On the Trinity 9.45–9.61

Unless the sayings are proper to the proposition, we do violence to the sayings by the presumption of our own unbelieving understanding. But if the answer was given to the causes of their anger, our faith rather speaks what is taught than irreligious perversity defends the error of its impiety. Let us ask, then, whether this answer is proper to the sabbath work: "The Son can do nothing of himself except what he sees the Father doing." For he said above: "My Father is working until now, and I am working." If what he does by the authority of the Father's nature in him he does while the Father does it, who works until now on the sabbath, the Son is free of blame for the work, in which the authority of the Father's working is set forth. For he referred "cannot" not to weakness but to authority; for he cannot of himself unless he sees. Seeing does not confer power; and since sight does not confer power, being unable without sight does not weaken the nature but shows the authority from sight. For "unless he sees" signifies consciousness in seeing, as he says to the apostles: "Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and see the fields, for they are white for harvest." With consciousness in himself, then, of the Father's nature, which works in him as he works, so that the Lord of the sabbath might not be believed to have violated the sabbath, he says: "The Son can do nothing of himself except what he sees the Father doing"; to show that what he worked came from the consciousness of the nature working in him, since, as he worked on the sabbath, the Father too was working until now on the sabbath. But to the resentment at the other indignity he referred the cause of the following saying: "For whatever the Father does, these the Son also does likewise." Reproach the Son of God with weakness, take away also the equality of nature, if the Son does not do likewise whatever the Father does, if any difference of the Father's power and working is admitted, if equality of honour, which is proper to equality of power and nature, is not demanded. For he himself says in what follows: "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." Divide, if you can, an equality in an honour that is not unequal; weaken, if you can, the nature in the same working of power.

Why do you seize on the cause of the answer to insult the divinity? To the sabbath working he answered that he could do nothing except what he had seen the Father doing; but to show equality he professed that he does whatever the Father does. Hold what concerns the sabbath as a reproach of weakness, if the Son does not do likewise whatever the Father does. But if "whatever" is without exception, where, after all, will weakness be found, when in nothing is the Son unable to do what the Father can? Or where, after all, is equality denied by the intervening of weakness, when one and the same honour is demanded for both? And if there is the same power of working and the same reverence in honouring, I do not understand where, after all, any insult of a weak nature is left, when the power of might and the equality of honour are the same in the Father and in the Son.

And although these things have been treated with the very resolution of the matter, yet, so that the Lord's words, "The Son can do nothing of himself except what he sees the Father doing," may not serve the impiety of weakening his nature rather than show his consciousness of the Father's nature in him, by which he worked on the sabbath by authority, we must also show the meaning of the Lord's saying that bears on this, where he says: "And I do nothing of myself, but as the Father taught me, I speak these things. And he who sent me is with me, and he has not left me alone, because I always do the things that please him." Do you perceive what it means that the Son can do nothing unless he sees the Father doing it? And with what mystery it was said, "I do nothing of myself"; and again, "He has not left me alone, because I always do the things that please him"? For if he does nothing of himself because the Father abides in him, how, again, has the Father not left him alone because he does what pleases him? On your view, heretic, the difference of the sayings does not agree: that he does nothing of himself except as taught by the Father abiding in him; and again that the Father abides in him because he does what pleases him. For if he does nothing of himself because the Father abides in him, how did he deserve that the Father abide in him from doing what pleases him? For there is no merit in not doing of oneself what one does. And conversely, how are the things the Son does pleasing to the Father, when the Father abiding in the Son does those very things? You are in a tight place, impiety, and the well-fortified piety of our faith shuts you in. Either the Son does something or he does not. If he does not, how does he please in what he does? But if he does, how does he do it in the things he does not do of himself? Since it is proper to have done what pleases, and there is no merit in not having done of oneself what one has done.

But, you who contradict, the unity of the nature is this: that he acts through himself in such a way as not to act of himself, and does not act of himself in such a way as to act through himself. Understand the Son acting, and the Father acting through him. He does not act of himself, since the Father is to be shown abiding in him. He acts through himself, since, according to the Son's birth, he himself does what pleases. Let him be weak in not acting of himself, unless he himself acts so far that what he does pleases. But let him not be in unity of nature, if the things he himself does, and in which he pleases, he does not do through himself, but the Father abiding in him teaches him to do them. So the Father teaches by abiding, and the Son in acting does not act of himself; and the Son, acting not of himself, himself acts when he does what pleases. And so the unity of nature is kept in acting, since he who works does not work of himself, and he who has not worked of himself works.

