Dialogues on the Holy Trinity 1 part 1/23

Human speech is indeed far too coarse, and unable to keep pace with the subtlety of concepts.

Therefore great is the awe one should feel in speaking of the things concerning God, and it is truly very wise to choose silence in these matters;

yet this is by no means without consequence for those charged with teaching.

Knowing this, the divinely inspired Paul said:

'For woe is me if I do not preach the gospel.' I have therefore set myself to the composition of this present book, and I have once again labored, for you, most studious brother Nemesinus, over this discourse on the holy and consubstantial Trinity.

Having gathered together, by genus, or rather by kind, the concepts pertaining to each of the questions at hand, we have composed the whole body of the book in seven short discourses;

and we have addressed it to the most reasonable Hermias, who is exceedingly devoted to learning and constantly eager to inquire into such matters.

The discourse is relaxed in style, but proceeds, in the manner of question and answer, through two persons;

the letter A is set before the first, and the letter B before the second.

For since the matters under inquiry involve very great subtlety, so that by the questions and answers the point being tested might always be sharply established and then sharply overturned, the introduction of these two persons became necessary.

One must therefore watch carefully the letters set before their names.

For in this way we shall keep the discovery of the concepts unconfused and arranged in the very best order, and preserve the structure and force of the whole book.

I pray that you fare well in the Lord, beloved.

That the Son is co-eternal and consubstantial with God the Father.

That the Son is also co-eternal with God the Father, and begotten of him by nature.

That the Son is true God, even as the Father is.

That the Son is neither a creature nor a thing made.

That the properties of the Godhead, and the glory, belong to the Son by nature, even as they do to the Father.

That the properties of humanity, and those sayings about the Son not altogether befitting God, would apply rather to the economy in the flesh, and not to the very nature of the Word insofar as he is understood, and is, God.

Concerning the Holy Spirit: that he too is God, and is of God by nature.

Of our father among the saints, Cyril, to Hermias the presbyter, in the form of question and answer. FIRST DISCOURSE. That the Son is consubstantial and co-eternal with God the Father.

{A.} It was not possible to see our reverend Hermias yesterday or the day before; it seems he was neither out shopping nor going anywhere at all, but the storm kept him shut up at home;

for that is very likely what happened.

But now at last fair, bright weather has shown itself.

For old age is always as harsh as a storm, and most reluctant to go outdoors, especially when it is raining;

they pour in together in shoals, and, diving into the flowering weed as into some thicket or copse, they contrive their own advantage;

but when the gleam of the sun's rays comes to float upon the waters, and they now behold the whole sea as if it were laughing, they take fresh courage and swim up again, and leap upon the crests of the waves, having cast off both fear and hesitation together.

{B.} Be well assured, my friend, that my case is exactly so, and not otherwise.

{A.} So for the time being you are very far removed from crowds and business, and your mind rests quietly by your own hearth, I suppose.

{B.} And what follows from that? {A.} The greatest benefit, and one befitting holiness.

Shall we not then grant that quiet repose too is among the good things? {B.} Certainly.

{A.} For what was sung by God through the lyre of the Psalmist will surely declare the truth on this very point.

{B.} What do you mean? {A.} 'Be still, and know that I am God.' For bodily sight, when free from dust and smoke and everything else capable of clouding it, exercises a fine and unhindered activity upon the things that customarily come under it.

But if it is in any way impaired by some affection, it will apply itself less than it should to the things seen, and will err, since it is not at all improbable that even precision itself should sometimes miss the mark.

The human mind, indeed, if it is calm and settled, and accustomed to be free of stale and foul imaginings, will look with a sharp and clear gaze, and will receive an unerring knowledge of the things that are.

But if it is made dull by some passion, it will never behold the divine beauty itself, but will settle, as it were, upon more earthbound things — just as drenched sparrows, weighed down as they are, are deprived of their flight upward.

{A.} Tell me then, Hermias: as you pass your leisure at home, do you think it fitting to have remembered this divine word? Are the sacred books, as yesterday and the day before, still in your hands, and is a most studious eagerness still nourished in your mind, whetting it, as it were, like one of the keenest-scented hounds, for the eager pursuit of whatever you need to learn? Or shall we perhaps rather blame your bodily years, now past their prime, for your idleness in these matters — or will you say something else, and not the truth? I could most gladly tease you, saying something of this sort: that an old man is a creature fond of lying, who seeks to have whatever he happens to wish and say accepted at once as trustworthy.

{B.} I could bring many charges against the weakness of my body;

for we have come to the very setting sun of life;

but I will say now what is necessary, and set such things aside.

