On the Trinity 1.25–2.6

The sixth book now lays open all the deceit of the heretical assertion. For, to win belief for their statements by condemning the sayings and faults of heretics, namely Valentinus, Sabellius, Mani, and Hieracas, they stole the pious preaching of the church to cloak an impious profession: so that, by correcting for the better the words of irreligious men and toning them down with ambiguous meaning, they might extinguish the doctrine of piety under the guise of condemning impiety. But we, setting out the sayings and professions of each, have cleared the holy preaching of the church, and have not allowed it to have anything in common with the condemned heretics; so that, condemning what is to be condemned, we might follow with reverence only what is to be followed. We have taught that the Lord Jesus Christ is the Son of God, which they most of all denied, by these means: the Father bears witness of him, he himself professes it of himself, the apostles preach it, the devout believe it, the demons cry it out, the Jews confess it while denying it, the Gentiles who did not know him understand it; so that what had not been left open to ignorance might no longer be allowed to be doubted.

The seventh book next tempered the discourse of the debate it took up according to the step of perfect faith. For first, by a sound and uncorrupted demonstration of the inviolable faith, it fought in the quarrel among Sabellius, Ebion, and these men who do not preach him as true God: why Sabellius denied that he subsisted before the ages, whom the others confessed as created. For Sabellius did not know the Son as subsisting, though he does not doubt that true God worked in the body. These men, on the other hand, denied the birth and affirmed a creature, since they do not understand that his works are the works of true God. Their quarrel is our faith. For while Sabellius denies the Son, he wins in this, that it was true God who worked; and the church conquers those who denied true God in Christ. But when these men demonstrate against him that Christ subsisted before the ages and always worked, they triumph, for our benefit, over Sabellius, condemned along with themselves, who knows true God but does not know the Son of God. Ebion, however, is so conquered by both, that the one proves that he subsisted before the ages, the other that it was true God who worked. And all are conquered by conquering one another: for the church, against Sabellius, against the preachers of a creature, and against Ebion, bears witness that the Lord Jesus Christ is true God from true God, both born before the ages and afterward begotten as man.

No one doubts that it was most fitting for pious teaching that, since we had preached from the Law and the Prophets first the Son of God, and then also true God, together with the mystery of unity, we should in turn, confirming the Law and the Prophets by the Gospels, teach from them first the Son of God, and then also true God. It was most appropriate, then, after the name of Son, to show its truth, although by common sense the name of Son would already carry full assurance of its truth. But lest any occasion for deceiving and mocking be left to those who oppose the truth of the only-begotten God, we built up that very faith in his being the Son in the proper sense through the truth of his divinity: teaching that he who could not be denied to be the Son of God is God, by these ways: name, birth, nature, power, and profession; so that he would not be other than he was called, nor the name fail to belong to a birth, nor the birth have lost the nature, nor the nature not have kept the power, nor the power fail to be made known by a profession conscious of its own truth. We have therefore set out all the grounds of each kind, drawn from the Gospels, so that the profession did not pass over the power in silence, nor the power fail to show the nature, nor the nature fail to belong to its birth, nor the birth fail to belong to its name: so that no room would be left for impious slander, since the Lord Jesus Christ himself had also taught, by the declaration of his native truth, the divinity of true God from true God according to name, birth, nature, and power.

The eighth book, now that the two preceding books on the Son of God and true God have greatly advanced the faith of believers, is wholly occupied with demonstrating one God; not taking the birth away from the Son of God, nor introducing through it the divinity of two gods. First it showed by what means the heretics, since they could not deny the truth of God the Father and God the Son, still tried to evade it; refuting their foolish and ridiculous pretexts, by which, through what is said: “The multitude of believers had one soul and one heart”; and again: “He who plants and he who waters are one”; and again: “I do not pray for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that all may be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they too may be in us,” they assert a unity of will and harmony rather than the truth of divinity. But we, treating these very passages according to their own force, showed that they contain faith in the divine birth; and, going over all the declarations of the Lord's sayings, we taught the whole and complete mystery of the majesty both of the Father and of the only-begotten, from the proclamations of the apostles and the properties of the Holy Spirit: since by the Son being understood in the Father and the Father known in the Son, I showed the birth of the only-begotten God and the truth of perfect God in him.

