On the Trinity 11.1–11.18

The apostle, treating in many ways the whole and complete mystery of the gospel faith, also spoke to the Ephesians these words among the other precepts of divine knowledge: "As you also were called in the one hope of your calling. One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is through all and in us all." For he did not leave us to the doubtful and wandering pursuits of an undefined teaching, nor give over human wits to uncertain opinions, but shut in the freedom of understanding and will by barriers set and placed by himself, so as not to let us be wise except in what alone had been preached by him, since through the defined establishment of an unchangeable faith it was not permitted to believe in one way and another. Proclaiming to us, then, one Lord, he mentions one faith; then, mentioning the one faith of the one Lord, he also shows one baptism; so that, since there was one faith of one Lord, through this one faith in the one Lord there would also be one baptism. And because the whole mystery both of baptism and of faith is in the one God as in the one Lord, he concluded the completion of our hope with the profession of one God; so that one baptism and one faith would belong to the one God as to the one Lord. For each is one, not by union but by property: since it is proper to each to be one, whether for the Father to be what the Father is, or for the Son to be what the Son is; and the fact that each is one in his property is the mystery of unity for both: because the one Lord Christ cannot take from God the Father his being Lord, and the one God the Father is not understood to deny to the one Lord Christ his being God. Since, if through the fact that God is one it does not seem proper to Christ also to be God, it must be understood that through the fact that Christ is one Lord it is not due to God also to be Lord; if "one" is not the sign of a mystery but the exclusion of a union. There is, then, one baptism and one faith of the one Lord, as of the one God the Father.

But faith is no longer one if it does not keep in the profession of conscience one Lord and one God the Father. And how does a faith which is not one confess one Lord and one God the Father? It will no longer be one amid so great a diversity of preachings, if one man believes that the Lord Jesus Christ, when the nail pierced his palms, groaned with the pain of our weakness, and, lacking the strength of his own nature and power, feared with terror the death now threatening him; if he denies even what is principal, that he was born, and preaches rather that he was created; if he calls him God rather than understands him so; since it is religious to call even gods by that name, but to understand him as God is the consciousness of the divine nature. Then Christ is no longer one Lord, if for some he does not feel pain as God and for others he fears as weak; if for some he is God by nature and for others by title; and if for some he is Son by generation and for others by appellation. And through this neither is God the Father one in faith, if he is believed Father by some by power and by others by generation, since God is also the Father of all things. And who will doubt that whatever is outside the one faith is outside the faith? For in the one faith both the Lord Christ is one and God the Father is one. And the Lord Christ is one, not by name but by faith; he is one Son, but only if he is God, if he is unchangeable, if he has never been lacking in being God or Son. Whoever, then, preaches Christ otherwise than he is, that is, as neither Son nor God, will preach another Christ. Nor is there one faith in the one baptism; because, according to the apostolic teaching, the faith of that one baptism is one, whose one Lord is Christ, both Son of God and God.

For Christ can no longer be denied to be Christ, nor be made unknown to the world. The volumes of prophecy seal him; the fullness of the times, advancing daily, testifies to him; the tombs of apostles and martyrs speak of him through the workings of mighty deeds; the power of his name proves him; unclean spirits confess him; the bellowing of punished demons resounds with him. But in all these is the dispensation of his power. For the rest, he is to be preached by our faith as he is, so that, not by name but by confession, in the one faith of one baptism, he may be to us one Lord: because, as there is one Lord Christ, there is one God the Father.

But now these new preachers of Christ, denying all that is Christ's, preach another Lord Christ as another God the Father: because neither did the one beget, but create; nor was the other born, but created; and through this Christ is God outside the truth, since his being God is not from birth; and God the Father is outside the consciousness of faith, since his being Father is not in generation. They praise God the Father, indeed, deservedly and as is fitting, as of a nature inaccessible, invisible, inviolable, unspeakable, infinite, provident, powerful, kind, moving, passing through, abiding within and without, and perceiving all things in all; but when they add, to the surpassing height of praise, that he alone is good, alone powerful, alone immortal, who does not understand that this reverence of praise tends to this, that the Lord Jesus Christ, remaining outside this blessedness which is offered in honour to God alone by the exception "alone," is himself mortal, weak, and evil, since in these things the Father is alone? And therefore natural birth from God the Father is denied him, so that the blessedness which is natural to God the Father may not remain in him through generation; because birth is in the power of the nature that begot.

