On the Trinity 28–31

I will further add that passage too, in which, while the heretic rejoices as if in some eye of his own truth and light, which he has in fact lost, he may recognize the whole blindness of his error. For again and again he objects that it was said, “Have I been with you so long, and you do not know me? Philip, he who has seen me has seen the Father also.” But let him learn what he does not understand. Philip is blamed, and rightly and deservedly, for having said, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” For when had he heard or learned from Christ that Christ was the Father? On the contrary, he had often heard and often learned rather that he was the Son, not the Father. For when the Lord said, “If you have known me, you have known my Father too, and from now on you know him and have seen him,” he had not said this in order to be understood as the Father himself; but because whoever has approached the Son of God deeply and fully, with all faith and all devotion, will in every way come to the Father through the Son in whom he so believes, and will see him. “For no one,” he says, “can come to the Father except through me.” And therefore he will not only come to God the Father and know the Father himself, but he ought also to hold it so, and so to take it for granted in heart and mind, as if he had already known and seen the Father.

For the divine Scripture often announces things not yet done as done, because they are going to be so; and things that are certainly to happen it does not foretell as future but narrates as done. Thus, when in the times of the prophet Isaiah Christ had not yet been born, he said, “For a child has been born to us”; and when there had not yet been an approach to Mary, he said, “And I went in to the prophetess, and she conceived and bore a son.” And when Christ had not yet made known the bosom of the Father, he declared, “And his name will be called the Angel of great counsel.” And when he had not yet suffered, he proclaimed, “He was led as a sheep to the slaughter.” And when the cross as yet was nowhere, he said, “All day long I have stretched out my hands to an unbelieving people.” And when he had not yet been given drink with insult, he said, “In my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.” And when he had not yet been stripped, he said, “For my clothing they cast lots; and they counted my bones; they dug through my hands and feet.” For the divine Scripture, foreseeing, speaks as done of what it knows will be, and speaks as completed of what it holds as future, which will come without doubt. And therefore the Lord said in the present passage, “From now on you know him, and have seen him.” For he was saying that the Father would be seen by whoever had followed the Son; not as though the Son himself were the Father who was seen, but because whoever chose to follow him and be his disciple would obtain as a reward the power to see the Father. For he is also the image of God the Father; and to this is added that as the Father works, so the Son also works. And the Son is the imitator of all the Father's works, so that each one may hold himself as though he had already seen the Father, since he sees him who in all his works always imitates the invisible Father.

But if Christ is himself the Father, how does he at once add and say, “Whoever believes in me will himself do the works that I do, and will do greater than these, because I go to the Father”? And he further joins on: “If you love me, keep my commandments; and I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate.” After this he also joins on: “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word; and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him.” He also added this: “But that Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send, will teach you and remind you of all that I have said.” He further puts forward this passage, to show that he is the Son, and rightly adds and says: “If you loved me, you would rejoice that I go to the Father, because the Father is greater than I.” And what when he also joins on this: “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser: every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every fruitful one he cleanses, so that it may bear more fruit”? He presses on further and adds: “As the Father has loved me, so I too have loved you: remain in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and remain in his love.” Further he urges and says: “But I have called you friends, because all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.” He adds this too: “But they will do all these things to you because of my name, because they do not know him who sent me.” The Lord would never have added these things after those, bearing clear witness that he is not the Father but the Son, if he had been conscious of being the Father or wished to be understood as the Father; except that he wished to express this: that each one ought already to hold, when he sees the image of God the Father through the Son, that he has seen the Father; since each one who believes in the Son is trained in the contemplation of the image, so that, grown used to seeing divinity in the image, he may be able to advance and grow even to the perfect contemplation of God the Father almighty. And since whoever has drunk this in with heart and mind, and has believed that it will be so in every respect, may hold the Father whom he will see as though he had already in some way seen him, and may hold it here already as though he possessed what he knows for certain he will have.