My mind is indeed always eager for good learning, and desires, I think, nothing else now but this one thing alone;

but just as some noble, swift-running colt, though eager to display the excellence of its legs, is compelled, against its will, by ground not wholly level and cleared, to give a broken and less than admirable demonstration of the vigor within it;

in just the same way, I think, I myself too, gripped by a burning and irrepressible eagerness to search diligently into the things contained in the divinely inspired Scripture, am held back by places hard to enter and untrodden — the approach to which is not simple, as one might suppose, nor easy to traverse, nor lying open for those who wish to take hold of it.

In this way the ruggedness of the terrain sometimes drives the mind, as it were, into hesitation;

and of all such places I have shuddered most at the discourse concerning faith, even though it is the very sum of the hope that is in us.

{A.} Yes indeed — for I would say you speak the truth.

Yet it is surely plain to everyone that no one, I think, could obtain any of the good things from above, given by God, without labor.

For things exceedingly transcendent, whose glory is set on high, are not smooth paths for those who wish to attain them, but are not easily grasped, hard of access, and steep;

yet God gives to all simply and without reproach — and shall it not be given him? For surely it is by the divine and intelligible Light that things lacking light are illumined, and it is by Wisdom that things bereft of understanding and wisdom are made wise.

For it says, 'Until the day dawns, and the morning star rises in your hearts' — calling, I think, by 'the dawning of the day' and 'the rising morning star,' the illumination given through Christ in the Spirit.

{B.} That Christ is light, and indeed day and radiance and morning star, to those once numbered among those called through faith, no one could doubt.

But if we were to ask it of you, would you set forth for us, most clearly, the unswerving and blameless account of the faith — or will you refuse to speak, and instead indulge that hesitancy which is customary and fitting for me, and always somehow bound up with old age? For countless indeed are the things bandied about by many, who, flattering away the right doctrine of truth, twist it in various ways to suit their own fancy, and, flying about like wild wasps, buzz terribly over cities and lands alike, speaking, as it is written, the things from their own heart, and not from the mouth of the Lord.

{A.} How I admire you, my friend, for your incomparable love of God, and I beg you never to abandon so upright and praiseworthy a resolve.

Yet, my companion, as for sharing with you, quite without toil and abundantly, in the things you desire — I do not at all claim to be able to fathom the intelligible doctrine fully, as though promising to say and teach something better than those before us.

Enough, enough are the writings of the holy Fathers on this subject; if anyone should choose to engage them with understanding and approach them watchfully, he would at once fill his own mind with the divine light.

For it was not they themselves who spoke, according to the word of the Savior, but the Spirit of God the Father speaking in them. And 'all Scripture is God-breathed and profitable.' Is that not so? {B.} Yes, this too is true;

but if you yourself should hold back and contribute nothing whatever, and, shutting your tongue behind your teeth, as it were, should persuade us to inactivity — attempting to raise up, as a fortification against those eager to hear such things, the hard-to-overturn, hard-to-refute pretext that the Fathers have spoken sufficiently and adequately on such matters for us — I could not commend one who chose to act so; and, since you ask, I think it right to say just this.

{A.} What, then, would you ask of me? Surely do not disparage my modest understanding, noble friend.

{B.} To disparage you is not at all my aim — far from it;

but answer, then, and do not, by shifting about, carry me away from the pursuit of what I need to inquire of you.

{A.} Well then, ask, if you please.

{B.} If one of our own people thought to pasture sheep, or perhaps goats, in the fields, would you not think he needed a shepherd's crook and dogs, so that he himself might defend against any of the wild beasts that happened to attack —

and the dogs, forestalling the danger with their own barking, might check the boldness of the assault, and keep the flock unharmed for its owner? {A.} You have spoken rightly.

{B.} But if, as time passed, some of the dogs happened to die, and the shepherd then brought in others, would the barking and vigilance of this second set be pointless, seeing that it was in just these things that their predecessors were reputed to excel? {A.} And how could what is beneficial be thought or called pointless? {B.} Then will you yourself remain silent without reproach, directing us only to the writings of the Fathers, and calling it a superfluous thing to wish to pursue equal zeal in the most God-loving studies — even while the savage heretics, with unbridled and ungated mouth, are devouring the souls of the more simple? {A.} Very well then, since a keen desire has taken hold of me —

come, come, let us set before us the matters precisely and carefully determined by that holy and all-glorious council once gathered in the city of Nicaea, and let us consider, if you agree, what point in it those who have chosen heterodoxy find not free of reproach.