Add to this also what you seize on as a reproach of weakness: "All that the Father gives me comes to me, and him who comes to me I will not cast out; because I came down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of the Father who sent me." But perhaps the Son is without freedom of will, so that weakness of nature imposes necessity on him. And he is subject to necessity, not to will, so that he does not cast out those who come, given to him by the Father. But the Lord, signifying in these words the unity of the mystery, since he does not reject those given to him, since he does not do his own will but the will of him who sent him, after repeating this same saying to the murmuring Jews, confirms the sense of our understanding, saying: "Everyone who hears from the Father and learns comes to me; not that anyone has seen the Father, except he who is from God; he has seen the Father. Amen, amen, I say to you, he who believes in me has eternal life." And I ask first, where the Father was heard, where he taught those who heard? But no one has seen the Father except him who is from God. And how will anyone hear him whom no one has seen? Hearing from the Father, then, he comes to the Son. And when the Son is heard and teaches, the property of the Father's nature, both heard and teaching, is shown in him; so that the Son's teaching and being heard is understood as hearing the Father's teaching. For since no one has seen the Father, and he who comes to the Son hears and learns from the Father so that he comes, we are reminded to understand what it is for the Father both to teach in the Son speaking and, in the Son being seen, to be heard, though seen by no one; because the birth of the Son contains in itself, perfected, the property of the Father's nature. Wishing, then, to testify to the Father's authority while keeping the unity of nature in himself, the only-begotten God both does not cast out those given him by the Father and does not his own will but the will of him who sent him; not that he does not will what he does, or that he who teaches is not himself heard; but so as to show both him who sends and himself who is sent under the property of an undifferenced nature, since what he wills, does, and speaks he signifies to be the Father's will, works, and words.

That he is of free will he shows without ambiguity when he says: "For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so the Son also gives life to whom he will." Where equal power of might and dignity of honour is shown in the Father and the Son, there freedom of will is also shown; but where unity is shown, there the disposition of the Father's will is signified. For the Son does what the Father wills. But to do is more than to obey a will; for to obey a will implies an outward necessity, while to do a will is proper to unity, since the deed belongs to the will. And when the Son does the Father's will, he teaches, through the non-difference of nature, that his will is natural to him together with the Father, since all that he does is his will. The Son plainly wills all that the Father wills, and the natural will does not disagree. For since this is the Father's will, which he shows when he says: "For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day," hear now whether the Son's will disagrees with the Father's, when he says: "Father, I will that those whom you have given me may be with me where I am." There is no doubt, then, that the Son wills. For while the Father wills that believers have eternal life in the Son, the Son wills that believers be where he himself is. Unless, perhaps, dwelling with Christ is not eternity; or Christ does not give perfect and blessed things to those who believe in him, saying: "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." Is he not in freedom of will, willing to give us knowledge of that secret of the Father? And is his will so free that he imparts knowledge of himself and of the Father to whom he wills? And so the nature both of birth and of unity between the Father and the Son is shown, since the Son is so free in will that what he does willingly is a deed of the Father's will.

He who does not know the dispensation of the faith is plainly outside the understanding of the mysteries; and he who has not gained the teaching of the gospel is a stranger to the hope of the gospel. The Father is to be believed in the Son and the Son in the Father, through unity of nature, through power of might, through equality of honour, through the generation of birth. But perhaps the Lord's testimony is contrary to this profession of ours, when he says: "The Father is greater than I." Is this, heretic, the dart of your impiety? Are these the weapons of your madness? Has it slipped your mind that the church does not know two unbegotten ones, and does not confess two fathers? Have you forgotten the dispensation of the Mediator, and in it the birth, the cradle, the growth in age, the suffering, the cross, the death? And at your rebirth did you not confess the Son of God born of Mary? If, abiding the Son in all these, he says, "The Father is greater than I," do you think you need not know that this dispensation of your salvation is the emptying of the form of God, and that the Father, outside this taking up of human sufferings, remained in that blessed eternity of his undefiled nature without taking up our flesh? For we profess that the only-begotten God, abiding in the form of God, remained in the nature of God; and we do not at once pour the unity of the servile form back into the nature of divine unity; nor again do we preach the Father in the Son by a bodily insertion, but that from him a nature of the same kind was begotten, which by nature had in itself the nature that begot it; which, abiding in the form of the nature that begot it, took the form of the nature and weakness of a body. For the property of the nature was there; but the form of God was no longer there, because through his emptying the form of a servant had been taken up. For the nature had not failed so as not to be; but the nature of God, remaining itself, had taken into itself the lowliness of an earthly birth, exercising the power of its kind in the condition of the lowliness taken up. And God born from God, found in the form of a servant as man, acting as God in works of power, was not other than God, as he taught by his deeds, nor did he fail to remain man, in whose condition he was found.

