On the Trinity 4.25–4.42

Scripture also shows through Abraham that it was God who spoke. To Abraham too a son, Isaac, is promised. Then afterward three men stand by him. Abraham, seeing three, worships one and confesses him as Lord. Scripture has recorded that three men stood there; but the patriarch is not ignorant of who is to be worshipped and confessed. The appearance of those standing there is not distinguished; but he recognized his Lord with the eyes of faith and the sight of the mind. Then follows: “And he said to him, I will return to you at this time next year, and Sarah your wife will have a son.” And after this the Lord said to him: “I will not hide from Abraham my servant what I am about to do.” And again: “And the Lord said, The cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is full, and their sins are very great.” And again, after much other conversation, which we pass over for brevity, when Abraham was anxious about the righteous being destroyed together with the unrighteous, he says: “Far be it from you who judge the earth to do this judgment.” And the Lord said: “If I find fifty righteous in Sodom, in the city, I will spare the whole place for their sake.” And again, when the conversation with Lot, Abraham's kinsman, was finished, Scripture says: “And the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the Lord out of heaven.” And again: “And the Lord visited Sarah, as he had said, and God did for Sarah as he had spoken; and Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in her old age, at the time of which the Lord had spoken to him.” Then, when the maidservant had been driven from Abraham's house with her son, and was afraid in the desert that the boy would die for lack of water, the same Scripture says: “And the Lord God heard the voice of the boy where he was, and the angel of God called Hagar from heaven and said to her, What is it, Hagar? Do not fear; for God has heard the voice of the boy from the place where he is. Arise, take the boy and hold his hand; for I will make him a great nation.”

What blindness of faithlessness this is, what dullness of an unbelieving heart, what rashness of irreligion, either to be ignorant of these things or, knowing them, to disregard them! Certainly they were recorded and spoken in such a way that no error or obscurity might hinder the understanding of the truth. And if we show that they cannot be unknown, then the denial must be a crime of impiety. The angel of God began to speak to Hagar, as one who would increase Ishmael into a great nation and grant him innumerable descendants. The confession of the woman who heard him teaches that he is both Lord and God. For the speech began from the angel of God, but ended in the confession of God. So he who, in the ministry of announcing the great counsel, is the angel of God, is himself God both by nature and by name. For the name is fitted to the nature, not the nature to the name. On the same matters God speaks to Abraham: he is told that Ishmael has already been blessed and is to be multiplied into a nation: “I have blessed him,” he says. So he did not change the indication of his person, for he shows that he had already blessed him. Scripture has certainly kept the order of the mystery and the manner of true preaching, beginning with the angel of God and afterward confessing that the same one, speaking on the same matters, is God.

The divine word proceeds with a fuller advance of teaching. God speaks to Abraham there and promises that Sarah will bear a child. After this three men stand by him as he sits; he worships one and confesses him as Lord. And the same one, worshipped and confessed by him, promises that he will return at the same time in the coming year, and that Sarah will have a son, as God had said to Abraham. The same one, seen by him as a man, afterward speaks to him about these same things. Only the names change; nothing is lost from the confession. For though he saw a man, Abraham worshipped the Lord, recognizing, that is, the mystery of the embodiment to come. Nor did he lack testimony to so great a faith, since the Lord says in the Gospels: “Abraham your father rejoiced to see my day; he saw it and was glad.” The man who was seen, then, promises that he will return at the same time. Look at the fulfillment of the promise; but remember that it is a man who promises. What, then, does Scripture say? “And the Lord visited Sarah.” So this man is the Lord, accomplishing what he promised. And what follows? “And God did for Sarah as he had spoken.” Named a man in speaking, signified as Lord in the visitation, he is proclaimed God in the deed. You are certainly not unaware that it was a man who spoke, who was both seen by Abraham and spoke to him. How will you fail to know that he is God, when the same Scripture that had called him a man confesses him as God? For it said: “And Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in her old age, at the time of which the Lord had spoken to him.” But it was the man who said that he would come. Believe him a man only, unless he who came is both God and Lord. Compare the reasons. The man certainly will come for this, that Sarah may conceive and bear: learn the faith. The Lord and God came for this, that Sarah might conceive and bear. The man spoke in the power of God; God accomplished it in the working of God. So both his speaking and his doing show him to be God. Then, of the three men who were seen, two go away; but the one who remains is both Lord and God. And he is not only Lord and God, but also judge. For Abraham, standing before the Lord, said: “By no means will you do this thing, to kill the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous will be as the wicked. Far be it from you, who judge all the earth, to do this judgment.” In his whole speech, then, Abraham teaches the faith by which he was justified: he recognized his Lord out of the three, worshipped him alone, and confessed him as Lord and judge.