Instructed neither by the apostolic nor by the gospel preachings, they exalt the magnificence of God the Father for the use of their impious profession, not by the faith of religion but by the art of impiety: so that, while they set forth that all things of his nature are incomparable, they affirm, by the exception of comparison, that the only-begotten God is of a degenerate and weak nature: God, the living image of the living God, the fullest form of the blessed nature, the only-begotten birth of the unbegotten substance; who, unless he has the perfect glory of the Father's blessedness and renders the complete likeness of the whole nature, is not in the truth of an image. But if the only-begotten God is the image of the unbegotten God, the truth of a perfect and complete nature is in him, through which it comes about that he is the image of the truth. The Father is powerful; but if the Son is weak, he is no longer the image of the powerful. The Father is good; but if the Son is in a divinity of a different kind, an evil nature does not render the image of the good. The Father is incorporeal; if the Son, according to the Spirit, is circumscribed by a body, the bodily is no longer the form of the incorporeal. The Father is ineffable; if speech comprehends the Son, a nature that can be told is outside the image of the untellable. The Father is true God; if the Son is in falsity as God, he who is false is no longer the image of the true. The apostle does not preach him as an image of God in part, or a form of God in a portion; he says that he is the image of the invisible God and that he is the form of God. The nature of divinity could not be preached more expressly by the apostle in the Son of God than that, as regards what is invisible of God, Christ is the image of the invisible God: who, surely, in a visible substance would not render the image of an invisible nature.

But, as we taught in the earlier books, they snatch the dispensation of the body taken up to insult the divinity, and seize causes of impiety from the mystery of our salvation. If they held fast to the apostolic faith, they would understand that he who was in the form of God took the form of a servant; and they would not use the form of a servant to dishonour the form of God, since the form of God contained in itself the fullness of God; and they would treat with pious reasoning what belongs to the times and the mystery, so that the divinity would receive no insult and the dispensation would bring no error. But since all things, I think, have now been shown by us most completely, and the power of the divine nature has been shown under the birth of the body taken up, no room for doubt is left that the only-begotten God and man did all things by the powers of God, and in the powers of God accomplished all things with the whole truth of man: having in himself both the nature of God, powerful in his deeds, since he was born from God, and the completeness of perfect man, since his birth was from the Virgin; both subsisting in the nature of God with the truth of a body, and abiding in the truth of a body with the nature of God.

Although, then, the whole speech of our answer has come down to the very glory of death, and each proposition of the impious profession has been contradicted from the gospel and apostolic teachings, yet, because the impious have dared to presume certain things even after the glory of the resurrection, to show the weakness of a degenerate nature, we must now answer these very things. And, as we have observed in the rest, the reason of those sayings must be brought from those sayings themselves, so that truth may be found where it is denied. For what has been said divinely, simply and for the instruction of faith, must have been said in such a way that, for what it was said for, it is not confirmed by examples of foreign and external sayings.

For among their other impieties the heretics are accustomed to use this saying of the Lord: "I ascend to my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God"; so that, because his Father is their Father and his God their God, he is not in the nature of God: since he professes that God is Father to the rest as he is to himself, the privilege ceasing in the sharing both of nature and of the birth through which he was born God and is Son. Let them hold also this saying of the apostle: "But when he says, All things are subjected, it is evident that he is excepted who subjected all things to him. And when all things are subjected to him, then he himself will be subjected to him who subjected all things to him, that God may be all in all"; so that, since that subjection will be thought a witness to a weak nature, he whom natural weakness subjected to the power of a stronger nature is not in the power of the Father's nature. And let them take this as the best fortified and impregnable defence of all their impiety, to abolish the truth of birth: that, because through subjection he is not God, and through a God and Father common to himself and to us he is in fellowship with the creature, he himself also is a creation from God rather than a generation; since creation subsists from nothing, but generation has a natural author of birth.

