On the Trinity 10.53–10.71

I am not unaware how far the magnificence of the heavenly mystery hinders the weakness of human understanding, so that we cannot easily either express these things in words, or judge them by sense, or even embrace them with the mind. The apostle, knowing that it is arduous and most difficult for earthly nature to conceive the working of divine things by our own judgment, as though we were keener to understand than God is mighty to accomplish, writes thus to his lawful son according to the faith, who had taken in the holy letters from infancy: "As I urged you to remain at Ephesus when I was going into Macedonia, that you might charge certain persons not to teach otherwise, nor to give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which provide questions rather than the building up of God which is in faith." He forbids the words of genealogy to be handled and the fables of endless questioning to be touched; and teaches that the building up of God is in faith, so as to enclose the measure of human modesty within a faithful reverence for God's omnipotence, and so that our weakness may not stretch itself to examine things that dull the nature of examining. If, for those who look upon the brightness of the sun, the power of the strained light is so dazzling that, if ever the keen eye of curious contemplation inquires more cleverly into the cause of the radiant light, the nature of the eyes is driven back to a deadened sense of seeing, and it happens that by straining to see more you do not see: what are we to expect in the things of God and in the sun of righteousness? Will not folly fall on those who wish to be wise beyond measure? Will not the stupor of dull foolishness seize that very keen light of understanding? For a lower nature will not understand the cause of a higher nature, nor is heavenly reason subject to human conception. For whatever is subjected to the consciousness of the weak will be within the condition of weakness. The power of God, then, exceeds the human mind; and if weakness stretches toward it, it will be rendered weaker, losing even what it holds, since the nature of heavenly things is stronger and dulls it; because, being greater, by its very embrace it weakens every obstinacy of one pursuing it. As, then, the sun is to be seen so far as it can be seen, and is to be received in as much light as is admitted, lest, if we wish to expect more, we gain even less than we can; so heavenly reason is to be understood so far as it allows itself to be understood, and expected so far as it has given itself to be grasped, lest, if we are not content with the measure of what is granted, we lose what is granted. There is, then, in God what can be perceived; there plainly is, if only you wish for what you can. For as there is in the sun what you may see, if you wish to see what you can, but you lose what you can see while you strain for what you cannot, so too in the things of God you have something to understand, if you wish to understand what you can. But if you hope beyond what you can, you will not be able to do even what you could.

I will not yet touch the mystery of that timeless birth: that discussion belongs to its proper place. Meanwhile I have in words the mystery of the flesh taken up. I now consult those searchers of heavenly secrets, that they may speak, according to their nature, the mystery of Christ born of the Virgin. Whence will they say came the conception to the Virgin? Whence the childbearing to the Virgin? What will they argue was the cause of these birth origins? And what grew together within the recesses of the mother's womb? Whence the body? And whence the man? And then, after these, what is it for the Son of Man, abiding in heaven, to have come down from heaven? For according to bodily causes, to come down and to abide are not the same; one is a change of departing, the other the undisturbedness of abiding. The infant cries, but is in heaven; the boy grows, but remains God of fullness. And when he ascends where he was before, and he who abides comes down, by what sense of human understanding will it be grasped? For the Lord says: "What if you see the Son of Man ascending where he was before?" The Son of Man ascends where he was before; and what sense will conceive this? The Son of Man, who is in heaven, came down from heaven; and what reason will supply this? The Word became flesh; what words will speak this? The Word becomes flesh, that is, God man; and he who is man is in heaven, and he who is God is from heaven. He ascends while descending; but he descends without descending. He is what he was, and what he is he was not. We run through causes and fail in reason; we see the reason and do not understand the causes. But understanding Christ Jesus thus, we shall know; and thinking more that we understand, we shall not know.

And how great is that mystery of words and deeds, that Christ wept, and that tears flowed from his eyes through anguish of mind! Whence these defects of his soul, that the grief of sorrow should draw tears from the body? And what bitterness of things, what unbearableness of pain, dissolved the Son of Man who came down from heaven into tears? And then, what was it in him that wept? God the Word, or the soul of his body? For although the office of tears is in the body, yet a kind of grief of the mind sweats them out in the service of the body. And then, what cause had he for weeping? Is he paying the due honour of tears to impious and parricidal Jerusalem, which would suffer nothing worthy of the slaughter of so many prophets and apostles and of the death of its own Lord? And as the calamities of human deaths are wept for, is the fall of this lost and desperate nation lamented? And what, I ask, is this mystery of weeping? The soul, which is sorrowful, weeps. But did it send the prophets? Did it so often wish to shelter her gathered chicks under the covering of its wings? But grief does not befall God the Word, nor tears the Spirit. Nor is it fitting for the soul to have done anything before the body. And yet there is no doubt that Jesus Christ truly wept.

