On the Trinity 22–27

But why, though we seem to be hastening to another part of the discussion, should we pass over that passage in the Apostle? “Who, though he was in the form of God, did not think it robbery to be equal with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, made in the likeness of men, and found in bearing as a man: he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even the death of the cross; therefore God also exalted him above all, and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of things in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue confess that the Lord Jesus is in the glory of God the Father.” “Who, though he was in the form of God,” he says. If Christ were only man, he would have been described as in the image of God, not in the form of God. For we know that man was made to the image, not to the form, of God. Who, then, is this who, as we have said, was in the form of God? An angel? But we do not read of the form of God even among the angels; except that this one, preeminent and noble above all, the Son of God, the Word of God, the imitator of all his Father's works, since he himself works just as his Father does, is (as we have put it) in the form of God the Father. And rightly he has been declared to be in the form of God, since he himself is above all things and holds divine power over every creature, and is God after the example of the Father; yet he obtained this very thing from his own Father, that he should be both God and Lord of all, and God begotten and brought forth from him after the form of God the Father.

This one, then, though he was in the form of God, did not think it robbery to be equal with God. For though he remembered that he was God from God the Father, he never compared or set himself beside God the Father, mindful that he was from his Father, and that he had the very thing that he is because the Father had given it. Hence, finally, both before taking up the flesh, and also after taking up the body, and moreover after the resurrection itself, he rendered, and renders, all obedience to the Father in all things. By this it is proved that he never thought divinity a kind of robbery, so as to make himself equal to God the Father; but on the contrary, obedient and subject to his every command and will, he was content even to take up the form of a servant (that is, to become that man), and the substance of flesh and body, which he took up by being born, coming as it did from the slavery of the sins of the fathers and of man: and at that time he also emptied himself, since he did not refuse to take up the frailty of the human condition. For if he had been born only a man, he would not have been emptied by this: for a man, when he is born, is increased, not emptied; for when he begins to be what he could not have had when he did not exist, he is, as we have said, not emptied but rather increased and enriched. But if Christ is emptied in being born, by taking the form of a servant, how is he only man? Of him it would more truly have been said that he was enriched when he was born, not emptied; except that the authority of the divine Word, resting for a while in order to take up the man, and not exercising itself with its own powers, lowers itself for a time and lays itself down, while it bears the man whom it took up. He empties himself when he descends to injuries and insults, when he hears unspeakable things and experiences unworthy ones. Yet an excellent fruit of this humility is at once present. For he received the name that is above every name, which we certainly understand to be none other than the name of God. For since it belongs to God alone to be above all things, it follows that the name that is above all belongs to him who is above all things, God. That, then, is the name which is above every name; and it follows that this name belongs to him who, though he was in the form of God, did not think it robbery to be equal with God. For if Christ were not God, every knee of things in heaven, on earth, and under the earth would not bend at his name; nor would things visible or invisible, or every creature of all things, be subject or placed beneath a man, since they would remember that they existed before man. Hence, since Christ is said to be in the form of God, and is shown to have emptied himself into birth according to the flesh, and is declared to have received from the Father the name that is above every name, and every knee of things in heaven, on earth, and under the earth is shown to bend and bow at his name, and this very thing is asserted to serve the glory of God the Father: it follows that he is not only man because he became obedient to the Father unto death, even the death of the cross; but from these higher things, which proclaim the divinity of Christ, the Lord Christ Jesus is also shown to be God, which the heretics do not wish.

At this point I may also gather arguments from the side of other heretics. It is a firm kind of proof that is taken even from an opponent, so that the truth is proved even by the enemies of the truth themselves. For it is so plain that he is presented in the Scriptures as God that many of the heretics, moved by the greatness and truth of his divinity, stretching his honors beyond measure, have dared to proclaim or think him not the Son but God the Father himself. Though this is against the truth of the Scriptures, it is nevertheless a great and outstanding argument for the divinity of Christ, who is so truly God, but as the Son of God born from God, that many heretics (as we have said) have taken him as God in such a way that they thought he should be declared not the Son but the Father. Let them consider, then, whether he is God whose authority has so moved some that they thought him, as we said above, to be God the Father himself: confessing the divinity in Christ in an unbridled and extravagant way, the plain divinity of Christ driving them to this, that whom they read to be the Son they thought to be the Father, because they perceived him to be God.

