On the Trinity 8.29–8.49

For there follows: "Now there are divisions of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are divisions of ministries, and the same Lord himself; and there are divisions of workings, but the same God who works all in all. And to each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for what is profitable." In this passage a fourfold meaning is understood: in the division of gifts there is the same Spirit, and in the division of ministries the same Lord himself, and in the division of workings the same God, and in the giving of what is profitable the manifestation of the Spirit. And so that the giving of what is profitable might be known in the manifestation of the Spirit, it is at once added: "To one is given through the Spirit the word of wisdom, to another the word of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith in the same Spirit, to another the gift of healings in the same Spirit, to another the working of powers, to another prophecy, to another the discerning of spirits, to another kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues."

The fourth element we named, the manifestation of the Spirit in the giving of what is profitable, has a clear meaning. For it has been stated through what profitable gifts this manifestation of the Spirit takes place. In these powers of the divisions there is no uncertain display of the gift of which the Lord had spoken to the apostles, commanding them not to depart from Jerusalem: "But wait," he said, "for the promise of the Father, which you heard from my mouth: For John baptized with water, but you will be dipped in the Holy Spirit, whom you will also receive not many days after these." And again: "But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and Samaria, and to the end of the earth." He bids them wait for the promise of the Father, heard from his mouth. Certainly even now the utterance is of that fatherly promise. Through these workings of powers, then, there is the manifestation of the Spirit. For the gift of the Spirit is not hidden where there is the word of wisdom and the words of life are heard; or where there is the knowledge of divine understanding, so that we may not, like cattle, through ignorance of God be ignorant of the author of our life; or through faith in God, so that we may not, by not believing the gospel of God, be outside the gospel of God; or through the gift of healings, so that by the healing of infirmities we may bear witness to the grace of him who grants them; or through the working of powers, so that what we do may be understood to be the power of God; or through prophecy, so that through understanding of doctrine we may be understood to be taught by God; or through the discerning of spirits, so that we may not be ignorant whether someone speaks by a holy or a perverse spirit; or through kinds of tongues, so that speech in tongues may be given as a sign of the Holy Spirit given; or in the interpretation of tongues, so that the faith of the hearers may not be endangered by ignorance, when the interpreter of a tongue makes the tongue clear to those who do not know it. In all these, then, divided to each for profit, there is the manifestation of the Spirit, since through them he gives to each wonders of profit, the gift of the Spirit not being hidden.

In this mystery of the heavenly sacraments, most difficult for human understanding, the blessed apostle Paul kept both a complete demonstration and careful caution, to show that these divided gifts are given through the Spirit and in the Spirit (for to be given through the Spirit and in the Spirit is not the same thing): because the giving of a gift that is obtained in the Spirit is nevertheless granted through the Spirit. He completes these divisions of gifts thus: "But all these one and the same Spirit works, dividing to each as he wills." Now then I ask what Spirit works these things, dividing to each as he wills: whether the one through whom, or the one in whom, the division of gifts takes place. If anyone dares to say that it is the same one who is signified, the apostle will contradict him, saying why the reader understands him wrongly; for he says above: "And there are divisions of workings, but the same God who works all in all." So he who divides is one, and he in whom the division is granted is another. And understand that it is always God who works all these things, yet in such a way that Christ works, so that the Son, working, performs the Father's work. And if you confess Jesus as Lord in the Holy Spirit, understand the force of the threefold meaning in the apostle, when in the divisions of gifts there is the same Spirit, in the divisions of ministries the same Lord, in the divisions of workings the same God; and again one Spirit working all things, dividing to each as he wills. And grasp, if you can, that the Lord in the division of ministries and God in the division of workings are this same one Spirit, who both works and divides as he wills; because in the divisions of gifts there is one Spirit, and the same Spirit works and divides.

Or, if this one Spirit of the same divinity in God and in the Lord, through the mystery of the birth, displeases you, show what spirit it is, and in what spirit he both works and divides these divisions for us. But you will show nothing other than what belongs to our faith, because the apostle showed who is to be understood, saying: "For as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the one body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Christ." He signifies, then, that the divisions of gifts are from the one Lord Jesus Christ, who is the body of all; for when he had shown the Lord in the ministry and had also shown God in the workings, he nevertheless shows that one Spirit both works and divides all these, dividing these members of graces in the perfection of one body.