For if anyone's aim is to declare that the faith, most excellently defined and set forth, with God's help, by that holy and great council, is the unshaken and firmly grounded foundation and base of our souls, he will speak most soundly, and will win praise from Christ, and will shine forth as a most faithful and true worshiper.

Let there, then, be recorded for us, word for word, the divine and most sacred pronouncement of that holy council — that is, the Symbol of the faith, polished and finely wrought with concepts true in every respect — so that no argument whatever might be admitted by those who wish to find fault with our manner of speaking, as though we were leaping after certain foreign doctrines, and had abandoned the royal road to turn aside to one side, according to what seems right to one's own private judgment alone.

For this, I myself would reckon, is truly a disease of the mind not easily cured.

For 'wisdom that is untested goes astray,' as it is written.

The exposition of the faith is, then, as follows:

We believe in one God, Father almighty, maker of all things visible and invisible;

and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father as Only-begotten, that is, from his substance, God from God, light from light, true God from true God;

begotten, not made, of one substance with the Father, through whom all things came into being, both those in heaven and those on earth;

who for us men and for our salvation came down, and was made flesh, and became man, suffered, and was buried, and rose again on the third day;

ascended into the heavens, and comes to judge the living and the dead;

that he came into being from things that did not exist, or that the Son of God is of a different hypostasis or substance, or that he is created, or mutable, or alterable — those who assert such things the catholic and apostolic Church anathematizes.

{B.} Ah, what unadulterated sobriety, arriving at the loftiest conclusion!

Boanerges, that is, 'son of thunder' — each one, I suppose, of those who have thus proclaimed these things will be called.

For they have uttered something extraordinary and beyond nature.

{A.} I think, then, that I have both reflected upon this and acted most excellently.

For the necessity of holding no other opinions besides these, nor having anything else upon one's lips, but rather following the judgment and the words discovered through the Spirit — this, be well assured, I would honor above every argument.

But you could not persuade those on the opposite side to choose to think as you do.

For like certain disgraced and insolent calves, they rush headlong after what seems good to themselves, and running past the finest and truly most beautiful pasture, they hasten toward thorns and thistles, being fed upon the words of certain senseless false teachers — over whom perhaps even the Word of Wisdom herself has shed tears.

O those who have forsaken the straight paths to walk in the ways of darkness, who rejoice in evils and delight in wicked perversion, whose paths are crooked and whose tracks are winding! {A.} Well said.

It would also be most fitting to lament them, together with the prophet Jeremiah, saying:

'Who will give water to my head, and a fountain of tears to my eyes, that I may weep for this people day and night?' For he who, when it was possible to choose the knowledge of the truth, has senselessly turned aside into deceit and corruption and into profane false opinions — how should he not, henceforth, be fitting to be lamented? 'And they went out from us,' as one of the Savior's holy disciples wrote, 'yet they were not of us.'

That is, from the confession of the faith? {B.} Yes, so they say.

For we shall rightly rebuke the term 'consubstantial,' insisting that it is a newfangled expression and unwritten — that is, not found in the God-inspired Scriptures.

{A.} These are the most foolish things they could say, my friend.

For a term harms nothing at all, wherever what it signifies is altogether true.

Would you not yourself grant that what I say is true? {B.} Very much so.

{A.} Consider, then, whether we are not sometimes accustomed to apply to the nature of God certain other terms of this sort, even though they are unknown to the sacred and divine Scriptures.

{B.} What sort do you mean? {A.} For if someone should call the Divine incorporeal and formless, without quantity and without magnitude, would his statement about it fall short of what is fitting? And if he should also call it unbounded and unruled by any, would one suppose he had said nothing necessary, even though he held a true opinion? {B.} Indeed, that would be nonsense.

Why then did they need, recklessly and boyishly running the risk, to rebuke the term 'consubstantial' as strange and unfamiliar, branding this most lucid and philosophical expression as such — even though the matter is true and acknowledged among those who have wisely examined divine things and been instructed in the mysteries — namely, that the Son, having sprung forth from the very substance of God and the Father, will not, contrary to their own supposed good opinion, be of a different kind, nor indeed a stranger to the One who begot him, but rather consubstantial with him, of the same form and of the same nature? For I will feel no shame whatsoever in using every term that serves to make clear what is good and true.

For the Divine is altogether removed from genus and specific difference.

But if we are going to reject the very means by which one might be called, even to a slight degree, into knowledge of the substance that lies above all things, we shall henceforth be faithless and ignorant, being instructed from nowhere as to who is by nature and in truth God, but tossed about like waves and carried about by every wind, according to what is written.

