On the Trinity 6.21–6.35

From these I have been taught what I hold; with these I have been imbued past curing. And forgive me, almighty God, that in these things I cannot be corrected, though I can die with them. The age of this present world has brought forth these most impious teachers, as I judge them, too late for me. My faith, which you instructed, got these masters too late. Before I had heard their names I believed in you thus, was reborn through you thus, and from then on have been yours thus. I know that you are almighty, and I do not look for an account of the ineffable birth known only to you and to your Only-begotten himself. For nothing is impossible to you, and I do not doubt that the Son was begotten by you by the power of your omnipotence. For if I doubted, I would already be denying that you are almighty. I learned from my own birth that you are good; and so I am confident that you were not grudging of your honors in the birth of your Only-begotten. For I believe that what is yours is his, and what is his is yours. The very creation of the world has shown me that you are wise; I am conscious that you begot from yourself your Wisdom, not unlike you. You are truly one God to me; but I will not believe that there is in him who is God from you anything other than what is yours. And judge me in this, if it is a crime in me, that through your Son I have believed too much the Law, the Prophets, and the apostles.

But let rash speech cease, and let it pass from what it broke out into, through the need to expose heretical folly, to the service of giving reasons instead: so that, if any can still be saved, they may keep to the road of gospel and apostolic teaching toward faith, and understand that the Son of God is true Son not by adoption but by nature. For this is the fitting order of our answer: first to teach that he is the Son of God, so that the nature of divinity in him, by which he is Son, may be fully established. For the heresy now in question works above all for this, that our Lord Jesus Christ should not be the true Son of God and true God. That our Lord Jesus Christ is truly the only-begotten Son of God, God, and is so taught, is known in many ways: since the Father testifies of him, he himself professes it of himself, the apostles preach it, the devout believe it, the demons confess it, the Jews deny it, the nations recognize it in his passion. For what is said in faith of his being the Son in the proper sense does not come from sharing a name. And since everything that Christ the Lord did or taught is beyond everything belonging to those who are called sons, and among all the things special to Christ this above all is taught, that he is the Son of God, the name of son in him does not come from a general relationship.

I do not taint the faith of truth by establishing this with words of my own. Let the Father speak of his Only-begotten, as he often did, so that Jesus Christ might not be unrecognizable because of his body at the completing of the mystery of baptism: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” I ask, in what is truth lost, and in what is the faith of this profession weak? The birth from a virgin by the Holy Spirit announced by an angel, the star that guided the Magi, the honor of the one worshipped in the cradle, the power of the one to be baptized under the Baptist's profession: these are not thought enough to show his majesty; the Father speaks from heaven, and speaks thus: “This is my Son.” What is meant by this faith, not of added names, but of pronouns? For surnames are added to names, but pronouns hold in themselves the force of names. There is a signification of what is proper where one hears both “this is” and “my.” And understand what the truth and meaning of the words are. You had read: “I have begotten sons and raised them up”; but you had not read “my sons”: for he had begotten them for himself through the dividing of the nations, and the people of his inheritance as sons. So that the surname of son, by a sharing in an adoptive inheritance, might not be added to the only-begotten God, the truth of nature was shown by signifying what is proper. Let the name of son indeed be assigned to Christ as a common one, if it is found said of anyone else: “This is my Son.” But if “This is my Son” is proper and unique to him, why do we bring a charge against God the Father for professing what is proper to the Son? Does it not seem to you that “this is” means this: others indeed have been named sons by him, but this one is my Son; I have given the name of adoption to very many, but this one is my Son; do not look for another, do not fail to believe that it is this one; this one I touch as with a pointing finger and by the meaning of the word, when I say that he is both mine, and this, and Son? After this, what understanding can there be that he is not to be believed to be so? And this meaning of the Father's voice was given so that he who was to be baptized to fulfill all righteousness should not be unknown in what he was; but that he who was seen as a man for the mystery of our salvation should be known by God's voice as the Son of God.