Every slander is shameless, because falsehood contradicts truth when shame has already been thrown off; yet sometimes it puts forward some veil of ambiguous excuse, so as to be modest in its defence while it is shameless in its sense. But now, in the things impiously presumed to weaken the divinity of our Lord, room for modesty or false excuse is shut out, since, the very pardon of ignorance ceasing, the bare will of an irreligious understanding is uncovered. For, to defer a little the demonstration of the gospel saying itself: was this preaching of the apostle unknown, when he says: "And by the confession of all, great is the mystery of piety, which was manifested in the flesh, justified in the spirit, seen by angels, preached to the Gentiles, believed in this world, taken up in glory"? Is anyone still of so dull an understanding as to understand the dispensation of the flesh taken up by the Lord as anything other than a mystery of piety? And first, whoever is outside this confession is outside the faith of God. For the apostle does not doubt that all must confess this: that the mystery of our salvation is not an insult to the divinity but a mystery of great piety; and a mystery no longer hidden in secret but manifested in the flesh; and no longer weak through the nature of the flesh but justified in the spirit; so that through the justification of the spirit the weakness of the flesh would be absent from our faith, through the manifestation of the flesh the mystery would not be hidden, and through the unknowable cause of the mystery there would be only the confession of great piety in the sacrament. And so the apostle kept the order of the whole faith: as it is piety, it is a mystery; as it is a mystery, there is knowledge in the flesh; as there is knowledge in the flesh, there is justification in the spirit; because the mystery of piety which is manifested in the flesh, so as to be truly a mystery, is manifested in the flesh through the justification of the spirit. And so that it might not be unknown what kind of justification in the spirit that manifestation in the flesh was, the mystery which was manifested in the flesh and justified in the spirit, and was seen by angels, preached to the Gentiles, and believed in this world, is this very thing taken up in glory; so that it is in all things the mystery of great piety, as it is manifested in the flesh, justified in the spirit, seen by angels, preached to the Gentiles, believed in this world, taken up in glory. For preaching follows sight, faith follows preaching, and the taking up in glory completes all; because the taking up in glory is also the mystery of great piety, and through this faith in the dispensation we are prepared to be taken up conformed to the Lord's glory. The taking up of flesh, then, is the mystery of great piety, because through the taking up of flesh there is the manifestation of the mystery in the flesh. Yet the manifestation in the flesh is to be confessed as nothing other than the mystery of great piety, because its manifestation in the flesh is both the justification of the spirit and the taking up in glory. And with what hope, after all, is the mystery of the pious dispensation weakness of divinity in our faith, when through the taking up in glory it is to be confessed as the mystery of great piety? And since it is no longer weakness but mystery, not necessity but piety, the reason of the gospel saying must now be sought, so that what is the mystery of our salvation and glory may not be left as an occasion of impious preaching.

The Lord's profession about himself seems to you, heretic, a weighty authority and not to be undone, where he says: "I ascend to my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God"; so that, because one and the same is both Father as Father and God as God to us and to him, he is in that weakness in which we are: since through the same Father we are made equal as sons, and through the same God we are compared as servants; and since we are both a creation by origin and servants by nature, yet, since the Father and God is common to us, creation by nature and servitude would be common to him with us. And this madness of impious preaching also uses this prophetic saying: "God, your God, has anointed you"; so that he is not in that power of nature by which he is God, since God, anointing him, is preferred to him as his God.

He does not know Christ as God who does not know God as born. And for God to be born is nothing other than to be in that nature by which he is God; because to be born, though it shows a cause of birth, does not fall short of existing in the kind of its author. And what does not fall short in kind owes indeed to its author the cause of its birth, yet has not lost of itself the nature of the author; because the birth of God is neither from elsewhere nor something else. If it is from elsewhere, it is not birth; if it is something else, it is not God. But since he is God from God, through this too God the Father is to God the Son both the God of his birth and the Father of his nature; because the birth of God is both from God and has in it the nature of the kind by which he is God.