Other heretics too have so embraced the plain divinity of Christ as to say that he was without flesh, and have taken away from him the whole man that he took up, lest they should impair in him the power of the divine name if they associated a human birth with him, as they supposed. We do not approve this; but we bring it forward as an argument that Christ is so truly God that some, removing the man, have thought him only God, while some have believed him to be God the Father himself: whereas the reasoning and balance of the heavenly Scriptures show Christ to be God, but as the Son of God, and, since the Son of man was also taken up by God, to be believed to be man as well. For if he was coming to man in order to be the Mediator of God and men, he had to be with man, and the Word had to become flesh, so that in himself he might fasten together the concord of earthly and heavenly things alike, joining in himself the pledges of both parties and uniting God to man and man to God; so that rightly the Son of God, by taking up flesh, might become the Son of man, and the Son of man, by receiving the Word of God, might become the Son of God. This most profound and hidden mystery, destined before the ages for the salvation of the human race, is found fulfilled in the Lord Jesus Christ, God and man, by which the human race might be brought to the fruit of eternal salvation.

But the material of this heretics' error has arisen, I think, from this: that they suppose there is no difference between the Son of God and the Son of man, lest, if a distinction were made, Jesus Christ should easily be proved both man and God. For they want the same one, that is, the man, the son of man, to be seen as also the Son of God, so that the man and flesh, that frail substance, may be said to be the same as the Son of God himself. Hence, since no distinction is drawn between the son of man and the Son of God, but the son of man himself is claimed as the Son of God, Christ, only a man, is asserted to be the same as the Son of God. By this they strive to shut out “The Word became flesh and dwelt in us” and “You will call his name Emmanuel, which is interpreted, God with us.” For they put forward and hold out the things reported in the Gospel of Luke, from which they try to assert not what is, but only what they wish to be: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore also the holy thing that will be born of you will be called the Son of God.” If, then, they say, the angel of God says to Mary, “the holy thing that will be born of you,” the substance of flesh and body is from Mary; and he declared that this substance, that is, this holy thing that was begotten of her, is the Son of God: the man himself, they say, and that flesh of the body, which was called holy, is itself the Son of God. So that when Scripture says “holy thing,” we should understand Christ, the son of man, to be a man; and when it sets forth “Son of God,” we ought to perceive not a man but God.

But the divine Scripture easily convicts and uncovers the frauds and thefts of the heretics. For if it were only thus, “The Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the holy thing that will be born of you will be called the Son of God,” perhaps we would have to struggle against them in another way, and other arguments would have to be sought and other weapons taken up, by which to overcome their snares and tricks. But since Scripture itself, abounding in heavenly fullness, strips itself of the slanders of these heretics, we easily rest on what is written and overcome these errors without any hesitation. For it did not say, as we have already set out, “therefore the holy thing that will be born of you,” but added a conjunction: for it says, “therefore also the holy thing that will be born of you,” to show that it is not principally this holy thing that is born of her, that is, this substance of flesh and body, that is the Son of God, but consequently and in the second place; while principally the Son of God is the Word of God, incarnate through that Spirit of whom the angel says, “The Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.” For this is the legitimate Son of God, who is from God himself; who, in taking up this holy thing, both joins the Son of man to himself and draws and carries him over to himself, and by his connection and mingling makes him united with himself and makes him the Son of God, which he was not by nature: so that the principal title to this name “Son of God” is in the Spirit of the Lord, who came down and came; and the consequence of the name is in the Son of God and man; and rightly, consequently, this one was made the Son of God, since he is not principally the Son of God.

And therefore the angel, seeing this arrangement and unfolding this order of the mystery, not confusing everything so as to leave no trace of distinction, set down a distinction, saying, “Therefore also the holy thing that will be born of you will be called the Son of God”: lest, if he had not dispensed this distribution with its due balances, but had left it mingled in confusion, he should truly have given the heretics occasion to declare that the Son of man, as man, is the same as the Son of God and of man. But as it is, setting out part by part the order and reasoning of so great a mystery, he plainly expressed it by saying, “and the holy thing that will be born of you will be called the Son of God,” proving that the Son of God came down, and that he, taking up the Son of man into himself, consequently made him Son of God, since the Son of God associated and joined him to himself; so that the Son of man, adhering in birth to the Son of God, might hold by that very mingling, as lent and borrowed, what he could not possess from his own nature. And so by the angel's voice a distinction was made, which the heretics do not want, between the Son of God and the Son of man, yet with their union; pressing them to understand Christ, the Son of man, as a man, and also to receive the Son of God, and the man as Son of God, that is, the Word of God (as it is written), as God: and therefore to acknowledge Christ Jesus the Lord, connected (so to speak) from both, woven and compounded from both, and united in the same concord of both substances by the fastening of a mutual covenant one to the other, as man and God, by the truth of the Scripture that says this very thing.

