On the Trinity 2.31–3.15

But the saying we read in the Gospels, “God is spirit,” must be carefully examined, how and for what reason it was said. For every saying is spoken for a reason, and the meaning of a saying must be understood from the intention of the speaker; lest, because the Lord answered “God is spirit,” the use and gift of the Holy Spirit should for that reason be denied together with his name. The Lord was speaking with the Samaritan woman, for he had come as the redemption of all. After a long conversation about living water, and the five husbands, and the man she now had who was not her own, the woman answered him: “Lord, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, and you say that in Jerusalem is the place where one must worship.” The Lord answered: “Believe me, woman, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father seeks such to worship him. For God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth, because God is spirit.” The woman, then, mindful of the traditions of her fathers, thought that God must be worshipped either, as Samaria held, on the mountain, or, as Jerusalem held, in the temple: for Samaria, transgressing the Law, had chosen the site of the mountain for worshipping God, while the Jews held the temple built by Solomon to be the seat of religion; and the presumption of both confined, on the height of a hill or in the hollow of a built house, God, within whom are all things and outside whom nothing is able to contain him. Since, then, God is invisible, incomprehensible, and boundless, the Lord said the time had come when God was to be worshipped neither on the mountain nor in the temple: for God is spirit, and spirit is neither circumscribed nor held; by the power of his nature he is everywhere and absent nowhere, overflowing wholly in all things; and so those are true worshippers who will worship in spirit and truth. And for those who are to worship God the Spirit in the Spirit, the one is in the office, the other in the honor, because a distinction is made between him in whom and him who is to be worshipped. For the name and gift of the Holy Spirit is not taken away because it was said, “God is spirit.” The answer was given to the woman, who shut God within a temple and a mountain, that all things are in God and God is in himself, and that he, invisible and incomprehensible, must be worshipped in what is invisible and incomprehensible. And so the nature both of the gift and of the honor was signified when he taught that God the Spirit is to be worshipped in the Spirit, showing both the freedom and knowledge of the worshippers and the boundlessness of the one worshipped, since God who is Spirit is worshipped in the Spirit.

Like this is the Apostle's saying: “The Lord is Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” To make his meaning understood, he distinguished him who is from him whose he is. For to have and to be had are not one thing, nor does the same expression contain “he” and “his.” So when he says, “The Lord is Spirit,” he shows the nature of his infinity; but when he adds, “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom,” he signifies the one who is his; for the Lord is Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. These things have been said not because the argument requires them, but so that no obscurity might cling to these sayings. For the Holy Spirit is one everywhere, enlightening all the patriarchs, the prophets, and the whole choir of the Law, inspiring John even in his mother's womb; given afterward to the apostles and the other believers for the knowledge of the truth granted to them.

What his office is in us, let us hear from the words of the Lord himself. For he says: “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. For it is expedient for you that I go; if I go, I will send you the Advocate.” And again: “I will ask the Father, and he will send you another Advocate, to be with you forever, the Spirit of truth. He will guide you into all truth; for he will not speak from himself, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will announce to you the things to come. He will glorify me, because he will take of what is mine.” These words, out of many, have been set down to open a road to understanding; in them are contained both the will of the Giver and the nature and terms of the gift: that, since our weakness could grasp neither the Father nor the Son, the gift of the Holy Spirit, by a kind of covenant of his intercession, might enlighten our faith, which finds the incarnation of God hard to believe.

It now follows that we should hear the Apostle too explaining the power and office of this gift. For he says: “As many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption, in whom we cry: Abba, Father.” And again: “No one speaking in the Spirit of God says ‘Jesus is anathema,’ and no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except in the Holy Spirit.” And again: “There are distributions of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are distributions of ministries, but the same Lord; and there are distributions of workings, but the same God, who works all things in all. To each is given the enlightenment of the Spirit for the common good. To one is given through the Spirit the word of wisdom, to another the word of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith in the same Spirit, to another gifts of healings in the one Spirit, to another the working of mighty deeds, to another prophecy, to another the discerning of spirits, to another kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. But all these the one and the same Spirit works.” We have, then, the cause of this gift, and we have its effects; and I do not know what doubt there can be about him whose cause, nature, and power are plainly set out.

