On the Trinity 1.1–1.24

As I looked about for the proper and religious duty of human life, a duty which, whether flowing from nature or proceeding from the studies of the wise, might attain something worthy of the divine gift of understanding granted to it, many things presented themselves which in common opinion seemed to make life useful and desirable; above all, those things which now, as always before, are held most important among mortals: leisure together with wealth. Yet either without the other is rather the material of evil than the occasion of good. For leisure without means is understood to be almost a kind of exile from life itself, and wealth without rest brings all the more calamity, the more humiliating it is to go without the very things most desired and sought for enjoyment. And these, though they contain in themselves the highest and best allurements of life, do not seem very far removed from the habit of a beast's pleasure: for beasts that roam through wooded places, especially those rich in pasture, enjoy both freedom from labor and fullness from grazing. For if the best and most perfect use of human life is to be judged to be rest and abundance, this same use must be common, according to the sense of each kind, to us and to all the beasts that lack reason: for all of them, with nature herself serving them in the greatest plenty and security, have an overflowing abundance to enjoy without any care for possessing.

And it seems to me that most mortals have rejected for themselves and censured in others this habit of a foolish and beastlike life for no other reason than this: moved by nature herself, they judged it unworthy of a human being to think himself born only for the service of his belly and of idleness, and brought into this life not for the pursuit of some splendid deed or good art; or to think that this very life was granted with no advance toward eternity (a life which, surely, no one would doubt should not be reckoned a gift of God, since, afflicted by so much anguish and hindered by so many troubles, it wears itself away by itself and within itself, from the ignorance of childhood to the dotage of old age). And therefore they turned, in teaching and in practice, to the virtues of patience, self-control, and forbearance, because they held that to do well and to understand well was, in the end, to live well; and they judged that life must not be thought to have been given by the immortal God only for death, since it would not be understood as the act of a good giver to have granted the most delightful sense of living for the sake of the saddest fear of dying.

And although I did not judge this view of theirs foolish or useless, namely to keep the conscience free from all guilt, and to foresee prudently, avoid wisely, or bear patiently all the troubles of human life, yet these very men did not seem to me fit enough guides to living well and happily, since they laid down only the common precepts of teaching, suited to human sense: precepts which it would be beastlike not to understand, and which, once understood, it would seem a madness beyond even a beast's savagery not to practice. But my mind was eager not only to do these things, the neglect of which would be full both of crimes and of sorrows, but to know the God and Father of so great a gift, to whom it owed its whole self, in whose service it thought itself ennobled, to whom it might refer every expectation of its hope, and in whose goodness, amid such great calamities of present affairs, it might rest as in a most safe and familiar harbor. To understand him, then, or to know him, my mind was kindled with the most burning zeal.

For many of them brought in numerous families of uncertain gods, and, thinking that male and female sex operate in divine natures, asserted births and successions of gods from gods. Others proclaimed gods greater and lesser, differing in power. Some, affirming that there is no God at all, worshipped only nature, which came into being by chance motions and collisions. Most, indeed, following public opinion, spoke of there being a God, but declared that this same God was unconcerned with and neglectful of human affairs. Some, again, worshipped the very bodily and visible forms of creatures in the earthly and heavenly elements. Finally, some placed their gods in images of men, cattle, wild beasts, birds, and serpents, and confined the Lord of the universe and Father of infinity within the narrow bounds of metals, stones, and logs. And it was no longer fitting that those should be authorities for the truth who, following ridiculous, foul, and irreligious things, disagreed among themselves even in the opinions of their most empty views. But amid all this my anxious mind, striving along a useful and necessary road toward the knowledge of its Lord, judged neither that indifference toward the things he had made was worthy of God, nor that sex and successions of begetters and begotten befit a powerful and incorruptible nature. Further, it held for certain that what is divine and eternal can only be one and without difference; because that which was for itself the author of its own being necessarily left nothing outside itself that was superior to itself; and so omnipotence and eternity belong to one alone, since neither stronger and weaker fits with omnipotence, nor later and earlier with eternity; and in God nothing is to be worshipped but what is eternal and powerful.

Pondering these and many other such things in my mind, I came upon those books which the religion of the Hebrews held to have been written by Moses and the prophets. In them, God the Creator himself bearing witness of himself, these words were found: “I am who I am”; and again: “Thus you shall say to the children of Israel: He who is has sent me to you.” I was filled with wonder at so perfect a description of God, which expressed the incomprehensible knowledge of the divine nature in words most suited to human understanding. For nothing is understood to be more proper to God than to be; because that which is neither ever ceases nor ever began. What is everlasting, with the power of incorruptible blessedness, could not, and never can, not be; for everything divine is subject neither to abolition nor to a beginning. And since God's eternity is in no respect lacking to him, he fittingly showed this alone, that he is, as the witness of his incorruptible eternity.