“Then,” they say, “if Christ is not only man but also God, and Scripture reports that Christ died for us and was raised, then Scripture teaches us to believe that God died; or if God does not die, and Christ is reported to have died, Christ will not be God, since God cannot be taken to have died.” If they ever understood, or had understood, what they read, they would never speak so dangerously at all. But the madness of error is always headlong; and it is nothing new if those who have abandoned the lawful faith go down even to dangerous things. For if Scripture set forth Christ as only God, and no association with human frailty were mingled in him, their twisted argument might rightly have had some force here: “If Christ is God, and Christ died, then God died.” But since Scripture establishes him, as we have often shown, not only as God but also as man, it follows that what is immortal must be held to have remained incorrupt. For who does not understand that the divinity is impassible, but human frailty passible? Since, then, Christ is understood to be mingled and united both from what is God and from what is man (for the Word became flesh and dwelt in us), who would not easily recognize of himself, without any teacher or interpreter, that it was not what is God in Christ that died, but what is man in him that died? For what if the divinity in Christ does not die, but only the substance of the flesh is extinguished, when in other men too, who are not flesh only but flesh and soul, the flesh alone suffers the assault of destruction and death, while the soul is seen to be incorrupt and outside the laws of destruction and death? For this is what the Lord himself said when he urged us to martyrdom and to contempt of all human power: “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.” And if the immortal soul cannot be killed or slain in anyone else, though the body and the flesh alone can be slain, how much more surely could the Word of God and God in Christ not be slain at all, when only the flesh and the body were killed? For if the soul in any man has this nobility of immortality, that it cannot be slain, much more does the nobility of the Word of God have this power, that it cannot be killed. For if the power of men fails to slay the sacred power of God, and if human cruelty fails to slay the soul, much more must it fail to slay the Word of God. For since the soul itself, which was made through the Word of God, is not killed by men, much more surely will the Word of God be believed unable to be destroyed. And if the bloody savagery of men can do no more against men than to kill only the body, how much more surely will it have no more power in Christ than to kill the body only: so that, since from this it is gathered that nothing but the man in Christ was slain, it is evident that the Word in him was not brought down to mortality. For if Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who are agreed to have been only men, are plainly alive (for “all these,” it says, “live to God”; nor did death, which dissolved their bodies, destroy the soul in them; for it could exercise its right over bodies, but had no power to exercise it over souls; for one thing in them was mortal and therefore dead, another immortal and therefore understood not to be extinguished, and for this reason they were declared and said to live to God): much more surely could death in Christ have power against the material of the body alone, but could not exercise itself against the divinity of the Word. For the power of death is broken where the authority of immortality intervenes.

But taking occasion from the fact that Christ is proved by the sacred authorities of the divine writings to be not only man but also God, other heretics break out and contrive to shake the standing of religion in Christ, wishing by this very fact to show that Christ is God the Father, since he is asserted to be not only man but is also proclaimed God. For they speak thus: “If God is proclaimed to be one, and Christ is God, then,” they say, “if the Father and Christ are one God, Christ will be called the Father.” In this they are proved to err, not knowing Christ but approving the sound of a name: for they will not have him be the second person after the Father, but the Father himself. Since they are easily answered, a few things will be said.

For who would not acknowledge that the person of the Son is second after the Father, when he reads what was said by the Father next to the Son, “Let us make man to our image and likeness”; and after this the report, “And God made man; to the image of God he made him”? Or when he holds in his hands: “The Lord rained fire and sulphur on Sodom and Gomorrah from the Lord out of heaven”? Or when it is said to Christ, “You are my Son; today I have begotten you; ask of me, and I will give you the nations as your inheritance, and the ends of the earth as your possession”? Or when that longed-for scribe too says, “The Lord said to my Lord: Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies the footstool of your feet”? Or when, unfolding the prophecies of Isaiah, he finds it written thus: “Thus says the Lord to Christ my Lord”? Or when he reads, “I did not come down from heaven to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me”? Or when he finds it written, “For he who sent me is greater than I”? Or when he considers the text, “I go to my Father and your Father, my God and your God”? Or when he has, placed with the rest, “But in your law it is written that the testimony of two is true; I testify about myself, and the Father who sent me has testified about me”? Or when a voice is given from heaven: “I have both glorified, and will glorify”? Or when Peter answers and says, “You are the Son of the living God”? Or when the Lord himself approves the mystery of this revelation, and says, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven”? Or when Christ himself says, “Father, glorify me with that honor which I had with you before the world was made”? Or when the same says, “Father, I knew that you always hear me; but I said it because of those standing around, that they may believe that you have sent me”? Or when the definition of the rule is laid down by Christ himself, and it is said, “And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the one and true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I have glorified you on earth; I have finished the work which you gave me”? Or when the same likewise asserts and says, “All things have been handed over to me by my Father”? Or when his sitting at the Father's right hand is attested both by the prophets and by the apostles?