With equal truth of tears Lazarus too was wept for. And I ask first, what is wept for in Lazarus? Not, surely, death, which is not unto death and is for the glory of God. For the Lord says: "This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified through it." Death, then, which was the cause of glorifying God, did not bring the sorrow of weeping. Nor was there a need for weeping in the fact that he had been absent when Lazarus died. For he himself says plainly: "Lazarus is dead, and I am glad for your sakes, that you may believe, that I was not there." His absence, then, which served the faith of the apostles, had no cause for tears, since, absent, by the consciousness of divine knowledge he had announced the sick man's death. No need for weeping remains; and yet there was weeping. And still I ask, to whom will that weeping be ascribed? To God, or to the soul, or to the body? But the body by itself does not have the tears that it pours out for the grief of a mourning soul. Much less is it that God wept, who is to be glorified in Lazarus. Nor is it fitting that a soul should call Lazarus from the tomb, and that at the command and power of a soul bound to a body a soul already loosed from it should be called back into its dead body. Does he grieve who is to be glorified? Does he weep who is about to give life? It does not belong to one about to give life to weep, nor to one about to be glorified to grieve; and yet he who gives life both wept and grieved.

We mention few things out of many, not from the necessity of poverty or from ignorance of the sayings, but so that a reasoning not drawn out may commend a complete exposition. The Lord bears and does what is not known though it is perceived, what is not unknown and yet cannot be known, since there is both truth in the things and mystery in the power, as we shall show plainly even from what he says: "For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again; this command I received from the Father." He lays down his life of himself; and I ask, who lays it down? For we do not doubt that Christ is God the Word; nor again are we ignorant that the Son of Man consisted of soul and body, the angel confirming it to Joseph: "Rise, and take the child and his mother, and go into the land of Israel; for those who sought the child's life are dead." Whose, then, is this soul, I ask, the body's or God's? If the body's, what power has the body, which is animated into life through the movement of the soul? Then, has the body received any command, which without the soul is dull and dead? But if anyone thinks that God the Word lays down his soul so as to take it up again, let him show that God the Word died, that is, remained without sense and life in the manner of a dead body, so that he took up his soul again to live, by which he would be made alive again.

But no one sharing in reason will ascribe a soul to God; although it is often written that God's soul hates sabbaths and new moons, and is well pleased in certain things. But this is customarily said with the same meaning by which hands, eyes, fingers, arm, and heart are counted in God as though bodily. For since a spirit, according to the Lord's saying, does not have flesh and bones, no members of bodily parts fit him who is and does not change, for his solidity; but his simple and blessed nature remains one whole, which is all things. God, then, is not animated to life in bodily ways by the office of an inner soul, but he himself lives as life to himself.

And how does he lay down his soul, or take it up again once laid down? Or what is the reason of this command? God, then, neither lays it down to death nor takes it up again to life. Nor does the body have a command to take it up again, because it does not take it up again by itself. For it was said of the temple of his body: "Destroy this temple, and after three days I will raise it up." God, then, raises up the temple of his body. And who lays down his soul so as to take it up again? For the body does not take it up again by itself, but is raised up by God. And what is raised up is what is dead; and what lives does not lay down its soul. God, then, neither died nor was buried; and yet it was said by him: "For in pouring this ointment on my body, she did it to bury me." What was poured on his body was done to bury him; and it is not the same to be oneself and to be one's own; and it is not one thing to be done to bury oneself and for one's body to be anointed; nor is it consistent that the body be his own and he himself be buried.

But this is the understanding of the divine mystery: not to be ignorant of God in him whom you do not fail to know as man; and not to fail to know man in him whom you are not ignorant of as God; not to divide Jesus Christ, because the Word became flesh; not to think him buried whom you understand to have raised himself; not to doubt that he raised himself whom you do not dare to deny was buried. For Jesus Christ was buried, because he also died. And he died who, when about to die, said: "God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" And he said this who also said: "Amen I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise"; and, promising paradise, he cried with a loud voice: "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit." And saying this, he breathed his last.