And therefore in this same earlier discourse, testifying to the unity of nature he had with the Father, he had said: "He who has seen me has seen the Father also," and "The Father in me and I in the Father." These surely have no difference, arising from equality of nature, since the beholding of the Son makes good the seeing of the Father too, and one abiding in one does not divide one from one. And so that he might not be thought to render from himself the sight of beholding the Father through bodily beholding, he had added: "Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father in me; but if not, believe at least because of the works"; so that, since power belongs to nature and working itself is the might of power, the unity of the Father's nature in him might be known through the might of the power; since, so far as anyone knew him to be God in the power of nature, so far he would know God the Father in the might of nature; and since the Son, as great as the Father is, enabled the Father to be seen in him in his deeds, the Father would thereby be known as undifferenced from the Son, through understanding him as undifferenced in the might of nature.

So the only-begotten God, about to fulfil the dispensation of the flesh and to complete the mystery of the servile form he had taken, used a profession that would demonstrate our faith, saying: "You have heard that I said to you, I am going away, and I am coming to you. If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father; because the Father is greater than I." Since what concerns the nature of divinity was set out in this same earlier discourse, does this profession take from the Son the equality of nature that a genuine birth completes? Or is it an insult to the only-begotten God that the Father is to him the unbegotten God, since from the unbegotten God an only-begotten birth subsists into an only-begotten nature? For the Son is not his own origin, nor did he, not yet existing, procure his birth for himself out of nothing; but existing as a living nature from a living nature, he holds in himself the power of the nature, while professing the authority of the nature, so as to testify both to the honour and to the grace of the birth received in the honour. And rendering this as due to the Father, that he ascribes his obedience to the will of him who sent him, yet not so as to weaken the unity of nature by the obedience of humility, he became obedient to death, and yet after death he is above every name.

But if perhaps he seems unequal for this reason, that this name is given him after the emptying of the form of God, this slander does not know the mystery of the lowliness he took up. For if the birth of a man brought in a new nature, and lowliness changed the form under the servile taking up, now the gift of the name restores the equality of form. For ask what was given. If what was given is what belongs to God, the gift of this nature brings no lowness upon that divine nature. Indeed, this name now given him, though it has the mystery of a gift, does not have in the gift of the name a foreign name. For it is given to Jesus that things in heaven and on earth and under the earth should bow the knee to him, and every tongue confess that the Lord Jesus is in the glory of God the Father. The honour of this confession is given, then, that he is to be confessed in the glory of God the Father. Do you hear, then, "The Father is greater than I"? Know that he is the one of whom it was said for the merit of obedience: "And he gave him the name which is above every name." Hear again: "I and the Father are one," and "He who has seen me has seen the Father also," and "I in the Father and the Father in me." Understand the honour of the confession given, that the Lord Jesus is in the glory of God the Father. When, then, is it "The Father is greater than I"? Surely then, when the name above every name is given him. And conversely, when is it "I and the Father are one"? Surely when every tongue confesses that the Lord Jesus is in the glory of God the Father. If, then, the Father is greater by the authority of the giver, is the Son less through the confession of the gift? The giver, then, is greater; but he to whom it is given to be one is no longer less. If it is not given to Jesus that he is to be confessed in the glory of God the Father, he is less than the Father. But if it is given him to be in that glory in which the Father is, you have both, in the authority of the giver, that he is greater, and, in the confession of the gift, that they are one. The Father, then, is greater than the Son; and plainly greater, who gives him to be as great as he himself is; who imparts to him by the mystery of birth to be the image of his unbegottenness; whom he begets from himself into his own form; whom he renews again from the form of a servant into the form of God; whom, born in his glory according to the Spirit as Christ God, he gives again to be in his glory according to the flesh as Jesus Christ, God who died. He showed, then, the cause why, if they loved him, they would rejoice that he was going to the Father: because the Father was greater.