And since the life of believers lies in the confession of this faith (for there is no other eternal life than that we should know that Jesus Christ, the only-begotten God, is the Son of God), the voice from heaven is heard again by the apostles, repeating this same meaning, so that what it would be death not to believe might be believed more firmly for life. For when the Lord stood on the mountain in the form of his majesty, with Moses and Elijah standing by, and three pillars of the churches had been taken up as witnesses to the vision and the voice, this voice of the Father came from heaven: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear him.” The brightness that was seen had not been enough to confirm his honor; he is marked out by the voice: “This is my Son.” The apostles cannot bear the glory of God; mortal eyes are dulled at the sight; the faith of Peter, James, and John, dismayed with fear, falls down; yet the profession of the Father's authority is there, and this one is shown to be Son by the word that signifies what is proper. And not only is the truth of the Son made known by “this” and “my,” but there is added: “Hear him.” The testimony of the Father is indeed from heaven; but the testimony of the Son is confirmed on earth, for he is shown to be the one to be heard. And although no ambiguity is left by the Father's profession, yet it is decreed that the Son's profession about himself is also to be believed; and the truth of the Son in him is taught so far that the confirmation of the Father's voice demands of us the obedience of hearing. Since, then, this voice of the Father's will is that the Son should be heard, let us hear the Son professing what he himself is.

I do not think anyone is so far removed from common sense that, while he recognizes in all the books of the Gospels the Son's profession of the bodily lowliness he assumed, when he says, “Father, glorify me,” and again, very often, “You will see the Son of Man,” and, “The Father is greater than I,” and also, “Now my soul is greatly troubled,” or even, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” and many other such sayings, of which we will speak in their order, he should nevertheless, amid such constant testimony of lowliness, charge him with insolence for calling God his Father, when he says, “Every plant which my Father has not planted will be uprooted,” or, “You have made my Father's house a house of trade”; and that wherever he always names God as his Father, it should be a matter of rash presumption rather than of a confident nature which, conscious of its birth, holds the name of truth in the Father. A frequent profession of lowliness, then, does not have this vice of insolence, to claim what belongs to another, defend what is not his own, and presume to make himself equal to God in what is proper to him. Nor with equal rashness, as when he names the Father, does he also profess himself Son, saying: “For God did not send his Son into this world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through him”; or again: “Do you believe in the Son of God?” What are we doing now, if we grant Jesus Christ only the name of adoption, through which we charge him with rash presumption even in naming God as his Father? The Father's voice from heaven is: “Hear him.” I hear: “Father, I thank you”; I hear: “You say that I blasphemed, because I said, I am the Son of God.” If I do not believe the names, if I do not understand the nature from the words, I ask what is to be believed and understood. No other suspicion is left to me. The authority of the Father is from heaven: “This is my Son.” The Son's profession about himself is: “My Father's house,” and “My Father.” The profession of the name is salvation, when the question demands faith, saying: “Do you believe in the Son of God?” Names of what is proper follow, where it says “my.” I ask you, heretic, from where any other presumption comes. You take faith from the Father, profession from the Son, nature from the names; you do violence to God's words, so that they may not be what they declare. The only thing your impiety has is shamelessness, to accuse God of lying about himself.

Although, then, a simple confession alone shows the names to be names of nature, so that he of whom it was said, “This is my Son,” and he to whom it was said, “My Father,” are what they are called; yet, lest the name be one of adoption in the Son, or of honor in the Father, let us see what properties have been added by the Son to the name of Son. He says: “All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and he to whom the Son wills to reveal him.” Does “No one knows the Son except the Father, nor does anyone know the Father except the Son” agree with “This is my Son” and “My Father”? For the Son could be known through the Father, or the Father through the Son, only by mutual testimony. There is the voice from heaven; there is also the word of the Son. The Son is as unknowable as the Father. All things have been handed over to him, and in “all” nothing is understood to be excepted. If the power is equal, if the secret of knowledge is equal, if the nature is in the names, I ask how they are not what they are called, whose might in power and difficulty in knowledge do not differ. God, then, does not deceive in his words; neither the Father nor the Son lies about himself: and learn how the names are to be trusted in these things.