You now who either divide Christ into three, Word and soul and body, or reduce the whole Christ, God the Word, to a man of common kind only, reveal to us this mystery of great piety, which was manifested in the flesh: what spirit Christ gave up, and who commended his spirit into the Father's hands, and who was in paradise that same day, and who complained that he was forsaken by God. For the complaint of the forsaken is the weakness of one dying; but the promise of paradise is the kingdom of the living God. The commending of the spirit is the confidence of one who commends; the giving up of the spirit is the departure of one dying. I ask, then, who dies? Surely he who gives up the spirit. Then who gives up the spirit? Surely he who commended his spirit to the Father. And if the same who commended it, the same giving up the spirit, died, I ask whether the body commends the soul, or God the soul of the body? For it is not doubtful that the soul is often signified by "spirit," and indeed from this very fact, that Jesus, about to die, gave up the spirit. If, then, anyone thinks it must be held that the soul is commended by the body, the living by what is to be dissolved, the eternal by what is to decay, the abiding by what is to be raised; and there is no doubt that the same one who commended his spirit to the Father was in paradise that same day with the thief; then I ask whether, received into the tomb, he remained in paradise, or whether, remaining in paradise, he complained that he was forsaken by God.

For the Lord Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, is one and the same, signifying himself through all these: who, while he signifies that he is forsaken to death, is man; and yet, while he is man, reigns as God in paradise; and, reigning in paradise, the Son of God commends his spirit to the Father; and the Son of Man gives up to death the spirit commended to the Father. Why now do we make an insult of the mystery? You have him complaining that he is left to death, because he is man; you have him who dies professing that he reigns in paradise, because he is God. Why do we keep only for impiety what he said to us for the understanding of his death, and keep silent about what the same one professed to show his immortality? If this voice and speech belong to the same one, complaining that he is forsaken and professing that he reigns, by what reasoning of unbelief do we divide our faith, so that he who dies at the same time is not the same who reigns, when he himself testified both of himself, both commending his spirit and breathing his last? But if the same, commending the spirit and giving it up, both dies reigning and reigns dead, we have in the mystery of the Son of Man and the Son of God both one reigning who dies and one dying who reigns.

Let every irreligious unbelief, then, incapable of the divine mystery, keep away: that unbelief which does not know that Christ wept not for himself but for us, so that the very feeling of human custom which he took up might bear witness to the truth of the man he took up; which is ignorant that Christ died not for himself but for our life, so that through the death of the immortal God the life of mortals might be renewed; which does not understand the complaint of the forsaken and the confidence of the reigning one, so that, because God reigns and he complains that he is dying, there should be in our understanding both the man dead and God reigning. For he who dies and he who reigns are not different, nor is he who commends the spirit different from him who breathes his last, nor is he who was buried different from him who rises, nor is he who descends not one with him who ascends.

Hear on this the faith of the apostolic teaching, trained not by the sense of the flesh but by the gift of the Spirit, when he speaks to Greeks seeking wisdom and Jews seeking signs: "But we preach Christ Jesus crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness; but to those called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ Jesus the power of God and the wisdom of God." Is Christ divided, so that Jesus crucified is one and Christ the power and wisdom of God another? But this is a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles; to us, however, Christ Jesus is the power of God and the wisdom of God; but a wisdom not known to the world nor understood by the prudent of this age. And how little it is understood, learn from the same blessed apostle, saying: "But we speak the wisdom of God, which is hidden in a mystery, which God foreordained before the ages for our glory, which none of the rulers of this age knew; for if they had known it, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory." Is the apostle ignorant that this wisdom of God is hidden in a mystery and is unknowable to the rulers of the age? Does he divide Christ, so that the Lord of majesty is one and Jesus crucified another? But he contradicts this most foolish and most impious opinion, saying: "For I decided to know nothing among you except Christ Jesus, and him crucified."