And lest perhaps you think that the honor of all three men who were seen together is contained in the confession of one, look at what Lot said when he saw the two who had departed: “And when Lot saw them, he rose to meet them and bowed with his face to the ground, and said, Behold, lords, turn aside into the house of your servant.” Here the simple sight of angels kept the plural; there the faith of the patriarch confesses a singular honor. Here the history of divine Scripture indicates that only two of the three were angels; there it proclaims the Lord and God. For it says: “And the Lord said to Abraham, Why did Sarah laugh, saying, Shall I really bear a child? But I have grown old. Is any word impossible with God? At this time I will return to you next year, and Sarah will have a son.” Scripture, then, keeps the order of truth, neither mixing a plural into him who was recognized as both God and Lord, nor giving the two angels the honor that had been offered to God alone. Lot indeed says “lords,” but Scripture calls them angels. In the one case it is a man's courtesy; in the other, the confession of the truth.

Then the punishment of a just judgment comes upon Sodom and Gomorrah. And what weight is there in this? The Lord rained sulfur and fire from the Lord. As it says Lord from Lord, so it did not separate by the name of nature those whom it had distinguished by signification. For we read in the Gospel: “The Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son.” So the Lord gave what the Lord received from the Lord.

But you who have accepted the knowledge of the judge as Lord and Lord, recognize the sharing of the same name in God and God. Jacob, departing out of fear of his brother, had seen in a dream a ladder set on the earth and reaching to heaven, the angels of God going up and down on it, and the Lord leaning on it and bestowing on him all the blessings he had given Abraham and Isaac. Afterward God speaks to him thus: “And God said to Jacob, Arise, go up to the place Bethel and dwell there, and make there an altar to God, who appeared to you when you fled from the face of your brother.” God asks honor for God, and asks it with the indication of another person: “who appeared to you,” he says, “when you fled”; so that no confusion of one and the same person might arise. God, then, is the one who speaks, and God the one of whom he speaks: the confession of honor does not separate by the name of nature those whom the signification distinguishes as subsisting.

And for this passage I remember certain things needed for a fuller explanation; but the order of our answer must follow the order of their proposition. So what remains for it we will pursue in another book in its proper place. For now it was only necessary to show, in the case of God who asks honor for God, that the angel of God who spoke with Hagar is both God and Lord, since he himself spoke to Abraham on the same matters; that the man who appeared to Abraham is both God and Lord; but that the two angels, who were seen with the Lord and sent by him to Lot, are proclaimed by the prophet as nothing but angels. And God was present not only to Abraham in a man; God came to Jacob also in a man. And he not only came, but is shown wrestling; and not only wrestling, but weak against the one with whom he wrestled. This is not the time or the subject for treating anything of the mystery of the wrestling. He is certainly God, because Jacob prevailed against God, and Israel saw God.

Let us see whether this angel of God is also known to be God elsewhere than with Hagar. He plainly is. And he is found to be not only God, but the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. For the angel of the Lord appeared to Moses from the bush, and the Lord speaks from the bush: whose voice do you think should be understood, that of him who was seen, or of someone else? There is no room here for a lie. For Scripture says: “And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire from the bush.” And again: “The Lord called him from the bush, Moses, Moses. And he answered, What is it? And the Lord said, Do not come near here; take the sandals off your feet; for the place on which you stand is holy ground. And he said to him, I am the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” He who appeared in the bush speaks from the bush; the place of the vision and of the voice is one, and no one other than the one seen is heard. He who is the angel of God when he is seen is likewise the Lord when he is heard; and the Lord who is heard is then recognized as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. When he is called the angel of God, he is shown not to be self-contained and solitary, for he is the angel of God; when he is named Lord and God, he is proclaimed in the honor and name of his nature. You have, then, in the angel who appeared from the bush, both Lord and God.

