On the Trinity 3–4

I. Let us strike another blasphemy of theirs too, by which, as you write, they say that the Son is not almighty. And I will do this briefly, so as not to burden the reader by going on at length. Let them say when he is not almighty, through whom, as they too confess, all things were made: let them produce one work of the Father that the Son has not done also, to prove that the Son is not almighty. But since there is no work that is not both the Father's and the Son's, without doubt the Son is almighty, doing whatever the almighty Father does. It is enough if we also prove this by divine testimonies. In the prophet Zechariah we read: "Oh, oh, flee from the land of the north, says the Lord, for from the four winds of heaven I will gather you into Zion; be saved, you who dwell with the daughter of Babylon; for thus says the Lord almighty: After the glory he sent me against the nations that plundered you; for he who touches you is as one who touches the pupil of his eye; for behold, I bring my hand upon them, and they will be spoil for those who plundered them; and you will know that the Lord almighty has sent me." If you attend to this chapter, you will find that the almighty Son was sent by the almighty Father to help those placed in captivity. For consider that the prophet says, "Thus says the Lord almighty"; and let us hear, as the prophet reports, what the Lord almighty says: "After the glory," he says, "he sent me against the nations." Without doubt it is the Son who says that after the glory he was sent against the nations, whom the prophet calls the Lord almighty. This Son, then, being Lord almighty, was, in the last testimony, "and you will know that the Lord almighty has sent me," as was said above, sent by the almighty Father. And the apostle John too says in the Apocalypse: "The Amen, the faithful witness, the beginning of God's creation, who is and who was and who is to come, the Lord God almighty." And Solomon among other things says of wisdom, which is certainly Christ the Son of God: "For she is the radiance of eternal light and a spotless mirror; the Lord almighty is his name." Likewise: "He who redeemed them, the Lord almighty is his name." Likewise in …: "[She is the breath of the power of God and a pure emanation of the glory] of the almighty God, who possesses all things, [the mirror] of his majesty and the image of his goodness, and, being one, she can do all things." How is he not almighty, when he can do all things? For above too he had said of the same wisdom, "having all power": therefore he is almighty, having all power. And Solomon still says of the same wisdom: "And remaining in herself she renews all things." And elsewhere Solomon: "For your almighty hand is not powerless." Likewise he: "Your almighty word leaping down from the royal thrones."

II. Recognize his omnipotence when he renews all things; recognize meanwhile also that he is unchangeable, since, renewing all things, he remains in himself—that is, though he renews all things, he himself continues unchangeable; which belongs to none but the almighty God. And that the Son is truly unchangeable and the founder of all things is proved also by these verses of the psalmist: "In the beginning, Lord, you founded the earth, and the heavens are the works of your hands; they will perish, but you will remain; and all will grow old like a garment, and like a cloak you will change them and they will be changed; but you are the same, and your years will not fail." Paul, writing to the Hebrews, interpreted this as written of the Son of God. You have, then, by these chapters, a Son almighty, unchangeable, and founder of all things, as also maker of all things, Solomon saying: "For wisdom, the maker of all things, taught me." But one must take care not to understand two almighties: for although both the Father and the Son are almighty, yet there is one almighty, as there is one God, because the omnipotence of the Father and the Son is the same, as is the deity, according to what was expressed above as far as strength and the constraint of time allowed. And it will now be explained further below by the testimony of the prophet Isaiah: "Egypt is wearied, and the merchandise of the Ethiopians, and the Sabaeans, tall men, will pass over to you and be your servants, and they will follow behind you bound in chains, and they will worship you and pray in you, for God is in you, and there is no God besides you. For you are God, and we did not know it, the God of Israel, the Saviour. All who oppose him will be ashamed and confounded, and will go in confusion." Notice that it is said to the Son: "and they will be your servants, and they will follow behind you bound in chains, and they will worship you and pray in you." Therefore from here too the Son is shown to be true God, since he is worshipped; for to be worshipped belongs to God—since elsewhere too the apostle teaches that it is written of the Son of God, "And let all the angels of God worship him"—because he is truly God and Lord. But in the present testimony of Isaiah, as he himself is God, so also God is in him; for it says, "For God is in you, and there is no God besides you." And having said that God is in God, it continues: "For you are God, and we did not know it, the God of Israel, the Saviour." Since, then, God is in God, and there is no God besides him in whom God is, and he himself is God the Saviour of Israel, the unity of divinity in the Father and the Son is shown, as also of omnipotence and of whatever at all belongs to the divine substance—the Son differing from the Father only in this, that the one is Father and the other Son; that is, that the one begot and the other was born. Yet because he was born he does not have anything less than what is in God the Father, being the image of the invisible God, the radiance of glory and the imprint of his substance. Those who do not believe this of the Son of God will bear the sentence of Isaiah, who says: "All who oppose him will be ashamed and confounded, and will go in confusion." Jeremiah too expresses the deity of the Son, saying: "This is our God, and no other will be reckoned beside him, who found every way of understanding and gave it to Jacob his servant and to Israel his beloved; afterward he was seen on earth and lived among men." Not God the Father, certainly, but the Son, made man, was seen on earth and lived among men, exercising in himself the nature of man without sin for our salvation; of whom we also read: "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we saw his glory, glory as of the only-begotten from the Father."