And having taken fright and thrust away entirely even this — the being able, at least, to see as in a mirror and in a riddle, and to know in part — we shall all alike become like deaf and senseless stones.

'a useless burden upon the earth,' as one of the poets among the Greeks said.

{B.} But where, they say, does Scripture speak of 'consubstantial'? {A.} You are leading us back to the very same argument, my friend.

For where did it name the God of all things incorporeal and formless, and unbounded and unruled? Yet these things belong to him by nature, whether or not they consent to it.

If, then, we should choose to think rightly, we must by no means reject those names that serve toward the full knowledge of the truth.

Would they not, then, suppose that God did not speak falsely in saying, 'I am the One who is,' when he spoke to the holy Moses? 'For this is my name,' he says, 'and a memorial for generation after generation.' But I think they ought not slip into such a degree of madness as not even to dare to think that God is 'the One who is.'

For he truly is 'the One who is,' and thus it would befit him alone, properly and specifically, to be so called — even if the name might chance to pass over to others as in a kind of loose usage.

And we say that from this the name 'substance' was formed by the ancients, and very reasonably so — so that if someone should say that the Son is of the same nature and consubstantial with the Father, he would not be thought by us to have introduced any novelty unfamiliar in the coining of names, but, so to speak, would be using an expression that holds a foremost place, as it were, within the God-inspired Scripture.

For those names that have been brought forth by derivation are not, in every case, fixed altogether independently by their own separate positing, but rather they spring forth, as it were, from a first and originating root.

If, then, they should insist that 'consubstantial' lies outside sacred usage and custom, they would, above all, do violence to the natural manner in which names are derived.

For from 'that which is' come 'substance' and 'consubstantial.'

But in being so exceedingly ignorant, they destroy along with it also the other terms by which it would be possible for us, even if only as through a mirror and in a riddle, to perceive and to admit into our mind faint impressions of the Godhead.

...[of the same nature as] the Father the Son, but should say instead that he is 'of like substance'? {A.} They will not be speaking rightly, my friend; rather, they will first be caught contradicting themselves, most maliciously rejecting the term as unwritten.

For whether one should think the Son ought to be called consubstantial, or, if not this at all, then of like substance, as seems good to them, nonetheless in either case the name 'substance' comes creeping in for us just the same.

But while denouncing the term — I mean, of course, 'consubstantial' — as counterfeit, and spurious, and mistaken, and dissonant with the divine Scriptures, and whatever else of this sort they have cried out against it, they nonetheless admit it again, and inscribe it among the terms deemed most approved.

If, then, one should allow himself to say to them that the Son is of like substance with the Father, what then would such men seem to you to be doing? {B.} That they are acting quite unjustly, having shrunk in dread from the force inherent in the term, since it reveals the truth so nobly and so clearly.

{A.} Do not suppose it is otherwise than this, my friend;

and, behaving recklessly, as young men do, over their own unbridled talk and over the most unholy dogmas of their own teachers, they cut off the Son from the natural relation and kinship with God and the Father, and grudgingly — and perhaps even with a kind of pity — they permit him to have merely an image and a likeness of him, so that henceforth he might be seen as one of those created according to the image, or rather formed according to a quality of manner, differing but little from the divine and undefiled beauty.

{B.} How do you mean? {A.} Do you not hear, my friend, Christ commanding and declaring most clearly:

'Be merciful, even as your heavenly Father is merciful'? {B.} Yes.

{A.} Do you not, then, understand that a quality of manner shapes us too, and that, as it were, the divine character is impressed upon us in some fashion through virtue exercised in action? For the Divine is good unfeignedly and essentially;

but this [goodness] might also belong to us, in a manner of imitation, insofar as it is possible, appearing through our characters and manners, if we should make our desire and eagerness for all admirable things a matter of free choice.

For surely we shall not think, if we are of sound mind and reason, that those who bear the divine image in their own souls, resplendent through a quality of character, possess a resemblance to him that is essential and unchangeable, extending and stretching in equal measure to absolutely everything that belongs to him;

for otherwise we would be granting that the Divine is identical with ourselves, with nothing whatsoever setting up a wall between us to mark a difference.

For we have been created according to his image and likeness.

But this could not be the case at all — far from it;

For we are not simple in nature, whereas the Divine is simple and altogether uncomposed, and is rich in its own perfect completeness, needing nothing.

But every bodily nature is composed of certain parts, all running together to fill up some one thing that is complete.

And we, as regards the flesh, are of the earth, corruptible and quickly withering, likened equally to the grasses and lilies of the field.

And the soul of man is easily led astray, and undergoes manifold changes, both from the best toward what is base, and again from baseness toward the good.

