their own authority, [give glory to] one through another in another, … [whereas the Father wills] that his Son be honored as he himself is. For they say, “Glory to the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit,” which is nowhere written joined together, but separately, by an interchange of words, for the reasons mentioned, not, however, for a doxology or any subordination. Thus in the passage set out Scripture said, “One God and Father, from whom are all things, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things,” and did not add “in the Holy Spirit” or “in the Spirit.” And it often uses “through whom” in place of “with whom,” as Paul writes to the Corinthians: “For out of much affliction and anguish of heart I wrote to you through many tears,” in place of “with many.” And again in the first Letter: “And when I arrive, whomever you approve, these I will send through letters to carry your gift to Jerusalem,” that is, I will send with letters. Then elsewhere, without saying “from whom” and “through whom,” Scripture says “in the Holy Spirit,” that is, together with the Holy Spirit. For in many places, instead of saying “with this one too” or “together with this one,” it has said “in this one”: as it prophesies in the sixty-fifth psalm, “I will enter your house in burnt offerings,” in place of “with burnt offerings”; and again, “He brought them out in silver and gold,” that is, with silver and gold; and again in the hundred and seventh, “You will not go out in our armies,” that is, with our armies. And the most wise Paul, writing of Christ the Savior, instead of saying, “All things hold together upon him and were created by him,” said, “All things hold together in him, and in him all things were created.” If, then, the Master’s word that says, “Baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” does not show a difference, the phrase “in the Holy Spirit” will have no difference either, both because it is said with equal honor into one name, and because it is the same to say “into the name” and “in the name.”

These things are sufficient. Yet “from whom” is found written both of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and “through whom” stands both of the Father and of the divine Spirit, and “in whom” is not reserved for the Holy Spirit, but is said also of the Father and of the Son, as the Scriptures set out below show. That “from whom” is said of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, thus. Of the Son, Paul to the Ephesians: “Who is the head, Christ, from whom the whole body [makes] growth …”; [to the Colossians: “… grows with a growth] of God”; John in the Gospel …; and again from the Son: “He will take from what is mine and declare it to you”; and elsewhere, “I perceived that power went out from me.” Of the Holy Spirit, John: “He who sows to the Spirit will reap from the Spirit eternal life”; and again, “What is born of the Spirit is spirit”; and the angel, “For that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.” That “from whom, through whom,” and “in whom” are written together of the Father was said before. That “through whom” stands separately of the Father and of the Holy Spirit, thus. Of the Father, Isaiah, from the Father to the Son: “Behold, proselytes will come to you through me.” Observe how, because of the equal honor …; and again, “Woe to those who make deep counsel, and not through the Lord.” And in Genesis Adam says, “I have acquired a man through God”; and again, “All that Moses commanded Israel through the command of the Lord.” And Joseph says to the eunuchs, “Is not the interpretation of them through God?” And Paul too to the Hebrews: “For it was fitting,” he says, “for him, for whom are all things and through whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to make the founder of their salvation perfect through sufferings.” Note how very like this is to the text set out, “One Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things.” And to the Colossians: “[God is faithful,] through whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord.” Remember again that God the Father calls to his own Son. And to the Romans: “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, through the mercies of God”; and to the Galatians: “So you are no longer a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God.” And Moses commanded the sons of Israel through [the command] …. Of the Holy Spirit, Isaiah, from the Father: “You made counsel not through me, and covenants not through my Spirit”; Paul to the Corinthians: “God has revealed to us through his Spirit; for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God”; and again, “For to one is given through the Spirit the word of wisdom, … to another faith through the same Spirit.” To the Romans: “I appeal to you, brothers, through our Lord Jesus Christ and through the love of the Spirit”; and again, “He who raised Jesus Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit who dwells in you”; [to the Ephesians: “… that he may grant you,] according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with power through his Spirit”; and again, “The love of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit”; and to Timothy, “Guard the good deposit through the Holy Spirit who dwells in us.” And the Acts say, “In the first book, O Theophilus, I dealt with all that Jesus began to do and to teach, until the day when he was taken up, after he had given commands through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen.” By “the first” he means the Gospel according to Luke; for he also wrote the Acts of the Apostles.

