Dialogues on the Holy Trinity 1 part 12/23

But if some should reject the looseness of expression and the excessive inexactness used by way of extended application in the divinely-inspired Scriptures, then we and they too, I think, would be at a total loss for words, if it should seem to anyone that we must be overly meticulous in relearning and insisting on this point: why the divinely-inspired Scriptures bring down the nature above all things — the nature above body and form, without quantity or magnitude, intangible and immaterial — to bodily figures, naming for us 'the face of the Lord,' and 'hands' and 'feet.' We could most easily, and with great confidence, dismiss the censures of such people by saying that wise saying: that the undiscriminating use of such expressions in no way harms the actual being of that nature above body, since it was devised of necessity for the benefit of those who hear it.

Or would this argument not be persuasive, and quite correct? {B.} Certainly it would.

{A.} But since, puffed up with excessive conceit of wisdom, they rise up foolishly against the Only-begotten with 'firstborn' as an argument hard to overturn, saying that he must not be unassociated with creation, as having obtained a nature akin to and of one kind with all things in respect of having been made — do you wish that we say something further on this, of no small benefit? {B.} You will speak most gladly, and to one who is willing.

{A.} Have we not, who have received faith in him, been called through the Son to adoption as sons, and have we been formed toward him as images toward an archetype? {B.} Yes, we have been called and formed toward the Son.

For it is written that, 'But as many as received him, to them he gave power to become children of God.' {A.} You have spoken excellently.

And so I know that in this very matter you would state the necessary conclusion quite correctly.

We have been called to adoption — is this essential and natural sonship? Or is it not rather that we happen to be called sons because we have obtained brotherhood and kinship? Which is it? {B.} Not essential in any way, but adoptive and by grace.

{A.} How then is the Son still created because of being called 'firstborn'? And in what manner would he be classed essentially with brothers on account of likeness in kind, when in fact we gain our brotherhood with him not naturally at all, but rather from outside and in time — not from the very highest point before his sojourn in the flesh, but from when he came to be as we are? For, I think, even they, though they have chosen to rave to the utmost, would not say that the writing of the Law called the earlier fathers to brotherhood with the Son.

For there was in them a spirit of bondage.

Whence indeed it is quite evident that the Word who is from God is not among us as slaves, since he has not taken up into brotherhood that which still lies in the rank of a slave.

But now let us proceed wisely and undistractedly to that point.

{B.} What point? {A.} That which naturally belongs to certain existing things, O Hermias, could never come to be participated in within time, nor would it ever enter from somewhere as something foreign, deliberately admitted, but would rather always be seen as inherent, accompanying the very fact of being.

To give an example of what I mean: man is rational from the beginning and by nature, but he is not by nature rich.

Will he then receive being rich as something introduced and from outside, while having his being and his being called rational fixed by the laws of nature? It is true, then, I think, that no one could be understood to receive in time that which coincides with the very coming into being.

{A.} If, then, the Son was always brother to creatures and numbered among them, as being of the same kind as they, and 'firstborn' for this reason, then why did he grant to us, as though we did not have it, that which is naturally ours — I mean brotherhood? And why did he give it only to those who had believed, though it belongs to all, even to those who had not yet believed? For what still stands in between and cuts off one created being from intimacy with another, given that, in respect of having been made, they are alike common? Do you now perceive where this argument, addressed to those of the opposite view, leads? {B.} Yes.

{B.} But if they too should choose to think that he must be called 'only-begotten' merely because he alone came to be from the Father alone, what would you have to say to this?

{A.} I would reasonably suppose that a mind accustomed to perceiving something manly and vigorous has here been knocked out of its senses and slipped from sound judgment.

And I would say that they have also failed, not slightly, in the precise understanding of the names themselves, misdirecting, as it were, what these names actually signify, and dragging it thoughtlessly toward whatever suits their own pleasure.

For indeed 'only-begotten' would signify that which has been begotten by nature from someone, not that which has been wrought by art;

or rather, let them come forward and answer when asked where they have ever read this word applied to anything made by art and skill.

For we will surely not yield to their foolishness whatever they wish to legislate, most unbecomingly steering the force of what is signified toward what is not correct.

For if a carpenter should craft one single boat and no other, would it be called his 'only-begotten,' though it is a piece of craftsmanship and a work of skill? Then does this seem to you not ridiculous but wise? {B.} Not at all.

{A.} And moreover, the fact that our opponents insist, superfluously and most senselessly, that the Son was begotten from the Father alone in the sense that he alone was so begotten, and that thereby he has carved out for himself an exceedingly exceptional nature and has run through to the highest degree of glory — this would show that they have erred doubly and are utterly ignorant.