III. If, then, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, God with us born of a virgin, what do you gain now, heretic? If you object the weaknesses of the flesh he assumed, if you describe the stirrings of the human soul which he took together with the flesh—stirrings useful to us—it is still established that, as he is God and Son of God, he is in all things impassible like the Father. For this is why we set out first the things that belong to his deity: so that now, if anything of humility and weakness is read in Christ, his deity may not be believed violated, but it may be proved to be the carrying out of the nature of the man he took and of the discipline he was handing on. For it is empty to have willed to be born a man—born of a virgin, yet a man—and not to show in himself the weak nature of man. It is empty to give precepts by which men should live, and yet, having once deigned to be man, to have gone on without observing the precepts. If, made man, he had not willed to exercise man's weakness, who would believe that he had been made man from the womb of our origin, though without a man's embrace? Since even today there are those who deny that he bore our bodily substance, even after he exercised the weakness of the flesh. If, made man, he had not kept the discipline he had come to teach, he would not have given a good example of teaching. For which of the disciples would try to keep what the master himself, made man, had not kept—when today whoever keeps it is helped to keep it by his example? You see that he had to suffer weaknesses, so that he might be proved to have been born a man; and, made man, to observe whatever he had taught, so that he might invite others—or rather, I would say, so that he might lift others up: for now our flesh has learned to be lifted up by his flesh. For if he had not been willing to suffer man's weaknesses, why was he born a man of a virgin? And if he was not willing to observe the precepts, because he was Lord, why had he taken the form of a servant, which is subject to precepts and obedience? Indeed the whole mystery of the man assumed by God is this: that what was not kept in Adam through disobedience should be kept in Christ the man through obedience. The apostle Paul asserts this very thing among the other things he treats divinely: "For as by the disobedience of one man many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one many are made righteous." (For as by the contempt of one man many were made sinners, so too through the mystery of obedience in Christ—which he shows not from weakness but from the goodness of his deity, for the saving discipline of man—many are saved.)