But in matters most necessary for salvation, it is not enough to bring forward, to satisfy faith, only what is our own: for unexamined assertions of our own statements often flatter and deceive the mind, unless the demonstrated emptiness of the opposing propositions also confirms our faith by the very fact that they are shown to be ridiculous. The ninth book, therefore, is wholly intent on repelling what the impious seize upon to weaken the birth of the only-begotten God: men who, forgetful of the dispensation of the mystery hidden from the ages, do not remember that the gospel faith preaches him as God and man. For when they deny that our Lord Jesus Christ is God, like God and equal to God as God the Son to God the Father, born from God, and subsisting, according to the property of his birth, in the truth of Spirit, they usually rely on these declarations from the Lord's sayings: “Why do you call me good? No one is good but the one God”: so that, since he rebukes being called good and testifies that only the one God is good, he would be outside the goodness of God, who is good, and not within the truth of God, who is one. To these sayings they also join, as arguments for their impiety: “This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent”: so that, having confessed the Father as the only true God, he himself would be neither true nor God, because the restriction “the only true God” does not go beyond the author of the property so designated. And they say this must be understood as said without ambiguity, because he also said: “The Son can do nothing of himself, except what he has seen the Father doing”: so that, since he can do nothing except from the pattern of a work, a weakness of nature is understood in him; for what is subject to the necessity of another's working is in no way to be compared with omnipotence, and reason tells us that to be able to do all things of oneself and not to be able are different. And they differ so far, they say, that he professed this of God the Father: “The Father is greater than I,” and before so absolute a profession the slander of contradiction should cease, since it would be impious madness to ascribe the honor and nature of God to one who refuses it. And in every way, they say, he is so far removed from the property of true God that he even testified: “But of that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone”: so that, since the Son does not know what the Father alone knows, the one who does not know is far removed from the one who knows; because a nature liable to ignorance does not have the strength and power that is exempt from the dominion of ignorance.

Showing, then, that these things have been understood most impiously with a corrupt and depraved sense, we have brought forward all the reasons for the sayings from these very kinds of questions, times, and dispensations, fitting the words to their reasons rather than assigning reasons to the words. Thus, since “The Father is greater than I” differs from “I and the Father are one”; and “No one is good but the one God” is not the same as “He who has seen me has seen the Father also”; or since these are certainly so opposed in their difference: “Father, all that is yours is mine, and mine is yours” and “that they may know you, the only true God”; or again, “I am in the Father, and the Father in me” and “But of the day and hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone”: in each of them may be understood both the proclamations of the dispensation and the declarations of a power conscious of its nature. And though the author of both sayings is the same, yet, once the force of each kind has been shown, what is preached, for the mystery of the gospel faith, under the dispensation of reason, time, birth, and name does not tend to dishonor his true divinity.

The tenth book follows the same course as faith. For since, through the sense of a foolish understanding, they seized on certain things from the manner and the words of his passion to dishonor the divine nature and power in the Lord Jesus Christ, these very things had to be shown both to have been understood most impiously by them and to have been spoken by the Lord as a declaration of the true and perfect majesty in himself. For they flatter themselves, so as to be impious in the name of religion, with these sayings: “My soul is sorrowful even to death”: so that he would be far from the blessedness and incorruption of God, whose soul was seized by the ruling fear of impending sorrow; who was even so dismayed by the necessity of the passion as to pray: “Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me”; and without doubt he would seem to fear to suffer what he prayed not to suffer, since the dread of suffering supplied the reason for entreating. And the force of pain, they say, so took hold of his weakness that at the very time of the cross he said: “God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”; and he, moved by the bitterness of the passion even to complaining of his desolation, lacking his Father's help, breathed out his spirit with this cry, when he said: “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit”; and, troubled by dread at breathing out his spirit, he commended it to God the Father to keep, because despair of safety forced the necessity of commending it.

But these most foolish and impious men, not understanding that the same person said nothing contradictory about the same things, clinging only to the words, abandoned the very reasons for the sayings. For although “My soul is sorrowful even to death” is very far different from “Hereafter you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power”; and “Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me” is not the same as “The cup which my Father has given me, shall I not drink it?”; and “God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” is far different from “Truly I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise”; and “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit” disagrees greatly with “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do”: they fell back into impiety, incapable of grasping the divine sayings. And though dread and freedom, haste and excuse, complaint and encouragement, distrust and intercession do not fit together, forgetting the divine profession and nature, they held fast to the deeds and words of the dispensation as an argument for their impiety. We therefore, setting out everything that belongs to the mystery of the soul and body of the Lord Jesus Christ, have left nothing unexamined and nothing unspoken; but, fitting a peaceable understanding of all the sayings to each kind of reason, we have shown that his confidence did not tremble, his will did not shrink back, his security did not complain, and that he who prayed in commending himself had desired pardon for others; confirming the trustworthiness of all the sayings by a complete preaching of the gospel mystery.

