On the Trinity 9.62–10.6

Paul, the teacher of the Gentiles, does not allow us this profession of impious error, that the only-begotten God should be thought ignorant of anything; for he says: "Instructed in love, unto all the riches of the fullness of understanding, unto the knowledge of the mystery of God, Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." God Christ is a mystery, and all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge lie hidden in him. A portion cannot agree with the whole; for a part is not understood as all things, and all things do not allow themselves to be understood as a part. For if the Son does not know the day, then not all the treasures of knowledge are in him: he is not ignorant of the day, containing in himself all the treasures of knowledge. But we should remember that these treasures of knowledge are hidden in him, and not, because they are hidden, absent; since through his being God they are in him, but through his being a mystery they are hidden. Yet the mystery of God, Christ, in whom all the treasures of knowledge are hidden, is not hidden or unknown to us. And since he himself is the mystery, let us see whether, in the things he does not know, he is ignorant. For if in other cases a profession of not knowing does not carry the sense of ignorance, not even now is he ignorant of what he does not know. For since his not knowing, according to the fact that all the treasures of knowledge lie hidden in him, is a dispensation rather than ignorance, you have a cause of not knowing without the sense of ignorance.

For in all the things that God says he does not know, he professes ignorance, yet is not held by ignorance; since with regard to what he does not know there is no weakness of not knowing, but either it is not the time for speaking or it is the dispensation for not acting. God speaks to Abraham, saying: "The cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is full, and their sins are very great. I will go down, then, and see whether they are completing them according to their cry; and if not, that I may know." We have, then, God not knowing what he nevertheless does not fail to know. For since he knows the sins are very great, and yet goes down to see whether they are completed, and, if not yet completed, that he may know, we understand that he does not fail to know because he does not know, but knows then because it is the time for acting. God's knowing, then, is not a change from ignorance but the fullness of time. For he still waits in order to know; and since we cannot understand of him that he does not know, yet he still waits to know, it must be that what he knowingly does not know and unknowingly knows is nothing other than a dispensation either of speaking or of acting.

It cannot be doubted, then, that God's knowledge is from time rather than from change, since, regarding what God knows, it is the time for professing knowledge rather than for gaining it; as we are taught also from what was said to Abraham: "Do not lay your hand on the boy, and do nothing to him; for now I know that you fear your God, and you have not spared your beloved son for my sake." God, then, knows now; but to know now is a profession of earlier ignorance. Since this does not befit God, nor that he was ignorant before that Abraham was faithful to him, of whom it was said, "Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness," this "now I know" is the time at which Abraham received testimony, not that at which God began to know. For Abraham, by the burnt offering of his son, had shown the love he had for God; God knew it then, when he speaks. And since he is not to be understood as not knowing before, it must be understood that he knew it then because he speaks. Of the very many passages in the Old Testament about the knowledge of God, we have shown these only by way of example, so that what God does not know might be understood to be so not because of ignorance but because of time.

In the Gospels we find the Lord, knowing many things, not knowing them. The workers of iniquity, glorying in many mighty works and in his name, he does not know, saying: "And then I will swear, I never knew you. Depart from me, all you who work iniquity." Even with an oath he does not know those whom he nevertheless is not ignorant are workers of iniquity. He does not know them, then, not because he is ignorant, but because by the iniquity of their working they are unworthy of his knowledge: confirming the truth of the saying by the sanctity of an oath, having in the power of his nature that he is not ignorant, and keeping in the mystery of his will that he does not know. The only-begotten God also does not know the foolish virgins; having entered the bridal chamber of his glorious coming, he is ignorant of those who were careless to get oil for themselves. For they approach and ask, and are so far from unknown that they are answered: "Amen I say to you, I do not know you." Their approach and petition do not allow them to be unknown; but the answer of not knowing is not of nature but of will, since they are unworthy to be known by him who is ignorant of nothing. Finally, so that he might not be thought ignorant through weakness, he at once spoke thus to the apostles: "Watch, therefore, for you do not know the day or the hour"; so that, when he urges them to watch because of ignorance of the day and hour, it might be recognized that the virgins were not known by him because, asleep and careless, lacking oil, they had remained unworthy of entering his bridal chamber.