For he says: “For the works which the Father has given me to accomplish, the very works that I do, bear witness about me that the Father has sent me; and the Father who sent me has himself borne witness about me.” The only-begotten God teaches that he is Son not only by the testimony of the name but also of power: for his works, which he does, testify that he was sent by the Father. I ask, to what do the works testify? To his having been sent. And so both the obedience of the Son and the authority of the Father are taught in the one sent, since the works he does could belong to no one else than the one sent by the Father. But works are not enough as testimony, for unbelievers, that the Father sent him. For there follows: “And the Father who sent me has himself borne witness about me; you have neither heard his voice nor seen his form.” I ask what the Father's testimony about him was. Unroll the volumes of the Gospels and review their whole work. Give me a testimony of the Father besides what was heard: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased,” and, “You are my Son.” John heard this, though he was not ignorant of it; yet the testimony of the Father's voice is sent for our teaching. Nor is this enough. John in the desert was worthy of this voice, but the apostles too were not to be deprived of the authority of this testimony. The same voice from heaven comes to them, but they receive more than John. For John, prophesying already from the womb, did not need this word: “Hear him.” I will indeed hear him; and I will hear no one besides him, except the one who heard in order to teach. If there is no other testimony of the Father about the Son in the books than that he is his Son, the truth of this testimony is that the very works of the Father which he does confirm the truth of this testimony. What slander is brought in today, that the name is one of adoption, that God is a liar, that the names are empty? The Father has testified about the Son; the Son by his works makes himself equal to the Father's testimony: why should there not be seen in him the truth of the Son, which is both stated and proved? The name of Son in Christ is not from God the Father by an adoption of kindness; nor did he earn this name by holiness, as many are sons of God after the confession of faith. For in them there is no signification of what is proper, only a favor of the name granted, as is worthy of God. “This is,” “this is mine,” and “hear him” are something else: in this there is truth, there is nature, there is faith.

Nor indeed does the Son testify of himself anything less than this proper meaning of the Father's word. For as in the Father's saying, “This is my Son,” there is a showing of the nature, and in what he added, “Hear him,” there is the hearing of the mystery and faith for which he came from heaven, since we are urged to hear him for the saving teaching of confession; so in this the Son taught the truth both of his birth and of his coming, saying: “You neither know me nor know where I am from; for I did not come of myself, but he who sent me is true, whom you do not know; but I know him, because I am from him, and he sent me.” No one knows the Father, and the Son often professes this; and he says he alone knows him for this reason, that he is from him. I ask whether “from him” shows in him the work of creation or the nature of generation. If it is the work of creation, all things that are created are also from God. And how do all things not know the Father, when the Son knows him because he is from him? If he is seen to be created rather than born in being from God, since all things are from God, how is he not ignorant of the Father along with the others that are from him? But if it is proper to him to know him because he is from him, how will it not be proper to him that he is from him? That is, that he is true Son of God by nature, since he alone knows God because he alone is from him. You have, then, a property of knowledge from a property of generation; and “from him” shows in him not the power of a creature (for all things exist from him by the power of creation), but the truth of birth, through which he alone knows the Father, while the rest that are from him do not know him.

Yet, lest heresy perhaps seize on “from him” as referring to the time of his coming, he at once added: “Because I am from him, and he sent me.” He kept the order of the gospel mystery, professing himself born and sent: so that both who he was and where he was from might be known, according to the earlier sentence. For “I am from him” and “he sent me” are not the same, just as “you neither know me” and “nor do you know where I am from” are not the same. Is not every man, though born in the flesh, from God, according to the sense of common opinion? And how does he deny that either he himself or where he is from is known by them, unless he refers where he is from to the author of his nature? who would be unknown because he himself was unknown to be the Son of God. Examine, wretched folly, what this is: “You neither know me nor know where I am from.” All things are from nothing, you say, and so much from nothing that you dared to lie that even the only-begotten God came to subsist from nothing. What, then, is it that the impious know neither Christ nor where he is from? For the fact that where he is from is unknown shows, by the not knowing where he is from, the nature he is from. For whatever came to subsist from nothing cannot have its origin unknown: because the very fact that it is known to be from nothing involves no ignorance of where it is from. But he who came is not from himself; but he who sent him is true, whom the impious do not know. So he who sent is the very one who is not known to have sent. So the one sent is from the one who sent: and he is from him from whom he is not known to be; and for this reason who he himself is is not known, since it is not known from whom he is. He does not know Christ who does not know where Christ is from; nor does he confess the Son who denies he was born; nor does he understand him to be born who thought him to be from nothing. And he is so far from being from nothing that the impious do not know where he is from.