So, teaching that this joy came from love, because love would rejoice that Jesus was to be confessed in the glory of God the Father, he at once added the merit of resuming this glory, saying: "For the ruler of this world is coming, and he has nothing in me." The ruler of this world has nothing in him, because, found as a man in condition, he remained outside the sin of the flesh in the likeness of the flesh of sin, condemning sin in the flesh because of sin. Referring all this to obedience to the Father's command, he added: "But so that the world may know that I love the Father, and as the Father has given me command, so I do. Rise, let us go from here." Through love of carrying out the Father's command, he rises in haste to complete the mystery of his bodily suffering; yet at once he opens the mystery of the bodily taking up, through which we would be in him like branches in a vine, branches which would not bear useful fruit unless he had become the vine. And therefore he urges us to abide in him through faith in the body he took up, so that, since the Word became flesh, we might be in the nature of his flesh as branches in a vine; while he set the form of the Father's majesty apart from this taking up of bodily lowliness, at the time when, professing himself the vine for the unity of the branches, he showed the Father as the careful vinedresser of this vine, cutting off its useless and unfruitful branches and appointing them to be burned. Saying, then, "He who has seen me has seen the Father also," and "The words that I speak, I do not speak from myself; but the Father who abides in me, he does his works," and "Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father in me," so as to make plain both the mystery of the birth and the mystery of the body taken up, he comes through the sequence of his sayings to say, "Because the Father is greater than I." And at once, so that the full reason of the saying might lie beneath it, he added the example of the vinedresser, the vine, and the branch, showing thereby the taking up of bodily lowliness. And from this he teaches that the cause of going to the Father, and the gladness of love when he went to the Father, had to be that the Father was greater than he: from whom, namely, he was to resume glory; with whom and in whom he was to be glorified, not with a new honour but with the former one; not a foreign one but that which he had with him. If, then, he is not to be glorified into him, that is, to be in the glory of God the Father, ascribe an insult to his nature; but if his being glorified by him is authority, recognize the Father as greater in the authority of glorifying.

Why do you snatch the dispensation for impiety? Why do you attack the mystery of our salvation unto death? The Father, about to glorify the Son, is greater; the Son, glorified in the Father, is not less. Or how is he less who is in the glory of God the Father? Or is the Father not greater? The Father, then, is greater, in that he is Father; but the Son, in that he is Son, is not less. The Son's birth makes the Father greater; but the nature of the birth does not allow the Son to be less. The Father is greater, in that he is asked to restore glory to the man taken up; the Son is not less, in that he resumes glory with the Father. And so both the mystery of the birth and the dispensation of the incarnation are fulfilled. For the Father, being Father and now glorifying the Son of Man, is greater; and the Father and the Son are one, since the Son, born from the Father, after taking up an earthly body, is glorified into the Father.

So the birth has no baseness of nature, because he is in the form of God, because he is born from God. And although unbegottenness is thought to differ from birth by its very meaning, birth is still not outside the nature of unbegottenness, because it did not take from elsewhere that in which it subsists. For although it did not attain to being made co-unbegotten, it still received from the unbegotten God being what God is. Our faith, then, though not grasping a beginning of the birth, professes that the only-begotten God always is; because nature does not allow it to confess that he once began whose birth surpasses every time of beginning. But while it confesses that he always is and is before times, it does not doubt that he was born in timeless infinity, having nevertheless confessed his birth as one beyond the understanding of a beginning.

But the heretics take this as an insult to the nature, that it was said, "The Father is greater than I"; or this: "But of the day and hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone." Ignorance of the day and hour, then, is charged against the only-begotten God, so that God born from God is not in that perfection of nature by which he is God, since, under the dominion of a necessity of not knowing, some outward force is now stronger than he, which holds him in the weakness of ignorance as though weak against it. Indeed, the madness of the heretics drives us by a kind of right of necessary confession toward the impiety of this understanding, as if it must be believed so, because the Lord said it so, and because it could seem most irreligious to corrupt the declaration of his profession about himself by the opinion of a different understanding of ours.

