On the Trinity 7.20–7.32

And lest his giving life to whom he wills should seem not to have the nature of birth in it, but to subsist by right of an unborn power, he at once added: “For the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son.” And in all judgment having been given, both nature and birth are shown: because only an undifferentiated nature could have all things, and a birth cannot have anything unless it is given. All judgment has been given, because he gives life to whom he wills. Nor can judgment seem to have been taken from the Father, though he does not judge: because the Son's judgment is from the Father's judgment; for all judgment was given by him. But the reason for giving judgment is not passed over in silence. For there follows: “But he has given all judgment to the Son, so that all may honor the Son as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him.” What, then, I ask, is left for suspicion, or what remains as a pretext for impiety? The Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son. And the reason for giving judgment is that the Son may be of equal honor with the Father, and that whoever dishonors the Son dishonors the Father too. And how after this is the nature of the birth understood to differ, when not only working, power, and honor, but even the insult of denied honor makes them equal? The word of the divine answer, then, shows nothing other than the mystery of the birth. Nor could or should the Son be distinguished from the Father otherwise than by being taught both to have been born and yet not to differ.

The Father, then, works until now, and the Son works. You have the names of nature, since both the Father works and the Son. Understand also the nature of God working, through which God works. And lest perhaps you think two workings of unlike natures are to be understood, remember what was said of the blind man: “But that the works of God might be made manifest in him: I must work the works of him who sent me.” In what the Son works, then, is the Father's work; and the Son's work is the work of God. And the discussion of works continues later. Meanwhile, the answer was concerned only with referring every work to both, while the nature of working of both did not differ, since in what the Father works until now, the Son also works; lest he who is lord of the Sabbath (for the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath) should be believed to work impiously on the Sabbath, whose work, through the nature of birth, had in it the authority of the Father's work. The nature, then, is not confused or abolished, so that he is not a son; nor again is the nature taken away, so that he is not God. Nor are they separated by difference, so that they are not one; nor can their being one bring it about that there are not two. And first recognize the Son, when it is said: “The Son can do nothing of himself, except what he sees the Father doing.” You have the birth of a son, which can do nothing of itself unless it sees. In that he can do nothing of himself, he removes the error of being unbegotten; for a birth cannot have power of itself; but in that he sees, the recognition of a nature conscious in itself is signified. And in this now recognize the true nature of God: “For whatever he does, the Son also does likewise.” After the power of the nature, understand thereby the unity of a nature not unlike: “That all may honor the Son as they honor the Father who sent him.” And lest the unity of nature hold you in the union of a solitary one, learn in this the mystery of faith: “He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him.” Everything is shut against the devices of heretical fury. He is Son, because he can do nothing of himself; he is God, because whatever the Father does, he also does the same; they are one, because he is made equal in honor and does the same things, not other ones; he is not the Father himself, because he was sent. The birth alone, then, has this mystery, that it embraces in itself name, nature, power, and profession: because every birth cannot fail to be in the nature from which it is born. It does not bring a substance of a foreign kind, because from one there does not subsist something foreign. And what is not foreign to itself is one in the kind of nature; and whatever is one through birth does not have solitude, because solitude is singular, and the unity of birth belongs to both.