But if he had been the Father himself, why did he promise as a future reward what he had already granted and given? For since he says, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God”, he is found to promise the contemplation and sight of the Father; therefore he had not yet given it: for why would he promise it if he had already given it? For he would have given it if he were the Father; for he was being seen and touched. But when Christ himself, while he is being touched and seen, nonetheless promises and says that whoever is pure in heart will see God, by this very fact he proves that he is not the Father, since, while present and being seen, he promised that whoever was pure in heart would see the Father. It was, then, not the Father but the Son who made these promises: because he who was the Son promised what was yet to be seen; and his promise would have been pointless had he not been the Son. For why did he promise the pure in heart that they would see the Father, if those who were present were already then seeing Christ, the Father? But because he was the Son, not the Father, rightly the Son, as the image of God, was then seen; and the Father, as invisible, is promised and marked out to the pure in heart, that he may be seen. Let this suffice, then, to have been said even against this heretic: a few things out of many. For a field, and a wide and spacious one, will open if we choose to pursue this heretic more fully; since in these two passages, deprived, as it were, of his eyes, which have been dug out, he has been wholly overcome in the blindness of his doctrine.

For the order of reason and the authority of the faith, the Lord's words and writings having been set out, admonish us after these things to believe also in the Holy Spirit, promised of old to the church but given at the appointed opportunities of the times. For he was promised through the prophet Joel, but given through Christ. “In the last days,” he says, “I will pour out of my Spirit upon my servants and my handmaids.” And the Lord says: “Receive the Holy Spirit: whose sins you forgive, they will be forgiven; and whose you retain, they will be retained.” This Holy Spirit the Lord Christ at one time calls the Paraclete, at another declares to be the Spirit of truth. He is not new in the Gospel, nor was he given in a new way; for this same Spirit both accused the people in the prophets and provided advocacy for the Gentiles in the apostles. For the former deserved to be accused because they had despised the Law; and those of the Gentiles who believe deserve to be helped by the patronage of the Spirit, because they are eager to come to the law of the Gospel. There is indeed a difference in him in the kinds of his offices, because in the times there is a different reason for things; yet he who acts thus is not on that account different, nor is he another when he acts thus; but he is one and the same, dividing his offices according to the times and the occasions and records of events.

Finally the apostle Paul says: “Having the same Spirit, as it is written, I believed, therefore I have spoken; we too believe, and therefore we speak.” It is one and the same Spirit, then, who is in the prophets and in the apostles; except that there he was for a moment, here always. For there he was not in them so as to be always in them; here, so as to remain in them always. There he was distributed in moderation, here poured out whole; there given sparingly, here lent generously; yet not shown forth before the Lord's resurrection, but bestowed after Christ's resurrection. For he said, “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever, the Spirit of truth.” And: “When that Advocate comes whom I will send to you from my Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from my Father.” And: “If I do not go away, that Advocate will not come to you; but if I go away, I will send him to you.” And: “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth.” And since the Lord was about to go away into the heavens, he necessarily gave the Paraclete to the disciples, lest he should leave them as orphans in some way, which was not at all fitting, and abandon them without an advocate and a kind of guardian.

For he it is who strengthened their hearts and minds, who marked out the mysteries of the Gospel, who was in them the enlightener of divine things; strengthened by whom, they feared neither prisons nor chains for the name of the Lord, but even trod underfoot the powers and tortures of the world, armed now, that is, and strengthened by him, having in themselves the gifts which this same Spirit distributes and directs to the church, the bride of Christ, as her ornaments. For he it is who appoints prophets in the church, instructs teachers, directs tongues, works powers and healings, does wonderful works, grants discernment of spirits, bestows governments, suggests counsels, and orders and arranges whatever other gifts of grace there are; and so makes the Lord's church perfect and complete everywhere and in all things. He it is who in the form of a dove, after the Lord was baptized, came upon him and remained, dwelling in Christ alone full and whole, not cut short in any measure or portion, but distributed and sent in all his overflowing abundance; so that from him others might obtain a certain first taste of graces, the source of the whole Holy Spirit remaining in Christ, so that from him the veins of gifts and works might be drawn, the Holy Spirit dwelling abundantly in Christ. For this is what Isaiah, prophesying, already said: “And there will rest upon him,” he says, “the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and piety, and the Spirit of the fear of God will fill him.” And the very same he says in another place in the person of the Lord himself: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me; because he has anointed me, he has sent me to preach the gospel to the poor.” Likewise David: “Therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your fellows.” Of him the apostle Paul says: “For whoever does not have the Spirit of Christ is not his.” And: “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.”

