On First Principles 4.4.1–4.4.10

[Recapitulation concerning the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and the other things said above.] It is now time, having gone through the things said above as best we could, to recapitulate each point, by way of reminder, of what we have said here and there, and first of all to repeat what concerns the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. God the Father, since he is both invisible and inseparable from the Son, did not beget the Son by emission from himself, as some think. For if the Son is an emission of the Father, and “emission” means such a generation as the offspring of animals or of human beings usually is, then necessarily both the one who emitted and the one who was emitted is a body. For we do not say, as the heretics think, that some part of the substance of God was turned into the Son, or that the Son was procreated by the Father out of things that do not exist, that is, outside his own substance, so that there was a time when he was not; but, setting aside every bodily notion, we say that the Word and Wisdom was begotten of the invisible and incorporeal God without any bodily passion, as the will proceeds from the mind. Nor will it seem absurd, since he is called “the Son of love,” if in this way he is thought of as the Son of will too. John also indicates that “God is light,” and Paul indicates that the Son is “the radiance of eternal light.” As, then, light could never exist without its radiance, so neither can the Son be understood without the Father, the Son who is called “the express image of his substance,” and the Word and the Wisdom. How, then, can it be said that there was a time when the Son was not? For this is nothing other than to say that there was a time when truth was not, when wisdom was not, when life was not; whereas in all these the substance of God the Father is perfectly reckoned. For these cannot be cut off from him or ever separated from his substance. Though in our understanding they are said to be many, yet in reality and substance they are one, and in them is “the fullness” “of divinity.” But even this, when we say that there never was a time when he was not, must be heard with indulgence; for these very words carry the meaning of a time-word, that is, “when” and “never”; but what is said of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit must be understood as above all time, above all ages, and above all eternity. For this Trinity alone surpasses every sense of understanding, not only of time but of eternity. All other things, which are outside the Trinity, are to be measured in ages and times. This Son of God, then, as he is the “Word” and “God,” who “was in the beginning with God,” no one will consistently suppose to be contained in any place; nor as he is wisdom, nor as he is truth, nor as he is life, or righteousness, or sanctification, or redemption. For none of these needs a place in order to act or to work anything; but each of them is to be understood with reference to those who share in his power and working.

But if someone says that, through those who share in the Word of God, or in his wisdom, or truth, or life, the Word and Wisdom himself seems to be in a place, we must answer him that there is no doubt that Christ, as he is Word and Wisdom and all the rest, was in Paul; and so Paul said, "Or do you seek proof of Christ who speaks in me?" and again, "I live, yet no longer I, but Christ lives in me." Since, then, he was in Paul, who will doubt that he was likewise in Peter, and in John, and in each of the saints, and not only in those who are on earth but also in those who are in heaven? For it is absurd to say that Christ was in Peter and in Paul, but not in Michael the archangel and in Gabriel. From this it is clearly seen that the divinity of the Son of God was not enclosed in any place; otherwise it would have been only in that place and not in another; but by the majesty of his incorporeal nature, since it is enclosed by no place, it is understood to be absent from none. Only this difference must be understood: that even though he is in different beings, as we said, in Peter or Paul or Michael or Gabriel, he is not in all of them in the same way. For he is more fully and clearly and, so to speak, more openly in the archangels than in other holy men. This is plain from the fact that when the saints come to the highest perfection, they are said to become like the angels, or equal to them, according to the saying of the Gospel. Hence it is established that Christ is in each one as much as the measure of his merits allows.

Having briefly repeated these things about the doctrine of the Trinity, we should next briefly recall that through the Son are said to have been created all things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers: "all things were created through him and in him, and he is before all, and all things hold together in him, who is the head." In agreement with this, John too says in the Gospel that "all things were made through him, and without him nothing was made." And David, signifying the mystery of the whole Trinity in the creation of all things, says: "By the word of the Lord the heavens were established, and all their power by the spirit of his mouth." After this we shall fittingly recall the bodily coming and incarnation of the only-begotten Son of God. In this we must not think that the whole majesty of his divinity was shut up within the confines of a very small body, so that the whole Word of God, and his wisdom, and substantial truth and life, was either torn away from the Father or confined and circumscribed within the smallness of his body, and is not thought to have worked anywhere besides; but our confession of piety must keep carefully between the two, so that neither is it believed that anything of divinity was lacking in Christ, nor is it thought that any division at all was made from the Father's substance, which is everywhere. For John the Baptist too indicates something of this kind when, while Jesus was bodily absent, he said to the crowds: "Among you stands one whom you do not know, who comes after me, the strap of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie." For this certainly could not be said of one who was absent, as far as bodily presence is concerned, that he stood in the midst of those among whom he was not bodily present. Hence it is shown that the Son of God was present both wholly in the body and wholly everywhere.