Unless perhaps the apostle is thought not to have kept the principle of unity in saying, "And there are divisions of ministries, and the same Lord himself; and there are divisions of workings, but the same God," so that, because he referred the ministries to the Lord and the workings to God, he may seem not to mean one and the same in ministries and workings. Learn how these members of the ministries are members of the workings, when he says: "You are the body of Christ and members. And God has set some in the church, first apostles," in whom is the word of wisdom; "second prophets," in whom is the gift of knowledge; "third teachers," in whom is the teaching of faith; "then powers," in which are the healings of infirmities, powers of helping, prophetic governings, and gifts of kinds of tongues, whether of speaking or of interpreting. These are certainly both the ministries and the workings of the church, in which is the body of Christ; and God has established them. Or else declare that they were not established through Christ, because God established them. But you will hear him saying: "But to each of us grace was given according to the measure of the gift of Christ." And again: "He who descended is the same who also ascended above all the heavens, that he might fill all things. And he gave some apostles, and some prophets, and some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of ministry." Are not the gifts of the ministries Christ's, while they are nonetheless also the gifts of God?

But if impiety has claimed for itself that, because he says "the same Lord" and "the same God," they are not in unity of nature, I will add to this understanding of yours what you think are firmer supports. For the apostle himself says: "But for us there is one God the Father, from whom are all things, and we in him, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through him." And again: "One Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is through all and in us all." Through the words "one God" and "one Lord" it seems that being God is assigned as proper to God alone, as to the one God, since the property of one does not allow the partnership of another. O truly rare and difficult gifts of grace, and truly the manifestation of the Spirit established in this giving of what is profitable! And rightly was this order kept in dividing the graces, that the word of wisdom should be first; for it is true that "no one can say Jesus is Lord except in the Holy Spirit," because Christ could not be understood as Lord except through this word of wisdom; then that the word of knowledge should follow, so that we may speak with knowledge what we savour, and so savour the word of wisdom; and that the third gift should be in faith, because those first and higher gifts would lose the profit of the gift unless God were believed. So now, in the mystery of this greatest and most beautiful saying of the apostle, all the heretics have neither the word of wisdom nor the word of knowledge nor the faith of religion, because impiety, which does not grasp understanding, is outside the knowledge of the word and outside the simplicity of faith. For no one speaks what he does not savour, nor can he believe what he cannot speak. So the apostle, preaching one God, coming from the Law and called into the gospel of Christ, kept the confession of a perfect faith. And so that the simplicity of a seemingly careless statement might give the heretics no occasion to deny the Son's birth through the preaching of one God, he confessed one God under the sign of his property, saying: "One God the Father, from whom are all things, and we in him," so that he who is God might also be believed to be Father. Then, because this bare belief in one God the Father would not avail for salvation, he added: "And one our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through him," showing that the purity of saving faith lies in preaching one God and one Lord, so that we hold in faith both one God the Father and one Lord Jesus Christ. For he was not unaware of the Lord's saying: "For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him should have eternal life." But setting out the order of the church's faith, and establishing our faith in the Father and the Son, he spoke the mystery of that inseparable and indissoluble unity and faith, saying: "One God and one Lord."

First, heretic, living outside the apostolic spirit, understand your folly. If you seize on the confession of one God to make Christ not God, because where one is he must be understood as solitary, and being one is proper and peculiar to him who is one, what will you profess about the fact that Jesus Christ is one Lord? For if, on your view, that the Father is one God left Christ no room to be God, then necessarily, also on your view, that Christ is one Lord leaves God no room to be Lord, since you would have being one belong properly to him who is one. If, then, you deny that the one Lord Christ is also God, you will deny too that the one God the Father is also Lord. And what will there be in the might of God if he is not Lord, and in the power of the Lord if he is not God, since that which the Lord is makes him God, and that which God is constitutes him Lord?