He it is who works the second birth from the waters, a kind of seed of the divine race, and the consecrator of the heavenly birth, the pledge of the promised inheritance, and as it were a kind of bond of eternal salvation; who makes us God's temple and makes us his house; who intercedes before the divine ears for us with unutterable groanings, fulfilling the offices of an advocate and rendering the services of defense; given as an indweller in our bodies and the worker of holiness: who, doing this in us for eternity, leads our bodies forth to the resurrection of immortality, while he accustoms them to be mingled in him with heavenly power and to be joined with the divine eternity of the Holy Spirit. For our bodies are trained in him and through him to advance to immortality, while they learn to govern themselves with moderation according to his decrees. For he it is who desires against the flesh, because the flesh fights against him. He it is who restrains insatiable desires, breaks immoderate lusts, extinguishes unlawful passions, conquers burning impulses, rejects drunkenness, repels avarice, puts to flight luxurious revelings, binds together love, binds fast affections, repels sects, sets out the rule of truth, refutes heretics, drives the wicked out, and guards the Gospels. Of him the same Apostle says: “For we have not received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God.” Of him he exults and says: “And I think that I too have the Spirit of God.” Of him he says: “And the Spirit of the prophets is subject to the prophets.” Of him he reports: “But the Spirit says plainly that in the last times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, doctrines of demons, of those speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their conscience seared.” No one established in this Spirit ever says “Jesus is accursed”; no one has denied that Christ is the Son of God, or repudiated God the Creator; no one utters any words of his own against the Scriptures; no one lays down other and sacrilegious decrees; no one writes up different laws. Whoever blasphemes against him has no forgiveness, not only in this world but not even in the world to come. He it is who in the apostles bears witness to Christ, in the martyrs shows the steadfast faith of religion, in virgins encloses the admirable continence of sealed chastity, in the rest guards the laws of the Lord's teaching uncorrupted and undefiled; he destroys heretics, corrects the perverse, convicts unbelievers, exposes pretenders, corrects the wicked too, and guards the church uncorrupted and inviolate in the holiness of perpetual virginity and truth.

Let these things, then, concerning the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, be said by us briefly and set down concisely, and not drawn out in a long discussion. For they could have been extended more widely and drawn out in a fuller discussion, since the whole Old and New Testament could be brought in as testimony that the true faith is so. But since the heretics, always struggling against the truth, are accustomed to drag the sincere tradition and the catholic faith into controversy, being scandalized at Christ because he is asserted to be God both through the Scriptures and believed by us to be so, we must rightly (so that every heretical slander may be removed from our faith) so argue concerning Christ's being God as not to hinder the truth of Scripture, nor yet our faith, by which one God is both proclaimed through the Scriptures and held and believed by us. For both those who say that Jesus Christ is God the Father himself, and those who would have him be only man, have snatched the origins and causes of their error and perversity from this: that, noticing it is written that God is one, they thought they could hold that view in no other way than by thinking that Christ must be believed either only man or else God the Father. For they are accustomed to gather up their slanders thus, as they strive to prove their own error. Those who say that Jesus Christ is the Father put forward this: “If God is one, and Christ is God, Christ is the Father, since God is one; if Christ is not the Father, since Christ the Son is also God, two Gods would seem to have been brought in, contrary to the Scriptures.” But those who contend that Christ is only man reason from the opposite side thus: “If the Father is one and the Son another, and the Father is God and Christ is God, then there is not one God, but two gods are brought in together, the Father and the Son; and if God is one, it follows that Christ is man, so that rightly the Father is the one God.” Truly the Lord is crucified as if between two thieves, as he was once fixed to the cross; and so he receives the sacrilegious reproaches of these heretics from either side.