The Lord Jesus Christ, then, who as God searches hearts and reins, is not in such weakness of nature that he does not know, since this very not knowing is understood to come from the knowledge of his nature. And if any should perhaps ascribe ignorance to him, let them fear to be told by him who knows their thoughts: "Why do you think evil in your hearts?" For when the knower, not ignorant of thoughts and deeds, sometimes asks about thoughts and deeds as if an ignorant knower, as about the woman touching the fringe, or the apostles about their disagreement in words, or those weeping about the tomb of Lazarus, he is to be understood not as not knowing but as speaking. For nature does not allow that he who, though absent, knows Lazarus dead and buried should not know the place of the tomb; that he who sees thoughts should not have known the woman's faith; and that he who has no need to ask anyone about anything should have been ignorant of the apostles' disagreement. But for him who knows all things, it is sometimes a dispensation to say that he does not know the very things he is not ignorant of: whether, with Abraham, knowledge is concealed for a time; or, with the foolish virgins and the workers of iniquity, knowledge is denied to the unworthy; or, in the mystery of the Son of Man, the question of one ignorant comes from the man; in all these accommodating himself to the truth of bodily birth, by which the weakness of our nature is held; not so as to be weak by nature, he who is God, but so that God, born man, took human weaknesses upon himself; and took them so, not that the unchangeable nature was reduced into a weak nature, but that in the unchangeable nature there should be the mystery of taking up; since he who was God is man, and he who is man did not cease to remain God. So, acting and confirming himself as born man, while remaining God the Word, he very often uses the profession by which he is man, although the declaration of God is often the same as that of men: when he does not know things which are either not to be confessed at that time or are not acknowledged for merit.

We must understand, then, why he professed not to know the day. If he is believed not to know it at all, the apostle contradicts this: "In whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." There is, then, a hidden knowledge; and because it is to be hidden, not knowing must sometimes also be confessed, so that it can be hidden. For if it is declared, it will not remain in secret. He denies, then, that he knows, so that the knowledge can be hidden. But if he does not know so that the knowledge may remain hidden, he who knows all things does not fail to know by nature what he does not know only so that it may be hidden. And why knowledge of the day is hidden is not obscure. For, warning us always to remain intent with unremitting faith, he took away the security of a defined knowledge, so that the mind, anxious in the uncertainty of a suspended expectation, hastening and always awaiting the day of his coming, might always hope by awaiting; and the very uncertainty, though not about a time to be doubted, might hold it in wakeful care. For so the Lord says: "Therefore you also be ready, because you do not know at what hour the Son of Man will come." And again: "Blessed is that servant whom his Lord, when he comes, finds so doing." Ignorance was necessary not for error but for perseverance. Nor was that denied to our loss which, unknown, gave increase, so that the security of knowledge might not rouse the negligence of a faith grown careless, but an undefined expectation might keep the preparation unremitting: which would always guard against the coming of the thief, always to be feared, since he chooses the time of sleep for theft, while the father of the household keeps watch, always fearing loss.

Although, then, it is not obscure that God's ignorance is not ignorance but a mystery, since through a dispensation either of acting, or of declaring, or of showing, he so does not know as to know, and so does not fail to know as not to know, we must still see whether perhaps he is so weak that he cannot know what the Father knows: able indeed to know the thoughts of human hearts, because a higher nature mingles itself with the movements of a lower nature and passes through it, as weak, with vigorous power; but unable, being weaker himself, to penetrate a nature stronger than himself; because, as light things are passable for heavy, rare for dense, and liquid for solid, so conversely heavy things do not yield to light, dense to rare, or solid to liquid; since strong things are not open to weak ones, while weak things are penetrated by strong. For this reason, then, the impious say the Son is ignorant of the thoughts of God the Father, that, being himself weak, he does not enter the stronger by going in, nor does the feeble pass through the powerful.

