On the Trinity 9.12–9.29

For although I remember that the apostle frequently refers Christ's being raised from the dead to God the Father, the apostle is not, in his sayings, outside the gospel faith or contrary to himself, especially since the Lord says: "For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This command I received from the Father." Or when he was asked to show a sign for faith in him, he said of the temple of his body: "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." For since by the power to take up his life again and by the might to raise the temple he teaches that he himself is to himself the God of his resurrection, yet refers all this to the authority of the Father's command, the apostle is not understood in a contrary sense when, preaching Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God, he referred all the greatness of his work to the Father's glory; because whatever Christ does, the power and wisdom of God does; and whatever the power and wisdom of God does, God without doubt does, whose wisdom and power Christ is. So now Christ was raised from the dead through the working of God, because he himself worked the works of God the Father with a nature not different from God. And in him faith in the resurrection rests on God, who raised Christ from the dead.

The blessed apostle, then, kept this preaching of a twofold meaning in Christ, so as to teach both the weakness of the man in him and the power and nature of God, according to what was said to the Corinthians: "For though he was crucified out of weakness, yet he lives by the power of God," showing that the death was of human weakness and the life of the power of God; and to the Romans: "For the death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also consider yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus": ascribing the death to sin, that is, to our body, but the life to God, to whom it is natural to live; and that through this we must die to our body, so that we may live to God in Christ Jesus, who, taking up the body of our sin, now lives wholly to God, the fellowship of our nature being united into communion with divine immortality.

I had to show these things briefly so that we might remember that in the Lord Jesus Christ the person of both natures is under discussion; because he who abode in the form of God took the form of a servant, in which he was obedient to death. For the obedience of death is not in the form of God, just as the form of God is not in the form of a servant. But through the mystery of the gospel dispensation he who is in the form of a servant is no other than he who is in the form of God; though to take the form of a servant and to abide in the form of God are not the same, and he who abode in the form of God could not take the form of a servant except by emptying himself, since the two forms do not agree to come together. But he who emptied himself and he who took the form of a servant are not another and a different one. For having taken cannot belong to one who does not exist, since to take belongs to one who subsists. So the emptying of the form is not the abolition of the nature, because he who empties himself does not lack himself, and he who takes remains. And since he who empties and takes is the same, there is indeed in him a mystery, that he empties himself and takes; yet there is no destruction, so that the one emptying would not exist or the one taking would not be. So the emptying goes so far as to let the form of a servant advance, not so that Christ, who was in the form of God, should not remain Christ, since it was none but Christ who took the form of a servant. When he emptied himself, so that the same Christ, abiding as Spirit, should be Christ as man, the change of condition in the body and the taking up of a nature did not destroy the nature of the abiding divinity, because it is one and the same Christ who both changes his condition and takes it up.

Having shown the dispensation of the mysteries, through which the heretics were deceiving the ignorant, so as to ascribe to a weakness of divinity all that was said and done through the nature of the man taken up, and to assign to the form of God whatever is fitting and proper to the form of a servant, we must now answer their propositions themselves. For the kinds of the several sayings will now be safely judged, since the only faith is to confess the Word and the flesh, that is, Jesus Christ God and man. The heretics think, then, that our Lord Jesus Christ is to be denied as God by nature because he said: "Why do you call me good? No one is good but one, God." Every reasoned answer must start from the causes of the questions; for an answer will address what prompts the question. And first I ask the man who slanders with this saying whether he thinks the Lord blames being called good, and would rather have been called evil. For this seems to be signified by the words, "Why do you call me good?" I do not think anyone will be so senseless as to want to ascribe a profession of wickedness to him who said: "Come to me, all you who labour and are burdened, and I will refresh you. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." He professes himself gentle and humble; and will he be believed to be angry at being called good? These professions are so at odds that the witness to his own goodness would be accusing the name of goodness in himself. He is not, then, understood to be angry at being called good. And we must ask what other profession about himself he blames, since he is not to be believed to blame the name of goodness in himself.

