Dialogues on the Holy Trinity 1 part 6/23

Then how is it not better to consider that it is fitting neither to conceive of nor to describe the generation as occurring in time or according to body? For they could not even say that God became Father in time, but that he was, timelessly and without beginning, that which he is, since he by whom he is Father evidently coexists with him.

For the Son shone forth from the Father's essence in a manner beyond mind and such as no one could express, not having his own existence as something separate through a partition or division of the begetter, but subsisting in his own right, and begotten in the way that the incorporeal would beget, which is wholly unacquainted with cutting and division.

For if the divine nature admits at all of cutting and division and the things they speak of, let it also be conceived of as a body;

assuredly, then, in some place, and in magnitude and quantity.

And since it has been given quantity, let it not escape circumscription.

And upon these there will follow for us also a whole swarm of other notions, pouring upon it the properties peculiar to bodies, and a dreadful absurdity of reasonings.

{A.} For, my dear friend, I would not shrink in the least from saying this too:

{B.} What is that? {A.} If the nature of God and Father were subjected to the customs and laws of bodies, it would indeed beget not without suffering, and would undergo division, and the begotten would certainly exist in some particular position and place of its own, since it had altogether flowed forth out of the quantity of the one who bore it;

for this is how things from bodies are born.

If then they suppose that God and Father fills all things, where then will that which comes from him be situated for us, and what proper place will it find? {B.} You have spoken excellently in saying that from this there will arise no small multitude of impious notions.

'For the matter of generation must therefore be rejected,' they say, 'and let it not be thought true in the case of God.'

'For in this way the absurdity of the reasonings too will depart along with it.'

{A.} And yet this is nothing other than to kick away the exact doctrine of the faith.

For how will the divine and ineffable nature still possess sameness within the Trinity, if we do away with the true manner of generation? These things, I think, are mere trifling sophistry, and the uneducated audacity of Jewish madness.

We ourselves, then, will be on equal footing with those who glorify as one the God who begets all things and is Father, but who no longer acknowledge our Lord Jesus Christ.

And indeed what would prevent them from stoning him, accusing him in the manner of the Jews:

'It is not for a good work that we stone you, but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God'? For if they shall impiously do away with the true manner of the generation, no one, I think, would any longer descend to such levity of thought as to suppose that the Son is God by nature, but rather would think that he has merely been called so, just as we ourselves are, and that he has truly received the name of divinity as something adopted from outside, as one who has not appeared out of the very essence of God and Father.

But since, according to them, he is no longer the Son, but, as it seems, is reckoned along with us among the creatures, we have not yet been redeemed from serving the creation in place of the Creator, if we worship him; yet God will not justly charge us with the impiety involved in this, but will rather ascribe the responsibility to himself, since, in bringing his firstborn into the world, he says:

'And let all the angels of God worship him.' But he who is worshipped even by the holy angels themselves, and who possesses as his own the glory befitting God and Father, how could he not also be from the Father by nature, and for this reason God? Do you perceive, then, to what sort of end there falls out for them this notion — that generation is not true in the case of God, and yet they are also unwilling to allow that he begot him according to whatever manner belongs to his nature, without further meddling, but instead cast upon him, as if by some inescapable necessity, cuttings and flowings-away and the properties peculiar to bodies?

'But how could he beget,' they say, 'without suffering necessarily and in every way accompanying it?' {A.} Because, as I said before, it is not pious to suppose that the incorporeal is subjected to the laws of bodies, nor, because a body brings forth by suffering and division, would the incorporeal necessarily beget in exactly the same way;

but rather, just as it is, with respect to the mode of its being, otherwise disposed than a body, so too it will certainly have a manner of generation fitting and proper to itself.

And since a body begets in time, the incorporeal will certainly not beget in like manner.

