On the Trinity 3.16–4.7

Let us see what glorification the Son expects from the Father, and the matter is complete. For the passage continues: “I have glorified you on earth; I have finished the work you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me with yourself with the glory I had with you before the world was. I have manifested your name to men.” So the Father was glorified by the works of the Son: in his being understood as God, in his being shown as the Father of the only-begotten God, in his willing, for our salvation, that his Son should be born a man, even from a virgin; in whom all that began with the Virgin's childbearing is fulfilled in the passion. Therefore, because the Son of God, perfect in every respect and born before all time in the fullness of divinity, now a man by the origin of his flesh, was being brought to completion in death, he asks to be glorified with God, as he himself had glorified the Father on earth; for at that time the powers of God were being glorified in the flesh before an ignorant world. But what glorification is it now that he expects with the Father? Surely that which he had with him before the world was. He had the fullness of divinity, and he has it, for he is the Son of God. But he who was the Son of God had begun to be also the son of man; for the Word had become flesh. He had not lost what he was, but had begun to be what he was not; he had not given up what was his own, but had received what is ours: and for what he had received he asks an advance into that glory from which he had never departed. So, because the Son is the Word, and the Word became flesh, and the Word is God, and was in the beginning with God, and the Word was Son before the foundation of the world, the Son, now made flesh, prayed that the flesh might begin to be to the Father what the Word was: that what was of time might receive the glory of that splendor which is without time; that the corruption of the flesh might be transformed into the power of God and the incorruption of the Spirit, and be swallowed up. This, then, is a prayer to God, this the Son's confession to the Father, this the petition of the flesh: the flesh in which all will see him on the day of judgment, pierced and recognized from the cross; in which he was prefigured on the mountain; in which he was raised to heaven; in which he sat down at God's right hand; in which he was seen by Paul; in which he was honored by Stephen.

Having manifested the Father's name to men, then, he asks for these things. But by what name? Was the name of God unknown? Moses heard it from the bush, Genesis announced it at the beginning of the created world, the Law expounded it, the prophets proclaimed it, men perceived it in these works of the world, even the nations honored it, though falsely. So the name of God was not unknown. And yet it plainly was unknown. For no one knows God unless he confesses both the Father as Father of an only-begotten Son, and the Son as born, not by portion, extension, or emission, but from him, ineffably, incomprehensibly, as son from father, possessing the fullness of divinity from which and in which he was born, true, infinite, and perfect God; for this is the fullness of God. For if any of these is lacking, it will no longer be the fullness that it pleased to dwell in him. This is preached by the Son, this is made known to the ignorant; so the Father is glorified through the Son, when he is acknowledged as the Father of such a Son.

Wishing, then, to win faith for this birth of his, the Son set before us the example of his deeds, so that through the indescribable working of his indescribable deeds we might be taught about the power of an indescribable birth: when water becomes wine; when five loaves, after satisfying five thousand men, besides the rest of every sex and age, fill twelve baskets with fragments. The thing is seen and not known; it is done and not understood; its manner is not grasped, and its effect is forced upon us. It is foolish to bring the slander of inquiry against what by its nature cannot be comprehended. For as the Father is indescribable in being unbegotten, so the Son cannot be described in being only-begotten, because the one begotten is the image of the unbegotten. For when we grasp the image by perception and words, we must also reach him whose image it is. But we pursue invisible things and attempt incomprehensible things with an understanding confined to what is visible and bodily. We do not blush at our folly or accuse ourselves of irreligion when we slander the secrets and powers of God. We ask how he is Son, and from where, at what loss to the Father, or from what portion he was born. You had the example of his works, so that you might believe that God can bring about things whose working you cannot understand.

You ask how the Son was born according to the Spirit; I question you about bodily things. I do not ask how he was born of a virgin; whether her flesh suffered any loss in bringing forth from itself perfect flesh. Certainly she did not receive from another what she brought forth, but flesh brought forth flesh without the shame of our elements, and, undiminished, bore from its own a perfect child. And surely it would be right to think not impossible in God what we know, through his power, was possible in a human being.