Let us make use, then, of such generous gifts, and seek the use of this most necessary gift. For the Apostle says, as we showed above: “We have not received the spirit of this world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we may know the things that have been given us by God.” He is received, then, for the sake of knowledge. For as the nature of the human body will be idle when the occasions for its functions are absent (the eyes will have no use for their service unless there is light or day; the ears will not recognize their task unless a voice or sound is given; the nostrils will not know what their office is unless some scent is fragrant; not that their nature fails them for lack of an occasion, but the use comes from the occasion), so the human mind, unless it has drawn in the gift of the Spirit through faith, will indeed have the nature for understanding God, but will not have the light of knowledge. This gift, which is in Christ, is one and wholly open to all; and since it is lacking nowhere, it is given in proportion as each is willing to receive it, and abides in proportion as each is willing to deserve it. This is with us until the consummation of the age; this is the comfort of our waiting; this, in the workings of its gifts, is the pledge of our future hope; this is the light of minds, this the splendor of souls. This Holy Spirit, then, is to be sought, to be deserved, and thereafter to be kept by faith in the commandments and by keeping them.

The Lord's saying, “I am in the Father, and the Father in me,” brings obscurity to many, and not without reason; for the nature of human understanding does not grasp the meaning of this saying. For it seems impossible that what is in another should equally be outside it; and since the beings in question must not be solitary, yet keep their own number and state, it seems that they cannot contain each other, so that one who has another within himself, and so remains always outside him, should in turn remain always within the one he has within himself. Human perception will not attain this, nor will any human comparison furnish an example for divine things; but what is unintelligible to man is possible to God. I do not say this as though the mere authority of its having been said by God were enough to explain the saying. We must therefore learn and understand what “I am in the Father, and the Father in me” means, if indeed we shall be able to grasp it as it is, so that what is thought impossible in the nature of things may be reached by the reasoning of divine truth.

And so that we may more easily reach an understanding of this most difficult question, we must first know the Father and the Son according to the teaching of the divine Scriptures, so that our discussion may be more complete when it concerns what is known and familiar. The eternity of the Father, as we treated in the previous book, surpasses places, times, appearance, and whatever can be conceived by human sense. He is outside all things and in all things, containing all things and contained by none, not changeable by approach or departure; but he is invisible, incomprehensible, full, perfect, eternal, taking nothing from elsewhere, but sufficient to himself for remaining as he is.

This unbegotten one, then, before all time begot a Son from himself: not from any underlying matter, because all things are through the Son; not from nothing, because he begot the Son from himself; not by a childbirth, because there is nothing changeable or empty in God; not a part of himself, divided, cut off, or extended, because God is impassible and incorporeal, while these things belong to passion and flesh; and, as the Apostle says, in Christ dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. But incomprehensibly, ineffably, before all time and ages, he brought forth the Only-begotten from what was unbegotten in himself, imparting to his birth, through love and power, all that God is; and so from the unbegotten, perfect, and eternal Father the Son is only-begotten, perfect, and eternal. But what belongs to him according to the body he assumed is the will of his goodness for our salvation. For being invisible, incorporeal, and incomprehensible, as begotten of God, he took on himself as much matter and lowliness as there was capacity in us to understand, perceive, and behold him; yielding to our weakness rather than falling short of what he himself was.