For each of the things that exist, I think, is subject not at all to the laws of another, but to certain laws proper to itself;

and while being is common to all existing things, nevertheless nature distributes to each its own distinctness, restraining it by its own particular laws so that it does not exist altogether in the same manner as another thing;

so then, let bodies be subjected to the customs and laws of bodies, and let them beget according to themselves, and undergo divisions; but let the incorporeal be released again into its own proper principles, and let it beget according to itself, having a nature free from suffering and cutting.

...the generation of an incorporeal nature — why should he not rather indict himself of ignorance? For that which is greater and better than a body, and indeed incomparably superior to it, he forcibly drags down into the place of the inferior, and he does not blush to attach to it sufferings that in no way belong to it.

And shall we then do away altogether with that which for us is easier not to comprehend than it is possible to know? Since indeed no one could ever fully learn what the Father is according to nature — for every mind, I think, is less than such a thing — let those who impiously and most shamelessly say that he does not even exist do so; or else, since nothing among the things that exist is by its creative activity impassible, let them insist that he too will suffer something in his own nature, and will fall under the laws of created things, though he is unbegotten.

But no argument, I think, would bring God down to this;

rather he remains altogether firmly established in that which he is believed to be.

{B.} Indeed he remains, since the divine nature is altogether unshakeable.

'But if God has begotten,' he says, 'he will certainly be conceived of before the Son and will pre-exist his own offspring.'

{A.} I will say again, then, that if the incorporeal does not follow and fall under the laws of bodies, it will certainly beget according to itself, and not according to the nature of a body.

For that the begetter be conceived of beforehand and pre-exist relative to the things begotten — this, it would seem, a necessary and thoroughly inescapable argument will demonstrate, showing that it possesses a glory older than their being — but only, that is, in the case where one comes from one, and, as a second from a first, proceeds also in time; this holds for beings that spring forth not without a beginning, among those accustomed to beget in this way, since indeed not even their own root of generation is itself without beginning.

But that which exists without beginning and knows no end — I mean, of course, God — how, tell me, could he be found contending against the laws of his own nature, by admitting a beginning in season and in time for his own Son according to nature? For the begotten would then be of a different nature and degenerate, if it were to falsify the nature of the one who bore it;

and the matter, I think, will then lie not far from monstrous fable-telling.

For the notion that the begotten is cut off into a natural otherness from the begetter would not be far removed from what it is fitting to call monstrous fable.

The incorporeal, then, will beget according to its own nature, the offspring not having its generation in time, but being conceived of together with and coexisting with the existence of the begetter, and not coming behind it at all — since it has come forth from a beginning without beginning, one that is situated even prior to the ages themselves.

Yet if the argument could be made clear and somehow brought down to the level of the nature of created things, it would very well illustrate the matter under inquiry.

For matters of thought that leap far beyond the understanding of those listening would gain a clearer demonstration if they proceeded by way of vivid examples.

{A.} Your words are true, my good friend; but if you were to examine the nature of existing things, could you say with precision to what, of all things, God is most likened, so as to obtain a resemblance to just anything whatsoever and be exactly identical to it? {B.} By no means, since God is by nature nothing among the things that belong to the realm of created beings.

{A.} We must, then, greatly admire the sacred Paul, who prompts us with these words:

'For now we see through a mirror, in an enigma'; and indeed, as to the words 'now I know in part,' it would be both pious and wise not to leave them without wonder.

{A.} We must, then, go as quickly as possible to the Holy Scripture itself.

And flying over it in orderly fashion, like bees over a meadow that is fair by nature and richly flowering, adorned with the blossoms that spring from the seasons, and alighting upon those examples most fitting of all for our discourse, let us represent the manner of the ineffable and supra-intellectual generation;

and just as those who fix the eye of the body upon fine lettering strain to make it out, come, let us too, fixing our mind in like manner, observe, even if only in part and as in riddles, how the divine nature is disposed for us.

The Father, then, likening the Son to a word:

...for the word, by its passage from the depths upward and outward, in a way represents for us the generation as substantial.