Let no one, however, suppose that by this we affirm that some part of the divinity of the Son of God was in Christ and the rest elsewhere or everywhere; this can be thought only by those who do not know the nature of an incorporeal and invisible substance. For it is impossible to speak of a part of what is incorporeal, or for any division of it to be made; but he is in all, and through all, and above all, in the way we said above, that is, in the way in which he is understood as wisdom, or Word, or life, or truth; and by this understanding every confinement to place is without doubt excluded. The Son of God, then, wishing for the salvation of the human race to appear to human beings and to live among them, took up not only a human body, as some think, but also a soul, like our souls in nature, but in purpose and power like himself, and such as could fulfil unchangeably all the wills and dispensations of the Word and Wisdom. That he had a soul the Saviour himself shows most plainly in the Gospels, saying: "No one takes my soul from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay down my soul, and I have power to take it up again." And again: "My soul is sorrowful even to death." And again: "Now my soul is troubled." For the Word of God is not to be understood as the soul that is sorrowful and troubled, since he says by the authority of his divinity, "I have power to lay down my soul." Yet we do not say that the Son of God was in that soul in the way he was in the soul of Paul or Peter and the other saints, in whom Christ is believed to speak as he did in Paul. Of all of these we must think what Scripture says, that no one is clean from filth, not even if his life is but one day long. But this soul which was in Jesus chose the good before it knew evil; and because it loved righteousness and hated iniquity, therefore God anointed it with the oil of gladness above its fellows. It is anointed with the oil of gladness, then, when it is joined to the Word of God in a spotless union; and through this, alone of all souls, it was incapable of sin, because it was well and fully capable of the Son of God; and therefore it is one with him, and is named by his titles and called Jesus Christ, through whom all things are said to have been made. Of this soul, since it had received into itself the whole wisdom and truth and life of God, I think the apostle also spoke when he says: "Your life is hidden with Christ in God; but when Christ, your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory." For what other Christ is to be understood here, who is said to be hidden in God and afterwards to appear, but the one who is said to have been anointed with the oil of gladness, that is, filled substantially with God, in whom he is now said to be hidden? For this reason Christ is set before all believers as an example: because as he always, even before he knew evil at all, chose the good, and loved righteousness and hated iniquity, and therefore God anointed him with the oil of gladness, so too each one, after a fall or an error, should cleanse himself of his stains with this example set before him, and, having a guide for the journey, walk the steep road of virtue; so that in this way perhaps, as far as possible, through imitating him we may become partakers of the divine nature, as it is written that whoever says he believes in Christ ought himself to walk as he walked. This Word, then, and this Wisdom, by imitating whom we are called wise or rational, becomes all things to all, that he may win all; he becomes weak to the weak, that he may win the weak; and because he becomes weak, it is said of him, "Though he was crucified in weakness, yet he lives by the power of God." Finally, to the Corinthians, who were weak, Paul says that he knows nothing "among them except Jesus Christ, and him crucified."

Some wish that what the apostle says should also be taken as said of that soul itself, when it first took a body from Mary: "Who, being in the form of God, did not think it robbery to be equal with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant"; so that without doubt he might restore it to the form of God by better examples and teachings, and call it back to that fullness from which he had emptied himself. As by participation in the Son of God one is adopted as a son, and by participation in wisdom one is made wise in God, so too by participation in the Holy Spirit one is made holy and spiritual. For it is one and the same thing to receive participation in the Holy Spirit as in the Father and the Son, since the nature of the Trinity is one and incorporeal. What we have said about the participation of the soul must be understood in the same way of angels and heavenly powers as of souls, since every rational creature needs participation in the Trinity. As for the account of this visible world, since a very great question is usually raised about it too, as to how it stands, we have spoken of it above as best we could, both for those within our faith who seek the reason for believing as well, and for those heretics who stir up contests against us and very often toss about the word 'matter', which not even they have yet been able to understand; about this I think it necessary to give a brief reminder now too.