{A.} For first, by a necessary and inescapable line of reasoning, they will record the Father's inactivity after the Son, and will confess, though unwillingly, that the ever-active nature ceased to act in what is its own and stopped creating, no longer touching anything at all after that one, but relinquishing, as it were, to the power and nature of the Son the working and doing of those very things through which alone the highest nature would be recognized.

And thus the properties of divinity would become the fruits of a created essence! And, it would seem, God the Father will boast over one single creature alone, the Son;

while he, for his part, will pride himself on so many more, and will think himself greater than the Father — being shown to be of equal power with him through his being naturally able to create, and through bringing into being what once did not exist, and even having the advantage, I think, in the matter of being good, if indeed it belongs to goodness to bring into existence out of non-existence and to make existent that which had not yet obtained the grace of being.

The argument thus creeps forth into unseemliness, rendering idle the ever-active nature, to which alone indeed it would be fitting to assign being to things that are not;

for have not these wretched men, having shackled the source and origin of that gentle care with reasonings drawn from their own private notions, halted it — according to their own opinion — at the making of the Son? And yet, if God the Father, having chosen to be idle, was inactive concerning all else, why then did the blessed Moses compose for us such words and, as would follow from their view, vain deceptions — or rather, does he not write in accordance with the truth, saying:

'Let us make man according to our image and likeness.' For indeed the word 'Let us make' has clearly signified one who is by no means reluctant toward the act of making — at least as concerns ourselves — but rather one well disposed to work together with the Son and the Spirit, and indeed already active in doing so.

For it says, 'And God made man; according to the image of God he made him.' But the divinely-inspired Moses, being a speaker of God and well crowned indeed by the decree from above, could not be seen to speak falsely.

And he will persuade us all the more — the Word who has appeared from him — proclaiming the Father's nature to be ever-active and full of energy.

For Christ said somewhere, rebuking the Jews:

for it seemed to some that he was kindled to anger, if he should do anything on the Sabbath:

'My Father works until now, and I work.' And somewhere else again:

...jointly declaring, together with the Son, that the Father -- if one dares to say it -- is still inactive with regard to creation? {B.} Most perilous.

{A.} And that too, I think, is senseless in a way.

{B.} What is that, then? {A.} For if the Son obtained a distinct and exceptionally superior manner of coming-to-be for this reason and this alone -- namely, that he alone was made by the Father alone -- then let those men tell me, since I wish to be instructed: did the Father, out of envy, begrudge the creatures that came into being after the Son and through him the attaining of the fullness of blessedness, by not deigning to undertake personally the working upon them; or will they say that he is superior to envy and to every hesitation? {B.} They will say the latter, as I suppose.

{A.} Rightly thinking, my friend -- at least in this.

For surely they will not prove inferior to the wise men among the Greeks, one of whom -- this was Plato -- said concerning God:

'He was good, and in the good no envy arises toward anything at all.' Since, then, the Father is good, that is, is Goodness itself, and since the attaining of the highest degree by creatures, so as to be in the best possible state, could have been brought about solely through his own will and personal working, why, instead of setting this good in common before all without grudging -- as he is admired for being good -- did he yield the work of creating to another, depriving creation of the incomparably better maker? {B.} But, he says, the Father is not altogether idle;

for he works together with the Son, and joins him in bringing the rest into being.

{A.} What contribution, then, does he in fact have from the Son toward this? Is it that the Son's activity is better than his own, and therefore has been taken up by his own movements as something needed, that is, necessarily employed; or is it that it is inferior and worse, and has been admitted not out of necessity? If, then, it is as something better and needed, this is already superfluous talk -- or rather, already blasphemy;

for then the one from whom the Son came forth would in some sense be surpassed, and the Son would have the advantage over the nature of God the Father, supplying to it both a need and something better.

But if, on the other hand, it is inferior and unnecessary, and rather renders the creation less beautiful, tell me, what could persuade the Father to work together with the Son? Or how will one not say without any hesitation that the Father -- I know not how -- neglected what was better, and chose instead to hold to what was not so, having rejected, or rather having shrunk back from, choosing to do the work of creation himself -- through which alone its unmixed beauty would have been signified -- and having admitted the Son to share in it, so that what was brought into blessed being and came into existence might not receive its coming-to-be unmixed and unblended with what is worse?

{B.} But, he says, created nature could not have endured the Father's unmixed direct working; and besides, it was otherwise implausible that a majesty so surpassing and supreme should have had to be brought down even to the very meanest of things.

{A.} And yet this is indeed the froth boiled up from a base and abominable mind.