Run on through the testimonies of Moses, and see whether he neglects any opportunity to preach God and Lord. You hold, of course, from his words: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one.” Hold now the words of that divine song of his; for he says: “See, see that I am the Lord, and there is no God besides me.” And when all his words, to the end of the song, had been spoken in the person of God, he says: “Rejoice, heavens, together with him, and let all the sons of God worship him. Rejoice, nations, with his people, and let all the angels of God honor him.” God is to be honored by the angels of God, God who says: “For I am the Lord, and there is no God besides me.” For he is the only-begotten God, and the name “only-begotten” admits no partner (just as the unbegotten, insofar as he is unbegotten, admits no sharer); for he is one from one. Besides the unbegotten God there is no other unbegotten God, and besides the only-begotten God there is no other only-begotten God. Each, then, is one and alone, by the property proper to each, of being unbegotten and of having an origin. And so each is one God, since between one and one, that is, one from one, there is no second nature of eternal divinity. He is, then, to be worshipped by the sons of God and honored by the angels of God. So honor and veneration are asked for God from the sons and angels of God. Understand what is meant by the one to be honored and by those through whom he is to be honored: God, that is, through the angels and sons of God. And lest perhaps you think that honor is asked for one who is not God by nature, and judge that in this place Moses meant the honoring of God the Father (though the Father is honored in the Son), notice the blessing which he sets out for Joseph in the same discourse. For he says: “And may the things acceptable to him who appeared in the bush come upon the head and crown of Joseph.” God, then, is to be worshipped by the sons of God, but God who is also Son of God. And God is to be honored by the angels of God, but God who is the angel of God, God: because God, the angel of God, appeared from the bush, and what pleases him is wished for Joseph when he is blessed. He is not therefore not God because he is the angel of God; nor again is he not the angel of God because he is God. But, the understanding of the persons being signified, the sense of being unbegotten and of birth being distinguished, and the dispensation of heavenly mysteries made plain, he taught that God must not be thought solitary, since the angels and sons of God will worship God, the angel and Son of God.

Let these be our answers from the books of Moses, or rather let Moses himself have answered: for the heretics, using him as their authority, think it can be argued from the confession of one God that the Son of God is not to be preached as God; impious men against the testimony of their own authority, since he, while confessing one God, never ceased to teach of the Son of God that he is God. But it follows to bring forward the many sayings of the prophets on the same subject.

You hold the saying, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one”; and would that you held it rightly! But I ask, according to your own understanding, the meaning of a prophetic saying. For it says in the Psalms: “God, your God, has anointed you.” Distinguish, for the reader's understanding, the anointed and the anointer; distinguish “you” and “your”; show to whom and about whom the words are spoken. For this order of confession is joined to what was said before. He had said: “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever; the rod of your uprightness is the rod of your kingdom; you have loved righteousness and hated iniquity.” And now he has added: “Therefore God, your God, has anointed you.” The God of an eternal kingdom, then, because of the merit of the righteousness he loved and the iniquity he hated, was anointed by his God. Do any gaps between the names confuse our understanding? Only a distinction of person is set in “you” and “your,” with no distinction at all in the confession of nature. For “your” refers to the author, and “you” to the one who is from the author. For he is God from God, the prophet confessing in this order: “God, your God, has anointed you.” But there is no God before the unbegotten God, as he himself says: “Be my witnesses, and I am witness, says the Lord God, and my servant whom I have chosen, that you may know and believe and understand that I am, and before me there is no other God, and after me there will be none.” The dignity of him who is without beginning has been shown, then, and the honor of him who is from the unbegotten has been preserved: for “God, your God, has anointed you.” For the word “your” refers to the birth, but does not destroy the nature. And he is his God for this reason, that he was born from him as God. Yet the Son is not therefore not God because the Father is God: for “God, your God, has anointed you.” By marking both the author and the one begotten from him, in one and the same saying he placed both under the name of the same nature and dignity.

But lest a pretext for an impious assertion should perhaps be seized from the saying, “For I am, and before me there is no other God, and after me there will be none,” as though the Son too is not God, since after God, before whom there is no God, there will also be no God afterward, the meaning of the whole saying must be examined. God himself is witness of his own words; but his chosen servant is also witness together with him that there is no God before him and none will be after him. He is indeed a sufficient witness for himself; but with his own testimony about himself he has joined the testimony of the servant whom he chose. The testimony of the two, then, is one: that there is no God before him, for all things are from him; nor will there be a God after him; but not that no God has come from him. For the servant was already speaking these things in the Father's testimony, the servant chosen in the tribe from which he was to be born. He shows this very thing in the Gospels thus: “Behold my servant whom I have chosen, my beloved, in whom my soul is well pleased.” “There is, then, no other God before me, and after me there will be none”: showing, that is, the infinity of an eternal and unchangeable power in the fact that there is no God besides him before or after; yet placing his servant beside him both in his testimony and in his name.