So the perfect Son of a perfect Father, the only-begotten offspring of the unbegotten God, who received all things from him who has all things, God from God, spirit from spirit, light from light, says confidently: “The Father is in me, and I in the Father”: for as the Father is spirit, so the Son is spirit; as the Father is God, so the Son is God; as the Father is light, so the Son is light. From what is in the Father, then, come those things in which the Son is; that is, the whole Son was born from the whole Father; not from elsewhere, because nothing was before the Son; not from nothing, because the Son is from God; not in part, because the fullness of the Godhead is in the Son; nor in some things, because in all: but as he willed who was able, as he knows who begot. What is in the Father is also in the Son; what is in the unbegotten is also in the only-begotten; the one from the other, and both one thing; not two as one person, but one in the other, because there is nothing different in either. The Father is in the Son, because the Son is from him; the Son is in the Father, because his being Son is from nowhere else; the only-begotten is in the unbegotten, because the only-begotten is from the unbegotten. So they are in each other: for as all things are perfect in the unbegotten Father, so all things are perfect in the only-begotten Son. This is the unity in the Son and the Father, this the power, this the love, this the hope, this the faith, this the truth, the way, the life: not to slander God about his powers, nor to disparage the Son because of the secret and power of his birth; to compare nothing to the unbegotten Father, to separate the only-begotten from him neither in time nor in power, and to confess the Son as God because he is from God.

There are powers of this kind in God whose manner is incomprehensible to our understanding, yet faith in them is complete through the truth of their effect. And we shall find this not only in spiritual things but also in bodily ones, shown not as an example of the birth, but so that we may wonder at a deed we can understand. On the wedding day in Galilee wine was made from water: will our speech or perception attain by what means the nature was changed, so that the plainness of water ceased and the taste of wine was born? It was not a mixing but a creation; and a creation not starting from itself, but coming into being from one thing into another: what was weaker is not overpowered by pouring in something stronger, but what was is abolished, and what was not began. The bridegroom is sad, the household troubled, the celebration of the wedding feast in danger. Jesus is asked; he does not rise or bustle; this work is done while he remains at rest. Water is poured into the jars, wine is drawn into the cups; the knowledge of the one pouring does not agree with the perception of the one drawing. Those who poured think water is being drawn; those who draw think wine was poured in; the time between is not long enough for the nature of the liquid both to come into being and to perish. The manner of the deed baffles both sight and perception; yet the power of God is perceived in what was done.

The wonder of the deed with the five loaves is not unlike it. By their increase the hunger of five thousand men and of innumerable women and children is overcome; the understanding of the work escapes the eyes of our perception. Five loaves are offered and broken; new growths of fragments steal into the hands of those breaking them. The loaf from which pieces are broken is not diminished, and yet fragments always fill the hand of the one breaking. The moments deceive the sight: while you follow a hand full of fragments, you see the other with no loss to its portion; meanwhile the heap of fragments grows. Those who break are busy at their service, those who eat at their business; the hungry are filled; the leftovers fill twelve baskets. Neither perception nor sight can follow the progress of so visible a work. What was not, is; what is not understood is seen: it only remains to believe that God can do all things.

Divine things, then, involve no flattery, nor is there in God any pretense meant to please or deceive. These works of the Son of God did not proceed from a desire for display: for he whom innumerable thousands of thousands of angels serve did not flatter man. For what did he need of what is ours, he through whom exist all things that are ours? Or did he demand honor from us, now dull with sleep, now weary from nights of luxury, now with guilty consciences after the quarrels and slaughters of the day, now drunk after banquets: he whom archangels, dominions, principalities, and powers praise in heaven with eternal and unwearied voices, without sleep, without distraction, without sin? And they praise him because he, the image of the invisible God, created all of them in himself, made the ages, established the heaven, set the stars apart, founded the earth, sank the abysses; and because he afterward was born a man, conquered death, broke the gates of hell, won for himself a people as co-heirs, and carried flesh from corruption into the glory of eternity. He needed nothing from us, then, that these works, beyond telling and beyond understanding, should adorn him among us as though he needed praise. But God, foreseeing the error of human wickedness and folly, and knowing that unbelief would break out so far as to presume to judge the things of God, overcame our audacity with examples of the very things that would be doubted.

For there are many who are wise in this age, whose wisdom is foolishness to God, who, when they hear that God was born from God, true from true, perfect from perfect, one from one, contradict us as though we preached impossibilities, clinging to certain collections of maxims, when they say: “Nothing could be born from one, because every birth is from two. Now if this son was born from one, he received a part of him who begot him; and if a part, then neither is perfect; for the begetter lacks what went out from him, and there will be no fullness in one who consists of a portion. Neither, then, is perfect, since the one who begot loses his fullness and the one who was born does not attain it.” God, foreseeing this wisdom of the world, condemns it through the prophet too, saying: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and reject the understanding of the prudent.” Likewise in the Apostle: “Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the prudence of this world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through prudence, it pleased God through the foolishness of preaching to save those who believe: since Jews ask for signs and Greeks seek wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God: for the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.”