And it seems to be somewhat other than the one who uttered it, and yet it will in no way be cut off from him;

nor indeed will the mind bear away for itself the more ancient glory over the word that has leapt forth upward.

For the word is always from the mind and directed toward the mind, and indeed the mind is also in the word.

Or if they should say that this is not exactly so, then the mind will be without word, and the word will be without mind, and that very thing which makes both of them be understood as what they are will already have somehow vanished, and will be driven toward nothing.

For mind is always the root and source of the word, and the word, in turn, is the fruit and offspring of the mind.

For the one is by no means without word, even though it brings forth the word; and the other has received as its own portion the quality and form of nature belonging to the one who begot it, and proceeds without in any way harming the one who begot it.

But to dare to say, especially in these matters, that the begetter is in every way certainly more ancient than the begotten, is, I think, altogether foolish.

For the word proceeds from the mind;

But since mind is mind precisely because it has word, and word, again, is word precisely because it is filled with mind, how could mind ever be conceived apart from word, or word bereft of mind? For among things where one possesses something said to be possessed, the possessor demands for itself a certain more ancient claim to being — and this notion has, in a way, grown hoary with age in the bare imaginings of our minds, no less than the relation fathers would have toward sons — but this does not apply to those things which must necessarily coexist, and for which it is altogether fitting that each be conceived together with the other.

And thus the very being and coherence of a thing is brought to nothing, if one attaches to it 'the lesser in time' and 'the more ancient' — or rather, should we not say all the more that the two perish together with one another, if the one should appear and show itself prior to the other?

{B.} I am somehow slow to be able to grasp these things fully, and I do not altogether understand what it is you are saying.

So then, explain it clearly, and do not accuse me of dullness, nor hang your silence over me like some kind of sentence.

{A.} Indeed, I am ready to explain; for there is not much occasion for hesitation, at least in matters so subtle, so long as our argument proceeds smoothly for us.

For to range about, up and down and, as it were, in a circle, over matters of contemplation that are difficult to attain, would be no harm at all, but would rather produce for us no small benefit.

You would, then, see very well and clearly what I have said, if you were to examine the nature of colors.

Tell me this: whiteness, say, or blackness, before being established in those things that are accustomed to possess them — do you suppose that they could exist somewhere by themselves, on their own? {B.} By no means.

For such things happen rather to other subjects first; only then, being what they in fact are, do they at last with difficulty become manifest.

Therefore there would be certain substances conceived beforehand and presupposed in the argument, which have received whiteness and blackness;

but these qualities belong among the things possessed.

But if someone should wish to divide these into parts—the possessor on the one hand and, again, the possessed on the other—and should say that the possessor is prior, while supposing the possessed to come later, into what place of substance will he then assign for us that which is by nature fit to be white, if it is not yet white? Or how could whiteness be what it is said to be, if it were not recognized as whiteness through its coinciding with those subjects that know how to possess it and are by nature suited to it? For if the elements that run together to constitute any single thing whatsoever, and which cannot exist otherwise, do not attain a simultaneous concurrence, they will be graspable in contemplation, but will not yet possess actual existence, according at least to the account proper to them.

B. Well, this indeed is so, and I truly believe these things to have been rightly stated; and I think others too would judge no less than I do.

How, then, might the force of both these examples fit the case of the Father and the Son for us? A. Because the example of the word proceeding from the mind outward, and the impassibility of its generation, and moreover the fact that the thing begotten will not be severed but will rather itself remain in the mind that begot it, while also surely holding within itself in every way the mind that begot it—this would demonstrate the point most fully and clearly; and besides this, that its existence is joined by nature immediately and coexists together with these very concepts.