Let us see, then, what the questioner said besides "good." For he says: "Good teacher, what good shall I do?" He used two names together, "good" and "teacher." And since he does not blame being called good, he must blame being called good teacher. And he blames being called good teacher in such a way as to blame the faith of the questioner rather than the name either of teacher or of good in himself. For the young man, proud in his keeping of the law, ignorant of the end of the law, which is Christ, thinking himself justified by works, and not understanding that he had come to the lost sheep of the house of Israel and that it was impossible for the law to save believers through the faith of justification, questions the Lord of the law and the only-begotten God as though he were a teacher of common precepts written in the law. The Lord, then, abhorring this profession of irreligious faith about himself, that he was being questioned as a teacher of the law, answered: "Why do you call me good?" And to signify how far he was to be understood and confessed as good, he added: "No one is good but one, God"; not rejecting the name of goodness, if it were assigned to him as God.

Then, showing that he blamed the name of good teacher in himself because of the faith of him who questioned him as a man, after the young man's boasting and glorying in the law fulfilled, he answered thus: "One thing you lack: go, sell whatever you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me." He who promises heavenly treasure does not shun the name of goodness for himself; nor does he who offers himself as guide to this perfect blessedness refuse to be seen as teacher. But he blames the faith of an earthly opinion about himself, teaching that goodness is in God alone. And to signify that he was both God and good, he used the offices of goodness, opening the heavenly treasures and offering himself to lead the way to them. So he both abhors what was offered him as though to a man only, and does not profess himself foreign to what he assigned to God, since, confessing one God as good, he himself spoke and did what belongs to the power, goodness, and nature of the one God.

That he neither shunned the name of goodness nor refused the honour of teacher, but blamed the faith of one who savoured nothing in him but what was bodily and fleshly, is understood from the fact that he spoke otherwise to the apostles when they confessed him teacher, saying: "You call me Teacher and Lord, and you say well; for so I am"; and when elsewhere he said: "Do not be called teachers, for your teacher is Christ." Where he is teacher with faith, there he praises it so far as to profess the name himself; but here he does not acknowledge the name of good teacher, where he was not understood to be either Lord or Christ, proclaiming one God alone as good, certainly not separating himself from God, he who, professing himself Lord and Christ, shows himself guide to the heavenly treasure.

The Lord always kept this measure of the church's faith: proclaiming the Father as one God, he did not separate himself from the mystery of the one God, while through the nature of birth he professed himself neither another God nor the Father himself; because the nature of the one God in him does not allow him to be God of a different kind, nor does the birth admit that his being Son is not perfect. So he can neither be separated from God nor is he the Father himself. Through this he so tempers every meaning of his speech that whatever honour he declared for God the Father he showed, by a most modest confession, to be proper to himself too. For when he says, "Believe in God, and believe in me," I ask in what respect he separated himself in nature, who did not separate himself in honour? For in saying, "And believe in me," after saying, "And believe in God," is he not understood to have signified his own nature too by saying "in me"? Separate the nature, by all means, if you separate the faith. If to believe in God without Christ is life, tear Christ away from both the name and the property of God. But if it brings life to perfection that those who believe in God believe in Christ, let the careful reader weigh the force of the words: "Believe in God, and believe in me." For in saying, "Believe in God, and believe in me," joining himself to faith in God, he joined himself also to his nature, since, having named God, in whom one must believe, he taught that one must believe in him too; teaching thereby that he is God, since those who believe in God must believe in him. Yet he excluded the occasion of an irreligious union, because, professing that one must believe both in God and in himself, he left no room for faith in himself as solitary.