For this description of his infinity the words of the speaker, “I am who I am,” seemed enough; but we still had to understand the work of his majesty and power. For since being is proper to him who, always abiding, did not also begin at some time, this word worthy of the eternal and incorruptible God was again heard concerning himself: “Who holds the heaven in his palm, and the earth in his fist”; and again: “Heaven is my throne, and earth the footstool of my feet. What house will you build me, or what will be the place of my rest? Has not my hand made all these things?” The whole of heaven is held in the palm of God, and the whole of the earth is enclosed in his fist. But the word of God, though it profits the opinion of a religious understanding, contains more meaning when examined by the mind than when received by the ear. For the heaven enclosed in his palm is in turn God's throne, and the earth, which is held in his fist, is also the footstool of his feet. This is so that no bodily extension of form, as in the posture of one seated, might be understood in the throne and footstool, since that infinite power encloses, in the grasp of palm and fist, the very thing that is its throne and footstool; but so that in all these origins of creatures God might be known as within and without, both above and within, that is, surrounding all things and poured into all things: since the palm and fist that hold show the power of a nature that is outside, and throne and footstool, set beneath, show that outward things are subject to one within, since he, sitting within, is over his outward things, and he in turn, outside, encloses the things within. And so, wholly containing all things within and without himself, being infinite he is absent from nothing, and all things are in him who is infinite. In these most religious views of God, then, my mind, held fast by the pursuit of truth, took delight. For it judged nothing else worthy of God than that he should be so far beyond the understanding of things that, however far the mind, even a boundless one, might stretch itself toward some measure of opinion, however presumptuous, so far would the infinity of boundless eternity exceed all the infinity of the nature that pursued it. And though we understood this in piety, it was clearly confirmed by the prophet when he said: “Where shall I go from your Spirit, or where shall I flee from your face? If I ascend into heaven, you are there; if I descend into hell, you are present there also. If I take my wings before the dawn and dwell in the farthest parts of the sea, even there your hand will lead me and your right hand will hold me.” There is no place without God, and no place that is not in God. He is in the heavens, he is in hell, he is beyond the seas. He dwells within as the inner one, he goes beyond as the outer one. So he holds and is held; he is neither confined in any one thing, nor absent from all things.

Although, then, my mind rejoiced in the sense of this excellent and inexplicable understanding, because it could worship this infinity of boundless eternity in its Father and Creator, yet with still more intent zeal it sought the very beauty of its infinite and eternal Lord, so that it might believe that his uncircumscribed immensity was clothed in some adornment befitting a beautiful understanding. And while the religious mind was shut within the error of its own weakness, it grasped this measure of a most beautiful view of God from the voices of the prophets: “For from the greatness of the works and the beauty of creatures the maker of generations is correspondingly seen.” The Creator of great things is in the greatest, and the maker of the most beautiful is in the most beautiful. And since the work itself goes beyond perception, the worker must far exceed all perception. Beautiful, then, are the heaven, the air, the earth, the seas, and the whole universe, which, as the Greeks also hold, seems fittingly called κόσμος, that is, “world,” from its adornment. But if perception measures this beauty of things by natural instinct, as happens even with certain birds and cattle, so that, while their voice falls below thought, their perception still understands the very thing without expressing it; and yet again, since all speech comes from perception, perception speaks to itself in understanding: must not the Lord of this very beauty be understood to be the most beautiful of all beauty? So that, although the form of his eternal adornment escapes every perception of the understanding, the adornment still does not leave perception without some idea of him. And so God must be confessed as most beautiful, in such a way that he is neither contained within our power to comprehend nor outside our power to perceive.

My mind, then, imbued with these pursuits of pious opinion and teaching, rested in a kind of retreat and watchtower of this most beautiful conviction, understanding that nothing else was left to its nature by which it could render a greater or a lesser service to its Maker than to understand that he is so great that he cannot be understood, yet can be believed: since faith takes to itself the understanding that religion requires, and the infinity of eternal power goes beyond it.

Underlying all this, however, there was still a natural sense, that the profession of piety should be nourished by some hope of incorruptible blessedness, which holy thoughts about God and good conduct might earn as the pay of a victorious campaign. For there would be no profit in thinking well of God if death destroyed all perception and a kind of setting of failing nature abolished it. Moreover, reason itself persuaded me that it was not worthy of God to have brought man into this life, sharing in counsel and wisdom, under the condition of failing in life and dying for eternity: as though, not existing, he was put in place only so that, once put in place, he should not exist; whereas the only reason for our creation is understood to be that what was not should begin to be, not that what had begun should cease to be.