Since, then, not even the glory of the resurrection restrained these most desperate men within a religious understanding, but they either took the weapons of their impiety from the profession of his condescension or turned the revelation of the mystery to the dishonor of God: so that, through the saying, “I ascend to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God,” since the Father is Father and God is God in common to us and to him, he would, by this shared profession, be outside the restriction to the true God; and, like us, the necessity of being created would subject him to God the Creator, and adoption would take him up as a son; and no property of the divine nature would now be thought to be in him, according to the Apostle's saying: “But when it says, All things are subjected, he is excepted who subjected all things to him. And when all things have been subjected to him, then the Son himself also will be subjected to him who subjected all things to him, that God may be all in all.” For subjection, they say, both declares the weakness of the one subjected and signifies the power of the one ruling. The eleventh book is occupied in treating these things too, with the fullest demonstration of religion, showing from these very apostolic sayings not only that subjection does not lead to weakness of divinity, but that through this very subjection the truth that he is God, because born from God, is shown; and that, through the fact that the Father is Father and God is God both to him and to us, much is gained for us and nothing taken from him; since, born as man and having undergone all the sufferings of our flesh, he ascended to our God and Father, so that, as our man, he might be glorified into God.

We have always remembered what is observed in every kind of training: those who have first been trained for a long time by light exercise and long practice in a humbler study are then sent to the real trials of the things in which they have been instructed. So those who are to serve in wars, once they have played well at war, are drawn into military service; or those who have tried forensic suits on school material are then sent to the battles of the courts; or a sailor who has handled a ship fearlessly on home ponds is then entrusted to the storms of a great and foreign sea. We have taken care to do this very thing in this greatest and weightiest understanding of the whole faith. For after first instructing a tender faith from light beginnings concerning the birth, the name, the divinity, and the truth, and raising the zeal of readers by gentle progress even to the uprooting of all the heretics' pretexts, we then led them out into the very arena of the glorious and great contest: so that, as far as the human mind, relying on the opinion of common sense, falls short in grasping the eternal birth, so far they might strive, by divine studies, to perceive what is beyond the opinion of our nature. Above all we resolve this question, which, growing strong through the dullness of worldly wisdom, thinks it speaks with reason when it says of the Lord Jesus: “There was when he was not,” and, “He was not before he was born,” and, “He was made from things that did not exist”: so that, since birth seems to bring with it this reason, that he who was not came to be, and was born when he did not exist, they also subject the only-begotten God by this to the sense of time (as if faith itself and the very account of birth showed that he at some time had not been), and so they say that he was born from what he was not, because birth grants being to what was not. But we, preaching from the apostolic and gospel testimonies the Father always and the Son always, will teach that he is not the God of all things after anything, but before all things; and that the rashness of this irreligious understanding does not apply to him, that he was born from things that did not exist and was not before he was born; but that he always was in such a way that we also preach him as born, and was born in such a way that we make plain that he always was; and that in him there is not the exemption of being unbegotten, but the eternity of birth; because birth has an author, and divinity does not lack eternity.

And because they are ignorant of the prophetic saying and unskilled in heavenly teaching, with a corrupted sense and propriety of meaning they try to assert from it that God was created rather than born, because it is said: “The Lord created me in the beginning of his ways for his works”: so that he would be of the common nature of created things, though more excellent within the class of creation; and in him there would be not the glory of a divine birth but the strength of a powerful creature. But we, bringing nothing new and nothing presumed from outside, will set forth from that very testimony of Wisdom the truth and meaning of the saying, and show that his being created in the beginning of God's ways and for his works cannot be drawn into the understanding of the divine and eternal birth; because to have been created for these things and to have been born before all things are not the same. For where birth is meant, there is a profession of birth alone; but where the name of creation is used, there the reason for that creation comes first. And though Wisdom was born before all things, yet because she was also created for certain things, what is before all things and what began to be after certain things are not the same.

Next it seemed to follow, once the name of creation had been rejected from our faith concerning the only-begotten God, to teach also what is fitting and religious for the confession of the Holy Spirit: so that, with the earlier books confirmed by long and careful treatment, nothing would be lacking for the completeness of the whole faith, when, the irreligious errors of faulty preaching about the Holy Spirit also having been removed, the apostolic and gospel authority would keep the mystery of the regenerating Trinity unharmed and undefiled within a saving definition; and no one would any longer dare, by the judgment of human sense, to count among creatures the Spirit of God, whom we have received as the pledge of immortality and for a share in the divine and incorruptible nature.