As for the manner in which divine generation might be conceived by us, I do not think I can make it clear; but rather this: that if God is Father, he has not attained being what he is—that is, Father—within time—

for he always subsists in the same manner and in like fashion, and is superior to the change conceived in either direction;

for he is all-perfect, neither in want of the fulfillment of any good whatsoever, nor indeed subject to that decline which naturally brings grief to created things;

there is comprised together with him, altogether and in every way, the manifestation of the one begotten together with his existence, not lagging behind in time, nor indeed coming after the glory of the begetter; for it is necessary that, in every respect and altogether, in the case of God, the Father be always conceived and coexist together with the Son, and the Son in turn together with the Father, the Son being witnessed through himself to a beginningless antiquity, even though he exists in the manner of being begotten, as from the Father according to nature.

And when the divinely-inspired Paul names the Son for us as the 'radiance of the glory' of God the Father, and moreover says that he is also 'the exact imprint of his hypostasis,' he will surely, as I think, set his seal upon the argument we have just made, confirming that it has been fashioned altogether blamelessly and abounds in the votes cast for rightness and truth.

B. What do you mean? A. Suppose I put the matter again, having considered it somewhat in this way:

that whatever is illumined by something would, I suppose, be light—this very thing conveying to those outside knowledge of the substance that emits the radiance, and continually striking upon the perceptions through the eyes, or at least coming into contact with bodies by some other manner of impact—

it has allowed us to understand what, by nature, is the root and origin that sends it forth and makes it flash out.

Let our argument, then, be arranged by taking as an example the nature of the sun and the ray poured forth from it.

For what, by nature, would that sun reveal the brightness proceeding from it to be?

For reasoning, dividing off the sun by itself apart, conceives its substance to be whatever it is; but the light that is in it and poured forth from it—though proper to it—it will very carefully distinguish into an unmingled otherness, such as exists only in bare and mere concepts, on account of its procession from the sun outward.

But that it would be altogether ridiculous to imagine the origin of the sun as older, while the power of its indwelling light-producing activity lags behind even slightly, I do not think anyone of sound and vigorous mind would hesitate at all to agree.

For it is equivalent to saying that the sun does not even exist, if it does not have coexisting with it that by which it is recognized to be what it is.

Therefore, taking the force of the sensible examples as a rightly-shaped impression, as it were, framed within concepts that ascend to the highest degree, you will not corrupt the divine generation by foolishly admitting into it divisions, effluence, and passion.

For in the case of that substance which is highest of all, the generation is without passion; moreover, the existence of the offspring is substantial, free from division, and runs together with the begetter, being of necessity conceived along with him and entering in together with him.

For the wise John also has testified to the Son's beginninglessness in time, saying, 'In the beginning was the Word,' and again after this:

'He who is, who was, and who is to come.' B. The argument concerning this has indeed been worked out most excellently by us, my friend.

You suppose, probably, that we have thereby been freed from the difficulties, and need nothing further to prove that the Father should in no way be thought to preexist the Son, but should rather be conceived as connatural with him and coexisting with him;

but those other matters have not yet come to your mind—matters altogether hard of access and presenting a very steep approach.

A. What sort of things do you mean? B. Know that they will ask—for they are sharp in argument—whether God the Father has begotten the Son willingly or unwillingly.

B. For adding to this, I think, they will also say that if the Son is unwilled by the Father, then he has begotten him not of his own accord, but being driven to this by something—say, by necessity—or he will be found to have suffered some involuntary passion.

And having thus reduced the argument to absurdity, they will shut us up into confessing that henceforth we must say the Son was not begotten by the Father involuntarily; and finally they draw this conclusion:

'If the Father has not begotten the Son unwillingly, but willingly and by deliberate will, then surely the Father's will must both precede and appear before the Son's generation.'

'And that which,' they say, 'he had already, existing beforehand, taken counsel over, of that his will is indeed older than the begetting.'

A. How unholy indeed are the contrivances that these perverse men have devised against us!

Their argument so dances in mockery over the doctrines of truth that, if anyone should resolve to choose, among the most utterly discordant errors, the very worst of all, I do not think he could do better than these men.