And I should be making it very long if I tried to gather all the sayings on this side; since the divine Scripture, of the New Testament no less than the Old, everywhere shows him born of the Father, through whom all things were made and without whom nothing was made, who has always obeyed and obeys the Father, always having power over all things, but as handed over, as granted, as bestowed on him by his own Father. For what can be so evident that he is not the Father but the Son, as that he is set forth as obedient to God the Father? Lest, if he were believed to be the Father, Christ should be said to be subject to another God the Father.

But since they often urge against us that passage where it was said, “I and the Father are one”, we will beat them on this too just as easily. For if Christ were the Father, as the heretics think, he ought to have said, “I, the Father, am one.” But when he says “I” and then brings in the Father, saying “I and the Father,” he separates and distinguishes the distinctness of his own person, that is, of the Son, from the Father's authority, not only in the sound of the name, but also in the order of the power as arranged; for he could have said, “I, the Father,” if he had been conscious of being the Father. And since he said “one” (unum), let the heretics understand that he did not say “one person” (unus). For “one” put in the neuter signifies the concord of fellowship, not the unity of a person. For he is said to be “one thing,” not “one person,” since it is not referred to number but is expressed with reference to fellowship with another. Finally he adds, saying “are,” not “am,” to show by saying “are,” and “the Father,” that there are two persons. And the “one” that he says pertains to concord, to the same mind, and to the very fellowship of love; so that rightly the Father and the Son are one through concord, through love, and through affection. And since he is from the Father, whatever he is, he is the Son; yet the distinction remains, so that he who is the Son is not the Father, because neither is he who is the Father the Son. For he would not have added “are” if he had been conscious that he, the one and solitary Father, had become the Son.

Finally, the apostle Paul also knew this unity of concord, yet with a distinction of persons. For when he wrote to the Corinthians, he said, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the growth. But he who plants and he who waters are one.” And who would not understand that Apollos is one and Paul another, not that Apollos and Paul are the same and identical? Finally, the offices of each are set out as different: one who plants and another who waters. Yet the apostle Paul set forth these two, not as being one person, but as being one thing; so that Apollos is one and Paul is another, as far as the distinction of persons is concerned, but as far as concord is concerned, both are one. For when two have one mind, one truth, one faith, one and the same religion, one fear of God too, they are one, even if they are two; they are the same, since they think the same. For those whom the account of person divides from each other, the account of religion in turn brings together. And though they are not the same identical individuals, since they feel the same, they are the same; and though they are two, they are one, having fellowship in faith, even if they bear diversity in their persons.

Finally, when Jewish ignorance had been stirred by these words of the Lord, and rashly inflamed even to stones, so that they ran about and said, “We do not stone you for a good work, but for blasphemy, and because you, though you are a man, make yourself God,” the Lord set down a distinction in giving his reason, showing how he had called himself God or wished to be understood as God. “Do you say of him,” he says, “whom the Father sanctified and sent into this world, ‘You blaspheme,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’?” Here too he said that he has a Father. He is therefore the Son, not the Father; for he would have confessed himself the Father if he had been conscious of being the Father; and he sets forth that he was sanctified by his Father. Since, then, he receives sanctification from the Father, he is less than the Father; and consequently, being less than the Father, he is the Son. For if he had been the Father, he would have given sanctification, not received it. And now, by professing that he received sanctification from the Father, by the very fact that he proves himself less than the Father in receiving sanctification from him, he has shown himself to be the Son, not the Father. Moreover, he says that he was sent, so that by this obedience by which the Lord Christ came, sent, he might be proved to be not the Father but the Son, who would surely have sent if he had been the Father; but the Father was not sent, lest the Father, in being sent, should be proved subject to another God. And yet after this he adds what would dissolve all ambiguity whatever and extinguish the whole controversy of error. For he says in the last part of his speech: “You say, ‘You blaspheme,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God.’” If, then, the Lord plainly testifies that he is the Son, not the Father, it is an example of great rashness and enormous madness to stir up a controversy about divinity and religion against the testimony of Christ the Lord himself, and to say that Christ Jesus is the Father, when one sees that he has proved himself not the Father but the Son.