And this same thing is readily learned from his own words. For he says to the prophet Hosea: “I will no longer have mercy on the house of Israel, but I will surely oppose them; but on the sons of Judah I will have mercy, and I will save them in the Lord their God.” So the Father plainly names the Son God, in whom he also chose us before eternal times. He says “their” because the unbegotten God is from no one, and we are given to the Son by God the Father as an inheritance. For we read: “Ask of me, and I will give you the nations as your inheritance.” For God, from whom are all things, has no God, being eternal without beginning. But to the Son the Father is God, for he was born God from him. And to us both the Father is God and the Son is God: the Father confessing of the Son that he is our God, the Son teaching of the Father that he is God to us; yet the Son is named God by the Father, that is, by the very name of the Father's own unbegotten power. So much for Hosea.

And through Isaiah, how complete is God the Father's profession concerning our Lord! For he says: “For thus says the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, who made the things that are to come: Ask me about your sons and your daughters, and command me concerning the works of my hands. I made the earth and man upon it; I commanded all the stars; I raised up a king in righteousness, and all his ways are straight. He will build my city and turn back the captivity of my people, not for a price nor for gifts, says the Lord of hosts. Egypt will toil, and the merchandise of the Ethiopians and the Sabaeans; men of stature will pass over to you and will be your servants; they will follow after you bound in chains, and will worship you and make supplication in you; for God is in you, and there is no God besides you. For you are God, and we did not know it, the God of Israel, the Savior. All who oppose him will blush and be ashamed and go in confusion.” Is there still any room for rashness? Or is any pretext for ignorance left, unless only this remains, that impiety betray itself by its own profession? God, from whom are all things, who made all things by commanding, claiming as his own the works of the one who made them (which surely would not have been made unless he had said they should be made), testifies that a righteous king was raised up by him, who builds a city for God himself and turns back the captivity of the people, not for a price nor for gifts; for we are all saved by grace. Then he says how, after the toil of Egypt, that is, the calamity of the world, and the merchandise of the Ethiopians and the Sabaeans, men of stature will pass over to him. And what, then, are we to think the toil of Egypt and the merchandise of the Ethiopians and the Sabaeans? Let us remember the Magi of the East worshipping the Lord and bringing gifts, and let us measure the toil of so long a journey to Bethlehem of Judea. For in the toil of these leaders the toil of all Egypt is shown. For the whole world paid the chief honor of its impious religion to the Magi, who counterfeited the workings of divine power with a false appearance of things. The same Magi, with the merchandise of the Ethiopians and the Sabaeans, brought gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh; which another prophet also foretold, saying: “Before him the Ethiopians will fall down, and his enemies will lick the dust. The kings of Tarshish will offer gifts, the kings of the Arabians and the Sabaeans will bring gifts, and he will be given of the gold of Arabia.” In the Magi and their gifts, then, the toil of Egypt and the merchandise of the Ethiopians and the Sabaeans are shown: namely, the error of the world in the Magi who worship, and the choice gifts of the nations offered by them to the Lord they worshipped.

Who, then, are the men of stature who will pass over to him and follow him in chains? It is not obscure. Look to the Gospels: Peter is girded to follow his Lord. Look at the apostles: Paul, the servant of Christ, glories in his chains. And let us see whether the prisoner of Christ Jesus fulfilled what God had said of his Son, God. “They will make supplication,” he says, “for God is in you.” Recognize the saying in the Apostle, and understand it once recognized: “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself.” Then follows: “And there is no God besides you.” To which the same Apostle at once says: “For there is one Lord, our Jesus Christ, through whom are all things”; and no other is seen to be besides him, because he is one. Thirdly it also says: “You are God, and we did not know it.” But the former persecutor of the church said: “Whose are the fathers, from whom is Christ, who is God over all.” These prisoners, then, will preach these things: men of stature indeed, who will judge the twelve tribes of Israel on twelve thrones, and will follow their Lord in the martyrdom of their teaching and their suffering.