And besides this, let the testimony of God's own judgment about himself stand by. For he says: “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me, and I give them eternal life, and they will not perish forever, nor will anyone snatch them out of my hand. What the Father has given me is greater than all; no one can snatch it out of my Father's hand. I and the Father are one.” What stupor of a dull mind, I ask, blunts our understanding, so that these things, said so plainly, do not enter our sense? Or what swelling of an insolent mind mocks human weakness, so that, having gained knowledge of God from these words, men think God is not to be understood in the words by which he became known? Either other Gospels must be brought forward which teach otherwise; or, if these alone have taught about God, why do we not believe as we are taught? And if knowledge is taken from these alone, why is faith not from the same source as knowledge? But when faith is found to be opposed to knowledge, it is no longer the faith of knowledge but of crime, taking to itself an irreligious faith against the religion of a knowledge confessed. The only-begotten God, then, conscious of his own nature in himself, signifies the ineffable mystery of his own birth, for the confession of our faith, with as much completeness of words as he can: that he may be understood to be born, believed to be in the nature of God, to be one with the Father, and, in professing himself one with the Father, yet not to lose being the Son by being understood as solitary and the Father himself. For first he testifies to the power of his nature, when he says of his sheep, “Nor will anyone snatch them out of my hand.” This is the voice of conscious power, confessing the freedom of undisturbed strength in that no one snatches the sheep from his hand. But so that, though in the nature of God, the birth of the nature from God might be understood, he added: “What the Father has given me is greater than all.” He does not hide that he was born from the Father; for what he received from the Father is greater than all. And he who received it is in what he received by being born, not afterward; and yet he is from another, since he received. But lest he who received from another should be understood to exist as something else rather than in the nature of the one from whom he received, he says: “No one can snatch from my Father's hand.” No one snatches from his hand, because he received from the Father what is greater than all. What does so different a profession mean, that again no one snatches from his Father's hand? The hand that received from the Father is the Son's; the hand that gave to the Son is the Father's: and how is what is not snatched from the hand of the Son not snatched from the hand of the Father? If you ask how, understand: “I and the Father are one.” The Son's hand is the Father's hand. For the nature does not degenerate through birth so as not to be the same; nor again, because it is the same, does it hinder the understanding of birth, since birth admits nothing foreign into itself. So that, through a bodily signification, you may know the power of the same nature, the Son's hand is said to be the Father's hand, because the nature and power of the Father were in the Son. Finally, so that through the mystery of the birth you might recognize the truth of an undifferentiated nature, it was said: “I and the Father are one”: so that their being one might be believed to be neither different nor solitary, since through the property of birth and generation no other nature exists in either.

The will of mad minds remains, as far as can be understood, though the effect of the will has ceased; and zeal for malice does not abandon a malignant spirit, though the occasion for an evil work is absent. For now the fury of the heretics, since the Lord is already seated in heaven and they cannot drive him to the cross after the example of the Jews, with equal unbelief denies that he is what he is; and though they cannot deny what was said, yet, not obeying what was said, they exercise the hatred of impiety, throw stones of words, and, if they could, would drag him back from his throne to the cross. Of the Jews, stirred at the novelty of this saying, it is written thus: “The Jews therefore took up stones to stone him. He answered them: I have shown you many good works from the Father; for which of these works do you stone me? The Jews answered him: We do not stone you for a good work but for blasphemy, and because you, being a man, make yourself God.” But you, heretic, recognize what you do and profess, and understand that you are a partner of those whose example of unbelief you reproduce in yourself. For at the saying, “I and the Father are one,” the Jews raised stones, and their impious resentment, impatient of the mystery of saving faith, broke out even to an attempt to kill. What less do you accomplish by denying, having no one to stone? The will does not differ; but the heavenly throne makes your will ineffective. How much more irreligious are you than the Jew? He raises stones against the body, you against the Spirit; he against a man, as he thought, you against God; he against one dwelling on earth, you against one seated on the throne of power; he against one unknown, you against one confessed; he against one about to die, you against the judge of the ages. He says, “Being a man”; you say, “Being a creature”; but both of you say, “You make yourself God”; this reproach of your impious mouth against him is common to both. For you deny God from the generation of God, you deny the Son from the truth of birth, you deny that “I and the Father are one” is the confession of one and wholly alike nature in both. You put in place a God of a new, external, and foreign substance: so that he is either God of another kind, or not God at all, because he does not subsist by birth from God.