But God is, as it were, fixed and firmly grounded in his own goods, not enduring to undergo any shift toward other things;

and this steadfastness is essential to him, not something achieved by a deliberate, chosen security.

It is therefore quite clear that for those brought into being, the resemblance to God is not something natural, but rather it becomes apparent, as it were, in actual conduct and in the quality of manners.

{B.} Our reasoning would not fail to hit what is fitting, since indeed those angels who did not keep their own first estate slipped away from kinship with God, and we ourselves likewise, yet we have suffered no harm at all in our nature.

For we have by no means departed into complete non-existence, but we exist even apart from possessing virtue.

But having sold off, as it were, our knowledge of a certain skill and art through excessive indolence and our inclination toward baseness, we have been called back again to recover of old, through Christ, who re-instructs us to be reformed toward that first and archetypal beauty.

...we do not say that it is by leaping from humanity into some other nature that they attain to such glory, but rather by shifting, from a wicked purpose, toward the choice to do and to think what is better.

{A.} Is it not clear, then, Hermias, that the marks of the divine image will shine forth in us when we incline eagerly toward choosing to do the good, as you yourself have just now agreed, and yet we are not identical with God on account of our likeness to him?

For as for those things that have, in every respect whatsoever, a natural resemblance to one another, no argument, I suppose, could cut them off from their mutual natural kinship.

Is not an angel, perhaps, like another angel by nature, and one man like another of his own kind? {B.} It is so.

And yet — one might very reasonably ask them — why in the world, while rejecting the term and accusing it of being strange and unfamiliar, do you not likewise find it astonishing when someone, if he should choose, speaks according to your own view of 'homoiousios'? But I think they will be at a loss on this point.

Yet it is by no means difficult to understand, even if they themselves do not say so, that they dread and falsify the meaning conveyed by 'consubstantial' — not because, as they suppose and claim, it has been formed for us from an unwritten expression, but because it establishes the truth, declaring that the Son is of no other nature than truly that very nature of God the Father.

{A.} For I suppose, in all likelihood, that those who have chosen to fight against God have forgotten the voice of the Savior, who cried out plainly that he is the fruit of the ineffable nature, and not of a nature that has been brought into being and has obtained existence in time.

'For I,' he said, 'am not of this world.'

You are of this world. And again:

You are from below; I am from above. And indeed the wise John also writes concerning him:

He who comes from above is above all. For what else would 'from above' mean, except that he is altogether from the highest nature that surpasses all things? And what does it mean not to be of the world, except that he has been set free from any kinship of nature with anything that has come into being, having as his sole source God his own Father? {B.} But if they should wish 'from above' to be understood not in this way, as you yourself have just said, but rather that he is not from the humanity below and around the earth, but perhaps from heaven, or from some other nature far greater than ours, what should we say to them about this as well? {A.} What else but this: what would be exceptional in the nature and glory of the Son, as one might discern it, if they will say it is so--just as they have determined to think? For is not each of the holy angels also from above, and does he not come to us, that is, from heaven? And they are in a condition far better than ours, according to the principles inherent in their nature--Throne, and Dominion, and Lordship, and the Seraphim themselves? If then there is nothing surpassing in the Son, but he too is to be seen within these same natural measures, he will differ, I think, in nothing further from the rational creatures who come to us from above at various times, spirits sent forth in service, ministering for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation; and the dignity of Godhead will be draped about him as something borrowed, and he will tell a false tale, saying:

...truth, that which does not actually correspond to how it is named in the divinely inspired Scriptures? But what, then, do they altogether mean by saying that the Son is not of this world? {B.} I shall explain.

For they say that he is not consubstantial with God the Father, yet even while somehow--I know not how--lowering him from that ineffable nature, they have still reserved for him some distinction beyond the rest of creation.

For they say that he is not of the same nature as the things that were made, but occupies, as it were, a certain middle position, having in some way departed from the principle of nature, neither being joined altogether closely and essentially to the one who begot him, nor yet inclining wholly downward, that is, being reckoned among creatures.

{A.} Therefore, if they should choose to state clearly and openly the nature of the Son, casting off all shame, I suppose they would somewhere say that he is neither God by nature, nor yet a created being.

For if he has gone forth from the essence of God the Father, yet is again better than the nature of created beings, then he has certainly fallen away utterly from truly being God, while somehow--I know not how--escaping the charge of being numbered among creatures.

And indeed, contending for their argument, they say that he has been named mediator of God and men for no other reason, I think, than this:

{A.} Then what could be more senseless than such things? 'Our enemies are without understanding,' according to what is written: