On the Trinity 1–7

The rule of truth requires that first of all we believe in God the Father and Lord Almighty, that is, the most perfect Maker of all things, who hung the heavens on high, made the earth firm as a mass set low, poured out the seas in flowing water, and arranged all these things, both adorned and filled with their own fitting furnishings. For in the firmament of heaven he raised the light-bearing risings of the sun; he filled the gleaming globe of the moon with monthly increases of its orb to comfort the night; he kindled the rays of the stars with the varied flashes of their twinkling light; and he willed that all these should go round the whole circuit of the world in their lawful courses, to produce for the human race days, months, years, signs, seasons, and benefits. On the earth, too, he raised the highest mountains to a peak, sank the valleys into the depths, spread out the plains evenly, and usefully appointed herds of animals for the various services of men. He also made firm the oaks of the forests, to be of use to human needs; he brought forth crops for food; he unsealed the mouths of springs and poured them into flowing rivers. After this, so that he should not fail to provide even for the delight of the eyes, he clothed all things with the varied colors of flowers for the pleasure of those who behold them. In the sea itself too, though it was wonderful both in size and in usefulness, he fashioned many kinds of creatures, now of moderate, now of vast body, bearing witness by the variety of what he established to the skill of the Artisan. Not content with these, lest the roaring and running of the waters should seize an element not its own, to the loss of its human possessor, he enclosed its boundaries with shores: so that when the roaring flood and the wave foaming from the deep gulf came up to them, it would turn back upon itself and not go beyond the limits allowed it, keeping the laws prescribed: so that man might keep the divine laws all the more, since even the elements had kept them.

After this he also set man over the world, and indeed man made to the image of God, into whom he put mind and reason and prudence, so that he might be able to imitate God. Though the first beginnings of his body were earthly, yet his substance was breathed in from a heavenly and divine breath. And when he had given all things into his service, he willed that he alone should be free. And lest freedom, once unbound, should in turn fall into danger, he laid down a command, by which man was taught, not that there was evil in the fruit of the tree, but he was forewarned that evil would come if by chance man's will should lead him to despise the law he had been given. For he had to be free, lest the image of God should unfittingly be a slave; and a law had to be added, lest liberty, unbridled, should break out even to contempt of the Giver: so that he might receive, as a consequence, both fitting rewards and deserved punishments, having as his own whatever he had chosen to pursue, by the movement of his mind, in one direction or the other. From this, mortality, through envy indeed, comes back upon man himself: though he could have escaped it by obedience, he ran into it while, following perverse counsel, he hastened to become God. Yet God nonetheless tempered his punishment mercifully, in that not so much he himself as his labors are cursed upon the earth. For the fact that he is sought for does not come from ignorance, but shows the hope of man's future finding and salvation in Christ; and the fact that he is kept from touching the tree of life does not come down from the malicious spite of envy, but is done lest, living forever, unless Christ had first forgiven his sins, he should carry about with him, to his own punishment, a sin forever undying.

And yet in the higher parts too, that is, even above the firmament itself, which are not visible to our eyes today, he had earlier established angels, ordered spiritual Powers, set Thrones and Authorities over them, and founded many other immense spaces of the heavens and infinite works of mysteries, so that this world, immense though it is, appears to be rather almost the last of God's works among bodily things than the only one. For the regions that lie beneath the earth are not themselves empty of ordered and arranged powers. For there is a place to which the souls of the godly and the ungodly are led, already feeling a foretaste of the judgment to come: so that we might see the overflowing greatness of his works in every part, not shut up within the bosom of this world, spacious as it is, as we have said, but might also be able to contemplate the depths and heights even beneath the world itself; and so, having considered the greatness of his works, we might worthily marvel at the Artisan of so vast a structure.

Above all these he himself contains all things, leaving nothing empty outside himself, and he has left no room for a God superior to him (as some think). Since he has enclosed all things in the bosom of his perfect greatness and power, he is always intent upon his work: he passes through all things, moves all things, gives life to all things, beholds all things, and joins discordant matter into a harmony of elements, so that out of unlike elements one world has been made firm, bound together in such a union that it cannot be dissolved by any force, except when he alone who made it orders it to be dissolved, in order to provide other and greater things for us. For we read that he contains all things, and therefore nothing could exist outside him. Since he has no origin at all, he consequently experiences no end: unless perhaps (which God forbid) he began to exist at some time, and is not above all things, but, having begun to exist after something, is below that which existed before him, found to be less in power since he is marked as later even in time. For this reason, then, he is always immeasurable, because nothing is greater than he; always eternal, because nothing is older than he. For what is without origin can be preceded by nothing, since it is not subject to time. Therefore he is immortal, not failing in the end of a final dissolution. And since whatever is without origin is without law, he shuts out the measure of time, since he feels himself debtor to no one.

Concerning him, then, and the things that are his and in him, neither can the mind of man worthily conceive what they are, how great they are, and of what kind, nor does the eloquence of human speech put forth a power of speech equal to his majesty. For all eloquence is rightly dumb, and every mind is too small, to conceive and to express his majesty. For he is greater than the mind itself, and it cannot be conceived how great he is, lest, if he could be conceived, he should be less than the human mind by which he could be grasped. He is greater also than all speech and cannot be expressed, lest, if he could be expressed, he should be less than human speech, by which, when he is expressed, he could be encompassed and gathered up. For whatever is thought about him will be less than he; and whatever is uttered will be less than he when compared with him. We can in some measure perceive him in silence, but we cannot unfold him in speech as he is. For if you call him Light, you name his creature rather than himself; you have not expressed him. If you call him Power, you name and set forth his might rather than himself. If you say Majesty, you have described his honor rather than himself. And why should I make a long matter of it by running through each item? I will explain the whole at once. Whatever you say of him at all, you will have explained some attribute and power of his rather than himself. For what can you fittingly say or think of him who is greater than all words and all thoughts? Except that in one way (and this in so far as we can, as we grasp it, as it is permitted to understand) we shall grasp with the mind what God is, if we think of him as being that whose quality and greatness cannot be understood and cannot even come into thought itself. For if the sharpness of our eyes is dulled at the sight of the sun, so that our gaze cannot look at the orb itself, overcome by the brightness of the rays that meet it, the sharpness of the mind suffers the same in every thought of God: the more it strains to contemplate God, the more it is blinded by the very light of its thought.

For what can you fittingly say (to repeat myself) of him who is loftier than all loftiness, higher than all height, deeper than all depth, brighter than all light, clearer than all clearness, more splendid than all splendor, stronger than all strength, mightier than all might, more beautiful than all beauty, truer than all truth, braver than all bravery, greater than all majesty, more powerful than all power, richer than all riches, wiser than all wisdom, kinder than all kindness, better than all goodness, more just than all justice, more merciful than all mercy? For all kinds of excellence must necessarily be less than him who is both the God and the Father of all excellences; so that it may truly be said that God is that which is such that nothing can be compared with it. For he is above all that can be said. For he is a kind of Mind, begetting and filling all things, which, without any beginning or end of time, governs by supreme and perfect reason the causes of things, naturally linked together, for the benefit of all.