IV. Let us now see the mystery of the passion too. The whole Adam had sinned; the whole Adam had been expelled from paradise: he who had come to save the whole had to take up the whole that was expelled. But he would not have been seen to take up into himself the whole that was expelled unless he had taken it up in the substance of flesh and soul; for this is the whole man by nature. And this could be proved only if he bore the very weaknesses of his flesh and soul, though without the fault of sins, so that he might not be thought to have taken another substance of flesh and soul; so that, as he frees the man in himself from weaknesses and sufferings, we might believe that those too who follow in his footsteps have been freed. Let the apostle, the teacher of the nations, support this sense more vividly, writing as one who speaks in mysteries: "For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all are made alive." But let Isaiah describe better the nature of the man taken up in him: "Lord, who has believed our report, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? We announced before him as a child, as a root aged in thirsty ground; he has no beauty nor honour of form; and we saw him, and he had no beauty nor comeliness, but his appearance was without honour, failing beyond other men; a man placed under a stroke, and knowing how to bear weakness, because his face was turned away; he was despised and not esteemed. He bears our sins and suffers pain for us; and we reckoned him to be in pain and under a stroke and in affliction; but he was wounded for our iniquities and weakened for our sins; the teaching of our peace was upon him; by his stroke we have been healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; a man has strayed from his way, and the Lord gave him up for our sins; and he, because he was ill-treated, did not open his mouth. Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb before its shearer, so he did not open his mouth; in humiliation his judgment was taken away. Who will declare his generation? For his life is taken from the earth; because of the iniquities of my people he was led to death; and I will give the wicked for his burial and the rich for his death; because he did no iniquity, nor was deceit found in his mouth."

V. It is sufficiently proved by this testimony that he went through the whole nature of man in himself, yet without sin of his own, though he bore our sins. But lest he be believed to be only a man, the prophet put in between: "Who will declare his generation?"—that generation, certainly, by which he was begotten of God the Father, which is without beginning; and therefore he says of it, "Who will declare his generation?"—calling it not unknowable but inexplicable. For all of us catholics know that he was born of God the Father, but unspeakably; and therefore he says, "Who will declare his generation?" The generation by which he is born of a virgin according to the flesh the gospel relates, describing its times too. But the beginning of the divine generation, as we said, cannot be searched out, as neither can that of the divinity which he has as one with the Father: and therefore he says, "Who will declare his generation?" If, then, in the mystery of faith we have received this—to believe Christ God and man: God, of God, without beginning; man, because born of a virgin in time—let us not slander his divinity when, for our healing, he carries out the things of man, having in himself the nature of man that he received; for neither is the man to be denied when he exerts the natural power of his own divinity, having received in himself the form of a servant. If, then, he prays to the Father, and if he says that he does nothing of himself but what he sees the Father doing—to say nothing else now—certainly the master is setting a limit to human pride, so that man may learn to defer to God all the more as the true Son deferred, who had no reason of his own for subjection, and who had also given a form of prayer, so that we should ask not so much that our will be done as the will of the Father who is in heaven. And therefore, to fulfil what he had taught, he says: "I did not come to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me." And that he was made lower, that he grows, that he advances, that he hungers, that he thirsts, that he labours, that he weeps, that he grieves, that he is sorrowful, and finally that he dies, is to be referred to the nature of the man he assumed, which he exercised in a mystery for the sacrament of our salvation, according to the understanding given above in the testimony of Isaiah. Under this mystery of faith not only are those chapters solved about which you deigned to inquire, but also all the questions that impious heretics fit together against the divinity of the Son.

On the Son's saying, "The Father is greater than I."

I. Receive now also these questions, which you had put forward from the opposing side as the stronger ones, answered one by one. The heretics say, you write, in order to belittle the everlasting and in all things perfect deity of the Son: "The Father is greater than I." But we must ask when the Son said this: was it not when what is written was fulfilled in him: "You made him a little lower than the angels; you crowned him with glory and honour"? How he was made lower, let the apostle Paul explain, who knew the third heaven: "We see Jesus," he says, "made a little lower than the angels because of the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for all." "For all," he says, not for himself; so what wonder if he who tasted death for all was also made lower for all? He tasted death for all, not for himself, because he who was made man for all who were held guilty of sin was himself bound by no sin of his own. And see how the most wise Paul interprets this very thing—that he was made lower because of the suffering of death, and that by the grace of God he tasted death for all—as belonging to the fittingness of the work, continuing thus: "For it was fitting that he, for whom are all things and through whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the leader of their salvation perfect through sufferings." You see how beautiful, how truly fitting the mystery of our salvation is shown to be in this, that the Son is made lower. How then do you throw up, to darken his divinity, what he carries out for its fittingness? "The Father is greater than I": he said this then, after the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