And first, before the reason and cause of the saying are recalled, we must judge by the sense of common judgment whether it can be credible that he should not know anything of all things, who is the author of all things for what they are and will be. For if all things are through Christ and in Christ, and so through him that all things are in him, how is that which is neither outside him nor not through him not also in his knowledge, when his knowledge commonly grasps, by the power of a nature that does not lack knowledge, things that are neither in him nor through him? But what takes its cause only from him, and receives its movement toward what is and will be only within him, how is it outside the knowledge of his nature, through which and in which what is to be accomplished is contained? For the Lord Christ is not ignorant of human thoughts, not only those stirred by present movement but those still to be roused by the prompting of a future will, as the evangelist testifies: "For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray him." Will the power of his nature, then, which grasps knowledge of things not yet existing and is not ignorant of the disturbances that will come upon minds still at rest, be thought not to have known what is through it and within it? Is he who is powerful over what is another's powerless over what is his own, he of whom we remember it was said: "All things were created through him and in him, and he is before all"; or this: "Because in him it pleased all the fullness to dwell, and through him all things to be reconciled to him"? Since all the fullness is in him, and all things are reconciled through him and in him, and that day is the expectation of our reconciliation, is he ignorant of this day, whose time is both in him and is through his mystery? For this day is the day of his coming, of which the apostle says: "But when Christ your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory." No one, then, is ignorant of what is through him and within him: will Christ come, and not know the day of his coming? The day is his, according to the same apostle, because "the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night": and is he to be understood as held by ignorance of it? Human natures know beforehand, as far as in them lies, what they determine to do, and knowledge of what is to be done follows the will to act: and does God, born, not know what is in him and through him? For through him are the times, and in him is the day; because through him is the ordering of things to come, and in him is the dispensation of his coming. And will he be in such dullness as to be ignorant, by the sense of a sluggish nature, of what belongs to him, like wild beasts and brutes, which, animated without the reason of foreseeing counsel, do not know what they themselves are doing, when, driven by some movement of stupid will, they are carried toward something by chance and with uncertain step?

How, too, will the Lord of glory, if the day of his coming is unknown to him, be believed to be of an incomplete and imperfect nature, which has the necessity of coming and has not gained the knowledge of its coming? Through this, ignorance would be stronger than God, taking from him the power of having knowledge. And how greatly the occasion of impiety is doubled if, besides weakness in Christ, a fault is also assigned to God the Father: that he has cheated the only-begotten God, the Son of his love, of knowledge of this day, and out of a feeling of malice has begrudged him knowledge of the consummation to come; and that, while he willed the day and hour of his passion not to be unknown to him, he denied him the day of his power and the hour of his being glorified in his saints, and took away knowledge of blessedness from him to whom he granted foreknowledge of death! The trembling of the human conscience cannot bear presuming such a judgment upon God and ascribing to him the faults of human changeableness, so that either the Father denies the Son something or God born is ignorant of something.

But God does not know how to be anything other than love, nor anything other than Father. And he who loves does not envy; and he who is Father is not otherwise than wholly Father. For this name does not admit a portion, so that he is father in some respect and not father in another. For a father is father of the whole of what is in himself, having his whole self in him to whom his being father is not by a portion; not that he is father of the things that are his for himself, but that in the things by which he himself is, he is wholly father to him who is from him. And since, according to the natures of human bodies, which come together from unlike parts and consist of compounds, one can be father only of all that is his, since the perfect birth preserves in the children what is in each of the kinds and parts, a father, then, is father of all that is his, since the birth is from all and remains in all. And since in God things are not bodily but absolute, not partial but whole and entire, not made alive but living, whole living and whole one God, since he is not composed of a portion but perfect from simplicity, it is necessary that, according as he is Father, he himself be wholly Father of all that is his to him whom he has begotten from himself, since the perfect birth of the Son makes him Father from all that is his. If, then, the Father is proper to the Son, the Son must remain in that property by which the Father is. But how will he be thought to remain, if he is outside the nature of foreknowledge, and something is lacking to his birth from its author? For almost everything would be lacking if he does not have what is proper to God. And what else is proper to God than knowledge of things to come, so that a nature capable of invisible and not yet existing kinds contains things not yet abiding and to abide hereafter?