This God, then, we acknowledge and know, the Maker of all things: Lord because of his power, and Father because of his creating. This is he, I say, who spoke and all things were made; who commanded and all things came forth; of whom it is written, “In wisdom you have made all things”; of whom Moses says, “God in heaven above and on the earth below”; who, according to Isaiah, measured the heaven with his palm and the earth with his fist; who looks on the earth and makes it tremble; who holds the circle of the earth and those who dwell in it as locusts; who weighs the mountains in a balance and the groves in scales, that is, by the sure judgment of the divine ordering; and, lest the mass, lying unevenly, should easily fall into ruin if it were not balanced with equal weights, he evened out this burden of the earthly bulk with due measure. It is he who says through the prophet, “I am God, and there is none besides me.” It is he who declares through the same prophet, “For I will not give my majesty to another”, so as to exclude all heathens and heretics together with their fabrications, proving that he is not God who has been made by the hand of an artisan, nor he who has been fashioned by the invention of a heretic. For he is not God for whose existence an artisan must be sought. And he further added through the prophet, “Heaven is my throne, and the earth the footstool of my feet: what house will you build for me, or what is the place of my rest?”, to show that a temple cannot hold him whom the world cannot hold; and he says this not to boast of himself but for our knowledge. For he does not desire from us the glory of greatness, but wishes, as a Father, to confer on us religious wisdom.

And further, wishing to draw our wild spirits, swollen and harsh with rustic savagery, to gentleness, he says, “And upon whom will my Spirit rest, but upon the humble and quiet, and him who trembles at my words?”, so that man may in some measure know how great God is, while he learns to fear him through the Spirit that is given. In the same way, wishing still more to come to our knowledge and stirring our minds to worship him, he said, “I am the Lord, who made light and created darkness”, so that we should not suppose some nature or other to be the artisan of those alternations by which nights and days are governed, but should rather acknowledge God (as was truer) as their Maker. Since we cannot see him with the gaze of our eyes, we learn of him from the greatness, power, and majesty of his works. “For his invisible things,” says the apostle Paul, “from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood through the things that have been made; his eternal power also and divinity”, so that the human mind, learning hidden things from things manifest, might from the greatness of the works it sees contemplate with the eyes of the mind the greatness of the Artisan. Of him the same apostle says, “Now to the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory.” For he who has surpassed the greatness of thought has escaped the gaze of the eyes. “For,” he says, “from him and through him and in him are all things.” For by his command all things exist, so that they are from him; and by his word they are ordered, so that they are through him; and all things fall back under his judgment, so that, while they wait in him for liberty, when corruption has been laid aside, they may be seen to have been called back to him.

He is the one whom the Lord rightly declares alone to be good; to whose goodness the whole world is witness, which he would not have established had he not been good. For if all things are very good, then consequently and rightly the things established, being good, have proved their Establisher good; and things that come from a good Establisher cannot be other than good. Hence let all evil be far from God. For it cannot be that he should be the originator or the artisan of any evil work who claims for himself the name of the perfect one, of Father and of Judge, especially since he is the avenger and judge of every evil work; for evil does not befall man from any other source than his having departed from the good God. And this is marked in man himself: not because it was necessary, but because he himself so willed. From this it has plainly appeared both what evil is, and it has shone out clearly, so that envy should not seem to be in God, from whom evil would then have arisen.

This God, then, is always like himself; he never turns or changes himself into any forms, lest by change he should seem to be mortal as well. For the change of alteration is understood to be a portion of a kind of death. Therefore no addition of any part or honor ever comes to him, lest anything should ever seem to have been lacking to the perfect one; nor is any loss incurred in him, lest he should seem to have taken on a step toward mortality. But what he is, he always is; and who he is, he himself always is; and of what kind he is, of that kind he always is. For increases show an origin, and losses prove death and destruction. And therefore he says, “I am God, and I have not changed”, always keeping his condition, since what is unborn cannot be changed. For whatever that is in him which is God must always exist, so that he may always be God, preserving himself by his own powers. And therefore he says, “I am who I am.” For what is has this name because it always keeps the same quality of itself. For change takes away that name “is”: for whatever is at some time changed is shown to be mortal by the very fact that it is changed. For it ceases to be what it had been, and consequently begins to be what it was not. Therefore his condition rightly remains always in God, since, without the loss of alteration, he is always both like and equal to himself. For what is not born cannot be changed either: only those things come into change which are made or begotten, since things that once were not learn to be by being born, and therefore by being born to be changed. But those things that have neither birth nor maker have shut out change from themselves, since they do not have an origin, in which lies the cause of change.

Therefore he is also declared to be one, since he has no equal. For God, whatever God can be, must be supreme. But whatever is supreme must be supreme precisely because it is beyond compare. And therefore he must be alone and one, to whom nothing can be compared, since he has no equal. For there cannot be two infinite beings, as the very nature of things dictates. And whatever has neither origin at all nor end is infinite. For whatever has taken up the whole excludes the beginning of another. For if it did not contain all that is, whatever it is, then, being found within that by which it is contained, and so found less than that by which it is contained, it would cease to be God, brought under the power of another by whose greatness, as the lesser, it had been enclosed; and so what contained it would rather have begun to be God. From this it follows that no proper name of God can be spoken, since he cannot even be conceived. For what is contained in a name is whatever is grasped from the condition of its nature. For a name is the meaning of that thing which could be grasped from the name. But when the one we are speaking of is such that he cannot fittingly be gathered up even by the understanding itself, how will he be worthily pronounced by the word of a name, since, being beyond understanding, he must also be above the meaning of a name? So when God, for certain reasons and occasions, adds and puts forward his name, we should know that it is not so much a proper appellation that has been expressed, as a certain meaning that has been set, to which men may have recourse and so be able to obtain God's mercy by it.

He is therefore both immortal and incorruptible, experiencing no loss at all, and no end. For because he is incorruptible, he is therefore immortal; and because he is immortal, he is surely incorruptible: each is entwined with the other in mutual connection, and carried forward to the state of eternity in alternating linkage, immortality coming down from incorruption and incorruption coming from immortality.

Even if we read of his wrath, and have certain indignations of his described, and know of hatreds reported of him, we do not understand these to have been reported after the pattern of human vices. For all these things, though they can corrupt man, cannot in any way impair the divine power. Such passions will rightly be said to be in men, but will not rightly be judged to be in God. For man can be corrupted by them, because he can be corrupted; God cannot be corrupted by them, because he cannot be corrupted at all. These things, then, have their own force to exert, but where passible matter is present, not where impassible substance is present. For the fact that God is angry does not come from any fault in him; he does it for our healing. For he is merciful even when he threatens, since by these things men are called back to what is right. For those who lack reason for an honorable life need fear, so that those who have abandoned reason may at least be moved by terror. And therefore all these wraths of God, or hatreds, or whatever else is of this kind, since they are put forward for our healing (as the facts show), have come from design, not from fault, and do not come down from weakness; and for that reason they can have no power to corrupt God. For the diversity of the materials of which we are made commonly stirs up in us the discord of anger, which corrupts us; this cannot be in God, either from nature or from fault, since he is certainly not understood to be built up from bodily parts joined together. For he is simple, and without any bodily compounding; whatever that is which he alone knows himself to be, he is wholly that, since he has been called Spirit. And therefore those things which in men are faulty and corrupting, since men are angered through the corruptibility of the body itself and of matter, cannot exert the force of corruptibility in God, since, as we have said, they have come not from fault but from reason.

And although the heavenly Scripture often turns the divine countenance into a human form, when it says, “The eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous”; or when it says, “The Lord God smelled an odor of sweet fragrance”; or when tablets written by the finger of God are handed to Moses; or when the people of the children of Israel are set free from the land of Egypt by a strong hand and a lofty arm; or when it says, “For the mouth of the Lord has spoken these things”; or when the earth is said to be the footstool of God's feet; or when it says, “Incline your ear and hear”: we who say that the Law is spiritual do not enclose the measure or shape of the divine majesty within these outlines of our body, but spread it out without any limit over the plains (so to speak) of its boundless greatness. For it is written: “If I go up into heaven, you are there; if I go down to the underworld, you are present; and if I take my wings and go away across the sea, there your hand will lay hold of me and your right hand will hold me fast.” For we recognize the reasoning of divine Scripture from the adjustment of its arrangement. For the prophet then still spoke of God in parables, suited to the stage of faith at that time, not as God was, but as the people were able to grasp. That these things are said of God in this way, then, is to be charged not to God but rather to the people. So too the people are permitted to set up a tabernacle, and yet God is not shut up and contained within the tabernacle; so too a temple is built, and yet God is by no means fenced in within the narrow bounds of a temple. It is not God, then, who is limited, but the understanding of the people that is limited; not God who is narrow, but the understanding of the people's reason that is narrow.