II. And see that you do not believe him changeable, as though he ceased to be the Word after he became flesh; but, remaining always the Word, God, he also became flesh. For although he said, "And the Word became flesh," he wished to speak emphatically, lest anyone believe that the flesh in him was not true—since even after so emphatic a statement there are those who say that he had an apparent flesh. But to make it plain that the Word became flesh not by a change of the divine substance but by taking up human flesh, notice what follows: "and dwelt among us." The Word, then, was not cut off by change, since it dwelt among us through the flesh it assumed; for dwelling proves the continuance of the Word. I have put this in so that no one may believe the Son of God changeable when he reads, "And the Word became flesh." The Son, then, says, "The Father is greater than I," after the Word became flesh and took up the office of one who serves; for he came not to be served but to serve. "The Father is greater than I." What do you say, Godhead? How do you say that the Father is greater than you? Certainly you and the Father have one image according to Moses, and the same form according to the apostle Paul, who also taught me that you are the radiance of his glory and the imprint of his substance. And you yourself taught it, saying: "He who has seen me has seen the Father"; and, "I am in the Father and the Father in me"; "I and the Father are one." And whatever the Father does, you also do likewise; for these are your words: "For whatever he does, the Son also does likewise; and as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will, that all may honour the Son as they honour the Father." Since, then, you have the same image, the same form and the same substance, the same unity of nature, the same power, the same freedom of will, the same honour, and all things whatever that are the Father's are yours, because what is yours is the Father's—how do you say, "The Father is greater than I," when in all that belongs to deity you are such as the Father is? Let the apostle Paul speak, in whom Christ spoke, as he himself says: "Or do you seek proof of Christ who speaks in me?" What does the apostle say? "Who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God." Therefore, as he is in the form of God and equal to God, the Father is not greater. And how the Father is greater, what follows shows: "But he emptied himself," he says, "taking the form of a servant."

III. See that here too you do not understand a cutting-off of divinity when you hear, "he emptied himself": attend to what follows, "taking the form of a servant." He who is said to have taken the form of a servant is shown, then, to remain in his own state. But although the divine state remains and continues in him, he nevertheless emptied himself—namely, by hiding his divinity—"taking the form of a servant, made in the likeness of men, and found in appearance as a man; he humbled himself, becoming obedient even to death, the death of the cross." If such a one says, "The Father is greater than I," he does not attack the equality of divinity, but marks the mystery of humanity, in that he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant. If such a one says, "The Father who sent me gave me a command, what to say and what to speak," and, "I came down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me," he shows that he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, made in the likeness of men and found in appearance as a man; he humbled himself, becoming obedient even to death. And yet what diminution of his divinity is there in these things, if, to cut away arrogance in men, he spoke without arrogating anything to himself? I lie if the apostle Paul did not set down this very testimony in order to rouse each one to humility by the Saviour's example. You will find this to be so if you read more attentively the same letter which he writes to the Philippians. But the heretics will not have "The Father is greater than I" said because of the mystery of God emptied by taking the form of a servant. Let us too say that the Father is greater solely because of the mystery of generation; for some catholics too have followed this pious sense, saying that the Father and the Son are of the same substance and therefore, according to substance, neither is greater than the other. For as the Father is God, such also is the Son God; for he begot nothing less than he himself is: being perfect, he begot a perfect one. Although, then, as God, the Son is equal to God, yet, as Son, he is said to be less than the Father; that is, because the Son is from the Father, and, being fullness, the Father begot fullness: but the Father begot the Son, and therefore he did not say, "God is greater than I," but, "The Father is greater than I."