First we must know that we have never yet found the very word 'matter' used in the canonical Scriptures for the substance that is said to underlie bodies. For when Isaiah says, "And he will devour hylē, that is, matter, like hay," speaking of those who are placed in punishment, he used 'matter' for sins. And if the word 'matter' is perhaps written somewhere else, it will nowhere, I think, be found to mean what we are now inquiring about, except only in the Wisdom that is called Solomon's, which book is certainly not held by all to be authoritative. There, however, we find it written thus: "For your all-powerful hand, which created the world out of formless matter, did not lack the means to send upon them a multitude of bears or fierce lions." Very many, indeed, think that matter itself is meant in what Moses wrote at the beginning of Genesis: "In the beginning God made heaven and earth; but the earth was invisible and unformed." For by 'invisible and unformed earth' Moses seemed to them to indicate nothing other than formless matter. But if this is truly matter, it follows that the first principles of bodies are not unchangeable. For those who have laid down as the principles of bodily things atoms, or things that cannot be divided into parts, or things that are divided into equal parts, or some one element, could not place among the principles the name of matter, that is, what properly signifies matter. For when they place matter beneath every body as a substance changeable, alterable and divisible throughout, they do not place it beneath, according to its own property, as something apart from qualities. With them we too agree, since we wholly deny that matter should be called unbegotten or unmade, in keeping with what we showed earlier as well as we could, when we showed that from water and earth, air or heat, different fruits are produced through different kinds of trees; or when we taught that fire, air, water and earth change into one another, one element being resolved into another by a kind of mutual kinship; and also when we proved that the substance of flesh comes from the food of human beings or animals, and that the moisture of natural seed is turned into solid flesh and bones. All these things are proof that bodily substance is changeable and passes from any quality into any other.

Yet we must know that substance never subsists without quality, but that it is by the understanding alone that what underlies bodies and is capable of quality is distinguished as matter. Some, then, wishing to inquire more deeply into these things, have dared to say that bodily nature is nothing other than qualities. For if hardness and softness, hot and cold, wet and dry are qualities, and when these or others of the kind are taken away nothing else is understood to underlie them, then all things will seem to be qualities. Hence those who assert this have tried to argue that, since all who say matter is unmade confess that the qualities were made by God, it is found by this that, even according to them, matter is not unmade, if indeed all things are qualities, which are declared by all without contradiction to have been made by God. But those who wish to show that qualities are added from outside to a certain underlying matter use examples of this kind: Paul, without doubt, is either silent or speaking, awake or asleep, or holds some posture of the body, for he is either sitting, standing or lying down. These are accidents of human beings, without which they are hardly ever found. Yet our mind does not clearly define him by any of these, but we so understand or consider him through them that we do not at all grasp the account of his being in the fact that he is awake, or asleep, or speaking, or silent, or in whatever other things must happen to human beings. If, then, one can consider Paul to be without all these things that can happen to him, so too one will be able to understand the underlying substance without qualities. When, then, our mind, removing every quality from its thought, gazes, so to speak, at the bare point of the underlying substance alone and fixes on it, without regard to the softness or hardness, the heat or cold, the wetness or dryness of the substance, then by a kind of imagined thought it will seem to gaze at matter stripped of all these qualities.

But perhaps someone will ask whether we can also find in the Scriptures some occasion for this understanding. Something of this kind seems to me to be signified in the Psalms, when the prophet says, “My eyes have seen your imperfect being.” In this the mind of the prophet, examining the beginnings of things with a keener gaze and separating matter from its qualities by thought and reason alone, seems to have perceived God's “imperfect,” which is understood to be completed when qualities are added. Enoch too says thus in his book: “I walked as far as the imperfect”; which I think can be understood in a similar way, namely that the prophet's mind “walked,” examining and discussing each of the visible things, until it came to that beginning in which it saw “imperfect” matter without qualities. For it is written in the same little book, Enoch himself saying: “I beheld all the materials”; which is understood as if he said, “I saw all the divisions of matter,” which were broken off from one into the individual kinds, that is, of human beings, of animals, of the sky, of the sun, and of all the things in this world. After this we have shown above, as well as we could, that all things that exist were made by God, and that there is nothing that was not made except the nature of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit; and that God, who is good by nature, wishing to have those to whom he might do good and who would rejoice in receiving his benefits, made creatures worthy of him, that is, able to receive him worthily, whom he also says “he has begotten as sons.” And he made all things in number and measure; for with God nothing is either without limit or without measure. For by his power he comprehends all things, and he himself is comprehended by the understanding of no creature. For that nature is known to itself alone: for the Father alone knows the Son, and the Son alone knows the Father, and the Holy Spirit alone “searches even the depths of God.” Every creature, then, is marked off with him within a certain number and measure, that is, either the number of rational beings or the measure of bodily matter. Since intellectual nature had to use bodies, being found to be changeable and alterable by the very condition in which it was made (for what did not exist and began to exist is shown by this very fact to be of a changeable nature, and so has neither virtue nor wickedness as part of its substance, but as something accidental), since, then, as we said, rational nature was changeable and alterable, so that according to its merits it would use a different clothing of body, of this or that quality, it was necessary that, just as God foreknew the future differences of souls or of spiritual powers, so he should also make a bodily nature which, by the change of its qualities, could be changed at the Creator's will into whatever the case required. This must last as long as the things last that need its clothing; and there will always be rational natures that need bodily clothing: therefore there will always be a bodily nature too, whose clothing rational creatures must use; unless someone thinks he can show by some arguments that a rational nature can lead a life without any body. But how difficult that is, and how nearly impossible for our understanding, we have shown above in discussing each point.