The Lord, then, so tempered the measure of this pious and due profession in all that he said that the confession of his birth would bring no insult to his divinity, and the reverence of obedience would not offend the nature of majesty; but so that the birth would profess the honour due from one who owed his subsisting to an author, and the natural confidence would show the consciousness of a nature which subsisted as God by being born. Hence that saying: "He who has seen me has seen the Father also"; but also this: "The words that I speak, I do not speak from myself." For since he does not speak from himself, he must owe to an author what he speaks; but since, when he is seen, the Father is seen, it is the consciousness of the nature which, to show God in itself, subsisted as born God, not foreign to God. Or this: "What the Father has given me is greater than all"; and again: "I and the Father are one." For the Father's giving is a profession of the birth received; and that they are one is the property of nature from birth. Or this: "But he has given all judgment to the Son, that all may honour the Son as they honour the Father." For while judgment is given, the birth is not passed over in silence; but while honour is made equal, the nature is kept. Or this: "I in the Father and the Father in me"; and again: "The Father is greater than I." For in their being in each other, recognize the divinity of God from God; but in the Father's being greater, understand the confession of the Father's authority. So also this: "The Son can do nothing of himself except what he sees the Father doing; for whatever he does, these the Son also does likewise." Since he does not do it of himself, the Father is author to him for what he does, according to his birth; and yet, since the Son does likewise whatever the Father does, he does not subsist as anything other than God, for doing all that God the Father does, the nature of the Father's omnipotence subsisting in him. These things, then, have been so shown according to the unity of Spirit and the property of nature which is according to birth that the birth confesses the God of its subsisting, and the subsisting does not tear apart the consciousness of nature: God the Son professing God the Father as his own since he is born from him, but, as to what he was born, having by nature the whole of what God is.

The dispensation of the great and pious mystery, then, made the Father of the divine birth also the Lord of the condition taken up, since he who was in the form of God was found in the form of a servant. For he was not a servant when, according to the Spirit, he was God the Son of God. And according to common judgment, where there is no servant there is no lord. God is indeed the God and Father of the birth of the only-begotten God; but as to his being a servant, we can only ascribe a lord to him when he is a servant: because, if before he was not by nature a servant, and afterwards began to be by nature what he was not, no other cause of lordship is to be understood than the one that brought about the servitude; having a lord from the dispensation of nature at the time when he made himself a servant by the taking up of man.

Abiding, then, in the form of a servant, he who before abode in the form of God, the man Christ Jesus, said: "I ascend to my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God." If, then, a servant said these things, and to servants, how is this profession not that of a servant, and how will it be transferred rather to that nature which is not in the nature of a servant, when, for him who, abiding in the form of God, took the form of a servant, a fellowship as of a servant with servants can come only from the fact that he is a servant? The Father, then, is Father to himself as he is Father to men, and God to himself as he is God to servants. And since the man Jesus Christ, in the form of a servant, says these things to men who are servants, there is no doubt that the Father is Father to him as to the rest on that side by which he is man, and God to him as to all from that nature by which he is a servant.

In fact he began this same speech with an opening of this kind of profession, saying: "But go to my brothers and say to them, I ascend to my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God." And I ask now whether they are to be understood as his brothers according to the form of God or according to the form of a servant; and whether our bodily nature has any fellowship with him according to the fullness of divinity dwelling in him, so that we are reckoned his brothers as regards his being God? But the prophetic Spirit too knows in what respect there are brothers to the only-begotten God; for not so much a man as a worm said this: "I will tell your name to my brothers." And the worm, either living not from the conception of common origins, or emerging alive from the depths of the earth, professed this to signify the flesh taken up and made alive by himself even from the underworld; and having foretold in the whole psalm, by the prophetic Spirit, the mysteries of his passion, he must have brothers from that dispensation in which he suffered. The apostle too knows the mystery of brothers in him, preaching him as the firstborn from the dead and also the firstborn among many brothers. He is firstborn among many brothers, then, in the same respect in which he is firstborn from the dead; and since the mystery of death is in the body, the mystery of brotherhood also is in the flesh. So God has brothers from the flesh, because the Word became flesh and dwelt among us; but the only-begotten God, in the exception of being only-begotten, is without brothers.