If anyone dares not only to say these things of the only-begotten God with rash mouth but even to think them with impious heart, let him recognize that the apostle believed otherwise when writing thus of the Holy Spirit to the Corinthians: "But God has revealed it to us through his Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God. For who among men knows the things of a man that are in him, except the spirit which is in him? So also no one knows the things that are in God except the Spirit of God." But spurning these empty examples of bodily things, let us estimate God from God, and Spirit from Spirit, by their powers rather than by earthly conditions. And let us estimate, not by our sense but by the divine profession, and believe him who says: "He who has seen me has seen the Father also." Nor let us be ignorant of him who said: "Believe at least my works, that the Father is in me and I in the Father." Nor let us be ignorant of him who said: "I and the Father are one." For if the names of things, mentioned according to human understanding, confirm our sense, he in whom someone is seen through understanding has no difference of nature from him; nor does he differ in kind who, having him abiding in himself, is in him who abides; nor are they different who are one. Understand the unity, since the nature is not divided. And again grasp the mystery of an undivided nature, since, as a mirror, one is the mirror of one. A mirror, however, not in such a way that a brightness sends out an imaged likeness of an outward nature; but in that a living nature is undifferenced from a living nature, being whole from whole, which, while it is only-begotten, has the Father in itself, and abides in the Father while it is God.

Since the heretics cannot deny these things, proclaimed by the Lord to signify the mystery of the birth, they try to evade them by referring them to concord of will, so that in God the Father and God the Son there is not unity of divinity but of will: as though divine teaching were poor in words, and the Lord could not have said, "I and the Father will one thing"; or as though this meant the same as "I and the Father are one"; or as though, unskilled in speech, he did not say, "He who has seen my will has seen the will of my Father also," and this were the same as "He who has seen me has seen the Father also"; or certainly as though it were not in the usage of divine speech to say, "The will of my Father is in me, and my will is in my Father," but this saying, "I in the Father and the Father in me," fitted that meaning. All these things are foul, absurd, and impious, and human sense does not yield to such a judgment of foolish opinion, that either the Lord could not say what he wanted or said something other than what he said. And although he is found to have used parables and allegorical sayings, it is one thing to strengthen sayings with examples, or to do justice to the dignity of things by the meanings of proverbs, or to fit oneself to the professions of the times; yet this same passage about unity, which is under discussion, does not allow anything to be believed in the sayings other than what the words sound. For if they are one through willing one thing, and natures separable from each other cannot will one thing, since by the difference of a dissenting kind they necessarily disagree in different wills through difference of nature, how can those will one thing for whom knowing is not one, since knowledge and ignorance hinder the unity of a single will? Since, then, not knowing is opposed to knowledge, opposites cannot will one thing.

But perhaps his saying that only the Father knows confirms that the Son, who said he does not know, does not know. Unless he had plainly said that only the Father knows, a matter of the greatest danger would be left to our understanding, lest he himself be thought not to know. For since in what he does not know there is a dispensation of hidden knowledge rather than a nature of not knowing, through this too, that only the Father knows, he is to be believed not to have been ignorant: because, as we taught above, knowledge with God is not the understanding of coming to know what he did not know, but of speaking. And through the fact that only the Father knows, the Son is not understood not to know; since the Son says he does not know so that others may not know, and says the Father alone knows for this reason, that he himself also may not be ignorant. For if God is said to have known that Abraham loved him at the time when he did not conceal it from Abraham, it must be that the Father too is said to know the day because he has not concealed it from the Son, God not gaining knowledge by sudden learning but declaring it in time. If, then, the Son does not know the day according to the mystery, so as to keep silent, conversely the Father alone must be shown to know the day for this reason, that he does not keep silent.