But since you are stirred by the mystery of this saying, “I and the Father are one,” so that, as the Jew says, “Being a man, you make yourself God,” you say with equal impiety, “Being a creature, you make yourself God” (for you say: You are not Son by birth, you are not God in truth; you are a creature more excellent than all, but you were not born God, because I do not admit a birth of nature from an incorporeal God; not only are you and the Father not one, but you are not a son, not like him, not God); the Lord indeed answered the Jews, but his whole answer fits your impiety even better: “Is it not written in the Law, I said, You are gods? If he called them gods to whom the word of God came, and Scripture cannot be broken, do you say of him whom the Father sanctified and sent into this world, You are blaspheming, because I said, I am the Son of God? If I do not do the works of the Father, do not believe me; but if I do them, even if you will not believe me, believe the works, so that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I in him.” The reason for his answer followed the reason for the charge of blasphemy brought against him. For it was counted a crime that, being a man, he made himself God. And he was accused of making himself God because he had said, “I and the Father are one.” Intending, then, to show that his claim that he and the Father are one was taken from the nature of his birth, he first refutes the absurdity of the ridiculous charge, that he should be called guilty because, being a man, he made himself God. For since the Law assigned this name to holy men, and the word of God, which cannot be broken, confirmed this profession of an imparted name, how could this one, whom the Father had sanctified and sent into this world, be a blasphemer by confessing himself the Son of God, when the unbreakable word of God had established those named gods by the Law? It is no longer a crime, then, that being a man he makes himself God, since the Law called gods those who are men. And if the use of this name by other men is not irreligious, it is not seen to be used shamelessly by that man whom the Father sanctified (for this whole answer concerns the man, since the Son of God is also the son of man), in calling himself the Son of God; since he surpasses the others, who can without irreligion call themselves gods, in that he was sanctified to be the Son: as blessed Paul makes known to us the knowledge of this sanctification, when he says: “Which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning his Son, who was made of the seed of David according to the flesh, who was destined Son of God in power according to the spirit of sanctification.” The charge of blasphemy, then, that being a man he makes himself God, falls away, since the word of God gave this name to very many, and he, sanctified and sent by the Father, professed himself nothing other than the Son of God.

No room is left, I think, for doubting that “I and the Father are one” was said of the nature of his birth. For when the Jews accused him of making himself God by this saying, though he was a man, his answer confirms that by “I and the Father are one” he showed himself to be the Son of God: first by name, then by nature, finally by birth. For “I” and “the Father” are names of realities; “one” is a profession of nature, because in what they are the two do not differ; but “are” does not allow union. And where “we are one” is not union, birth makes them to be one. For all this comes from his professing himself, sanctified by the Father, to be the Son of God; and the profession of the Son of God confirms “I and the Father are one”: because birth can bring no nature other than that from which it subsists.

The word of the only-begotten God completed the mystery of our whole faith. For when the answer had been given to why, being a man, he made himself God, so that the saying “I and the Father are one” might take the order of a complete and perfect understanding, he consequently added: “You say that I blaspheme because I said, I am the Son of God. If I do not do the works of the Father, do not believe me; but if I do them, even if you will not believe me, believe the works, so that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I in him.” It is the mark of unbridled audacity when salvation is already despaired of in one's conscience, and every professed impiety is beyond shame. For no one blushes at folly when he has lost religion: to contradict these words is madness rather than ignorance. The Lord had said, “I and the Father are one”; this is the mystery of the birth, that the Father and the Son are in unity of nature. And since claiming the nature was being called a crime, the reason for the claim is taught from its ground. For he says: “If I do not do the works of the Father, do not believe me.” If he does not do the Father's works, he is not to be believed when he professes to be the Son of God. So the birth does not have a new and external nature, since he is to be believed to be the Son through doing the Father's works. What place does adoption, what place does the indulgence of a name find here, to make him not Son of God by nature, when the Son of God is to be believed from the works of the Father's nature? A creature is not made equal or like to God, nor is the power of a foreign nature compared to him: only the birth of a Son is believed, without impiety, equal to him through likeness. For whatever is outside him will be made equal to him with insult to his honored power. For if anything that is not from him can be found like him and of the same power, he has lost the privilege of God under the partnership of an equal; and he will no longer be one God, from whom another god is undistinguished. But equality of what is proper involves no insult: because what is like him is his own, and what is compared to him in likeness is from himself; nor is that outside him which can do what is his; and it is an advance of dignity to have begotten power without estranging the nature. The Son does the works of the Father, and on that ground asks to be believed the Son of God. It is not arrogant presumption that asks to be proved only from what it does. And he testifies that he does not his own works but the Father's, lest the birth of the nature be taken away by the magnificence of the deeds. And since, under the mystery of the body he assumed and of the man born of Mary, the Son of God was not understood, faith in the name is made known from the deeds, when he says: “But if I do them, even if you will not believe me, believe the works.” He does not want to be believed first to be the Son of God except from the works of the Father which he himself does. But if he does the works and, through the lowliness of his body, is thought unworthy of belief in his profession, he asks for belief in the works. For why should the mystery of a man's birth hinder the understanding of the divine birth, when the divine birth carries out all its work through the ministry of the man it assumed? If, then, the man is not believed through the works to be the Son of God, let the works be believed to be the Son of God's, since they cannot be denied to be God's. For the Son of God has in himself by being born everything that is God's; and therefore the Son's work is the Father's work, because the birth is neither outside the nature from which it remains, and has in itself the nature from which it subsists.