Having thus won an inglorious victory, and standing forth and surpassing the ignorance of others by the excesses of their impiety, let them henceforth hear:

'Sodom has been justified by you.' Enough, enough of bitterness, you men, and of perverted notions!

Come, let us now go straight toward the truth, and say that the Father, who is Father without beginning and eternally, could never be conceived apart from the offspring who is always with him and coeternally subsists with him.

But even though the Father is Father of the Son not unwillingly, the will to beget will surely not rise up beforehand and emerge in advance of the one begotten.

For if the Father's willing was in wisdom and word—

for surely they will not say the divine will is unwise and irrational—

and the Son is the Wisdom and Word of God the Father, then he himself is the one in whom the whole will of the Father resides.

So that, for those who have babbled such things, their reasoning is somehow turned back upon itself, and their formidable stratagem recoils against that which is opposed to it.

For it seems that nothing would prevent us too—sparing nothing of the absurdity of their reasonings—from asking in return whether the Father exists and is, willingly or unwillingly.

And if not willingly, then he has surely been forced altogether by necessity into existence.

But if not so, but rather willingly, then his willing must surely precede his existence.

And since the willing was manifestly enacted wisely and not apart from word, and the Son is Wisdom and Word, then he, the Son, will preexist the Father.

And the divine word, Scripture, names the Son for us as the Counsel and Will of God the Father.

'You have held my right hand, you have guided me by your counsel.' And indeed elsewhere too:

'Lord, by your will you gave strength to my beauty.' For we have been guided in Christ toward the will of the Father, and in him we are formed unto a beauty beyond the world, being strengthened through him for every good thing whatsoever.

Therefore, as far as their rotten notions and absurd reasonings are concerned, the Son would preexist the Father, he himself being the will—

—then how could the one begotten appear before the one who begot him? Observe, then, to what depth of evil they have descended, having cast off, as far as possible, the precept: 'Examine yourselves, whether you are in the faith.'

A. One could also overturn their old-wives'-tale premise, without much labor, by exposing yet another absurdity for them, by saying that they must answer this:

B. What is that? A. Whether God the Father would be thought and spoken of by us and by the holy angels as Creator and King, compassionate and good, or not? B. But I suppose they would readily grant these things without hesitation.

For how could it be otherwise? A. Let them, then, further explain:

—for I shall ask further—is he these things unwillingly, or willingly? For if they say unwillingly, they will grant that he has undergone that involuntariness, a passion as though from necessity.

But if they think it was not involuntary, and the will for him to be what he is preexisted, then he is not always potentially Creator, nor indeed King without beginning, or compassionate, or good—

—but rather some time will perhaps have crept in beforehand, during which, not yet being these things, he was deliberating on the necessity of being them.

And whoever examines closely the nature of things will reason that will and unwillingness govern matters that are to be done or not to be done, but no longer govern generation. And to those who ask 'for what reason' concerning these matters, it is wise to answer with that saying celebrated by some:

'Nature willed it so, and cares nothing for laws'; and I would add that it takes no account whatsoever of will or unwillingness.

Or would I not seem to you to think rightly, if I should declare that, since whatever God the Father is substantially is not derived from an increase according to will, as though he had turned toward the better, then neither has he acquired being Father by an act of will? B. What do you mean? A. Do you say the Father is holy, and moreover also good? B. Certainly.

A. Are these two virtues, then, naturally inherent in him by substance, or introduced into him from outside by an act of will—such that, should he happen to undergo unwillingness, they would depart from him again? For this departure would be a motion of the will.

For I think the reasoning of right doctrine would only smile at those who dare to say it is otherwise.

A. Well said, my friend, and I admire you for your love of learning.

Then how could God the Father be Father either willingly or, on the other hand, unwillingly, and not rather substantially, since he is thus holy and good, and does not have his being what he is in bare acts of will? And again, do you not see that other point—one that rages most fiercely and, as it were, barks against those on the opposing side? B. I do not yet understand.