That “in whom” was written of the Father and of his only-begotten Son, thus. Of the Father, Hosea: “And God said to him,” it says, “Call her name Not-pitied; for I will no longer have pity on the house of Israel, but I will surely set myself against them; but I will have pity on the sons of Judah, and I will save them in the Lord their God.” In the song of Hannah: “My heart is made firm in the Lord; my horn is exalted in my God.” David in the hundred and seventh psalm: “And will you not go out, O God, in our armies? Give us help from affliction, for vain is the salvation of man. In God we shall do valiantly, and he will bring to nothing those who afflict us”; and again, “In God I shall leap over a wall”; and again, “In God I will praise my words.” Paul to the Colossians: “Giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you for the share in the inheritance of the saints in the light, who rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom [of his beloved Son, in whom we have] redemption, the forgiveness of sins”; and again, “Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy, to the church of the Thessalonians in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ”; and again, “But if you call yourself a Jew and rely on the law and boast in God”; and elsewhere, “One God, through whom are all things, and we unto him”; and again, “In God who created all things”; and again, “[that] at last I may have a prosperous journey in the will of God to come to you”; and again, “Pray in God”; and again, “Whoever does the truth comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been done in God.” Of the Son, Paul to the Colossians: “For in him all things were created, in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities; all things were created through him and for him; and he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” To the Corinthians in the first Letter: “But you were washed, you were justified, you were sanctified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God”; and in the second, “But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him”; and again, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.” To the Romans: “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death”; [and, “justified freely by] his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” To the Hebrews: “In many ways God spoke of old to the fathers in the prophets; in these last days he has spoken to us in a Son.” Peter in his Letter: “And the God of all grace, who called us to his eternal glory in Christ Jesus.”

Further, the Greeks too, wise in their own conceit and beyond all stupidity, drunk with the opinion of polytheism and persuading themselves that they alone are very learned, while being more ignorant than anyone about what matters, and having no exact knowledge of the blessed Trinity in unity, … their (like the Scripture that says, “The impious man, when he falls into a depth of evils, despises”) through a self-chosen excess of reverence for demons, forsooth, and of curiosity, lean wrongly, to confirm their polytheism, or rather their godlessness, on the Apostle’s saying mentioned before, “If there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many gods and many lords”; and on the prophetic word that says, “You shall not revile gods,” and, “The God of gods, the Lord, has spoken”; no longer seeing these two things: first, that before the saying mentioned the Apostle wrote, “There is no God but one”; and second, that “they are so-called gods,” that is, existing not by nature but in name. For the conclusion has been left unsaid, but one must supply it, understanding the whole from the part given. It is because of things stated elliptically that he writes, “Let the reader understand.” He calls gods, then, the saints, who by grace have been counted worthy of adoption and of this title, whose citizenship, through virtue, is in heaven, according to the same Apostle; about whom the unerring God himself is seen to have said, “I said, You are gods, and all of you sons of the Most High”; and the evangelist, “If he called them gods to whom the word of God came.” And indeed Scripture hints at Moses and Aaron, neighbors of the angels, who were adorned with the name of God not only in a more general way but also in a more particular one. For God said to Moses, “Behold, I make you a god to Pharaoh”; and again of Aaron, “You will be to him as God,” that is, by your care for him. Or perhaps, in my view, it is not unlikely that the faithful and approved ministering powers of God, his well-pleasing works, I mean seraphim and dominions, powers and authorities, have been honored with this surpassing name, as we have. For the author of all things ungrudgingly shares all his own good things with those who ask him, and also with those who do not ask but are faithful and grateful and know how to remember a favor, even if they are silent. Rather, then, let them read Jeremiah prophesying about the gods of the Greeks, as beggarly as the Greeks themselves: “Gods who [did not make heaven and earth, let them perish] from the earth. The Lord made the heavens with understanding; he is the living and true God”; and David singing in the hundred and thirteenth: “The idols of the nations are silver and gold, works of men’s hands. They have mouths and will not speak; they have eyes and will not see; they have ears and will not hear; they have noses and will not smell; they have hands and will not feel; they have feet and will not walk; they will not make a sound in their throat. May those who make them become like them, and all who trust in them.”

… “[with the glory which I had before the] world was, with you”; and … [the one who] made [it], it is plain by this combination of words that he has an eternal and innate glory according to the divine [nature], which was not cast off from him; for the divine is unchangeable. Accordingly they said in these very words, the celebrated John, “And we beheld his glory, glory as of the Only-begotten,” and Paul, ever to be remembered and well versed in these things, “For if they had known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.” And in another way it is not right to think that God is glorified by his own work (for all things came to be through him, and with all things, surely, the glory they imagine as well). And all things are declared by the oracles to be works and servants of the power and wisdom of God; and the Only-begotten is the wisdom and power of God, as the creative Word. Accordingly, this God, well united [with our nature], explained in the same evangelist what “Glorify me” means, saying to the Father, “I glorified you on earth; I have finished the work that you gave me to do”; in place of: my incarnation did nothing outside your will, but all things in harmony with it. And some have understood, faithfully, that “Glorify me” was said because of the glory that accrues to the servant’s form. These things in summary form. We come to combative arguments against those who do not hear “Father,” but seize on “Glorify.” Let them say what kind of glory they have in mind. Is it the glory that we too offer to God? Let it be so, by concession, not in truth. Why then do they call the Son, who is glorified by him, a creature and less than the Father? For in the same Gospel he said, “Father, glorify your Son, that your Son also may glorify you”; and again, “If I glorify myself, my glory is [nothing]; it is my Father who glorifies me”; and again, from the Father, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” But is it that the lesser is glorified by the greater? And how did he keep equality of honor for himself by saying, “Glorify the Son, that the Son may glorify you”? Or shall we suppose another glory? This would be found to come from nothing. And what sense is there in the Father and the Son being glorified in the intelligible realm with a made glory?