Yet my mind was wearied, partly by fear for itself, partly by fear for the body. While it kept its firm conviction in a pious confession of God, it had taken on an anxious care for itself and for this dwelling of its own which would, as it thought, perish with it. After learning the Law and the Prophets, it also came to know the teachings of the gospel and apostolic doctrine in these words: “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 were made through him, and without him nothing was made. What was made in him is life, and the life was the light of men, and the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not grasp it. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness, to bear witness concerning the light. He was not the light, but came to bear witness concerning the light. The true light was that which enlightens every man coming into this world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, and the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own did not receive him. But as many as received him, to them he gave power to become sons of God, to those who believe in his name: who were born not of blood, nor of the will of man, nor of the will of the flesh, but of God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt in us; and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only-begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.” The mind advances beyond the understanding of natural sense, and is taught more about God than it had supposed. For it learns that its Creator is God from God; it hears that the Word is God and was with God in the beginning. It understands that the light of the world remained in the world and was not recognized by the world. It learns, too, that he came to his own and was not received by his own; but that those who receive him advance, by the merit of their faith, to be sons of God, born not from the embrace of flesh, nor from the conception of blood, nor from the will of bodies, but from God. Then it learns that the Word became flesh and dwelt in us, and that his glory was seen, which, as of the only one from the Father, is perfect with grace and truth.

Here the fearful and anxious mind finds more hope than it expected. First it is instructed in the knowledge of God the Father. And what it had formerly supposed by natural sense about the eternity, infinity, and beauty of its Creator, it now accepts as belonging also to the only-begotten God: not loosening its faith toward many gods, for it hears of God from God; not falling away into a difference of nature in God from God, for it learns that God from God is full of grace and truth; nor thinking of God from God as later in time, for it finds that God was in the beginning with God. Then it learns that faith in this saving knowledge is very rare, but its reward very great: for his own did not receive him, and those who receive him are raised to be sons of God, by a birth not of flesh but of faith. And it learns that to be sons of God is not a necessity but a power: for since God's gift is set before all, it is not conferred by the nature of parents, but the will obtains the reward. And lest this very thing, that each one is given the power to be a son of God, should be hindered in anyone by the weakness of a fearful faith (since what is both more desired and less believed is hoped for with the greatest difficulty, because it is hard), God the Word became flesh, so that through God the Word made flesh the flesh might advance into God the Word. And lest the Word made flesh should be either anything other than God the Word, or flesh not of our body, he dwelt in us: so that while he dwells he should remain nothing other than God, and while he dwells in us he, God, should have become flesh that is nothing other than our flesh. By his condescension in taking flesh he is not deprived of what is his own; for as the only-begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth, he is both perfect in what is his and true in what is ours.

This teaching of the divine mystery, then, my mind received with joy: advancing toward God through the flesh, called to a new birth through faith, and entrusted with the power to obtain heavenly regeneration; recognizing the care of its Parent and Creator for it, and judging that it would not be reduced to nothing by him through whom it had come out of nothing into this very being. And it measured all these things as beyond the sense of human understanding, because the reasoning of common opinion, incapable of heavenly counsel, thinks that only that exists in the nature of things which it either understands within itself or can accomplish of itself. But it weighed the mighty works of God, according to the magnificence of his eternal power, not by sense but by the boundlessness of faith: so that it would not refuse to believe that God was in the beginning with God, and that the Word made flesh dwelt in us, because it did not understand it; but would remember that it could understand if it believed.