But the apostle, holding fast the mystery of the Lord's saying "I and the Father are one," while he professes each to be one, signifies each as one not in the sense of the solitude of a single being but of unity of spirit; because one God the Father and one Lord Christ, since each is both Lord and God, still do not allow in our faith either two gods or two lords. Each, then, is one; and though each is one, neither is alone. We shall be able to speak the mystery of the faith only in the apostle's words. For there is one God and one Lord; and through the fact that God is one and Lord is one, the Lord is shown in God, just as God is shown in the Lord. You do not hold a union, so that God is single; nor yet do you divide the spirit, so that the two are not one. Nor can you divide the power in the one God and the one Lord, so that he who is Lord is not also God, or he who is God is not also Lord. For the apostle took care, by the wording of the names, not to preach either two gods or two lords. And therefore he used this kind of teaching, so that in the one Lord Christ he might signify also one God, and in the one God the Father signify also one Lord; and yet, professing both Father and Christ, not bring upon us an impious union that would destroy the birth of the only-begotten God.

Unless perhaps the madness of utter despair will dare to break out so far as to say that, because the apostle called Christ Lord, no one ought to confess him anything other than Lord, and that having the property of Lord he does not have the truth of God. But Paul knows that Christ is God, when he says: "Whose are the fathers, and from whom is Christ, who is God over all." Here a creature is not reckoned as God; he is the God of creatures, who is God over all.

How the God over all is also a Spirit inseparable from the Father, learn also from this very saying of the apostle with which we are now dealing. For having confessed one God the Father, from whom are all things, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, I ask what difference he brought in by saying that all things are from God and all things through Christ? Can he from whom, and he through whom, all things are be understood as of a nature and spirit separable from each other? For all things came to be from nothing through the Son, and the apostle referred them to God, from whom are all things, and to the Son, through whom are all things. And I do not find what difference there is, since through each there is the work of the same power. For if, with regard to the substance of the universe, it were a proper and sufficient account of creatures that they are from God, what need was there to mention that the things that are from God are through Christ, unless being through Christ and being from God are one and the same? But just as "Lord" and "God" are ascribed to each of them so as to be mutual, so "from whom" and "through whom" are referred to both, to show the unity of both and not to suggest a single one. The statement does not lie open to the occasion of impiety, and the apostle's faith is not wanting in carefulness of preaching. For he so tempered himself in these exact words that he could be understood to mean neither two gods nor a solitary one, while he both abhors union and does not divide unity. For this "from whom are all things" and "through whom are all things," though it did not establish a single one in the power of might, still did not show a different one in the working, since "from whom are all things" and "through whom are all things" showed for this purpose an author of the same nature. And he declares that both are proper to the same nature. For after proclaiming the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God, confessing that his judgments are inscrutable beyond understanding, and showing that his ways are past finding out, he nevertheless, using the office of human faith, rendered this honour to the depth of the unsearchable and inscrutable heavenly mysteries, saying: "For from him and through him and in him are all things; to him be glory for ever, amen": now referring to the signifying of one nature what can only be the work of one nature.

For since he specially ascribed to God that all things are from him, and gave to Christ as his property that all things are through him, and now it is the glory of God that from him and through him and in him are all things; and since the Spirit of God is the same as the Spirit of Christ; or since in the Lord's ministry and in God's working one Spirit works and divides: they cannot but be one whose properties belong to one, since in the same Lord the Son and in the same God the Father one and the same Spirit, dividing in the same Holy Spirit, accomplishes all things. O man worthy of the knowledge of great and heavenly secrets, taken up and chosen as a sharer in the divine mysteries, keeping necessary silence about things it is not lawful to utter, and truly an apostle of Christ! How has he shut in the wits of human perversity by the preaching of his complete statement, confessing one God the Father and one Lord Jesus Christ, so that amid these no one can preach either two or a single one; while yet he who is not single does not advance into two, nor can those who are not two be understood as solitary; and amid these the Father, being shown, shows the perfect birth of Christ!

Stretch out now your flickering, hissing tongues, you heretical serpents, whether Sabellius, or Photinus, or you who now preach that the only-begotten God is a creature. Whoever denies the Son will hear of one God the Father, because, since the Father is father only through the Son, the Son is signified in the Father by that very name. Whoever takes from the Son the unity of an undifferenced nature, let him acknowledge one Lord Jesus Christ; for unless the Lord is one through unity of Spirit, there will be no room left for God the Father to be Lord. And whoever reckons the Son from time and from the flesh, let him learn that through him are all things and we through him, and that, creating all things, he is a timeless immensity outside of times. And meanwhile let him read again that there is one hope of calling, and one baptism, and one faith. And if after this he opposes the apostle's preaching, he is himself made anathema, since he thinks otherwise by his own sense; he is neither called nor baptized nor faithful, because in one God the Father and one Lord Jesus Christ there is one faith of one hope and one baptism. Nor will any diversity of doctrines be able to boast of having a place among the things that belong to one God and Lord and hope and baptism and faith.