Doing, then, the works of the Father, and asking that, if he himself were not believed, the works themselves might at least be believed, he had to show what the works were to be believed for; namely, what follows: “But if I do them, even if you will not believe me, believe the works, so that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I in him.” This is the same as “I am the Son of God”; this is the same as “I and the Father are one.” This is the nature of the birth; this is the mystery of saving faith: not to divide what is one, nor to take nature away from the birth, and to confess the truth of the living God from the living God. For God, who is life, does not subsist from things composite and lifeless; nor is he who is power held together from weak things; nor is he who is light put together from dark things; nor is he who is spirit formed from things unlike. All that is in him is one: so that what is spirit is also light, power, and life; and what is life is also light, power, and spirit. For he who says, “I am, and I do not change,” is not changed in parts nor made different in kind. For the things signified above are not in him from parts; but all this in him is one and perfect: all of it is the living God. God, then, is living, and the eternal power of a living nature; and what is born from him, with the mystery of his knowledge, could not be born anything other than living. For when he says, “As the living Father sent me, and I live through the Father,” he taught that life is in him through the living Father. Then, when he says, “For as the Father has life in himself, so he has given the Son to have life in himself,” he testified that all his living things are from the living one. And what is born living from the living has the advance of birth without newness of nature. For what is begotten from the living into the living is not new; for life was not sought from nothing for birth, and life, which takes its birth from life, must, through the unity of nature and the mystery of a perfect and ineffable birth, both live in the living one and have in itself living life.

We remember that at the beginning of our discourse we warned that human comparisons do not satisfy as examples of divine things, yet that the mind of our understanding is partly trained by bodily forms. I consult the experience of human birth, whether the origin of those born does not remain within the parents. For though those lifeless and unseemly elements by which the causes of birth begin flow out into another person, yet by the power of nature they remain within one another: since, through the origin of the same nature given, the one who begets follows the one born; and through the birth received, whose power, though transmitted, is not taken away, the one born remains in the one who begets. Let this be mentioned by us only for understanding human birth, not as a perfect example of the birth in the only-begotten God: because the weakness of human nature is put together from unlike things and held together in life from lifeless things. Nor does what is begotten in it live at once, nor does it all live from life, since there are many things in it which, when they have grown, are cut off without any sensation of their nature. But in God all that is lives. For God is life, and nothing can be from life except what is living. Nor is the birth by derivation, but by power. And so, since all that is lives, and all that is born from him is power, he has birth but not change; he imparts increase and does not lose nature: since he both follows the birth he gave through the likeness of an undivided nature, and the birth, which is living from living, does not abandon in being born the nature it has.