Is it not unwise, then, to suppose that, if the Father's direct working were truly burdensome and overwhelming -- that is, wholly inaccessible to created and made nature -- it should nevertheless have become gentle, approachable, and bearable to the Son alone, even though, according to them, he possesses a nature of the same kind as the creatures? For what is once unbearable to created things could not become bearable to even one of them, even though that one might seem to be superior and be thought distinctly better than the rest.

And indeed to venture rashly to say that it is not fitting for the Father's transcendence to reach even down to such very lowly things would involve a double blasphemy.

For they will insult the Son, and they will also find fault with the Father himself, even while supposing that they are honoring him.

{B.} Thinking or saying what? {A.} They lower the Son below the transcendence conceived to be in the Father -- yet, I think, they would not take from him his attaining to the highest portion of both transcendence and glory, even if some of them were exceedingly perverse.

Is it fitting, then, tell me, that to the Son, who has such a nature and has attained to such honor and majesty, it should be proper for him to create Principalities and Thrones and Dominions and whatever lies even beyond these, but that the making of a small sparrow -- and what is even lower than that -- we shall assign to the powers of someone else? Then what sound thinking shall we be found to have? {B.} None at all.

{A.} And how would it not be a small and mean thing, given the Son's nature, to fashion a sparrow? Why, then, being image and likeness of God the Father, should he not have preserved this very likeness toward him -- I mean, by not disdaining to send forth even upon such lowly things the life-giving power that brings them into being? Just as they marvel at the supreme transcendence of God the Father and say it is beneath him to create angels, would they not, by the same reckoning, quite reasonably say the same of the Son -- that the making of a reptile, the coming-to-be of a sparrow, and the manifold variety of the flowers of the field are far removed from the dignity befitting him? And yet why then does the Psalmist crown with praises beyond words the One who has fashioned these very things, saying:

'He who makes grass to spring up for the cattle, and green herb for the service of man.' So then, either let them bring in for us other makers proportioned to the nature of the things made, or they will manifestly insult the Only-begotten, by making him also the maker of things so utterly lowly.

{B.} The argument would put them in no small danger.

{A.} And how would they not be stitching together arrogance and ignorance concerning the Father, then saying that he disdains to create the very things which he wills to exist and which, precisely because he is God, do exist? And yet I hear Christ saying, in admiration of the providence of God the Father:

'Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing, and not one of them shall fall to the ground without your Father who is in heaven?' And he who extends the reach of his own providence even as far as a sparrow -- how could he disdain to create angels, and to establish the firmament of heaven, and to fix fast the earth, and to bring forth sun and moon and stars, for which he has been admired as a worker of great deeds, with the holy angels applauding him with praises? For he said: 'When the stars were made, all my angels praised me with a loud voice.' Do I not seem to you to have examined what is fitting and to speak rightly? {B.} Quite so.

{A.} Would you say, then, tell me, that anything made, whether small or great, is not the work of divine power? {B.} By no means.

And understanding this very well, our divine Paul writes to us:

'For his invisible things from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood through the things that are made -- both his eternal power and divinity.' Is it, then, in the Word -- the maker of the coming-to-be of all things -- being conceived as created, that his divinity is made known, along with that power which is ever and unchangeably the same? For this is what 'eternal' means.

But then, I suppose, there is nothing at all to prevent creation itself as well from somehow now priding itself upon the title of divinity.

And what follows from this? The things that are seen will indicate to us our own divinity, but no longer that of God.

{B.} What then, if they should say that it is the Father's divinity and eternal power that is manifested through the grandeur of the things made? {A.} They would then be testifying against their own words, and could very easily be shown to stand opposed to their own conceptions.

{B.} What do you mean? {A.} That, having measured and defined the Father's creative activity as extending only as far as the bringing forth of the Son, they say that he is perceived 'from the creation of the world' -- even though sacred Scripture ascribes the making of the world to the Son.

...believing the Only-begotten to have been manifested as God.

For thus, having cleared Scripture of any appearance of having gone astray, we shall put such error away from ourselves, and shall send away from our own head the penalties for this, which the divine Paul has also declared to us:

'Amen.' Therefore, if some, through falsehood, declare the truth to be counterfeit and most impiously debased, worshipping created things rather than him who is God by nature, then a reprobate mind has taken up residence in us too, and we have been cast away somewhere toward what is not right, and we have gone astray together with the atheists, worshipping the Son as created nature.

For according to them, he has been made.

Is not what is made-to-be a creature? {B.} How could it not be? {A.} Consider, then, Hermias, to what degree of folly their opinions have descended.