I think it will certainly not seem contrary to this work of ours if we also briefly repeat, as well as we can, what concerns the immortality of rational natures. Everyone who participates in something is without doubt of one substance and one nature with anyone else who participates in the same thing. For example, all eyes participate in light, and therefore all eyes that participate in light are of one nature. But although every eye participates in light, yet because one sees more sharply and another more dimly, not every eye participates in light equally. And again, every sense of hearing receives voice or sound, and therefore every hearing is of one nature; but according to the quality of pure and sound hearing, each one hears more quickly or more slowly. Let us pass, then, from these sensible examples to the contemplation of intellectual things. Every mind that participates in intellectual light must without doubt be of one nature with every mind that participates in intellectual light in the same way. If, then, the heavenly powers receive a share in intellectual light, that is, in the divine nature, by participating in wisdom and sanctification, and the human soul receives a share in the same light and wisdom, these too will be of one nature with one another and of one substance; and the heavenly powers are incorrupt and immortal: without doubt the substance of the human soul too will be incorrupt and immortal. And not only so, but since the very nature of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, in whose intellectual light alone the whole creation has a share, is incorrupt and eternal, it is entirely consistent and necessary that every substance that has a share in that eternal nature should also itself endure for ever, incorruptible and eternal, so that the eternity of divine goodness may be understood in this too, since those who receive his benefits are also eternal. But as in the examples a diversity in the reception of light was preserved, when the gaze of the one looking was described as duller or sharper, so too in participation in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit a diversity must be preserved according to the attentiveness of the senses or the capacity of the mind. Otherwise, let us consider whether it does not even seem impious that a mind capable of God should undergo the destruction of its substance; as if this very ability to understand and perceive God could not suffice for its permanence; especially since, even if through negligence the mind falls away so that it does not receive God into itself purely and wholly, it always has in itself, as it were, certain seeds of restoring and renewing a better understanding, when “the inner man,” who is also called rational, is called back “to the image and likeness” of God who created him. Therefore the prophet also says: “All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall worship before him.”

But if anyone dares to ascribe the corruption of its substance to one who was made after the image and likeness of God, he extends, I think, the charge of impiety even to the Son of God himself; for he too is called the image of God in the Scriptures. Or else let whoever would have it so accuse the authority of Scripture, which says that man was made after the image of God. In man the marks of the divine image are plainly recognized, not through the form of the body, which decays, but through prudence of mind, through justice, through moderation, through courage, through wisdom, through discipline, in short through the whole choir of virtues, which, while they are in God by substance, can be in a human being through effort and through the imitation of God, as the Lord also indicates in the Gospel, saying, "Be merciful, therefore, as your Father is merciful," and, "Be perfect, as your Father is perfect." From this it is plainly shown that in God all these virtues always exist and can never come or go, whereas human beings acquire them gradually and one by one. Hence they seem through these to have a kind of kinship with God; and although God knows all things, and nothing of intellectual things is hidden from him (for God the Father alone, and his only-begotten Son, and the Holy Spirit have knowledge not only of the things they created but also of themselves), yet the rational mind too, advancing from small things to greater and from visible things to invisible, can come to a more perfect understanding. For it is placed in a body, and from these sensible things, which are bodily, it advances to things beyond the senses, which are incorporeal and intellectual. But lest it should seem to anyone an improper expression to speak of senses for intellectual things, we shall use as an example the saying of Solomon: "You will find a divine sense." By this he shows that intellectual things are to be sought not by a bodily sense but by another, which he calls divine. It is with this sense that we must look at each of the rational things we spoke of above, and with this sense that what we say must be heard and what we write considered. For the divine nature knows even what we turn over silently within ourselves. About the things we have said, and about the rest that follow from them, we must think according to the pattern we have set out.