And lest it be slowed by any error of worldly wisdom, it is further taught, through the Apostle, by divine words, toward the most perfect faith of this pious confession: “See that no one despoils you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elements of the world, and not according to Christ: for in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of every principality and power: in whom you were also circumcised with a circumcision not made with hands, in the stripping off of the body of the flesh, but with the circumcision of Christ, buried with him in baptism, in which you also rose again through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead. And you, when you were dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, he made alive together with him, forgiving you all your sins, blotting out the handwriting of the decrees that was against us, which was contrary to us; and he took it out of the way, nailing it to the cross; having put off the flesh, he made a public show of the powers, triumphing over them with confidence in himself.” Steadfast faith rejects the captious and useless questions of philosophy; truth does not yield to the deceits of human follies or offer itself as spoil to falsehood. It does not hold God according to the sense of common understanding, nor judge about Christ according to the elements of the world, Christ in whom the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily: so that, since the infinity of eternal power is in him, the power of eternal infinity exceeds every grasp of the earthly mind. Drawing us to the nature of his divinity, he has no longer bound us by a bodily observance of precepts, nor trained us, through the shadow of the Law, in the rites of cutting the flesh; but willed that the spirit, circumcised from vices, should cleanse every natural necessity of the body by purification from sins: so that we might be buried with his death in baptism and return to the life of eternity; regeneration to life being a death out of the former life, and we, dying to vices, being reborn to immortality; he himself, from immortality, dying for us, so that we might be raised together with him from death to immortality. For he took the flesh of sin, so that by assuming our flesh he might forgive sins, becoming a sharer in it by assumption, not by guilt; blotting out by death the sentence of death, so that by a new creation of our race in himself he might abolish the ordinance of the former decree; allowing himself to be nailed to the cross, so that by the curse of the cross he might nail up and blot out all the curses of earthly condemnation; and finally suffering as man, so as to put the powers to shame: since God, who was to die according to the Scriptures, would triumph in these things with the confidence of a victor in himself; since he, immortal and not to be conquered by death, would die for the eternal life of the dying. These things, then, done by God beyond the understanding of human nature, do not in turn submit to the natural perceptions of minds, for the work of infinite eternity requires an infinite way of judging: so that when God became man, when the immortal died, when the eternal was buried, this is not a matter for the reasoning of the understanding but an exception made by power; and so, conversely, it is a measure not of perception but of might that God should come from man, the immortal from the dead, the eternal from the buried. We are raised together, then, by God in Christ through his death. But since the fullness of the Godhead is in Christ, we have both the sign of God the Father raising us together in him who died, and the confession that Christ Jesus is nothing other than God in the fullness of the Godhead.

In this leisure, then, conscious of its security, my mind had rested, glad in its hopes, so far from fearing the interruption of this death that it even counted it as a passage into eternal life. And the life of this body of its own it thought not only not burdensome or sickly to itself, but held it to be what letters are to childhood, medicine to the sick, swimming to the shipwrecked, training to young men, and military service to those who will one day command: namely, the endurance of present things, advancing toward the reward of blessed immortality. Moreover, what it believed for itself it also preached to others through the ministry of the priesthood laid upon it, extending its office to the service of the salvation of all.

But amid these things there arose minds of impious rashness, desperate in themselves and savage toward all, who measure the mighty nature of God by the weakness of their own nature: not so that they themselves might rise to an infinite way of thinking about infinite things, but so that they might shut what is unbounded within the limits of their own understanding, and make themselves judges of religion, although the work of religion is the duty of obedience; forgetful of themselves, neglectful of divine things, correctors of the commandments.

For, to say nothing of the other most foolish pursuits of the heretics (about which, however, we shall not be silent wherever the argument gives occasion), some so corrupt the mystery of the gospel faith that, under a profession of one God that is only seemingly pious, they deny the birth of the only-begotten God; so that there is an extension into man rather than a descent; and so that he who was Son of Man in the times of the flesh he took was not the same who before was always, and is, the Son of God; so that there is no birth of God in him, but he is the same out of the same; so that a continuous sequence drawn out from the solid Godhead into flesh might preserve, as they think, an inviolable faith in one God, while the Father, extended as far as the Virgin, was himself born to himself as Son. Others, however (since there is no salvation without Christ, who in the beginning was God the Word with God), denying the birth, have professed only a creation: so that a birth would not admit him as true God, but a creation would teach a false one, which, while it counterfeited faith in one God as regards kind, would not shut him out of the mystery. And so, subjecting the true birth to the name and belief of a creation, they would make him separable from the truth of the one God, so that a creation put in his place would not claim for itself the perfection of divinity, which a true birth had not given him.

My mind, then, burned to answer the madness of these men, recalling that this above all was saving for it: to have believed not only in God, but in God the Father; to have hoped not only in Christ, but in Christ the Son of God; not in a creature, but in God the Creator, born from God. We hasten therefore above all to confound, from the proclamations of the prophets and the Gospels, the madness and ignorance of those who, under the preaching of one God (a preaching indeed alone useful and religious), either deny that Christ is God born, or contend that he is not true God: so that the creation of a powerful creature may leave the mystery of the faith within one God, since, they say, the birth of God would draw the religion of those who confess it outside faith in one God. But we, taught by God to preach neither two gods nor a solitary one, will set forth this account of the gospel and prophetic proclamation in confessing God the Father and God the Son: that in our faith both are one thing, not one person; confessing neither that both are the same, nor something between true and false; because, since God is born from God, the birth allows him to be neither the same nor something else.