For the divine and sacred word said that the nations, having been drawn as in a net through faith into the knowledge of the Son, have come to know the living and true God;

but they have arrived at such a wretchedness of reasoning that they feel no shame at all in casting upon him the meanness that comes from having been made.

And it is written thus concerning those who chose to follow the holy apostles:

'for the nations turned to the living and true God' -- that is, the Father --

'for this is the answer of a good conscience toward God.' {A.} The statement is true; but tell me this:

Is not our faith into the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit? {B.} So I say.

{A.} But those who are eager to preserve the faith unwavering, blameless, and free from every reproach -- would they believe in God and in a creature at once, or rather, in a single way, into God alone, binding the Son together with the Father as of equal nature? {B.} Evidently, as into one God, that is, into one nature of divinity; or rather, they would know that they could not step outside of blame, if they were to entwine him who is God by nature together with creation.

{A.} It is established, then, that our faith is also into the Son, as into the living and true God.

And this would become clear to you without any effort, if you listen carefully to the Son saying:

'You believe in God, believe also in me' -- not as into a creature and into God, far from it; but rather, because of the sameness of essence, bringing what is unvaryingly equal back into one nature of divinity.

'He who believes in me does not believe in me, but in him who sent me.' For believing in the Son does not remove one from the Father; rather, through the Offspring, it truly brings the genuine worshiper back to the Father who begot him.

And that the multitude who once worshipped idols came to know and to worship Christ as true God, you may learn quite easily from Paul, who speaks thus:

'for indeed they were without God in the world';

but since it came to know the Son through faith, it has appeared within a good hope, and has escaped and washed away the shame of atheism.

{A.} The Son, then, is indeed truly God;

for only thus does what we believe to have been renewed in ourselves through holy baptism remain unassailable and unfalsified.

{B.} And what, then, is this? For I do not quite understand.

{A.} Have we not, my friend, been begotten with a spiritual begetting, being conformed to the Son, and being remolded through the Spirit unto his divine and supra-mundane beauty, and are we not shown to be partakers of the divine nature, having obtained participation in the Son as in God? {B.} Very much so.

{A.} How, then, is he still created? Otherwise, is not the mystery a deception for us, resting on empty hopes, having -- as it seems -- a glory that is bare and exists only in the speaking of it, and is it not truly a fraud and a mere appearance, if this which we have believed ourselves to have become does not in fact exist? For how, or from what source, could we be partakers of the divine nature, or what mark of God could be signified in us, and how could we be conformed to the Son, if he is not God but rather something made? It would then be time to suppose that even the Father and God himself does not exist without having come into being --

for surely the exact image reflects the archetype.

For if you consider what the divine nature actually is, will you not say that this reality is altogether incomparable and cannot be set alongside creation, and resembles nothing among existing things without variation? {B.} Certainly so;

for how would the nature of God not transcend everything created? {A.} No one, then, if he has any sense, would admit the uncreated and unbegotten nature to be the archetype of what is created;

for indeed one would not behold, in that which always exists and is unchangeably the same, the nature that once did not exist and has been made.

{A.} And I think the reverse is also true:

for we could not behold, in that which once did not exist, that which always exists and is unchangeably the same.

{A.} What, then, is admirable in us from having been conformed to the Son? And where has this divine beauty flashed upon the souls of believers, as something unaccustomed and strange? And yet, between any created thing and any other created thing -- however they may be conceived to have come into being -- sameness of form is not something introduced from outside; rather, it is the very law of nature that engraves it.

The rest of creation, then, was always of the same form as the Son, who according to them is created.

What beauty, then, is still signified in our souls through the Spirit?

He will then, it seems, be shown to be one who acts for nothing, pointlessly adding something which, even if one happened not to choose it, one nevertheless already possesses by nature, and has of oneself without having received it from another.

But, I suppose indeed, right and unerring reasoning would surely smile down upon all of this.

For all of us who have believed are partakers of the divine nature, through our relation to the Son by the Spirit -- not merely in bare appearance, but in truth -- and we are conformed to God, being remade in our elements toward the beauty that transcends creation.

For Christ is formed in us ineffably, not as one created among created things, but as unbegotten and God amid created and made nature, re-engraving it, through the Spirit, unto his own image, and transposing creation -- that is, us -- unto a dignity that transcends creation.

{B.} Nothing, then, drives away or removes the Only-begotten from true sonship; rather, we shall grant that he has been begotten, and not made.

{A.} Yes, if indeed we truly accept him as God, and think it fitting that he should be honored with worship from us and from the holy angels, and we deem him worthy to be crowned with the surpassing majesties and glories of divinity -- so that, not having passed by the Maker and having run past the nature that is truly queen of all things, we do not serve creation, and, by bestowing the glory of the Unbegotten upon the begotten, we do not justly hear it said of us:

'Behold, a foolish and senseless people.' {B.} But surely those men too would say that he is both Son and God.

{A.} If, then, we ought to think that we are being beguiled by pleasing words when they send the Son away as far as possible from true divinity, then let them say so in plain, unveiled speech, and blaspheme openly.

For they will immediately hear in reply, both from us ourselves and from the holy angels:

'Walk in the light of your fire and in the flame that you have kindled.' For we shall turn toward the path that goes not astray, believing that the Word who has appeared from God is truly God, according to his ineffable begetting.

But if, coming to a mind not too dull to learn nor foolish, they will not indeed be outright deniers—being numbed, I suppose, at the blasphemy of doing so—yet having resolved to confess that he is God, they lower him beneath the substance of God the Father, and say that he is somehow better than a creature, as though placing him in a middle ground between uncreated and created nature; let them hear how the nature of divinity could ever be conceived as admitting of difference.

For God, in relation to God, could not be otherwise as regards being God—just as indeed one might observe also in our own case.

For we say that the nature of humanity is one, and the definition of its substance would be one, and not altered whether in the whole or in each individual.

Therefore, if they believe him to be God, let them altogether free him from belonging among the created things;

or, if they cannot be persuaded to think this, then let them no longer confess him to be God at all.

For then, laughing heartily, we shall say:

'Either make the tree good and its fruit good,'

'or make the tree corrupt and its fruit corrupt;'

'for the tree is known by its fruit.' For is it not the case, my friend, that we can know clearly and unerringly what each existing thing is by nature, from the things which it is truly believed to be? {B.} Indeed, very much so.

For at the same moment that human nature was brought into existence by the ineffable nods of the Craftsman, it was also adorned by its relation to the Spirit.

For 'he breathed into his face the breath of life'—the living being would not otherwise, I think, have possessed what is manifest in holiness and in kinship toward God, unless it were adorned by participation in the Holy Spirit.

Therefore also, when the Only-begotten became man, finding human nature bereft of the good that was of old and from the beginning, he hastened again to transform it back into that state, pouring in, as it were from the spring of his own fullness, and saying:

'Receive the Holy Spirit,' thereby sketching out very well the nature of the Spirit through the breath that came through flesh and was more manifest.

The renewal toward that original state, then, will correspond exactly to the original passages into being, and created nature has fallen sick in the manner of its separation—not by intervals conceived spatially, far from it;

but rather being thrust out and falling away from God, and from its conjunction with the Son that comes through the Spirit.

And indeed it runs back up to its original state, if it is willing, obtaining spiritual reformation, and being called to participation in his divine nature through the Spirit.

For what is akin is always dear, and a created thing would not turn away from another created thing, insofar as they are both created.

For what is alien tends always to be seen among things of a different kind, that is, of different species, not among those that share one and the same definition of nature.

How then does the Son dwell in creation through the Spirit? What is he adding or bestowing, or to what height is he raising up what is intelligible, or what improvement is he engraving on it? And how, if he himself is not among the better things (for he has been made along with us, as they at least say), is he said to have emptied himself, or what condescension would he have needed, in order that, lowering himself as it were from heights above creation, he might be joined to the world and become a part of the world—unless he is above the world and above creation? {B.} I think they will be at a loss to answer this.

{A.} And on what account is he alone free and a liberator, even though the whole of creation subjects its neck as a slave to God? We would be most senseless and talking nonsense, my dear friend, if we were to place the Son, who is from God by nature and coeternal with God the Father, among those who are so by grace.

For where, or what, would our archetype still be, if he too—after whose likeness we have been formed by adoption and imitation—should come down to be reckoned along with us? {B.} You seem to me to have carried through the argument on this point most clearly and distinctly.

But I think that our opponents will say: 'Is it not so, noble sirs, that the sacred words of old have hymned the Son as a work, and that the divine and great chorus of the apostles knew it so?' Indeed, Solomon, depicting the person of the Son in prophecy, says:

'The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways, for his works.' And Peter, indeed, chosen above the rest, says:

'Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God has made him both Lord and Christ.' What then should we say, if they were to besiege us again with such arguments? {A.} What else than to say what is true:

'But are our enemies foolish?' For a mind not illumined by the wisdom from above, which is poured down from the Father of lights, is thick and dark, and unable to run through the mist arising from dullness of learning.

'Enlighten my eyes, lest I sleep unto death.' Come then, with a keen and sober mind, testing out the knowledge of the matters before us, and, like keen-scented and excellent hounds, let us track down the truth that is still out of sight and not yet caught by the wicked.