But far be it to think of the novelties of bodily changes in the Father and the Son, as though the Father at some time either speaks to the Son or is silent. We remember, indeed, that a voice was sometimes sent from heaven for us, so that the meaning of the Father's saying might confirm among us the mystery of the Son, as the Lord says: "This voice came from heaven not for my sake but for yours." But the nature of God does not need the compound necessities of human function: movement of tongue, shaping of mouth, effort of breath, striking of air. God is simple; he is to be understood by our religion, professed by our piety; he is not to be pursued by sense but adored, because a bounded and weak nature cannot seize by the opinion of its understanding the mystery of an infinite and powerful nature. He is not, then, different by the parts of a compound divinity, so that in him there is will after stupor, speech after silence, or work after rest; so that he is not thought to will anything unless there is a movement toward willing, or cannot speak anything unless words sound after silence, or is not understood to do anything unless he goes out into work. He is not subject to the laws of nature from whom all nature takes its law; nor is he held in anything by weakness or change in accomplishing, who is beyond the measure of power, according to the Lord's saying: "Father, all things are possible to you"; so that God can do as much as human sense cannot grasp. But he did not cheat even himself of the power of omnipotence, saying: "Whatever the Father does, these the Son also does likewise." There is no difficulty where there is no weakness; for difficulty is the lot of a power unable to accomplish. For the nature of difficulty lies in weakness of power; and a power that has no measure is not held by the law of weakness.

We have shown this so that God might not be thought to have spoken to the Son after silence, nor the Son to know after ignorance; but that our understanding is to be instructed by expressions drawn from our nature, which would not understand anything to be shown except through a speaker, and would not think anything to be not unknown except by knowing. The Son, then, does not know the day for this reason, that he keeps silent; and he says the Father alone knows for this reason, that he alone does not keep silent toward the one who is his alone. But, as I said, he does not await these difficulties of nature, so as to know when he has ceased to be ignorant, or to hear when the Father has begun to speak. He taught without ambiguity the unity of his nature with him, as the Only-begotten, saying: "All that is the Father's is mine." He was not speaking now of possessing; for it is one thing to be, outside oneself, under one's own sway, another to be oneself in what is one's own: the one is to possess heaven, earth, and the whole world; the other is to signify oneself in the things that are one's own, and one's own not as external things subject to one, but because one subsists oneself from what is one's own. Now, then, when all that is the Father's is his, he signifies the nature of divinity, not a sharing of possessions. For when he was speaking of the Holy Spirit taking from what is his, he says: "All that is the Father's is mine; therefore I said, he will take of mine"; so that, when he takes of his, he might not be thought not also to take of the Father's; or, when he took of the Father's, might not be understood not also to take of his. For the Holy Spirit, who is the Spirit of God, was not taking from creatures, so as to seem to receive from them because all of them are God's. But all that is the Father's is his for this reason, that what the Spirit takes from the Son might not seem not also to be taken from the Father's, since all that was the Father's was understood to be the Son's too.

This nature, then, did not need change, or questioning, or address, so as to know after ignorance, ask after silence, or hear after asking; but, abiding perfect in the mystery of its unity, as it had birth from God, so it had the whole. And having the whole, it did not fail to hold what belongs to the whole, namely knowledge and will; so that the Son would not know by questioning what the Father knows, nor will by being given a sign what the Father wills. But since all that was the Father's was his, he was in such a property of nature that he neither willed nor knew anything other than the Father. To show the birth, however, a showing of the person is very often used, as when it is said: "I did not come to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me." He does the Father's will, not his own, while through the will of him who sent him he signifies the Father too. But that he wills the very same thing he shows without ambiguity, saying: "Father, I will that those whom you have given me may be with me where I am." Since, then, the Father wills us to be with Christ, in whom, according to the apostle, he chose us before the foundation of the world, and the Son wills that very thing, namely that we be with him, the will is the same as regards nature, which, to signify the birth, is distinguished in will.