Finally, in the Gospel the Lord said, “The hour will come when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem”; and he gave the reason, saying, “God is Spirit; and therefore those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.” There, then, it is the workings of God that are shown by the members, not the outward form of God or bodily outlines that are set out. For when eyes are described, it is expressed that he sees all things; and when an ear, it is put forward that he hears all things; and when a finger, a certain meaning of his will is disclosed; and when nostrils, his perception of prayers as though of fragrances is shown; and when a hand, it is proved that he is the author of every creature; and when an arm, it is declared that no nature can resist his strength; and when feet, it is explained that he fills all things and that there is nothing where God is not. For neither members nor the functions of members are necessary to him at whose will alone, even unspoken, all things both serve and are present. For why should he require eyes, who is Light? Or why should he seek feet, who is everywhere? Or why should he wish to walk, when there is nowhere outside himself to which he could go? Or why should he want hands, whose silent will is the artisan for establishing all things? Nor does he need ears, who knows even unspoken wishes. Or for what reason should he seek a tongue, for whom to think is to command? These members were necessary to men, not to God, because man's purpose would have been ineffective had the body not carried out his thought; but to God they are not necessary, since works not only follow his will without any effort, but the works themselves come forth at once together with the will. Rather, he is himself wholly eye, because he wholly sees; wholly ear, because he wholly hears; wholly hand, because he wholly works; and wholly foot, because he is wholly everywhere. For whatever he is, he is wholly equal and wholly everywhere. For whatever is simple has no diversity of itself within itself. For only those things fall into a diversity of members which come by birth into dissolution. But things that are not compounded cannot suffer this. For what is immortal, whatever it is, is itself one and simple and eternal. And therefore, because it is one, it cannot be dissolved; since whatever is itself placed beyond the rule of dissolution is freed from the laws of death.

But as for the Lord's saying that God is Spirit, I think that Christ spoke thus of the Father meaning that something still more should be understood than that God is Spirit. For although in his Gospel he reasons with men so as to increase their understanding, yet he too still speaks of God to men in such a way as they are still able to hear or grasp, although, as we have said, he strives to make them advance devoutly in the knowledge of God. For we find it written that God has been called Love; yet the substance of God is not expressed by this as Love. And that he has been called Light; yet the substance of God is not in this either; but all this has been said of God so far as it can be said. So that rightly, when he has been called Spirit, he has not been called all that he is; but when the mind of man, by understanding, has advanced as far as Spirit itself, having itself now been turned into spirit, it may be able to infer through the Spirit that God is something still greater. For that which he is, as he is, can neither be spoken by human speech, nor perceived by human ears, nor gathered by human senses. For if the things that God has prepared for those who love him neither eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man or the mind itself perceived, of what kind and how great is he who promises these things, to understand which both the mind and the nature of man have failed?

Finally, if you take Spirit as the substance of God, you will have made God a creature. For every spirit is a creature. God, then, will now have been made. Just so, if according to Moses you take God to be Fire, by calling him a creature you will have described something established, and will not have taught of the Establisher. But these things are figurative expressions rather than what he actually is. For in the Old Testament God is called Fire so that fear may be struck into a sinful people, since he is shown as Judge. And in the New Testament he is declared to be Spirit, so that he may be proved to be the restorer and creator of those dead in their sins, through this goodness of the pardon bestowed on believers.