The Son of God, then, caring for the human race, first became man so that he might be believed; so that he might be a witness to divine things for us, from among us, and through the weakness of flesh might preach God the Father to us who are weak and fleshly, carrying out in himself the will of God the Father, as he says: “I did not come to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me”; not that he himself does not will what he does; but he shows his obedience in carrying out his Father's will, himself willing to fulfill the will of the Father. And this was his will to accomplish the Father's will, to which he himself testifies, saying: “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son, that the Son may glorify you: as you have given him power over all flesh, that he may give eternal life to all that you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I have glorified you on earth, having finished the work you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me with yourself, with the glory that I had with you before the world was. I have manifested your name to the men whom you gave me.” In a few brief words he set out the whole work of his office and dispensation, while no less fortifying the truth of the faith against every suggestion of the devil's deceit. Let us run through, then, the meaning of each of his words.

He says: “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you.” He says that not the day, not the time, but the hour has come. An hour is a portion of a day. And what will this hour be? Surely the one of which he spoke when he strengthened his disciples at the time of the passion: “Behold, the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” This, then, is the hour in which he prays to be glorified by the Father, so that he himself may glorify the Father. But what does this mean? Does he who is going to glorify wait to be glorified, does he who is going to give back honor ask for it, and need what he will in turn impart? Here let the sophists of the world and the wise of Greece come forward and entangle the truth in their syllogisms. Let them ask how, and from where, and for what reason; and when they are stuck, let them hear: “God has chosen the foolish things of the world.” So by our foolishness let us understand what is unintelligible to the wise of the world. The Lord had said, “Father, the hour has come”: he had pointed to the hour of the passion, for he was saying this at that very moment; then he added, “Glorify your Son.” But how was the Son to be glorified? For, born of the Virgin, he had come from the cradle and infancy to full manhood; through sleep, hunger, thirst, weariness, and tears he had lived as a man; even now he was to be spat upon, scourged, and crucified. What then? These things would have testified to us that there was only a man in Christ. But we are not put to shame by the cross, not condemned beforehand by the scourges, not defiled by the spittle. The Father glorifies the Son. How? At last he is fastened to the cross. Then what follows? The sun does not set, but flees. Why do I say it fled? It was not taken into a cloud, but failed in the course of its work; and the other elements of the world felt their own destruction with him; and so that no heavenly workings should take part in this crime, they escaped the necessity of being present by a kind of abolition of themselves. But what did the earth do? It trembled under the weight of the Lord hanging on the wood, testifying that it could not contain within itself the one who was about to die. Do the cliffs and stones at least yield their part? They burst and split apart and lose their nature, and confess that the tomb cut from them cannot hold the body that is to be laid in it.

What follows upon this? The centurion of the cohort, the guard of the cross, also cries out: “Truly this was the Son of God.” Creation is set free by the intervention of this sacrifice; the rocks do not keep their firmness and strength. Those who had fastened him to the cross confess that he is truly the Son of God: the outcome agrees with what had been said. The Lord had said: “Glorify your Son.” He testified that he was Son not only by the name but also by the word of ownership, “your.” For many of us are sons of God, but this Son is not of that kind. For he is a true and proper Son, by origin, not adoption; in truth, not in name; by birth, not creation. So after his glorification confession of the truth followed. For the centurion confesses him to be the true Son of God, so that no believer might doubt what a man among his persecutors had not denied.