They plainly do not know, they do not know, who take the nature away from the name, who, not knowing, do not love to know. And let them hear the Son reproaching the impious with ignorance of this knowledge, when the Jews said that God was their Father; for he says: “If God were your Father, you would surely love me; for I came forth from God and have come; nor did I come of myself, but he sent me.” The Son of God did not disapprove the taking of a religious name in those who, confessing him as the Son of God, called God their Father; but he rebukes the rash claim of the Jews who presumed God to be their Father, through the fact that they did not love him: “If God were your Father, you would surely love me; for I came forth from God.” For all to whom God is Father through faith, he is Father through that faith by which we confess Jesus Christ as the Son of God. But to confess him as son according to the general name of the saints, what faith does that have, so that we say, “He is one of the sons”? Are not the rest also sons in this weakness of their creaturehood? In what, then, does the faith that has confessed Jesus Christ as Son of God excel, if he has the name of son, like the sons, not the nature? This faithlessness does not love Christ, nor does this impious profession piously claim God as Father: for if God were their Father, they would love Christ because he came forth from God. I ask what it is to have come forth from God. Certainly it cannot be said that to have come forth from God is the same as to have come; for he signifies both: “For I came forth from God and have come.” And showing what “I came forth from God” is, and what “I have come” is, he at once added: “Nor did I come of myself, but he sent me.” He taught that he is not his own origin when he said, “Nor did I come of myself,” and he testifies that he came forth from God and was sent by him. But when he says that he must be loved by those who called God their Father because he came forth from God, he taught that the reason for love lies in the reason for his birth. For he referred “came forth” to the name of an incorporeal birth, because the devotion of professing God as Father must be earned by love of Christ, who was begotten from him. For when he says, “He who hates me hates my Father also,” in saying “my” he excluded a sharing of the name by signifying what is proper. But he condemns the one who professes God as his Father and does not love him, for usurping the Father's name; for he who hates him hates the Father also, and he is not devoted to God the Father who does not love the Son, since there is no other reason for loving the Son than that he is from God. The Son, then, is from God not by his coming but by birth; and all love toward the Father will lie here, if the Son is believed to be from him.

The Lord testifies to this, saying: “I do not say to you that I will ask the Father for you; for the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came forth from God and have come from the Father into this world.” A complete faith concerning the Son, which believes and loves that he came forth from God, has no need of intercession with the Father; by itself it deserves to be heard and loved, having confessed the Son born from God and sent. His birth and coming, then, are shown with the most complete truth of signifying what is proper. “I came forth from God,” he says, so that no nature other than that of birth might be thought to be in him; since what else but God could come forth from God, that is, subsist from birth? “And I have come from the Father,” he says, “into this world.” So that that coming forth might be understood to signify a birth from the Father, he professed that he came from the Father into this world. The one belongs to the dispensation, the other to nature. Nor does he allow the coming forth to be thought the same as the coming, since after the coming forth from God he mentions the coming from the Father. For to have come from the Father and to have come forth from God are not of the same meaning; and the two expressions differ as much as being born and being present. For it is one thing to have come forth from God into the substance of birth, another to have come from the Father into this world to accomplish the mysteries of our salvation.

And according to the order of the answer we proposed, this is a most suitable place for us to teach, thirdly, that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was believed by the apostles to be so not by naming but by nature, not by adoption but by birth. For although many very great declarations of the only-begotten God about himself still remain, in which he testifies to the truth of his generation without leaving even a slight occasion for a lying slander, yet, since the reader's mind must not be burdened with sayings heaped up in abundance, and since some things about the proper character of the birth have already been shown, all the rest will be reserved for other questions. Now, since this is the order set for our discussion, that after the Father's testimony and the Son's profession we should be taught by the faith of the apostles too about confessing the Son of God as true and by birth, we must see whether, in the Lord's saying, “I came forth from God,” they understood anything other than the nature of a birth.