But neither the holy Scriptures nor we give them causes of perdition and blindness, if they either will not or cannot see what is plainly set in the midst of the divine writings. For we both know and read and believe and hold that there is one God, who made heaven and earth alike, since we neither know another nor shall ever be able to know one, since there is none. “I am God,” he says, “and there is none besides me, righteous and saving.” And in another place: “I am the first and the last, and besides me there is no God. Who is like me?” And: “Who has measured heaven with his palm, and the earth with his fist? Who has hung the mountains in a balance, and the groves in scales?” And Hezekiah: “That all may know that you alone are God.” Moreover the Lord himself: “Why do you ask me about the good? God alone is good.” The apostle Paul too: “Who alone,” he says, “has immortality, and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see.” And in another place: “Now a mediator is not of one; but God is one.” But as we hold and read and believe this, so we must pass over no part of the heavenly Scriptures; since we must in no way refuse even those marks of Christ's divinity that are set down in the Scriptures, lest, by corrupting the authority of the Scriptures, we be held to have corrupted the integrity of the holy faith. Let us then believe this also, since it is most faithful: that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is our Lord and God; since “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.” And: “The Word became flesh and dwelt in us.” And: “My Lord and my God.” And: “Of whom are the fathers, and from whom is Christ according to the flesh, who is God over all, blessed forever.”

What, then, shall we say? Does Scripture set forth two Gods? How then does it say that God is one? Or is Christ not God as well? How then was it said to Christ, “My Lord and my God”? Unless, then, we hold all this with due reverence and lawful reasoning, we shall rightly be believed to have given the heretics a scandal; not, surely, from any fault of the heavenly Scriptures, which never deceive, but from the presumption of human error by which they chose to be heretics. And first of all this must be turned back on those who presume to raise against us the dispute about two Gods. It is written, and they cannot deny it, that there is one Lord. What then do they think of Christ: that he is Lord, or that he is not Lord at all? But they do not doubt at all that he is Lord; so if their reasoning is true, there are now two Lords. How then, according to the Scriptures, is there one Lord? And Christ is called the one Teacher; yet we read that the apostle Paul too is a teacher. There is no longer, then, one Teacher; for by this reasoning we infer two teachers. How then, according to the Scriptures, is Christ the one Teacher? In the Scriptures God is called the one who is good; but in the same Scriptures Christ too is set down as good. If they infer rightly, then, there is not one who is good, but two who are good. How then, according to the faith of the Scriptures, is one said to be good? But if they do not think that the fact that there is one Lord can in any way be impaired by the fact that Christ too is Lord; nor that there is one Teacher, by the fact that Paul too is a teacher; nor that there is one who is good, by the fact that Christ too has been called good: let them understand by the same reasoning that the fact that God is one cannot be impaired by the fact that Christ too has been declared God.

God the Father, then, the Founder and Creator of all things, who alone knows no origin, invisible, immeasurable, immortal, eternal, is one God; to whose greatness, majesty, and power nothing can, I will not say be preferred, but even be compared. From him, when he himself willed, the Word, the Son, was born: who is not understood as the sound of struck air or the tone of a voice forced from the lungs, but is recognized in the substance of a power brought forth from God. The secrets of his sacred and divine birth neither an apostle has learned, nor a prophet discovered, nor an angel known, nor a creature recognized; they are known to the Son alone, who has known the Father's secrets. This one, then, since he is begotten of the Father, is always in the Father. But I say “always” in such a way as to prove him not unborn but born. Yet he who is before all time must be said to have been always in the Father; for no time can be assigned to him who is before time. For he is always in the Father, lest the Father should not always be Father. Yet the Father also in a certain sense precedes him, since it is necessary that he should in some way be prior, inasmuch as he is Father. For he who knows no origin must in some manner go before him who has an origin. At the same time the Son is less, since he knows that he is in the Father, having an origin because he is born; and he is in some way near to the Father in his birth (though he has an origin inasmuch as he is born), since he is born of that Father who alone has no origin.