But you, whoever you are, who pursue what cannot be searched out and make yourself a weighty judge of divine secrets and powers: I consult you, that to me, unlearned and simply believing everything about God as he has said it, you may at least give the explanation of this deed. I hear the Lord, and because I believe what is written, I know that after the resurrection he often presented himself to be seen in the body by many who did not believe; certainly to Thomas, who would not believe unless he handled his wounds, as he says: “Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the place of the nails, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” The Lord adapts himself to every weakness of our understanding, and, to satisfy the doubt of unbelievers, works a secret of invisible power: explain the manner of the deed, whoever you are, you searcher of heavenly things. The disciples were in a closed place and sat gathered in secret after the Lord's passion. The Lord stands there to confirm Thomas's faith on the conditions he had set, and offered him the opportunity to feel his body and handle his wound; and certainly he who was to be recognized as pierced must have brought the body in which he was pierced. I ask, then, through what parts of the closed house he came in bodily. For the evangelist expressed it carefully, saying: “Jesus came, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst.” Did he pass through the built walls and the solid wood, through their impenetrable nature? For he stood there bodily, not in pretense or illusion. Let the eyes of your penetrating mind follow his entry, then, and let the sight of your understanding go into the closed house with him. Everything is intact and locked; yet there he stands in the midst, he to whom all things are open by his power. You slander invisible things; I ask you for an explanation of visible ones. Nothing of the solid gives way; nor do wood and stones by their nature let anything in by some imperceptible slipping through. The Lord's body does not cease to exist so as to restore itself from nothing; and from where, then, is he who stands in the midst? Perception and speech give way before these things, and the truth of the deed is beyond human reason. So then, as we lie about the birth, let us lie also about the Lord's entry. Let us say it did not happen, because we do not grasp an understanding of the deed; and when our perception fails, let the reality of the deed fail too. But faith in the deed overcomes our lie. The Lord stood in the closed house in the midst of the disciples; and the Son was born from the Father. Do not deny that he stood there because, through the weakness of your understanding, you cannot follow the entry of the one standing there; do not refuse to know that the only-begotten and perfect Son, God, was born from the unbegotten and perfect God the Father, because the power of the generation exceeds the perception and speech of human nature.

Indeed, all the works of the world besides could stand by us as witnesses, so that we would not think it right to doubt the things and powers of God. But our unbelief runs against the truth itself, and we break in violently to destroy the power of God. If we could, we would lift our bodies and hands to heaven, drive the sun and the other stars out of the yearly bounds of their courses, throw the ebb and flow of the Ocean into confusion, stop the streams of springs, turn back the nature of rivers, shake the foundations of the earth, and rage against these works of God with an utter parricide. But it is well that the nature of our bodies holds us within this enforced restraint. Certainly we are not mistaken about what we would do if we could. For where we can, with the audacity of a profane will we tear up the nature of truth and wage war on the words of God.

The Son said: “Father, I have manifested your name to men.” Why do we raise slanders against this? Why are we in turmoil? Do you deny the Father? And yet this was the greatest work of the Son, that we should know the Father. You plainly deny him, when according to you the Son was not born from him. And why will he be called Son, if he was made by an act of will like other things? I could admire God as Maker of the world for creating Christ; and it would be a power worthy of God to have made the maker of archangels and angels, of things visible and invisible, of heaven and earth and this whole creation. But the Lord's labor is not that you should perceive that God can do all things in creating, but that you should know that God is the Father of the Son who speaks. There are many powers in heaven, effective and eternal; but there is one only-begotten Son, who differs from the rest not only in power, since all things are through him. But because he is the one true Son, let him not be made degenerate, as though born from nothing. You hear “Son”: believe that he is a son. You hear “Father”: remember that he is a father. Why do you thrust suspicion, malice, and audacity in among these names? Names have been fitted to divine things according to an understanding of their nature. Why do you do violence to the truth with words? You hear “Father” and “Son”: do not doubt that they are what they are called. The sum of the Son's dispensation is that you should know the Father: why do you make void the work of the prophets, the incarnation of the Word, the Virgin's childbearing, the power of the works, the cross of Christ? All these were spent on you, all were granted to you, so that through them both the Father and the Son might be made plain to you. Now you put in their place will, creation, and adoption: look at the warfare and the pay of Christ. Surely he cries out: “Father, I have manifested your name to men.” You do not hear, “You created the creator of heavenly things,” or, “You made the maker of earthly things,” but you hear: “Father, I have manifested your name to men.” Use the gift of your Savior: know that he who begot is Father and he who was born is Son, born from that Father who is, by the truth of nature. Remember that what was made known to you is not that the Father is God, but that God is Father.

You hear: “I and the Father are one.” Why do you cut the Son off and drag him away from the Father? They are one: that is, he who is has nothing that is not also in him from whom he is. When you hear the Son saying, “I and the Father are one,” fit the reality to the persons; allow the one begetting and the one begotten the meaning of his profession. Let them be one, as are he who begot and he who was begotten. Why do you exclude the nature? Why do you destroy the truth? You hear: “The Father is in me, and I in the Father,” and the Son's works testify to this concerning the Father and the Son. We do not, in our understanding, put a body into a body, or pour water into wine; but we confess in both the same likeness of power and fullness of deity. For the Son received all things from the Father, and is the form of God and the image of his substance. For he is from him who is; and “the image of his substance” distinguishes him only so that we may believe that he subsists, not so that any unlikeness of nature should be understood. And that the Father is in the Son and the Son in the Father means that the fullness of divinity in both is perfect. For the Son is not a diminution of the Father, nor is the Son imperfect from the Father. An image is not alone, and likeness is not likeness to itself. And nothing can be like God except what is from him. For what is like in all things is not from elsewhere; nor does the likeness of the one to the other allow difference to be mixed into the two. Do not alter what is alike, nor separate those who in truth are undivided: for he who said, “Let us make man in our image and likeness,” showed, by saying “our likeness,” that they are like each other. Do not touch, do not handle, do not corrupt. Hold to the names of the nature; hold to the Son's profession. I do not want you to flatter, praising the Son from your own invention: it is well for you to be content with what is written.

One must not trust human wisdom so far as to think that one knows perfectly whatever one knows, and to judge that the sum of complete reason is contained in what one's own mind, examining it, thinks agrees on every side with the opinion of truth. For imperfect things do not conceive the perfect, nor can what subsists from another fully attain the understanding either of its author or of itself; it perceives itself only in what it is, and does not stretch its perception further than the nature established for it. For it owes its whole being not to itself but to its author; and so what subsists from its author as something else is imperfect in itself, since it consists from elsewhere. And it must be foolish in that very point in which it thinks itself perfectly wise: for, not keeping within the necessity of its nature, and thinking all things contained within the bounds of its own weaknesses, it boasts falsely of the name of wisdom; since it cannot be wise beyond the power of its perception, and its perception is as weak as its power of existing. And for that reason the imperfect nature that boasts of having the wisdom of perfect perception is mocked with the reproach of foolish wisdom, as the Apostle says: “For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, not in wisdom of speech, lest the cross of Christ be made void. For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to those who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written: I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the understanding of the understanding I will reject. Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided through the foolishness of preaching to save those who believe: since Jews ask for signs and Greeks seek wisdom; but we preach Christ Jesus 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 weakness of God is stronger than men, and the foolishness of God is wiser than men.” All unbelief, then, is foolishness: for, using the wisdom of its own imperfect perception and measuring all things by the opinion of its own weakness, it thinks that what it does not understand cannot be done. For the cause of unbelief lies in the judgment of weakness, when someone thinks that what he has decided cannot be done has not been done.