The Son, then, is not ignorant of what the Father is not ignorant of; nor, because only the Father knows, is the Son therefore ignorant, since the Father and the Son abide in unity of nature; and the Son's not knowing, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, is a dispensation of silence; as the Lord himself testified when he answered the apostles asking about the times: "It is not for you to know the times or moments which the Father has set in his own power." Knowledge is denied; and not only denied, but even concern for knowing is restrained, since it is not theirs to know these times. They themselves, certainly, now after the resurrection, ask about the times, though when they asked before they had been told that not even the Son knew; nor can they seem to have understood, by the ear, that the Son did not know, since they question him again as one who knows. But understanding that the mystery of not knowing was a dispensation of silence, and thinking that now, after the resurrection, the time for speaking had come, they ask. And the Son no longer tells them that he does not know, but that it is not theirs to know, because the Father has set it in his own power. If, then, the apostles understand the Son's not knowing the day to be a dispensation and not weakness, shall we say the Son does not know the day for this reason only, that he may not be God? Since God the Father has set the day in his own power for this reason, that it might not pass into the knowledge of human understanding; and the Son, asked before, saying that he did not know, now in turn answers not that he does not know, but that it is theirs not to know, and that the Father has set the times not in his knowledge but in his power? For since day and moment fall within the name of "times," he who is himself to restore the kingdom to Israel cannot seem to be ignorant of the day and moment of restoring it. But instructing us toward understanding his birth through the exception of the Father's power, he neither answered that he did not know, and, showing that the ability to know was not granted to them, he professed that this very thing rests in the mystery of the Father's power.

There is no doubt that every utterance of human speech has always been liable to contradiction, because, where the movements of wills disagree, the sense of minds also disagrees, as, fighting with the feeling of opposed judgments, it contradicts the assertions by which it is offended. For although every saying is perfect by the reason of truth, yet, while one thing seems right or pleasing to some and another to others, the word of truth lies open to the answer of opponents, because the error of either a foolish or a vicious will strives against a truth either not understood or offensive. For all obstinacy in wills once adopted is without measure, and zeal for opposing persists with unbending movement, where the will is not subjected to reason and no effort is spent on learning, but we seek out reasons for what we want and fit teaching to what we are eager for. Then the teaching that is invented will be one of name rather than of nature; and the reason will no longer be that of truth but of preference, a reason which the will has fitted to itself for the defence of what pleases, not one that would stir the impulse of the will through the understanding of reasonable truth. Through these faults of partisan wills, then, all the contradictions of opposing purposes arise, and there is a stubborn fight between the assertion of truth and the defence of preference, while truth holds its ground and the will protects itself. But if the will did not go before reason, but were moved through the understanding of truth to will what is true, teaching would never be sought for the will, but the reason of teaching would move every will; and every word of truth would be without contradiction, since each one would not defend as true what he wanted, but would begin to want what is true.

The apostle, not unaware of these vicious wills, among many precepts for bearing witness to the faith and preaching the word, writing to Timothy, says: "There will be a time when they will not endure sound teaching, but according to their own desires they will heap up for themselves teachers, having itching ears; and they will turn away their hearing from the truth and turn aside to fables." For when, through zeal for impiety, they are beyond enduring sound teaching, they will heap up teachers for what they desire, piling up schemes of teaching suited to their lusts, not desiring to be taught, but gathering teachers to what they desire, so that the very heap of teachers sought out and piled up may satisfy with its teachings their seething desires. And this great madness of foolish irreligion, by what spirit at last, not enduring sound teaching, will it desire a corrupt one? If it does not know, let it learn from the same apostle writing to the same Timothy: "But the Spirit says plainly that in the last times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, to doctrines of demons, in the hypocrisy of those who speak lies." For what progress in teaching is it to seek what pleases rather than what should be taught? Or what reverence of teaching is it not to desire what should be taught, but to heap up teaching for what is desired? But seducing spirits supply these incentives, and the lies of feigned religion confirm them. For lying hypocrisy follows falling away from the faith, so that there is at least in words a piety which the conscience has lost. And they make this very feigned piety impious by every lie of words, corrupting the holiness of the faith by the schemes of false teaching, while teaching is heaped up according to the desires of partisanship rather than according to the gospel faith. For with ears roused by itching, while they are scratched by the impatient pleasure of hearing, under the novel preaching of their desire, being themselves wholly estranged from hearing the truth, they give themselves entirely to fables, so as to gain for what they say an appearance of truth, while they can neither speak nor hear what is true.