For after many obscure sayings, spoken in parables by him whom they already knew as the Christ announced by Moses and the prophets, confessed by Nathanael as both Son of God and King of Israel; after Philip too was rebuked, when he asked about the Father, for not knowing through the power of the works that the Father was in him and he in the Father; and after he had already taught them in frequent sayings that he was sent by the Father: yet when they heard him profess that he had come forth from God, this was their answer (for the passage is connected): “His disciples said to him, Now you speak plainly and say no proverb. Now we know that you know all things and have no need for anyone to question you: by this we believe that you came forth from God.” What, I ask, is this wonder at this word, that he professed to have come forth from God? You, holy and blessed men, who for the merit of your faith received the keys of the kingdom of heaven and obtained the right of binding and loosing in heaven and on earth, had seen such great things, so proper to God, done by our Lord Jesus Christ the Son of God; and at his saying that he came forth from God do you now declare that you attain an understanding of the truth for the first time? You had certainly seen the water of the wedding, and the same water become wedding wine, and the change, or growth, or creation of one nature into another. You had also broken five loaves for food for so great a multitude, and when all were satisfied the fragments of the loaves had grown to fill twelve baskets, and the smallness of a nature driving away hunger had grown into an abundance of the same nature. You had seen withered hands made whole again, the tongues of the mute loosed into speech, the feet of the lame quick to run, the eyes of the blind seeing, and the lives of the dead returning. Lazarus, already stinking, had stood up at his voice, and called from the tomb, with no interval between voice and life, had quickly come out, and while the smell of death still struck the nostrils, he himself was already standing alive. I say nothing of the other works of great and divine power. Do you only now understand who this is, sent from heaven, after you heard, “I came forth from the Father”? And is this said to you for the first time without a proverb, and do you understand through the power of his nature that it is true that he came forth from God, when he silently beholds the thoughts of your wills, when he asks about nothing as though ignorant, when he is the knower of all things? For through all these things which he does by the power and nature of God, he must be believed to have come forth from God.

Here the holy apostles did not understand “came forth from God” as “sent by God”; for throughout the earlier discourse they had often heard him confess that he was sent. But hearing that he came forth from God, and seeing the nature of God in him from his works, they recognize the truth of his nature by his having come forth from God, when they say: “Now we know that you know all things and have no need for anyone to question you: by this we believe that you came forth from God.” For they believe that he came forth from God by the fact that he is able to do, and does, the things that are God's. For he completes the account not by saying that the nature of God came from the Father, but that he came forth from God. Then what they now hear for the first time is confirmed for faith. For when the Lord had said both, “I came forth from God, and I have come from the Father into this world,” they found nothing to wonder at in what they had often heard, “I have come from the Father into this world.” But their answer testified to faith in and understanding of this saying, “I came forth from God.” For their answer referred only to that, when they say, “By this we believe that you came forth from God”; and they do not add, “and you have come from the Father into this world.” And since the one is in their profession and the other in their silence, the newness of the saying required the profession, and the understanding of the truth drew out the testimony of professing. They knew indeed that he could do all things as God, but they had not yet received the account of his birth; and those who knew he was sent by God did not yet know that he had come forth from God. Understanding that ineffable and perfect birth of the Son through the force of this saying, they now declare that he has spoken with them without proverbs.

For God is not born from God by the custom of human childbirth, nor is he thrust out, as man from man, through the elements of our origin. That birth is whole, perfect, and undefiled, whose coming forth from God is rather a going out than a childbirth. For he is one from one. It is not a portion, not a falling away, not a diminution, not a derivation, not an extension, not a passion; but it is the birth of a living nature from a living one. He is God coming forth from God, not a creature chosen for the name of God; he did not begin from nothing so as to be, but came forth from one who remains; and “to have come forth” has the meaning of birth, not of a beginning. For it is not the same for a substance to have begun and for God to have come forth from God. And though the knowledge of this birth is not subject to words, since it is ineffable, it nevertheless has the security of faith in the teaching of the Son, who shows that he came forth from God.