For my part, I am conscious that I owe you, almighty God the Father, this as the chief duty of my life, that all my speech and thought should speak of you. For this very use of speech that you have granted me can bring me no greater reward than to serve you by preaching you, and to show you as you are, Father, Father namely of the only-begotten God, either to a world that does not know it or to a heretic who denies it. In this, indeed, there is only the profession of my will; for the rest, the gift of your help and mercy must be prayed for, that you may fill with the breath of your Spirit the sails of our faith and confession spread out to you, and drive us forward on the course of preaching we have begun. For he who made this promise is not unfaithful to us, when he says: “Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.” We in our poverty will pray for what we lack, bring unwearied zeal to searching the sayings of your prophets and apostles, and knock at every door of closed understanding; but it is yours to grant what is prayed for, to be present when sought, and to open when knocked. For we are numb with a certain sluggish torpor of our nature, and through the weakness of our mind we are held within the necessity of ignorance in understanding your things; but the study of your teaching trains us toward a sense of divine knowledge, and the obedience of faith carries us beyond natural opinion.

We wait, then, for you to stir up the beginnings of this anxious undertaking, to strengthen it as it grows, and to call us to a share in the spirit of the prophets or of the apostles: so that we may grasp their sayings in no other sense than that in which they spoke them, and follow out the proper meanings of the words with the same significations of things. For we are going to speak of what they preached in mystery: you, the eternal God, Father of the eternal only-begotten God; you alone without birth, and the one Lord Jesus Christ from you by an eternal birth; not to be counted in the number of gods by a difference of truth, nor to be preached as not begotten from you, who are the one God, nor to be confessed as anything but true God, born from you, the true God and Father. Grant us, then, the meaning of the words, the light of understanding, honor in what is said, and faith in the truth; and grant that we may also speak what we believe: namely, that, knowing from the Prophets and Apostles you the one God the Father and one Lord Jesus Christ, it may be given us now, against the heretics who deny it, so to celebrate you as God as not to make you solitary, and so to preach him as not to make him false.

For believers the word of God was sufficient, the word poured into our ears by the evangelist's testimony with the very power of its truth, when the Lord says: “Go now, teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to keep all things whatever I command you; and behold, I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the age.” For what concerning the mystery of human salvation is not contained in this? Or what is left over or obscure? All is full, as coming from the full, and perfect, as coming from the perfect. For these words include the meaning of the terms, the efficacy of the acts, the order of the works, and the understanding of the nature. He commanded them to baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, that is, in the confession of the Author, of the Only-begotten, and of the Gift. There is one Author of all things. For there is one God the Father, from whom are all things; and one Only-begotten, our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things; and one Spirit, the gift in all. All things, then, are set in order according to their powers and merits: one power from which are all things, one offspring through whom are all things, one gift of perfect hope. Nor will anything be found lacking to so great a completeness, within which there is, in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, infinity in the Eternal, form in the Image, and enjoyment in the Gift.

But we are compelled by the faults of heretics and blasphemers to do what is not lawful, to climb heights, to speak what cannot be spoken, to presume what is not permitted. And though what has been commanded ought to be fulfilled by faith alone, namely to adore the Father, to venerate the Son with him, and to abound in the Holy Spirit, we are forced to stretch the lowliness of our speech to things that cannot be told, and are pressed into a fault by another's fault: so that what ought to have been kept within the reverence of our minds must now be brought out into the peril of human language.

For many have arisen who took the simplicity of the heavenly words according to the sense of their own will, not according to the plain meaning of the truth itself, interpreting otherwise than the force of the sayings required. For heresy comes from the understanding, not from Scripture; it is the sense, not the word, that becomes the crime. Can the truth be corrupted? When the name of father is heard, is not the nature of a son contained in the name? Will the Holy Spirit not be what he is called? For what a father is cannot be absent in the Father, nor can what a son is be lacking in the Son, nor can what is received fail to exist in the Holy Spirit. But men perverse in mind confuse and entangle everything, and by the perversity of their own sense they contend even for a change of nature: so that they take away from the Father what the Father is, while they wish to take from the Son what a son is. And they take it away when, as they hold, the son is not from the father's nature. And he is not from his nature when the one born and the one begetting do not have the same things in themselves. For he is not a son whose substance is other than his father's and unlike it. And how will he be a father, if he has not begotten in the son what is in himself of substance and nature?