And therefore the Apostle, knowing that the imperfect thinking of human nature regards only what it understands as within the reckoning of truth, says that he does not preach in wisdom of speech, lest the assertion of his preaching be made void. And lest he be thought a preacher of foolishness, he added that the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing: because unbelievers would think that alone to be wisdom which they understood; and since they understood nothing except within the nature of their own weakness, they would think that to be foolishness which alone is the perfect wisdom of God; and so, in the very opinion of their own weak wisdom, they would be foolish. Whatever, then, is foolishness to those who perish is the power of God to those who are saved: for these measure nothing by the weakness of their natural perception, but weigh the working of divine power according to the infinity of heavenly might. And therefore God rejects the wisdom of the wise and the understanding of the understanding, because salvation is granted to believers through what human opinion thinks foolishness: while unbelievers judge foolish whatever is beyond their perception, and the faithful leave to the power and might of God all the mysteries by which their salvation is granted to them. The things of God, then, are not foolish; but the prudence of human nature is unwise, which demands signs or wisdom from its God before it will believe. It is the way of the Jews to ask for signs, because, not wholly unacquainted with the name of God through their familiarity with the Law, they are troubled by the stumbling block of the cross. And it is the way of the Greeks to demand wisdom, because with Gentile folly and human prudence they look for the reason why God was raised on a cross. And because, according to the sense of nature, this is hidden in mystery from the weak, it becomes foolishness to the unbeliever, since what the imperfect mind does not naturally conceive it judges to be outside the reach of prudence. But because of this imprudent wisdom of the world, which through the wisdom of God did not know God before, that is, which did not reverence the wisdom of its Creator through the magnificence of the world and the beauty of so wisely established a workmanship, it pleased God to save believers by the preaching of foolishness, that is, that eternity should come to mortals through faith in the cross: so that, when the opinion of human judgment was confounded, salvation might be found where foolishness is thought to be. For Christ, who is foolishness to the Gentiles and a stumbling block to the Jews, is the power of God and the wisdom of God: because what human sense thinks weak and foolish in the things of God surpasses earthly prudence and strength in the truth of its wisdom and power.

Nothing in the works of God, then, is to be treated by the opinion of the human mind, nor should the material of his workmanship pass judgment on its Creator. We must take up foolishness in order to take up wisdom; not in the sense of imprudence, but with awareness of our nature: so that what the reasoning of earthly thought does not conceive, the reasoning of divine power may in turn instill in us. For when our understanding has recognized its foolishness, and we have perceived the unskillfulness of our natural imprudence, then through the prudence of divine wisdom we shall be instructed in the wisdom of God: when we measure the powers and might of God without limit, when we do not confine the Lord of nature within natural laws, when we understand that only this is rightly believed about God, for which he himself, with us, is both witness and author of what is to be believed about him.

In the earlier books, which we wrote some time ago, we consider it fully established that we hold the faith and confession of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit from the teaching of the Gospels and the apostles, and that we can have nothing in common with the heretics, since they deny the divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ without measure, reason, or fear. Yet in these books too certain things had necessarily to be included, so that, once all their deceits and impieties have been set out, the knowledge of the truth might be more complete. First we must learn what the rashness of their teaching is, and what the danger of their irreligion; then what their views hold against the apostolic faith, to which we conform, what they usually say in opposition, and by what ambiguity of words they mock the simplicity of their hearers; and finally by what art of interpretation they corrupt the truth and force of the divine sayings.

We are not unaware that neither human speech nor comparison with human nature can suffice to explain divine things. For what cannot be told has no limit or measure of signification; and what is spiritual differs from the appearance and example of bodily things. Yet when we speak of heavenly natures, the very things grasped by the perception of our minds must be expressed in the usage of common nature and speech, not as befitting the dignity of God, but as necessary to the weakness of our minds; for we are going to speak of what we perceive and understand by means of our own things and words. We testified to this in the first book, and we mention it again now so that, when we bring forward anything from human comparisons, we may not be thought to think of God according to bodily natures, or to compare spiritual things with our own passions, but rather to have brought forward the appearance of visible things for the understanding of invisible ones.

For the heretics say that Christ is not from God, that is, that the Son was not born from the Father, and is God not by nature but by appointment: namely, that there is an adoption in his name, because as there are many sons of God, so he too is a son; and then a liberality in his dignity, because as there are many gods, so he too is God; yet with a more indulgent affection of adoption and naming in his case, so that he was adopted before the others and is himself greater than the other adopted sons, and, created more excellently than all natures, surpasses the other creatures. Some of them, confessing the omnipotence of God, also say that he was created in the likeness of God and came to exist from nothing, like other things, in the image of his eternal Creator: that is, that he was commanded by a word to subsist out of things that did not exist, since God is able to fashion a likeness of himself out of nothing.

