On the Trinity 18–21

See, the same Moses reports in another place that God was seen by Abraham. And yet the same Moses hears from God that no man sees God and lives. If God cannot be seen, how was God seen? Or if he was seen, how can he not be seen? For John too says, “No one has ever seen God.” And the apostle Paul: “Whom no man has seen or can see.” But Scripture certainly does not lie: therefore God was truly seen. From this it can be understood that it was not the Father who was seen, who has never been seen, but the Son, who is accustomed both to come down and to be seen because he came down. For he is the image of the invisible God, so that the limitation and frailty of the human condition might already then grow accustomed to seeing God the Father one day in the image of God, that is, in the Son of God. For human frailty had to be nourished step by step and by increases through the image toward that glory, so that it might one day be able to see God the Father. For great things are dangerous if they are sudden. For even the light of the sun, coming suddenly after darkness, will not show day to unaccustomed eyes by its excessive brightness, but will rather cause blindness. Lest this happen to the harm of human eyes, the darkness is broken up and scattered little by little, and the rising of that luminary, climbing imperceptibly by moderate increases, gradually accustoms the eyes of men to bear its whole orb by the increase of its rays. So, then, Christ too, that is, the image of God and the Son of God, is looked upon by men in so far as he could be seen. And therefore the frailty and limitation of the human lot is fed, drawn forward, and brought up through him, so that one day, having grown used to beholding the Son, it may be able to see even God the Father himself as he is; lest, struck by the sudden and unbearable brightness of his majesty, it should be cut off, so that it could not see God the Father whom it has always longed for. Hence it is the Son who is seen here; and the Son of God is the Word of God; and the Word of God became flesh and dwelt in us; and this is Christ. What reason, in the name of mischief, is there for doubting that he should be called God, who is understood to be proved God in so many ways?

And if an angel meets Hagar, Sarah's maidservant, driven out and put to flight from the house, at a spring of water on the road to Shur, asks the reasons for her flight and hears them, and after this offers her counsels of humility; moreover gives her hope of the name of mother, pledges and promises that from her womb there would be much seed, and that Ishmael was to be born of her, and besides discloses the place of his dwelling and describes his way of life: and if Scripture presents this angel as both Lord and God (for he would not have promised the blessing of seed unless he had been an angel and God): let the heretics consider what they make of this passage. Was this one whom Hagar saw the Father, or not? For he is set down as God. But far be it from us to call God the Father an angel, lest he be subject to another whose angel he would be. But they will say it was an angel: how then will he be God, if he was an angel? since this name has never been granted to angels. Unless it is that the truth shuts us in from both sides to this conclusion: that we must understand it to have been the Son of God, who, since he is from God, is rightly called God, because he is the Son of God; and since he is subject to the Father and the announcer of the Father's will, he has been declared the Angel of great counsel. Therefore, if this passage does not fit the person of the Father, lest he be called an angel, nor the person of an angel, lest he be declared God, but it does suit the person of Christ that he should be both God, because he is the Son of God, and an angel, because he is the announcer of the Father's arrangement: the heretics ought to understand that they act against the Scriptures, who, though they say they believe Christ to be an angel, are unwilling to declare him God as well, whom they read in the Old Testament to have often come to visit the human race.

Moses further adds that God was seen by Abraham at the oak of Mamre, as he sat at the door of his tent at noon; and that nonetheless, when he had seen three men, he called one of them Lord; and when he had washed their feet, he offers loaves baked in the ashes, with butter and an abundance of milk, and urges them to stay as guests and eat. After this he hears that he is to be a father; he learns that Sarah his wife would bear him a son; he comes to know of the end of the Sodomites, which they deserved to suffer; and he learns that God had come down because of the outcry of Sodom. If in this passage they wish the Father to have been seen at that time, received as a guest together with two angels, then the heretics have believed the Father visible. But if it was an angel, when one of three angels is called Lord, why is an angel called God, which is not usual? Unless, so that his proper invisibility may be given back to God the Father, and his proper limitation left to the angel, it will be believed that none other than the Son of God, who is also God, was seen by Abraham and received as a guest. For he was rehearsing in a mystery what he was to be: made Abraham's guest, he was to be among Abraham's sons; and he washed the feet of those sons, to prove that he was the same, repaying to the sons the due of hospitality which their father had once lent to him. Hence too, lest there should be any doubt that it was he who had been Abraham's guest, it is written in the account of the end of the Sodomites: “The Lord rained fire and sulphur on Sodom and Gomorrah from the Lord out of heaven.” So too the prophet says in the person of God: “I overthrew you as the Lord overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah.” The Lord, then, overthrew Sodom; that is, God overthrew Sodom; but in the overthrow of Sodom the Lord rained fire from the Lord. And this Lord was the God seen by Abraham; and this God is Abraham's guest, seen, surely, because he was touched. But since the Father, being invisible, was surely not seen then either, the one who was seen and received and welcomed as a guest was he who is accustomed to be touched and seen. And this is the Son of God, the Lord who rained sulphur and fire from the Lord on Sodom and Gomorrah. And this is the Word of God; and the Word of God became flesh and dwelt in us; and this is Christ. It was not, then, the Father who was Abraham's guest, but Christ; nor was it the Father who was then seen, but the Son; and it was Christ who was seen. Rightly, then, Christ is both Lord and God, who was seen by Abraham for no other reason than that before Abraham himself God the Word was begotten from God the Father.

Further, the same Angel and God, it says, comforts and visits the same Hagar when she had been put out of Abraham's house with the boy. For when she had left the infant in the wilderness because the water in the skin had run out, and the boy had cried out and raised weeping and wailing, “And God heard,” says Scripture, “the voice of the boy from the place where he was.” Having reported that it was God who heard the infant's voice, it added: “And the Angel of the Lord called Hagar herself from heaven”, stating that he was an angel whom it had called God, and declaring him Lord whom it had set down as an angel; and this Angel and God further promises Hagar greater comfort, saying: “Do not fear; for I have heard the voice of the boy from the place where he was. Rise, take the boy, and hold him: for I will make him a great nation.” If this angel is only an angel, why does he claim for himself the right to say, “For I will make him a great nation”, when this kind of power is surely God's and cannot be an angel's? Hence he who can do this is also confirmed to be God; for, to prove this very thing, Scripture immediately adds: “And God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of living water, and she went and filled the skin from the well and gave it to the boy; and God was with the boy.” If, then, this God was with the boy who opened Hagar's eyes so that she saw a well of living water and drew water because of the pressing need of thirst; and this God, called an angel, calls her from heaven, when earlier, hearing the voice of the crying boy, he was rather God: he is understood to be none other than one who is both angel and God. Since this cannot be fitting and suitable to the Father, who is only God, but can be fitting to Christ, who has been declared not only God but also Angel, it plainly appears that it was not the Father who then spoke to Hagar there, but rather Christ, since he is God, to whom the name of angel also belongs, inasmuch as he was made the Angel of great counsel; and he is Angel in that he makes known the bosom of the Father, as John declares. For if John himself says that this same one who makes known the Father's bosom, the Word, became flesh so that he might make known the Father's bosom, then rightly Christ is shown by the Scriptures to be not only man but also angel, and not angel only but also God, and is believed by us to be so: lest, if we will not accept that it was Christ who then spoke to Hagar, we either make an angel God, or count God the Father Almighty among the angels.

What if we read in another place likewise that God is set down as an angel? For when Jacob was complaining to his wives Leah and Rachel of their father's injustice, and telling them that he now wished to go back and return to his own land, he also brought in the authority of his dream, reporting that at that time the Angel of God had said to him in a dream: “Jacob, Jacob.” “And I,” he says, “said, What is it? Look, he said, with your eyes, and see the he-goats and rams mounting the sheep and the she-goats, speckled, white, and spotted, and ash-colored and sprinkled. For I have seen all that Laban has done to you. I am the God who appeared to you in the Place of God, where you anointed for me a standing stone, and vowed a vow to me there. Now therefore rise, and depart from this land, and go into the land of your birth, and I will be with you.” If the Angel of God says these things to Jacob, and the Angel himself goes on to say, “I am the God who appeared to you in the Place of God”, we see without any hesitation that this one is set down not only as an angel but also as God, since he says that the vow was made to himself by Jacob in the Place of God, and he does not say “in my place.” There is, then, a Place of God, and this one too is God. But there it is simply written “in the Place of God”; for it is not said “in the place of the Angel and God,” but only “of God”; whereas he who makes these promises is said to be both God and Angel; so that rightly there is a distinction between him who is called only God and him who is declared not simply God but also Angel. Hence, if such great authority cannot here be taken to belong to any other angel, so that he should confess himself to be God as well and testify that the vow was made to him, but only to Christ, to whom a vow can be vowed, not because he is an angel only, but because he is God: it is plain that he cannot be taken to be the Father, but the Son, God and Angel. And if this is Christ, as it is, he runs a grave danger who calls Christ only a man, or only an angel, taking from him the power of the divine name which he has often received from the faith of the heavenly Scriptures, which often call him both Angel and God.

To all these is added this too: that just as the divine Scripture has often set him down as both Angel and God, so it sets him down as both man and God, the same divine Scripture expressing what he was to be, and already then painting in an image what he was to be in the truth of substance. “For Jacob,” it says, “remained alone, and a man wrestled with him until morning; and he saw that he could not prevail against him, and he touched the breadth of Jacob's thigh, while he wrestled with him and Jacob with him; and he said to him, Let me go, for the morning star has risen. And he said, I will not let you go unless you bless me. And he said, What is your name? And he said, Jacob. And he said to him, Your name will no longer now be called Jacob, but Israel will be your name: for you have prevailed with God, and are mighty with men.” And it adds further: “And Jacob called the name of that place Vision of God: for I have seen God face to face, and my soul has been saved. And the sun rose upon him; soon he passed the Vision of God; but he limped on his thigh.” A man, it says, wrestled with Jacob. If a solitary man, who is he? Where is he from? Why does he struggle and wrestle with Jacob? What had come between them? What had been done? What was the reason for so great a struggle and so great a contest? Why, besides, is Jacob, who is found strong enough to hold the man with whom he wrestled, found to have asked a blessing from the one he was holding because the morning star was already rising, unless it is that this struggle was prefigured, which was to take place between Christ and the sons of Jacob, and which is said in the Gospel to have been accomplished? For against this man the people of Jacob wrestled, and in that wrestling the people of Jacob were found stronger, since they won the victory of their iniquity against Christ; and at that time, because of the crime they committed, they began, uncertain and slipping, to limp most grievously in the walk of their own faith and salvation: and though they were found superior in condemning Christ, they nonetheless need his mercy, they nonetheless need his blessing.

But this man who wrestled with Jacob says, “Your name will no longer now be called Jacob, but Israel will be your name.” And if Israel is “a man seeing God,” the Lord was elegantly showing that he who was then wrestling with Jacob was not only man but also God. Jacob surely saw God, with whom he wrestled, even though in the wrestling he was holding a man. And so that there might be no further doubt, he himself set down the interpretation, saying, “For you have prevailed with God, and are mighty with men.” For this reason the same Jacob, now understanding the force of the mystery and perceiving the authority of him with whom he had wrestled, called the name of that place where he wrestled Vision of God. He added moreover the reasons to offer an interpretation of “Vision of God”: “For I have seen God,” he says, “face to face, and my soul has been saved.” He saw God, with whom he wrestled as with a man: and he held the man as victor, but asked a blessing as from God, as the lesser. So he wrestled with God and with man; and thus this wrestling was prefigured there, but was accomplished in the Gospel between Christ and the people of Jacob; and in it, though the people were found superior, they were found the lesser, since they were proved guilty. Who will hesitate to acknowledge that Christ, in whom this figure of the wrestling was fulfilled, is not only man but also God, since the very figure of the wrestling seems to have proved him both man and God?

And yet even after this the same divine Scripture does not cease to call the Angel God and to declare God an Angel. For when this same Jacob was about to bless Manasseh and Ephraim, the sons of Joseph, placing his hands crosswise on the boys' heads, he says, “God, who has fed me from my youth to this day, the Angel who delivered me from all evils, bless these boys.” And he so far sets down as the same the Angel whom he had called God, that at the end of his words he put the person of whom he spoke in the singular, saying, “bless these boys.” For if he had wished one to be understood as God and another as the Angel, he would have included two persons in the plural number; as it is, he set down the singular number of one person in the blessing, by which he wished the same one to be understood as God and Angel. But God the Father cannot be understood here; but Christ can be understood as God and Angel. And Jacob signified him as the author of this blessing by placing his hands crosswise over the boys, as though Christ were their father, showing by the way he laid his hands the figure and form of the passion to come. Let no one, then, who does not hesitate to call Christ an Angel, hesitate to declare him God as well, since he understands that this same one was invoked as both God and Angel for the blessing of these boys, a blessing arranged by the mystery of the passion in the figure of the hands.

But if some heretic, stubbornly struggling against the truth, should wish to understand an angel in the proper sense in all these examples, or contend that it must be so understood, he too must be broken by the strength of the truth on this point. For if, since all things in heaven, on earth, and under the earth are subject to Christ, even the angels themselves, together with all the other things that are subject to Christ, are called gods, then by right Christ is also God. And if any angel subject to Christ can be called a god, and if this is said and uttered without blasphemy, much more surely can this belong to Christ himself, the Son of God, that he be declared God. For if an angel who is subject to Christ is proclaimed a god, much more, and more firmly, will Christ, to whom all the angels are subject, be said to be God. For it does not fit nature that what is granted to the lesser should be denied to the greater. So if an angel is less than Christ, and an angel is called a god, more consequently is Christ said to be God, who is found greater and better not than one angel but than all the angels.

And if God stood in the assembly of gods, and in their midst God judges between gods; and Christ several times stood in the synagogue; then Christ stood in the synagogue as God, judging, that is, the gods to whom he says, “How long will you accept the persons of men?”, accusing, that is, the men of the synagogue who did not exercise just judgments. Further, if those who are rebuked and blamed are nevertheless seen for some reason to obtain this name without blasphemy, so as to be called gods, much more will he be held to be God who, by the authority of the same reading, is shown not only to have stood as God in the assembly of gods, but also to judge and decide between gods. And if those who fall like one of the princes are nevertheless called gods, much more will he be said to be God who not only does not fall like one of the princes, but even conquers the author and prince of wickedness himself. What reason is there, in the name of mischief, that, when they read that this name was given even to Moses, where it is said, “I have set you as God to Pharaoh”, it should be denied to Christ, who is found to have been appointed not God to Pharaoh, but Lord and God of the whole creation? And to Moses this name was given sparingly, to Christ lavishly; to Moses by measure, to Christ above all measure altogether. “For the Father,” it says, “does not give by measure to the Son: for the Father loves the Son.” To Moses for a time, to Christ without time; for he received the power of the divine name both over all things and for all time. And if one who received power over a single man nonetheless obtains this name of God without hesitation, in the smallness of the power given him, how much more will he be believed to have obtained the authority of this name who has power even over Moses himself?

I could indeed sift through the treatments of all the heavenly Scriptures and stir up, so to speak, a huge forest of evidence concerning this aspect of Christ's divinity, were it not that my purpose is not so much to speak against this heresy as to set out briefly the rule of truth concerning the person of Christ. Yet, though I hasten to other matters, I do not think I should pass over what the Lord expressed in the Gospel to signify his majesty, saying, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it up in three days.” Or when in another place and passage he declares, “I have power to lay down my life and to take it up again: for this command I have received from the Father.” For who is it that says he can lay down his life, or can recover his life again, because he has received this command from the Father? Or who says that he can raise again and rebuild the destroyed temple of his body, unless it is that that Word who is from the Father, who is with the Father, through whom all things were made and without whom nothing was made, the imitator of the Father's works and powers, the image of the invisible God, who came down from heaven, who testified to what he had seen and heard, who came not to do his own will but rather to do the Father's will, by whom he had been sent for this very purpose, that, made the Angel of great counsel, he might unlock for us the laws of heavenly secrets, and who, the Word made flesh, dwelt in us: that this Christ, from us, is proved not only man, because he is the Son of man, but also God, because he is the Son of God?

And if Christ has also been called by the Apostle the firstborn of all creation, how could he be the firstborn of all creation, unless it is that, according to his divinity, the Word proceeded from God the Father before all creation? If the heretics will not accept this, they will be forced to show that Christ the man is the firstborn of all creation, which they will not be able to do. Either, then, he is before all creation, so as to be the firstborn of all creation, and is not only man, since man is after all creation; or he is only man, and is after all creation. And how is he the firstborn of all creation, unless it is that the Word, which is before all creation and therefore the firstborn of all creation, becomes flesh and dwells in us, that is, takes up this man who is after all creation, and so dwells in us with him and in him, so that neither is the man taken away from Christ nor the divinity denied? For if he is only before all creation, the man in him has been taken away; but if he is only man, the divinity, which is before all creation, has been cut off. Both, then, are allied in Christ, both joined, and both connected. And rightly, since there is in him something that surpasses creation, the concord of divinity and humanity is seen to be pledged in him. For this reason he who is declared to have been made the Mediator of God and men is found to have united God and man in himself.

And if the same Apostle reports of Christ that, having put off the flesh, he disgraced the powers, triumphing over them openly in himself, he surely did not say to no purpose “having put off the flesh,” unless he wished it to be understood that he put it on again in the resurrection. Who, then, is this one who put off and put on again? Let the heretics inquire. For we know that the Word of God put on the substance of flesh, and that the same put off again that same material of the body, which he took up again in the resurrection and resumed like a garment. But Christ would neither have put off nor put on the man if he had been only man. For no one is ever either stripped of himself or clothed with himself. For whatever is stripped off or put on from elsewhere must necessarily be something else. Hence rightly it was the Word of God who put off the flesh and in the resurrection put it on again; and put it off because he had put it on in his birth. And so in Christ it is God who puts on, and he must also have put off; therefore he who puts on must likewise put off. And the man is put on and put off, as a kind of tunic of a woven body. And therefore, consequently, it was, as we have said, the Word of God who is found now to have put on, now to have put off. For this is what was foretold in the blessings: “He will wash his robe in wine, and his cloak in the blood of the grape.” If the robe in Christ is the flesh, and the cloak is the body itself, let it be asked who he is whose body is the cloak and whose flesh is the robe. For to us it is plain that the flesh was the robe and the body the cloak of the Word, who washed the substance of the body and cleansed the material of the flesh with blood, that is, with wine, by the passion on the side of the man he had taken up. Hence, inasmuch as he is washed, he is man, because the cloak that is washed is flesh; but he who washes is the Word of God, who, in order to wash the cloak, became the taker-up of the cloak. Rightly, from the substance which was taken up to be washed, he is declared man; just as from the authority of the Word who washed, he is shown to be God.