And you whom the warmth of faith and zeal for a truth unknown to the world and to the wise of the world have called to read must remember that the weak and feeble opinions of earthly minds are to be cast off, and all the narrow limits of imperfect judgment widened by a religious expectation of learning. For there is need of the new perceptions of a regenerate mind, so that each one's own conscience may enlighten him according to the gift of his heavenly origin. One must first stand, then, by faith, as holy Jeremiah warns, in the substance of God: so that, being about to hear of the substance of God, he may temper his understanding to what is worthy of God's substance; and temper it not by any measure of understanding, but by infinity. Moreover, conscious that he has been made a sharer in the divine nature, as the blessed apostle Peter says in his second letter, let him not measure the nature of God by the laws of his own nature, but weigh the divine declarations according to the magnificence of God's testimony about himself. For the best reader is one who waits for the meaning of what is said from the words rather than imposing it on them, who carries away more than he brings, and does not force the words to seem to contain what he had presumed before reading that they must mean. When, then, the discussion concerns the things of God, let us grant God the knowledge of himself, and serve his words with pious reverence. For he is a fit witness to himself who is not known except through himself.

But if, in treating of the nature and birth of God, we bring forward examples by way of comparison, let no one think that they contain in themselves the perfection of a complete account. For there is no comparison between earthly things and God; but the weakness of our understanding compels us to seek certain likenesses from lower things as pointers to higher ones, so that, prompted by the familiarity of everyday things, we may be led from what our own perception knows to an idea of what lies beyond ordinary perception. Let every comparison, then, be held useful to man rather than fitting to God, since it suggests understanding rather than fills it; nor let it be thought presumptuous for setting side by side the natures of flesh and spirit, of the invisible and the tangible, since it declares itself both necessary to the weakness of human understanding and free from blame for an example that falls short. We proceed, then, to speak of God in the words of God, yet steeping our understanding in likenesses drawn from our own things.

First, we have so arranged the plan of the whole work that its connected books follow in the order best suited to the progress of readers. For we did not wish to offer anything confused or undigested, lest a disordered heap of a work should produce a kind of rustic uproar of jumbled clamor. But since there is no climbing steep places unless the foot is carried to the top on steps laid gradually beneath it, we too, setting in order certain starting points for the climb, have eased this arduous road of understanding with what is, as it were, a gentler slope, not cut into steps but rising gradually on a level path, so that the ascent of those walking it may advance almost without the climbers feeling it.

After this book of our first discourse, the next teaches the mystery of the divine generation in such a way that those who are to be baptized in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit may not be ignorant of the truth of the names, nor confuse the understanding through the words, but may conceive each in their mind as it is and as it is named; so that they may recognize most fully, in what has been said, that the reality belongs to the name and the name to the reality.

After this gentle and brief discourse demonstrating the Trinity, the third book advances, gradually indeed, but now with progress. For what the Lord professed of himself beyond the understanding of human sense, it fits to the faith of understanding by as many examples of power as it can, when he says, “I am in the Father, and the Father in me”: so that what man does not grasp through his dull nature, faith, now a reasonable knowledge, may attain; for God must not be disbelieved about himself, nor must it be thought that understanding his power lies outside the reasoning of faith.

The fourth book then takes its start from the teachings of the heretics, clearing itself of the faults by which the faith of the church is defamed. It brings forward that very exposition of their faithlessness published by many not long ago, and convicts them of having defended one God from the Law deceitfully, and therefore most impiously, by setting out all the testimonies of the Law and the Prophets in such a way as to show that to confess one God without Christ as God is irreligion, and that, once the only-begotten God Christ is confessed, not to preach one God is faithlessness.

The fifth book kept to the order of reply that the heretics had set by their profession. For since they had falsely claimed to preach one God according to the Law, they also put forward from the same Law that there is one true God: so that by the restriction of God as both one and true they might take away from the Lord Christ his birth, because where there is birth, there truth also must be understood. But we, teaching by the same steps by which this was denied, have preached from the Law and the Prophets neither two gods nor a solitary true God, but the Father as true God in such a way that we neither corrupted faith in one God nor denied the birth. And since, according to them, the name of God would be ascribed to the Lord Jesus Christ as created rather than born, rather than belonging to him, the truth of his divinity has been so demonstrated from the prophetic authorities that, the Lord Jesus Christ being preached as true God, the truth of the divinity native to him would be contained, for us, within the understanding of the one true God.