They add this too, when they hear that earlier bishops preached that the Father and the Son are of one substance, so as to weaken it subtly by giving it the look of a heretical opinion: they say that those bishops used and expressed the meaning of this word, “of one substance,” which in Greek is called homoousion, in this sense: as though the Father himself were the Son, extended, that is, from his infinity into the Virgin, from whom he took a body, and in that body which he took added to himself the name of son. This is their first falsehood about the homoousion. The next is their claim that the term homoousion means that something prior and other is common to the two, as though a prior substance or ousia of some material existed which, being shared by the two and used up in each, would testify that both are of a prior nature and of one thing. And therefore, they say, they reject the confession of the homoousion, because its expression does not distinguish the Son from the Father, and shows the Father to be later than the material he has in common with the son. Thirdly, they devise this reason for rejecting the homoousion: that according to the meaning of this word the Son is thought to come from a division of the Father's substance, as though he had been cut off from him, so that one thing was divided into two; and that they are called of one substance because a portion cut off from a whole is of the nature from which it was cut; and that the passion of division cannot befall God, because he would be changeable if he became liable to diminution by division, and would be made imperfect if his substance passed away from his perfection into another portion.

They also think they can neatly contradict the teaching of the prophets, and of the Gospels and apostles as well, by preaching that the Son's birth took place within time. For since they assert that we are wrong to say the Son always was, they must, by excluding that he always was, confess his birth from time. For if he did not always exist, there will be a time when he did not exist. And if there is a time when he did not exist, there will be time before him, because he who does not always exist began to be from time. But he who is free of time cannot fail to be always. They declare that they reject the statement that the Son always was for this reason: lest, through his always having been, he should be believed to be without birth; as though, by saying that he always was, he were proclaimed unbegotten.

O foolish and impious fears, and irreligious anxiety on God's behalf! The things alleged against the meaning of homoousion and against the statement that the Son always is, the church abhors, rejects, and condemns. For she knows one God, from whom are all things; she knows also one Lord, our Jesus Christ, through whom are all things: one from whom and one through whom; the origin of all from one, the creation of all through one. In the one from whom, she understands the authority of being unbegotten; in the one through whom, she venerates a power differing in nothing from its author, since “from whom” and “through whom” share a common authority over the things created. In the Spirit she knows God as Spirit, impassible and indivisible; for she has learned from the Lord that a spirit does not have flesh and bones, lest anyone should think that the losses of bodily passions could befall him. She knows one unbegotten God; she knows also one only-begotten Son of God. She confesses the Father as eternal and free of any origin; she confesses also the Son's origin from eternity: not himself from a beginning, but from him who has no beginning; not through himself, but born from eternity from him who always is from no one; that is, taking his birth from the Father's eternity. Our faith, then, is free from the opinion of heretical perversity. For the profession of our understanding has been stated, though the reasoning for that profession has not yet been set out. Yet, so that no suspicion might remain about the term homoousion used by the Fathers, and about the confession that he always was, these things have been mentioned. By them it may be known that the Son subsists in the substance in which he was begotten from the Father; that nothing was taken from the substance in which the Father abode by the Son's birth; and that holy men, aflame with the teaching of God, called the Son homoousios with the Father not for the faults and reasons mentioned above; lest anyone perhaps think that the birth of the only-begotten Son was taken away through the ousia, because he was called homoousios with the Father.

But so that we may understand the necessity of taking up both these terms, and the reason why they were used against the heretics who were then raging, for the greatest security of the faith, I think we must answer the perversity of the heretics and refute all their foolish and deadly teachings by the testimonies of the Gospels and the apostles. For they think they give reasons for each of their assertions, because beneath each they have set certain testimonies from the divine books which, with a corrupted sense of understanding, flatter only the ignorant, presenting an appearance of truth according to the perversity of their interpreters.