We have plainly fallen into this most troublesome time of the apostle's prophecy. For now that teachers have been sought out to preach a creature rather than God, men pursue human desires rather than the teachings of sound faith; and the itching of their ears has so roused them to hear what they desire that, with teachers heaped up, this preaching alone now prevails for the present, through which the only-begotten God, estranged from the power and truth of God the Father, is in our faith either God of another kind or not God: a deadly profession of impiety either way, either speaking of two gods under a difference of divinity, or denying altogether as God him whose nature is from God by birth. This pleases ears estranged from hearing the truth and turned to fables; the hearing of this sound teaching is not endured, and it is wholly in exile together with its preachers.

But though sound teaching is now in exile from many, who heap up teachers for themselves according to their own desires, the truth of preaching will not be in exile from the holy. For we in exile will speak through these books, and the word of God, which cannot be bound, will run free, giving warning of this same time of the apostle's prophecy; so that, when hearing impatient of the truth is detected and teachers heaped up according to human desires are found, there may no longer be doubt about the time, but truth may be understood to share the exile of the preachers of sound faith, who rejoice in it. We will not complain of the times; rather we will rejoice that iniquity has shown itself through this time of our exile, in which, impatient of the truth, it banishes the preachers of sound teaching so as to heap up teachers for itself according to its desires; glad and rejoicing in the Lord in our exile, that the fullness of the apostle's prophecy has been fulfilled in us.

In the earlier books, then, holding, as I think, the profession of a sincere faith and undefiled truth, although, according to the custom of human nature, no speech is not liable to contradiction, I think we have so governed the reasoning of our whole reply that no one can contradict it except with a profession of impiety. For the truth of those sayings which the heretics take from the Gospels according to the art of their lying has been so shown that in contradicting them it is no longer possible to plead ignorance, but irreligion must be confessed. We have also, by the gift of the Holy Spirit, so tempered the demonstration of the whole faith that they could not even invent any charge against us. For they are accustomed to fill the ears of the ignorant about us, asserting that we deny the birth when we preach the unity of divinity, and saying that by "I and the Father are one" we signify a solitary God: so that the unbegotten God, descending into the Virgin, was born man; who, for the dispensation of the flesh, put the "I" that had so begun, and for the showing of his divinity added "and the Father," as though he were the father of this his man; and, consisting of two, namely man and God, he spoke of himself as "we are one."

But we, declaring a birth that subsists without time, have preached God the Son as God of a nature not foreign to God the Father; not co-equal with the Unbegotten by being unbegotten, but not unequal by the generation of the Only-begotten; that they are one not by the doubled names of a union, but by the birth of nature; that there are not two gods in our faith through difference of kind, nor again a single one because of a solitary God, where the mystery of the only-begotten God is to be confessed; but that the Son is signified and is in the Father, since in him are both the nature and the name of the Father; and that the Father is understood and abides in the Son, since a son can neither be called nor be a son except from a father; that he is also the living image of a living nature, and the form of God naturally sealed in God, of a power and kind so undifferenced that neither his work, nor speech, nor appearance is foreign to the Father; but since the image naturally has in itself the nature of its author, the author too, through his natural image, has worked, spoken, and been seen.