But he, containing in himself the nature of us all by the taking up of flesh, was what we are and had not lost being what he had remained; having God as Father, then by birth and now by constitution. Now by constitution, because all things are from God the Father. For God is Father to all, since all things are from him and in him. But to the only-begotten God, because the Word became flesh, he is not Father from this only; for he is Father as to the fact that in the beginning God the Word was with God. But when the Word became flesh, what the Father is remains both in the birth of the Word of God and in the constitution of the flesh. For God is the Father of all flesh, but not in the way he is Father to God the Word. And God the Word neither ceased to be the Word nor failed to be flesh. For the Word which became flesh and dwelt among us is not, while dwelling, not truly the Word, nor, while the Word is flesh, is he not truly God and man: because to dwell must belong to one who remains, and to become flesh is to be understood to belong to one who is born. And that he dwells in us is the taking up of our flesh; because, through the Word made flesh dwelling in us, God is in the truth of our body. If, then, Christ Jesus, man according to the flesh, takes away the nature of God the Word, or if God the Word is not the man Christ Jesus according to the mystery of piety, let it be an insult to his nature that, as for us, the Father is his Father and God his God. But if God the Word, the man Christ Jesus, did not cease to be God the Word, the fellowship of us and him toward the Father and God comes only from that nature by which he is brother; because "I ascend to my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God" was announced to the brothers not through the fact that he is the only-begotten God the Word, but through the fact that the Word became flesh.

The apostolic word does not speak in careless meanings or ones uncertain enough to give occasion for impiety. So now the evangelist, beginning the Lord's saying with the profession of brothers, taught that the profession of the whole saying pertains to the fellowship of that nature from which he is brother, because the speech is addressed to brothers; so that what was preached for the mystery of piety might not be counted as an insult to the divinity, since our fellowship with him, by which the Father is our Father and his, and God our God and his, existed according to the dispensation of the flesh, we being reckoned brothers to him by the birth of the body. No one, then, doubts that God the Father is also the God of our Lord Jesus Christ; but this pious profession of ours does not lie open to occasion for impiety. He is his God, not so that he is God of a kind different from him. But because he was born God from the Father, and is a servant by dispensation, let him have both a Father, since he is God from him, and his God, since he is flesh from the Virgin. The apostle seals this in a brief and complete saying: "Making mention in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation." For where Jesus Christ is, there is his God; but where glory is, there is the Father. He, then, who is Father to Christ according to glory is God to Christ according to Jesus. For the angel names Jesus Christ the Lord, whom Mary was to bear; but prophecy speaks of Christ the Lord as Spirit. And to many this saying seems more obscure in Latin, because Latin does not use the articles which Greek always uses, by a fitting and necessary custom. For it is written thus: ὁ θεὸς τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ, ὁ πατὴρ τῆς δόξης. With us, if the custom of articles always existed, it would be pronounced thus: "That God of that our Lord Jesus Christ, that Father of that glory." For through the fact that "that God" is "of that Jesus Christ" and "that Father" is "of that glory," a certain property of understanding has been expressed according to the capacity of our sense: so that where Christ's glory is, there God is his Father; but where Christ Jesus is, there the Father is his God; having his God in the dispensation when he is a servant, and the Father in glory when he is God.

Times and ages do not bring a diversity of Spirit, so that the same Christ who abode by the Spirit in the prophets is not himself and the same in the body. For speaking through the mouth of the holy patriarch David, "God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your fellows," he spoke according to no other mystery than that of the dispensation of the body taken up. For he who now, charging his brothers, said that their Father is his Father and their God his God, then also said that he was anointed by his God above his fellows; so that, while he has no fellow as the only-begotten Christ, God the Word, he might be known to have a fellow from that taking up by which he is flesh. For that anointing did not profit that blessed, incorruptible birth abiding in the nature of God, but the mystery of the body and the sanctification of the man taken up, as the apostle Peter testifies when he says: "For they gathered together in truth in this city against your holy Son Jesus, whom you anointed." And again: "You know the word that went through all Judea, beginning from Galilee after the baptism which John preached: Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed him with the Holy Spirit and with power." Jesus, then, is anointed for the mystery of the regenerated flesh. And how he was anointed with the Spirit of God and with power is not doubtful, at the time when, as he came up from the Jordan, the voice of God the Father was heard: "You are my Son; today I have begotten you"; so that through this testimony of the flesh sanctified in him the anointing of spiritual power might be known.