This one, then, when the Father willed, proceeded from the Father; and he who was in the Father proceeded from the Father; and he who was in the Father, because he was from the Father, was afterwards with the Father, because he proceeded from the Father: that divine substance, namely, whose name is the Word, through whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made. For all things are after him, because they are through him. And rightly he is before all things, but after the Father, since all things were made through him; he proceeded from him by whose will all things were made. God, certainly, proceeding from God, constituting a second person after the Father, as Son; but not taking from the Father this, that he is one God. For if he had not been born, then, as unborn, compared with him who was unborn, equality being shown in both, he would make two unborn, and therefore would make two Gods. If he had not been begotten, then, compared with him who was not begotten and found equal, the two not begotten would rightly have produced two Gods; and so Christ would have produced two Gods. If he had been found without origin like the Father, and himself the beginning of all things like the Father, he would have made two beginnings and consequently would have shown us two Gods as well. Or if he too were not the Son, but a Father begetting another Son from himself, rightly, compared with the Father and marked as equally great, he would have made two Fathers, and therefore would have proved two Gods as well. If he had been invisible, compared with the Invisible and declared equal, he would have shown two invisibles, and therefore would have proved two Gods as well. If incomprehensible, if whatever else belongs to the Father, then, we say, he would rightly have raised the controversy about two Gods which these men invent. But as it is, whatever he is, he is not from himself, because he is not unborn; but he is from the Father, because he is begotten: whether as he is the Word, or as he is the Power, or as he is the Wisdom, or as he is the Light, or as he is the Son, and whatever of these he is, since he is from no other source than, as we said above, from the Father, owing his origin to his Father, he could not make a discord of divinity by the number of two Gods, since he took his origin by being born from him who is the one God. In this way, since he is both only-begotten and firstborn from him who has no origin, there is one beginning and head of all things. Therefore he asserted one God, whom he proved to be under no beginning or starting point, but rather the start and beginning of all things.

But the Son does nothing of his own will, nor acts by his own counsel, nor comes of himself, but obeys all his Father's commands and precepts: so that, although his birth proves him the Son, yet his compliant obedience declares him the minister of the Father's will, from whom he is; and so, while he renders himself obedient to the Father in all things, though he too is God, yet by his obedience he shows the one God the Father, from whom he also drew his origin. And therefore he could not make two Gods, because neither did he make two origins, since he received the beginning of his birth before all time from him who has no origin. For since that which is unborn is the beginning for the rest (that is, God the Father alone, who is outside origin, from whom he who is born exists), since he who is born of him rightly comes from him who has no origin, proving that to be the beginning from which he himself is: even though he who is born is God, he nonetheless shows one God, whom he who is born proved to be without origin. He is, then, God, but begotten for this very purpose, that he might be God. He is also Lord, but born of the Father for this very purpose, that he might be Lord. He is also Angel, but destined by his Father as Angel to announce the great counsel of God. His divinity is so handed down that he does not seem, either by dissonance or by inequality of divinity, to have produced two Gods. For since all things have been made subject to him as Son by the Father, while he himself, with the things subject to him, is made subject to his Father, he is proved to be the Son of his Father, but is found to be both Lord and God of all the rest. Hence, since all things put beneath him are handed over to him who is God, and the Son refers back to the Father all things made subject to him as received, he gives back again to the Father the whole authority of divinity; the one God is shown to be the true and eternal Father, from whom alone this power of divinity is sent forth, and, handed over and directed also into the Son, returns again to the Father through the communion of substance. The Son, indeed, is shown to be God, to whom divinity is seen to have been handed over and extended; and yet nonetheless the Father is proved to be the one God, since step by step, by a reciprocal course, that majesty and divinity, sent back by the Son himself, returns and is turned back again to the Father who had given it; so that rightly God the Father is the God of all, and the beginning even of his own Son, whom he begot as Lord; while the Son is God of all the rest, since God the Father set over all him whom he begot. So Christ Jesus, the Mediator of God and men, having from his own Father power over every creature made subject to him, inasmuch as he is God, with the whole creation subject to him, found in concord with God his Father, has briefly proved his Father to be the one and only and true God, while there remains in him that for which he was also heard.