The one faith, then, is to confess the Father in the Son and the Son in the Father through the unity of an inseparable nature, not confused but undivided, not mixed but undifferenced, not merely joined but existing, not incomplete but perfect. For it is birth, not division; he is Son, not by adoption; he is God, not by creation. Nor is he God of another kind; the Father and the Son are one; for the nature was not made new in being born, so as to be foreign to the property of its origin. So the apostle holds this faith of the Son abiding in the Father and the Father in the Son, proclaiming that for him there is one God the Father and one Lord Christ, since in the Lord Christ there was also God, and in God the Father there was also Lord; and each was one in being God, and each was one in being Lord; because it is understood to be imperfect both in God, unless he is Lord, and in the Lord, unless he is God. And so, since each is one, and one is signified in each, and neither is without the one, the apostle in his teaching does not go beyond the gospel preaching; nor is Christ, speaking in Paul, different from what he said while abiding bodily in the world.

For the Lord had said in the Gospels: "Work not for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you; for him the Father, God, has sealed." They said therefore to him: "What shall we do to work the works of God?" And he said to them: "This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent." The Lord, setting out the mystery both of his incarnation and of his divinity, spoke also the teaching of our faith and hope: that we should work for food that does not perish but endures for ever; that we should remember that this food of eternity is given us by the Son of Man; that we should know that the Son of Man is sealed by God the Father; that we should recognize that this is the work of God, to believe in him whom he had sent. And who is it whom the Father sent? Surely the one whom God sealed. And who is it whom God sealed? The Son of Man, of course, who provides the food of eternal life. And who, finally, are those to whom he provides it? Those who will work for the food that does not perish. So the work of the food is the same as the work of God, namely to have believed in him whom he sent. But the Son of Man says these things. And how will the Son of Man give the food of eternal life? He does not know the mystery of his own salvation who does not know that the Son of Man, giving food to eternal life, has been sealed by God the Father. Here now I ask what, after all, is the meaning of the Son of Man being sealed by God the Father?

First we must recognize that God spoke not for himself but for us, and tempered the language of his speech to our understanding as far as the weakness of our nature can grasp it. For when earlier he had been rebuked by the Jews for making himself equal to God by professing himself the Son of God, he had answered that he did all things that the Father does; that he had received all judgment from the Father; and that he too was to be honoured as the Father. And in all these, having first professed himself Son, he had made himself equal to the Father in honour, power, and nature. Then he had said that, as the Father has life in himself, so he had given the Son to have life in himself; in which he signified the unity of the same nature through the mystery of birth. For by "what the Father has" he signified the Father himself in the having; because God is not, in human fashion, made of parts, so that what is had by him is one thing and he who has it is another. The whole of what he is, is life, a nature perfect, absolute, and infinite, not made up of unlike parts but itself living throughout. And since this life was given such as it is had, even if it is understood to signify the birth of him to whom it was given, it still brings no difference of kind, since it was given such as it is had.

After this so manifold and exact signifying that the Father's nature was shown in him, he used this saying: "For him the Father, God, has sealed." The nature of seals is such that they display the whole form of the figure pressed into them and have nothing less in themselves than that from which they are sealed; and while they receive the whole of what is impressed, they bear forth from themselves the whole of whatever was impressed. But this does not serve as an example of the divine birth, because in seals there is material, difference, and impression, by which the likenesses of stronger kinds are impressed on softer natures. But the only-begotten God, also Son of Man through the mystery of our salvation, wishing to signify to us the likeness of the Father's property in himself, says he was sealed by God; and this because the Son of Man was going to give the food of eternal life, so that through this the power to give food for eternity might be understood to be in him, because he contained in himself the whole fullness of the Father's form, of the God who sealed him, so that what God had sealed should bear from itself nothing other than the form of the God who sealed it. These things the Lord spoke to the Jews, who because of their unbelief could not receive this saying.