“How then,” he says, “does he say in the Gospel according to Mark, ‘When he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels’?” This is what is said by the orthodox: that because of the sameness of the Godhead and of the kingdom he will come in the Father’s glory; that is, having glory equal to that of the one who begot him. For again in Matthew the same Lord, stating this point and showing that the glory of himself and of the Father is the same, said thus: “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him.”

It is wholly foreign to the truth too that they say the Son’s nature is between the divine and the created nature, wrongly transferring to this the Scripture that rightly says, “Mediator … [between God and men, the man Christ Je]sus.” For he will then slip out of being God and true Son, which he has been proved, in the right way, to be; and he will escape also being thought, as the heretical argument has it, a thing made, which he neither is nor is written to be. And indeed this too was declared by oracle in Isaiah: “Not an envoy, not an angel, but the Lord himself saved them”; that is, not a creature, but God himself, who supplies to us the gifts fitting for him, gifts that come before our requests. The mediation, then, is in the economy; in which, having ineffably [offered] himself on behalf of the whole human race, and having brought himself to his own Father as intelligible incense, he propitiated him, and … withdrew us from idols, and united us to the knowledge of God, and gave back paradise, and led us up to heaven, joining earthly things to heavenly, as God holding authority, fitting together the separation that had come about, and bringing man back to that grace from which he had slipped; so that the Apostle, overcome by the greatness of the reconciliation, proclaims with a God-inspired tongue: “He is our peace, who has made the two one and has broken down the dividing wall of the fence”; and again, “Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Some of the heretics, wholly bereft of faith, say something else that is ridiculous to suppose and much more so to say: that the gifts given to creation before the steadfast, unshakable, and loving coming of Christ the Savior into the world were bestowed by God the Father alone, without his own beneficent Son, the Word, as if, forsooth, the Son were a subordinate. But if they had part and lot with those who taught about God, “All things came to be through him, and without him not one thing came to be” (among which every gift came to be through him and from him, for these too are part of the things that came to be; whence it has been proclaimed, “He is Lord of all,” and, “God, mighty, holder of authority,” and, “[No other] will be reckoned …,” “the only one able to save”), they would have known that without the author of coming-into-being and giver of good things, the only-begotten Son, the Word, at once judge and redeemer, no gift has come from above; nor has any time or race of creatures been released from evils and counted worthy of providence; just as, again, nothing at all is outside his judgment. Rather each of us will undergo the fitting judgment, mercifully, and whatever more than this can be said, or thought, or not thought, from him from whom too we have received good things from the beginning, by the good pleasure of the Father and the concord of the Holy Spirit. For how is it not most unjust and most impious to say, or to suppose at all, that he created and gave law, but did not exercise providence, which is ranked before creating; and that, after all things here, he also judges those who received good things from another and lost them through their own ill counsel and folly? Or how is it not unreasonable to suppose that he made us free, as has been said many times, but did not himself have what he assigned to others according to the measure of their nature and as was fitting? I think, then, that the heretics themselves, whose words miss the truth, see that if they want to say anything against our arguments they will have nothing to say. For other men too, besides those mentioned, worthy of credit and steadfast in character, not merely men, are seen fighting against their unbearable and uncontrollable wickedness and bearing witness to the Savior, who has given joy common to all. For Zechariah cries out, distinguishing things past and to come: “If there is any good thing of his, and if any fair thing, it will be from him.” And Isaiah proclaims plainly about him: “God, mighty, holder of authority.” And following these saints, in whose words the teachings about God blossom everywhere with beauty and grace, those outside too in some way, in this part, [say things] fitting about the Creator and King of all: “For all splendid gifts to men are of God: whether anything is good and blessed, or best, or lovely, fair gifts of God are made for all.” And again: “He rules over all, and alone to all …”