Although, then, in very many and almost all his sayings he provided the resolution of this mystery, so that, having confessed God the Father, he never separated himself from his unity, nor, placing himself in his unity, professed him to be one and solitary, the mystery both of unity and of birth is understood to be taught most of all from this, when he says: "But I have a testimony greater than John's. For the works which the Father has given me to accomplish, the very works that I do, bear witness of me, that the Father has sent me. And the Father who sent me has himself borne witness of me. You have never heard his voice nor seen his form, and you do not have his word abiding in you, because you do not believe him whom he has sent." How is it truly understood that the Father has borne witness to the Son, when he himself has not been seen nor his voice heard? I remember, indeed, that a voice was heard from heaven, saying: "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear him." And how was the voice of God not heard, when the voice heard contains in itself the signifying of the Father's voice? But perhaps those dwelling in Jerusalem did not hear it, because John alone heard it in the wilderness. We must ask, then, how the Father bore witness in Jerusalem. For he no longer uses the testimony of John, who heard the voice from heaven, but has a testimony greater than John's; and what this was he added at once: "For the works which the Father has given me to accomplish, the very works that I do, bear witness of me, that the Father has sent me." I recognize the authority of the testimony, for no one but the Son sent by the Father would do these things. His work, then, is the testimony. But what follows next? "And the Father who sent me has himself borne witness of me. You have never heard his voice nor seen his form, and you do not have his word abiding in you." Are they then free of blame for not knowing the Father's testimony, since he was never heard or seen by them and his word does not abide in them? But they are not excused for a testimony unknown to them, because he professes that the Father's testimony about him is the testimony of his works. The works, then, testify of him that he was sent by the Father; but this testimony of the works is the Father's. And since the Son's working is the Father's testimony, it must be understood that the nature working in Christ is that through which the Father too is witness. And so Christ working, and the Father testifying in his work, are shown to be of an inseparable nature according to birth, since the testimony of God about Christ is signified to be Christ's very working.

They are not, then, free of guilt for a testimony unknown to them, since the work of Christ is the Father's testimony about him. Nor, because they did not hear the voice of the witness, nor see his form, nor have his word abiding, are they therefore without awareness of the testimony. For to the words, "You have never heard his voice nor seen his form, and you do not have his word abiding in you," so that, since the Father had borne witness of him, the cause of the voice not being heard, the form not seen, and the word not abiding in them might be understood, he at once added: "Because you do not believe him whom he has sent"; showing that, if he were believed, the voice of God would be heard, the form of God seen, and his word would be in those who believed, since through the unity of nature the Father both spoke and was seen and was possessed in him. Does he not signify the Father too, when he has been sent by him? Does he distinguish himself from the Father by any difference of nature, when the Father, bearing witness of him, was neither heard nor seen nor understood for this reason, that they did not believe him who was sent by the Father? The only-begotten God, then, does not separate himself from God in confessing God the Father; but, God the Father being shown through the signifying of the Father, he establishes himself also in the honour of God.

For in this very same discourse, in which he teaches that by his works he testifies that he was sent by the Father, and signifies that the Father testifies that he was sent by him, when he had said, "And you do not seek the glory of him who alone is God," he still did not leave this saying bare and not first prepared for faith in the unity. For above he said: "You will not come to me that you may have life. I do not receive glory from men; but I know you, that you do not have the love of God in you. I have come in my Father's name, and you have not received me; if another comes in his own name, you will receive him. How can you believe, who receive glory from men and do not seek the glory of him who alone is God?" He rejects the glory of men, because glory is rather to be sought from God, and it is the mark of unbelievers to receive glory from one another. For what glory will man impart to man? He says, then, that he knows the love of God is not in them; and he teaches this cause of the love of God not abiding in them, that they do not receive him coming in the name of his Father. What, I ask, is it for him to come in the name of the Father? Is it anything other than in the name of God? Or is it not for this reason that the love of God is not in them, that he was not received when he came in the name of God? Or had he not signified the nature of God in himself when he said, "You will not come to me that you may have life"? For in the same discourse he had already said: "Amen, amen, I say to you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live." When he comes in the name of the Father, he is not the Father himself, and yet he is not outside that nature of divinity by which the Father is; because it is proper both to the Son and to God to come in the name of God the Father. Then another, coming in the same name, is to be received. But this is a man from whom men will hope for glory for themselves, and to whom they will render glory in return, while he falsely claims to have come in the name of the Father. And it is not obscure that the antichrist is signified here, boasting with a lie of the Father's name. And when they honour him and are honoured by him (for they will receive this spirit of error), they will not seek the glory of him who alone is God.