Although, then, these things can in no way be changed from what they are, they nevertheless bring in new doctrines and human inventions. So Sabellius extends the Father into the Son, and thinks this should be confessed in names rather than in realities, since he presents the same one to himself as Son and as Father. So Ebion, granting the Son of God every beginning from Mary, presents not man from God but God from man; and holds that the Virgin did not receive one already subsisting, God the Word, who was in the beginning with God, but bore flesh through the word; for he says that in the Word there was before not the nature of an existing only-begotten God, but the sound of an uttered voice. So too some preachers of this present time bring forth the form and wisdom and power of God from nothing and in time, lest, if the Son is from the Father, God should be diminished into the Son; they are too anxious lest the Son born from him should empty the Father. And so they come to God's aid in the creation of the Son, providing him from things that did not exist, so that the Father may remain within the perfection of his nature, because nothing has been begotten from him. What wonder, then, that they hold different views about the Holy Spirit, when they are such rash authors of the creation, change, and abolition of the very giver of the Spirit? And so they dissolve the truth of this perfect mystery, while they contrive substances of difference in things so common to both: denying the Father, while they take from the Son what a son is; denying the Holy Spirit, while they know neither his use nor his author. So they both destroy the unlearned, while they assert the reasonableness of this preaching, and deceive their hearers, while they take the nature away from the names, since they cannot take the names away from the nature. I pass over the other names of human peril, the Valentinians, Marcionites, Manichees, and the other plagues, which at times seize the minds of the unlearned and infect them by the very contagion of their company; and one pestilence comes upon all, while the disease of the preachers is poured into the minds of the hearers.

The unbelief of these men, then, drags us into a doubtful and dangerous position, so that it becomes necessary to say something about such great and hidden things beyond the heavenly prescription. The Lord had said that the nations were to be baptized “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” The form of faith is certain; but as far as the heretics are concerned, every meaning has been made uncertain. Nothing, therefore, is to be added to the commands, but a limit must be set to audacity: so that, since malice, roused by the prompting of the devil's deceit, evades the truth of things through the names of the nature, we may set forth the nature of the names; and, declaring the dignity and office of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit as we find them in the words, the names may not be cheated of the properties of the nature, but be held by the names within the meaning of the nature. I do not know what mind there is in those who think otherwise about these things, corrupting the truth, bringing darkness on the light, cutting what cannot be cut, tearing the incorrupt, dividing the undivided. If it is so easy for them to tear apart what is perfect, to lay down law for power, to draw a boundary around the infinite, for me at least, as I answer them, there is turmoil in my cares, faltering in my perception, stupor in my understanding; and in speech I will confess not weakness now, but silence. And yet the will to do it is wrung from me, so as to resist audacity, to help those in error, and to provide for the ignorant. But what is demanded is immense, what is dared is incomprehensible: that there should be speech about God beyond the bounds God has set. He has laid down the names of the nature: Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Whatever is sought beyond this is beyond the meaning of language, beyond the reach of perception, beyond the conception of understanding: it is not uttered, not attained, not held. The nature of the thing itself exhausts the meaning of words; an impenetrable light blinds the contemplation of perception; whatever is contained by no limit exceeds the capacity of understanding. But we, begging pardon for this necessity from him who is all these things, will dare, will seek, will speak; and, the only thing we promise in so great a question, we will believe whatever shall be shown us.

There is the Father, from whom everything that exists has come to be. He, in Christ and through Christ, is the origin of all things. Moreover, his being is in himself: he does not take what he is from elsewhere, but holds what he is from himself and in himself. He is infinite, because he is not himself in anything, but all things are within him; always beyond place, because he is not contained; always before the ages, because time is from him. Run on in thought, if you think there is some furthest point of him: you will always find him, because however far you strain, there is always further to strain. Always to strain toward his place is as much your condition as being without end is his. Speech will fail in him, but his nature will not be enclosed. Again, unroll the ages: you will find that he always is; and when the reckoning of numbers fails in speech, being still does not fail God. Rouse your understanding and embrace the whole with your mind: you hold nothing. What you hold as the whole still has a remainder, and that remainder is always within the whole. So that is not the whole which has a remainder; nor is the remainder all, which is the whole. For a remainder is a portion, but “all” is what is whole. But God is both everywhere and wholly wherever he is. So he exceeds the region of understanding, he outside of whom there is nothing, and to whom it belongs always to be. This is the truth of the mystery of God; this is the name of the impenetrable nature in the Father. God is invisible, ineffable, infinite: to speak of him speech falls silent, to search for him perception is dulled, to embrace him understanding is confined. Yet, as we said, he has the name of his nature in “Father”; but he is Father only. For he does not, in the human way, have from elsewhere the fact that he is Father. He is unbegotten, eternal, having in himself always that he always is. He is known to the Son alone: for no one knows the Father except the Son, and he to whom the Son wills to reveal him; nor the Son except the Father. Theirs is a mutual knowledge, theirs in turn a perfect understanding. And since no one knows the Father except the Son, let us think about the Father together with the Son who reveals him, who alone is a faithful witness.