The apostle knows nothing else and judges that he knows nothing else; but we, weak of wit and weaker of faith, cut, divide, and double Christ Jesus, judges of mysteries and slanderers of a hidden sacrament. For to us Christ crucified is one, the wisdom of God another; the one buried is one, the one descending another; and the Son of Man one, the Son of God another. Not understanding, we teach; not knowing, we accuse; and we men correct the sayings of God; and we do not deign to believe as the apostle does: "Who will bring a charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies; who is it that condemns? Christ who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us." Does another intercede for us than he who is at the right hand of God? Or is he who is at the right hand of God not himself the one who rose? Or is he who rose not the same who died? Or is he who died not the same who condemns? Or is he who condemns not the same who is God who justifies? Let us separate, then, if it is permitted, Christ who condemns from God who justifies, the dead Christ from Christ who condemns, Christ sitting at the right hand and praying for us from the dead Christ. If, then, all these are one Christ, and the dead Christ is not one and the buried another, or one descending to the lower regions and another ascending into the heavens, according to the apostle's saying: "Now what does 'he ascended' mean, except that he descended into the lower parts of the earth? He who descended is himself the one who ascended above all the heavens, that he might fill all things": how far shall we stretch the foolish-talking ignorance of our impiety, so as to profess that what is hidden in the mystery of God can be explained by us? He who descended is himself the one who ascended. Is it doubted that Jesus Christ the man, rising from the dead and ascending above all the heavens, is at the right hand of God? Will it be said that the body which lay in the tomb descended to the underworld? If, then, he who descended is himself the one who ascended, and the body is neither believed to have descended to the underworld, while it is not doubted that the body rising from the dead ascended into the heavens: what faith is left here except that of a hidden mystery, unknown to the world and to the rulers of the age, so that, since he who descends and ascends is one and the same, Jesus Christ too is one for us: both Son of God and Son of Man, both God the Word and man in the flesh, who suffered, died, was buried, rose, was received into the heavens, and sits at the right hand of God; having in his one and the same self, by dispensation and nature, in the form of God and in the form of a servant, without any partition of himself, what is man, and without division, what is God?

So, forming the faith of our careless and ignorant opinion, the apostle spoke the mystery of this confession thus: "For though he was crucified out of weakness, yet he lives by the power of God." For, preaching the Son of Man as the Son of God, who, though man by dispensation, still remained God by nature, he says that the same one was crucified out of weakness who lives by the power of God; so that, since the weakness was from the form of a servant and the nature remained from the form of God, and he who was in the form of God had taken the form of a servant, it should not be doubtful in what mystery he both suffered and lives; so that, since there were in the same one both weakness for suffering and the power of God for life, he who both suffered and lives should not be another, divided from himself.

The only-begotten God did indeed suffer what men can suffer; but let us use the apostle's faith and saying: "For I delivered to you first of all that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he rose on the third day according to the Scriptures." He did not use bare definitions of sayings, giving occasion for error, but urged that the manner of the death and resurrection be confessed not so much by the names of things as by the force of the Scriptures, so that our understanding of his death might be that which was in the meaning of the Scriptures. Not leaving room for weak thoughts and scrupulous slanders against the faith, he added only this limit for preaching the death and resurrection, "according to the Scriptures"; so that we might not be weakened, carried about by the wind of empty disputes or hindered by the foolish subtleties of deceitful questions, but faith, unharmed, might always recall itself to this harbour of its religion, to believe and confess the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, Son of Man and Son of God, according to the Scriptures; a pious security of resisting slander being set before it, since Christ Jesus was to be understood to die and rise as he is written. For faith carries no danger, and every pious profession is safe in the hidden mystery of God. Christ was born of the Virgin; but according to the Scriptures he was conceived of the Holy Spirit. Christ wept; but according to the Scriptures, so that in weeping he rejoiced. Christ also hungered; but according to the Scriptures, as God he worked, without food, against the tree that had no fruit. Christ suffered; but according to the Scriptures he was then to sit at the right hand of Power. He complained that he was forsaken to death; but according to the Scriptures he then received his confessor with himself into the kingdom of paradise. He died; but according to the Scriptures, rising, he sat as Lord at the right hand of the Lord. In the faith of this mystery, then, is life; this confession does not admit slander.

Certainly the apostle does not leave it open to doubt and to say: "Christ born, suffering, dead, rising: in what way, by what power, by what division, in what parts? Who is weeping, who rejoicing, who complaining, who descending, who ascending?" But showing the merit of faith in this, only through the confession of an unhesitating religion, he says: "But the righteousness that is from faith says this: Do not say in your heart, Who ascends into heaven? that is, to bring Christ down. Or, Who descends into the abyss? that is, to bring Christ back from the dead. But what does the Scripture say? The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart; that is, the word of faith which we preach: because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." Faith perfects the righteous man, according to what was said: "Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness." Did Abraham bring charges against God when he promised him the inheritance of the nations and a number of offspring from him, to abide according to the multitude of the stars and the sand? For a religious faith, not doubting the omnipotence of God, was not held back by the natures of human weakness; but, despising what in itself was frail and earthly, it received faith in the divine promise beyond the measure of bodily constitution; because no human law could measure the powers of God, God bringing forth as much generosity in accomplishing as he showed will in promising. Nothing, then, is more righteous than faith; because, though fairness and moderation in earthly actions are commendable, yet nothing is more righteous for man than to have believed the omnipotence of God with an understanding of his unlimited power.