God, then, is in God; and he in whom God is, is God. And how is there no God besides you, when God is in the same one? You seize, O heretic, on “There is no God besides me” to confess a solitary God the Father: how will you interpret the saying of God the Father's own proclamation, “There is no God besides you,” if by the saying “There is no God besides me” you strive to assert that the Son of God is not God? To whom, then, did God say, “There is no God besides you”? For here you will not be allowed to substitute the person of a solitary one. For the Lord spoke to the king whom he raised up, in the person of the men of stature who worship and make supplication: “For God is in you.” This does not admit a solitary one. For “in you” signifies one present, as the one to whom the words are addressed. And what follows, “God is in you,” shows not only one who is present, but also one who abides in the one present, distinguishing the one who dwells from the one in whom he dwells, yet by a distinction of person only, not of kind: for God is in him, and he in whom God is, is God. For God is not in a dwelling of a different nature, foreign to himself, but abides in his own, begotten from himself. God in God, because God from God. “For you are God, and we did not know it, the God of Israel, the Savior.”

The next words refute you who deny God in God; for it says: “All who oppose him will blush and be ashamed and go in confusion.” This is God's decree against your impiety. For you oppose Christ, for whose sake the profession of the Father's voice rebukes you. For he whom you deny to be God is God. And you deny it under the pretense of honoring God, who says, “There is no other God besides me.” But be confounded and blush: the unbegotten God does not need the honor you offer; he does not ask from you this glory of his solitude; he does not desire this understanding of your opinion, that because he said, “There is no God besides me,” you should deny that he whom he begot from himself is God. And lest you should claim this as belonging to him alone in order to destroy the Son's divinity, he filled the glory of his Only-begotten with the honor of perfect divinity, saying: “And there is no God besides you.” Why do you separate what has been made equal? Why do you set apart what has been placed side by side? It is proper to the Son of God that there is no God besides him; it is proper to God the Father that there is no God apart from him. Use the words of God about God. Confess thus, and make supplication to the king: “For God is in you, and there is no God besides you. For you are God, and we did not know it, the God of Israel, the Savior.” The duty of honor is free from insult, and this pattern of confession gives no offense; especially since opposition to him is full of confusion and shame. Dwell on the words of God, confess with the voices of God, and flee the threat of confusion. For by denying that the Son of God is God you will not so much venerate God with the honor of glory as solitary as despise the Father by dishonoring the Son. Confess, in faithful honor to the unbegotten God, that besides him there is no God; preach to the only-begotten God that apart from him there is no God.

Hear, then, besides Moses and Isaiah, Jeremiah also, as a third, teaching this same thing, when he says: “This is our God, and no other will be counted beside him. He found every way of knowledge and gave it to Jacob his servant and to Israel his beloved. Afterward he was seen on earth and lived among men.” For he had already said above: “He is also man, and who will know him?” You have, then, God seen on earth and living among men; and I ask how you think we should understand, “No one has ever seen God, except the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father,” when Jeremiah preaches God who was seen on earth and lived among men? The Father certainly is visible to none but the Son. Who, then, is this who was seen and lived among men? He is certainly our God, God visible in man and able to be touched. And understand the prophet when he says: “No other will be counted beside him.” If you ask how, hear what follows, lest on this account you think that the saying, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one,” is not also proper to the Father. For these words hang together: “No other will be counted beside him, who found every way of knowledge and gave it to Jacob his servant and to Israel his beloved; afterward he was seen on earth and lived among men.” For there is one Mediator between God and men, God and man: mediator both in the giving of the Law and in the taking of a body. No other, then, is counted beside him. For he is one, born from God as God, through whom all things in heaven and on earth were created, through whom times and ages were made. For the whole of whatever exists subsists by his working. He, then, is the one who makes covenant with Abraham, speaks to Moses, testifies to Israel, abides in the prophets, is born through the Virgin of the Holy Spirit, nails to the wood of the passion the hostile powers that oppose us, destroys death in the underworld, confirms by the resurrection the faith of our hope, and destroys the corruption of human flesh by the glory of his body. No other, then, will be counted beside him. For these things are proper to the only-begotten God alone, and he alone was born from God in this peculiar blessedness of his powers. No other God is counted beside him, for he is God not from another substance but from God. There is nothing new in him, then, nothing foreign, nothing recent. For when Israel hears that its God is one, and that no other God is counted beside the Son of God, God, so that he is God, then the Father, God, and the Son, God, are wholly one, not by a union of person but by unity of substance: for the prophet does not allow what the Son of God, God, is to be counted toward another God.