But perhaps it is believed that the Son needed the glorification for which he prayed; and he will be found weak, since he waits for glorification from one greater. And who will not confess the Father greater, as unbegotten than begotten, as father than son, as sender than sent, as the one willing than the one obeying? He himself will be our witness: “The Father is greater than I.” These things must be understood as they are; but we must beware lest, among the unlearned, the honor of the Father weaken the glory of the Son. And this very glorification that was asked for does not allow it to be weakened: for after the words, “Father, glorify your Son,” there follows also, “that the Son may glorify you.” The Son, then, is not weak, since he, while he is to be glorified, will himself give back glorification in return. But if he is not weak, what was he asking for? For no one asks except for what he needs. Or is the Father also weak? Or is he so lavish with what he has that glorification must be given back to him through the Son? But neither did the one need it, nor does the other desire it; and yet each will impart it to the other. So the request for glorification to be given and returned in turn takes nothing from the Father and does not weaken the Son; but it shows the same power of divinity in both, since the Son prays to be glorified by the Father, and the Father does not disdain glorification from the Son; and these things show the unity of power in the Father and the Son through the exchange of glorification given and returned.

But what this glorification is, and from what it comes, must be learned. God, I think, is not changeable, nor does fault or correction, gain or loss, befall eternity; but what is, always is, for this is peculiar to God. What always is cannot ever have it in its nature not to be: how then will that be glorified which lacks nothing of its own and does not fall short of itself, so that there is nothing it might receive into itself, and it has lost nothing to take back? We are stuck; we hesitate. But the evangelist does not abandon the weakness of our understanding; he shows what glorification the Son would give back to the Father, saying: “As you have given him power over all flesh, that he may give eternal life to all that you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” The Father, then, is glorified through the Son in this, that he comes to be known by us. And this was the glory: that the Son, himself made flesh, had received from him power over all flesh, and that he would give the eternity of life to what is perishable, bodily, and mortal. And the eternity of our life was the effect not of labor but of power, since it was not any new contrivance but only the knowledge of God that would take up the glory of eternity. So glory is not added to God, for it had not departed so as to be added; but through the Son he is glorified among us, who were ignorant, runaways, unclean, dead without hope, in darkness without law; and he is glorified by this, that the Son received from him power over all flesh, to give it eternal life. Through these works of the Son, then, the Father is glorified. And so when the Son received all things, he was glorified by the Father; and in turn the Father is glorified when all things are done through the Son. And the glory received is given back in such a way that whatever glory is in the Son is wholly the Father's glory: because he received all things from the Father; because the honor of the one who serves redounds to the honor of the one who sends, as the honor of the one who begets lies in the honor of the one who is born.

But in what, then, does the eternity of life consist? He himself says: “That they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” What difficult questions are here, what battle of words? Life is to know the true God; but this alone does not yet make life. What, then, is joined to it? “And Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” The honor due to the Father is rendered by the Son when he says, “you, the only true God.” Yet the Son does not separate himself from the truth of God when he adds, “and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” The confession of believers allows no gap, since the hope of life is in both; nor does he who follows in the conjunction fall short of being true God. When, then, it is said, “That they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent,” under this designation, namely of sender and sent, the truth and divinity of the Father and the Son are not set apart by any difference of meaning or interval, but the faith of religion is taught to confess the one who begets and the one begotten.

So the Son glorifies the Father fully in what follows: “I have glorified you on earth, having finished the work you gave me to do.” All the praise of the Father comes from the Son, because in whatever the Son is praised, the praise will be the Father's; for he accomplishes everything the Father willed. The Son of God is born a man, but the power of God is in the Virgin's childbearing. The Son of God is seen as a man, but God is present in the works of the man. The Son of God is fastened to the cross, but on the cross God overcomes the death of man. Christ the Son of God dies, but all flesh is made alive in Christ. The Son of God is in the underworld, but man is carried back to heaven. The more these things are praised in Christ, the more praise will he receive from whom Christ is God. In these ways, then, the Father glorifies the Son on earth; and in turn the Son, by the works of his powers, glorifies him from whom he is, before the ignorance of the nations and the folly of the world. And this exchange of glorification does not concern any advance of divinity, but the honor that was received from the recognition of those who did not know. For in what did the Father not abound, from whom are all things? Or what was lacking to the Son, in whom it had pleased all the fullness of divinity to dwell? So the Father is glorified on earth, because the work he commanded is accomplished.