But for us the preacher of the gospel, by the Spirit of Christ speaking through him, conveys an understanding of this property, saying: "Who, though he was in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal to God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant." For he whom God had sealed could be nothing other than the form of God; and what is sealed in the form of God must have in itself, imaged together with it, the whole of what is God's. And therefore the apostle preached that he whom God sealed is God abiding in the form of God. For, about to speak of the mystery of the body taken up and born together in him, he says: "He did not consider it robbery to be equal to God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant." For what was in the form of God remained God through God who sealed him. But because the form of a servant was to be taken up, and he was to be obedient to death, not grasping for himself to be equal to God, he emptied himself through obedience to take up the servile form. He emptied himself out of the form of God, that is, out of that by which he was equal to God; yet not regarding himself equal to God by robbery, though in the form of God and equal to God he stood sealed as God by God.

Here now I ask whether he who remains God in the form of God is God of another kind, as we see in seals with the sealing and sealed likenesses, when iron pressed on lead or a gem on wax either shapes the likeness of a hollow image in it or presses out the form of one standing out from it. But if anyone is so foolish and senseless as to think that God forms out of himself into God something other than God, and that he who is in the form of God is wholly something other than God, then after the mysteries of the man taken up and of the humility completed through obedience even to the death of the cross, he will hear, by the confession of things in heaven and on earth and under the earth and of every tongue, that Jesus is in the glory of God the Father. If then he will remain in this glory when the form has already been that of a servant, I ask, what did he remain when he was in the form of God? Was not Christ, the Spirit, in the nature of God, which is signified by "glory," since Christ Jesus, that is, the one born man, will stand in the glory of God the Father?

In all things the blessed apostle keeps the unchangeable preaching of the gospel faith, proclaiming the Lord Jesus Christ as God, so that the apostolic faith neither perishes into two gods through a God of another kind, nor does God the Son, inseparable from the Father, give an impious occasion for preaching a single and solitary God. For in saying "in the form of God" and "in the glory of God the Father," he neither taught that they differ nor allowed us to think that he does not exist. For he who is in the form of God neither advances into another God nor is himself not God, because he cannot be separated from the form of God, being in it; nor is he who is in the form of God not God. Just as he who is in the glory of God cannot be other than what God is; and while he is God in the glory of God, he does not admit the preaching of another God different from God, because, by being in the glory of God, he has in himself by nature, from him in whose glory he is, that which God is.

The one faith is not endangered by many proclamations so as to cease to be one. For the evangelist had taught the Lord's saying: "He who has seen me has seen the Father also." But did Paul, the teacher of the Gentiles, either not know or keep silent about the force of the Lord's saying, when he said: "Who is the image of the invisible God"? I ask whether he is a visible image of the invisible God, and whether the infinite God can be imaged into an appearance through the image of a bounded form? For an image must render the form of that of which it is the image. Let those who want the nature in the Son to be of another kind determine of what sort they would have the Son to be the image of the invisible God. Bodily, perhaps, and visible, and wandering about from place to place by motion and walking? Let them remember, however, that according to the Gospels and the prophets both Christ is Spirit and God is Spirit. If they confine this Spirit, Christ, in a formable and bodily way, the image of the invisible God will not be bodily, nor will a defined measure be the likeness of the undefined.

But neither did the Lord leave it uncertain, "He who has seen me has seen the Father also," nor was the apostle silent about what kind of image he is, "who is the image of the invisible God." For the Lord had said, "If I do not do the works of my Father, do not believe me," teaching that the Father is seen in him from this, that he did his works, so that the power of the nature, once understood, might show the nature of the power understood. By this the apostle, signifying that he is this image of God, says: "Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; because in him were established all things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or principalities or powers or dominions; all things were founded through him and in him, and he is before all, and all things hold together in him; and he is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things he himself might hold the first place; because in him it pleased all the fullness to dwell, and through him all things to be reconciled to him." Through the power of these works, then, he is the image of God. For surely the Founder of things invisible is not under such necessity of nature that the image of the invisible God should be visible. And so that he might not be understood as the image of a shape rather than of a nature, he is therefore the image of the invisible God, the nature of God in him being understood through the power of his nature, not through a visible quality.