So the apostle, expecting in us this righteousness which is from faith, removed the irreligion of an uncertain and faithless doubt, forbidding the care of anxious thought to be admitted into the heart, shown also by the authority of a prophetic saying. For he says: "Do not say in your heart, Who ascends into heaven?" These words, said thus by the prophet, he follows up with the resolution of the clause added, saying: "that is, to bring Christ down." For the sense of the human mind does not stretch itself to heavenly knowledge, nor does religious faith doubt about divine works. Christ did not need the help of human power, so as to be brought down into a body from that seat of his blessedness by the aid of someone ascending into heaven; no outward power drove him to the earth. He is to be believed to have come as he came; and true piety is to confess Christ not brought down but descending. The mystery is his own, both in time and in work. Nor, because he came at a certain time, is he to be believed brought down by another; nor is his coming in time to be understood as subject to the power of one bringing him down. But the unbelief of the other doubt also is not permitted. For at once, from the prophetic saying, is added: "Or, Who descends into the abyss?" And soon the reason of the saying is added: "that is, to bring Christ back from the dead." The freedom to return into heaven comes from the freedom to descend to earth. The hesitation of doubting is taken away: knowledge is in faith, reason in power, effect in things, cause in power.

But for this a conscience that does not waver is needed. For the apostle, carrying out the whole mystery of the Scripture, says: "The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart." There is no need of a slow word of confession, sought from afar, nor of any interval left between heart and mouth, so that what is to be spoken to declare religion should be pondered by faithless doubt. But it must be both near us and in us, so that, by no delay between the region of the heart and of the mouth, our faith may not be one way in the sense and another in the words, but, joined to mouth and heart, may have an unhesitating religion both of feeling and of speaking. And of this prophetic saying, as of the others, the apostle added the reason: "This is the word of faith which we preach: because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." It is piety not to doubt, righteousness to believe, and salvation to confess. Not to flow away into uncertainties, nor to boil over into foolish talk, nor to sift the powers of God by any reasoning, nor to circumscribe his power by a measure, nor to go over again the causes of unsearchable mysteries, but to confess Jesus as Lord and believe that he was raised from the dead by God: this is salvation. What madness it is, then, to quibble about what kind of being, and of what sort, Jesus is, when salvation is only this, to know this alone, that he is Lord! And then, what error of human vanity is it to stir up disputes about his resurrection, when it suffices for life to have believed that he was raised by God? Faith, then, is in simplicity, righteousness in faith, piety in confession. God does not call us to the blessed life through difficult questions, nor does he trouble us with the manifold kinds of eloquent speech. Eternity is for us something complete and easy: to believe that Jesus was raised from the dead by God, and to confess that he himself is Lord. Let no one, then, seize on what has been said because of our ignorance as an occasion for irreligion. For Jesus Christ had to be known as dead, so that we might live in him.

If, then, for the understanding of his death he says, "God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" and "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit," did he, consulting for our confession, confess himself weak, rather than refuse to leave us in doubt? For, about to raise Lazarus, he prays to the Father; did he need prayer, when he said: "Father, I thank you that you have heard me; and I knew that you always hear me, but I said it because of the crowd, that they may believe that you sent me"? He prayed, then, for us, so that the Son might not be unknown; and though the words of prayer did not profit him, he spoke for the profit of our faith. He was not, then, in need of help; but we are in need of teaching. He also prays to be glorified, and at once the voice of God the Father glorifying him is heard from heaven. But at the wonder over the voice heard he says: "This voice came not for my sake but for yours." For us the Father is asked, for us the Father speaks; let all serve the effect of our confession. And since the answer of glorification was given not to a petition for glory but to the ignorance of the hearers, how will the complaint of suffering, in the utmost exultation of suffering, not be understood as given for the instruction of our confession? Christ prays for his persecutors, because they do not know what they do. Christ promises paradise from the cross, because God reigns. Christ on the cross rejoices that he has finished all things with the cup of vinegar, because, about to die, he has fulfilled the prophecy. For us he was born, for us he suffered, for us he died, for us he rose. And since for us this alone is the property for salvation, to confess the Son of God raised from the dead, why, I ask, should we die in this irreligion, so that, when Christ, remaining within the confidence of his divinity, showed through the signification of the man he took up that he was dying with the security of one dying, this should serve above all to deny him as God, that the Son of God professed himself to us both Son of Man and dead?