Since, then, they do not have the love of God because they did not receive him coming in the name of the Father, and again, receiving another coming in the same name and receiving glory from one another, they do not seek the glory of him who alone is God, can Christ be understood to separate himself from the glory of the one God, when the glory of the only God is not sought precisely because, in receiving the antichrist, he was not received? For he whose rejection is the neglect of the glory of the only God must have the glory of the only God in his own glory; had they abided in receiving him, they would have sought the glory of the only God. And this same discourse is our witness, at whose beginning it is contained: "That all may honour the Son as they honour the Father. He who does not honour the Son does not honour the Father who sent him." Only things natural to each other are made equal in honour, and honour made equal does not separate those honoured. Yet equality of honour is demanded together with the mystery of birth. Since the Son is to be honoured as the Father is, and the glory of him who alone is God is not sought, he is not outside the glory of the only God, whose glory is one and the same with God's; because, as he who does not honour the Son does not honour the Father either, so he who does not seek the glory of the only God does not seek Christ's either. Christ's glory, then, is inseparable from God's glory. And how one and the same it is for both he also teaches when, on being told of Lazarus's sickness, he says: "This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified through it." Lazarus dies for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through Lazarus. Is it doubted that the glory of God is in the glory of the Son of God, when the death of Lazarus, which is glorious to God, is to bring forth glory for the Son of God? And so both the natural unity of God the Father in Christ through birth is taught, when Lazarus's sickness is for the glory of God, and the mystery of the faith is kept, when the Son of God is to be glorified through Lazarus: God being understood as glorified through the Son of God, and not understood so as not also to be confessed in the Son of God, since, when God is glorified through Lazarus, the Son of God is glorious.

The birth of the living from the living is inseparable from the mystery of the divine nature, and the Son of God does not undergo a change of kind, so that the truth of the Father's nature might not remain in him. For even by those very expressions in which, by confessing only one God, he seems to have denied the nature of God in himself under the showing of one alone, he still placed himself in the unity of the Father's nature without overthrowing faith in one God. For when asked by a scribe what was the chief commandment in the law, he answered: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your inward parts, and with all your strength. This is the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these." He is thought to have estranged himself from the nature and worship of the one God, since the profession of the chief commandment is this: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord"; and then not to place himself even in the worship of the following commandment, since the law called us to love of neighbour as it called us to faith in one Lord. And indeed the scribe's answer must not be neglected, when he says: "You have spoken well, Teacher, in truth, that God is one and there is no other besides him; and that he is to be loved with all the heart and all the strength and all the soul; and to love one's neighbour as oneself. This is greater than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices." The scribe's answer seems to agree with the Lord's words, professing an inmost and inward love of one God, promising love of neighbour according to the truth of one's love for oneself, and understanding that love for God and man is above whole burnt offerings of sacrifices. But we must see what follows.

[When Jesus saw that he had answered wisely,] he said to him: "You are not far from the kingdom of God." What does the profession of so measured an answer mean, that, although this faith brings a man to completion for the kingdom of heaven, to believe in one God and love him with all the soul, all the strength, and all the heart, and also to love one's neighbour as oneself, this scribe is not yet in the kingdom of God, but not far from the kingdom of God? This is given with another meaning to those who clothe the naked, feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, visit the sick, and frequent those shut up in prison: "Come, you blessed of my Father, possess the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world." Or to those for whom this is the reward of poverty of spirit: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." This is the perfect fruit, the full possession, the sure handing over of the prepared kingdom. Or did the young man profess anything less than these? For when he had made love of neighbour equal to love of self, what had he left undone for the completion of good works? For sometimes to be kind and dutiful is not of perfect love; but perfect love has fulfilled every duty of kindness of every kind, since he leaves nothing that he owes another who renders as much to another as to himself. But the Lord, praising the scribe's profession of faith, yet held back by ignorance of the completed mystery, and answering that he was not far from the kingdom of God, still did not set him in the very possession of the blessed hope. For he was running a happy course, though unknowingly, both preferring the love of God to all things and making love of neighbour equal to his love of himself. And since he had preferred the love of God even to that love of neighbour, he was no longer held by the prescriptions of whole burnt offerings and sacrifices. This was not far from the gospel mystery.