Fire, having fire in itself and remaining as fire in fire, partly offers an image of this faith. For though in it there is the brightness of light, the heat of its nature, the power of burning, the restlessness of flickering, yet the whole is fire, and all these are one nature. It has, indeed, weakness, in that it subsists and lives through matter, and fails together with the matter by which it had lived. But what is incomparable in God we learn in part by comparison, so that what is partly found in earthly elements may not be incredible in God. I ask, then, whether there is division and separation when fire comes from fire. Is the nature cut off so as not to remain, or does the nature not follow so as not to be in it, when, a light kindled from a light by a kind of advance of birth, there is no cutting off of nature, and yet there is light from light? Or does this not remain in that which subsists from it without cutting off? Or is this not in that from which it was not cut off, but went out with unity of natural substance? And I ask whether they are not one, when light from light is separable neither by division nor by kind of nature.

And these comparisons, as I said, are made only for understanding the faith, not for the dignity of God: so that we might gain an understanding of invisible things from bodily ones, not at all so that any example of comparison should satisfy the nature of God, since it would be fitting and just to believe God when he testifies about himself. But because heretical fury troubled the faith of the simpler, saying that what could hardly be understood except by bodily comparison should not be believed about God, we thought it useful, according to that saying of the Lord already mentioned above, “What is born of the flesh is flesh, but what is born of the Spirit is spirit,” since God is spirit, to insert these examples of comparison in part: so that he might not be thought to lie in his profession, when some natural examples of creatures provided us with understanding of the divine profession.

The living Son of God from the living, then, and God from God, showing both the unity of an inseparable and wholly alike nature and the mystery of birth, says: “I and the Father are one.” And since there arose a slander of the saying as though insolent, to show rather the consciousness of his nature in the saying, he added: “You say that I blaspheme, because I said, I am the Son of God,” testifying that the unity of nature is from birth. But so that a complete profession might confirm faith in the birth, and yet the birth professed might not bring a split in nature, he kept this conclusion of his whole answer: “Believe the works, that the Father is in me and I in the Father.” What here has not been shown to be natural and proper under the mystery of birth? They are in each other, since the birth is from the Father alone, since no external or unlike nature subsists into another God, since God, remaining from God, does not have what he is as God from elsewhere. Bring in two gods into the church's faith, if you find an opening; or at least invent a solitary God by false reasoning: separate the Son from the Father, if you can, except by the truth of birth alone confessed. The Son is in the Father, and the Father in the Son, not by transfusion and mutual pouring back, but by the perfect birth of a living nature. So in God the Father and God the Son you will neither count two gods, because both are one, nor preach a single one, because both are not one person. Apostolic faith, then, does not have two gods, since it has neither two fathers nor two sons. Confessing the Father, it has confessed the Son; believing in the Son, it has believed also in the Father: because the name of father has in itself the name of son. For he is father only through the son; and the signification of son is a showing of the father, because the son is only from the father. In the confession of one, then, there is not one person only: since the Son completes the Father, and the birth of the Son is from the Father. And the nature is not changed by birth so as not to be the same according to the likeness of its kind. But it is the same in such a way that, through birth and generation, both must be confessed rather to be one thing, not one person.

Let him preach two gods, then, who can preach one without one; or let him teach a single God who can deny that one is in one through the power of nature and through the mystery of generation and birth. And let him assign a different nature to each who does not know that the Father and the Son are preached as one. Let the heretics blot out the Son's gospel profession about himself, “I am in the Father, and the Father in me,” so that they may preach either two gods or one alone. There are no significations of natures in the property of one nature; nor does the truth of God from God make two gods, nor does the birth of God allow a single God, nor are they not one who are in each other. And they are in each other, since one is from one: because neither did one give to one through generation anything other than what is his own, nor does one obtain from one through birth anything other than the one's. Apostolic faith, then, whether it preaches the Father, will preach one God; or whether it confesses the Son, will confess one God: because the same and wholly alike nature of God is in both, and because, while the Father is God and the Son is God, and the name of the nature of both is one, “one” signifies both. For God from God, or God in God, neither makes two gods, since one from one remains in the nature and name of the one; nor falls into a solitary God, since one and one in signification are not alone.