And why he is not far from the kingdom of God, rather than about to be in the kingdom of God, must be understood from the Lord's own words. For there follows: "And no one dared to question him any longer. And Jesus answered and said, teaching in the temple: How do the scribes say that the Christ is the son of David? For David himself says in the Holy Spirit: The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies the footstool of your feet. David himself calls him Lord; and how is he his son?" The scribe, then, who confesses one God, to be loved above all things, is not far from the kingdom of God. But he is reminded by his own profession why he is ignorant of the mystery of the law and does not know that Christ the Lord, the Son of God, is to be confessed, through the nature of his birth, within faith in one Lord. And because, through the profession of one Lord according to the law, it seemed that nothing was lacking to the Son of God for remaining within the mystery of the one Lord, he reminds the scribe how he could call Christ the son of David, when David had professed him his Lord, and nature would not allow that one who was the son of so great a patriarch should also be his lord. This was so that the scribe, who understood him only according to the flesh and the childbearing of Mary, who was of David, might remember that according to the Spirit he was David's Lord rather than his son; and that the saying, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord," might not separate Christ from the mystery of the one Lord, since so great a patriarch and prophet professed as his Lord him who had been begotten from the womb of the Lord before the morning star; not, surely, forgetful of the law, nor ignorant that no other lord is to be confessed, but understanding that he who had come to subsist from the womb of the incorporeal God by the mystery of a natural birth is to be understood as Lord without violating faith in the law, since, one from one, through the nature of the one Lord, he had in himself by nature that which the Lord is.

What room, then, is now left for doubt? The Lord himself, teaching that the chief commandment of the law lies in the confession and love of one Lord, used toward the scribe not his own testimony but the prophet's that he himself is Lord; yet always signifying that he is Lord through the fact that he is the Son of God. For through this he abides in the mystery of the one God by birth: because the birth of God, holding the nature of God in itself, does not go out into another God by diversity of nature; and the truth of generation neither takes from the Father his being Lord, nor fails to bring it about that the Son also is Lord. And so neither does the Father lose his authority, nor does the Son fail to hold the nature: through which neither is God the Father not the one Lord, nor is the only-begotten God the Lord separated from the one, since from the one Lord he himself subsists as one into Lord; teaching one Lord from the law in such a way as to confirm, with the prophet as witness, that he too is Lord.

Let the answer of the gospel faith go on through the remaining propositions of impious madness, and fight back with the very things by which it is attacked; and, conquering with the weapons meant for its own destruction, let it show that the sayings of one Spirit are also the teaching of one faith. For there is no other Christ than he who has been preached, namely true God, abiding in the glory of the one true God; and as he professed himself Lord from the law while he seemed to deny it, so in the Gospels too he shows himself true God while he is thought not to confess it. For the heretics excuse themselves from confessing him true God by this saying of his: "And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent." For in saying, "you, the only true God," he is thought to separate himself from the truth of God by the exception of a solitary one, since "the only true God" does not allow itself to be understood except as a solitary God. And truly the apostolic faith does not allow two true gods to be believed, because nothing foreign to the nature of the one God is to be made equal to the truth of the same nature. For God will not be one in the truth of the one God if, outside the nature of the one true God, another true God of another kind exists, not natural to him through birth.

But so that he may be understood, by this very same saying, to have professed himself without ambiguity true God in the nature of the one true God, let the course of our answer descend from the professions that precede it, continuous and joined with it, so that, through the steps of a demonstrated faith, the confidence of our freedom may finally rest on the very summit of Christ the true God. After the mystery of his discourse in which he said: "He who has seen me has seen the Father also," and: "Do you not believe me that I am in the Father and the Father in me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak from myself; but the Father who abides in me, he does his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; but if not, believe at least because of the works themselves." After this manifold discourse of great mysteries, then, there follows this saying of the disciples in reply: "Now, then, we know that you know all things, and do not need anyone to question you; by this we believe that you came forth from God." In the powers of God in him they understood also the nature of God; for to know all things and to know the thoughts of hearts could belong not to one sent from God but rather to one born from God. They profess, then, that they believe this, that he came forth from God, because the power of the nature of God was in him.