I would gladly explain it to you, since you have chosen to be an eager learner.

Will they, then, think it necessary to confess that the Father is by nature a begetter, and will they say this is substantial to him? Or will they deny even this, holding the most unholy opinions? For if they say he is not substantially a begetter, they will at once do away with the existence of the Son, who has obtained his being not in an unbegotten manner, but exists and subsists from the Father, according to the faith of the sacred Scriptures.

But if God the Father, not truly possessing a generative nature, was moved by an act of will to become able to beget, then it is time to say, in effect, that he has somehow fashioned his own nature himself, rendering it generative, and bringing it into what it previously was not; and indeed he would fittingly be thought older than himself, if, existing and subsisting, he has willed to become what he is—I mean, Father.

But let all this be cast into the mountain and the wave, an absurdity no longer bearable in its sickness.

But we, following the reasonings that spring from right doctrine, say that it would be superfluous and ignorant to suppose the Father to be a begetter either unwillingly or willingly, but rather that he is so by nature and substantially.

For he is not unwillingly what he is by nature, his will running together with his nature for being what he is.

B. It seems to me too that this is so.

A. And besides this, one might also venture to expose them to yet another absurdity: namely, the claim that in the case of God the Father one ought to suppose the will to be older than the begetting.

If, then, that which befits his own nature will not be lost by his having begotten, why do the wretches not blush to attach to him the disgrace that comes from unbegottenness? But if it were that he had not begotten under better and more fitting circumstances, what was it that summoned him toward begetting — a thing that would surely turn out worse, were he persuaded to beget? Therefore he has failed even in fitting reasoning, and has willingly admitted that which by nature works injustice — and this against his own glory and nature — and, as it seems, some strange charge has sprung up against the ineffable counsel of the Father.

Are not these things, then, more loathsome than any vomit, and have they not come to the very limit of every evil, having together reached the utmost extreme of impiety? {B.} Yes.

{A.} Come then, let us set these things aside as far as possible, and proceed to that other matter.

{B.} What sort of matter do you mean? {A.} I mean that we ought to enclose within our own souls the best of all opinions concerning God, understanding that nothing will have preceded the begetting of the Son, nor will the will of the Begetter arise before the existence of the Begotten; rather, God was at once Father, and willer of being Father.

For he is not what he is without willing it, though he does not undergo in this respect a will imposed by necessity — just as, indeed, is the case if he should also be conceived as holy and good.

For at once and essentially he is both holy and good, and he wills to be what he is; and one must not suppose it to be otherwise in the case of God.

For he is at once God and at once Father, his begetting not coming after his existing; rather, his being Father subsists and is conceived together with his being God.

To one, then, whose nature is so disposed, one must certainly grant that the begotten — that is, the Son — co-subsists with him without beginning.

{B.} But, they say, if you wish, let this too be so in some such way, and let it be understood that the Son co-exists with the Father.

For God was always Father in potentiality, and so the Son, before the begetting, was to be apprehended only by bare contemplation and existed merely in the semblance of being — but he was begotten after this.

{A.} Then, for the present, let the begetting be confessed as true, and truly from the Father.

For he who by nature is father both in potentiality and in actuality does not have will as the arbiter over both states, but will rather follow the laws of nature, by which begetting too would be understood to occur.

But neither could he become the father of something foreign to his nature, if indeed the begotten must always be of the same nature as the begetter.

And that they attach to the Father himself the ignoble blemish arising from having been changed, even though the divine Scripture says:

'With whom there is no variation, nor shadow of turning' — and from this one shall know their error.

For what, my good man, is this but a turning and, as it were, a gross alteration — the passing, as I say, from potentiality into actuality? For a thing that is conceived as existing potentially according to nature, but not yet received as such also in actuality, stands still for the time in potentiality, not yet having admitted the movement into actuality, but still lingering in that which is first and original.

But should it perhaps admit the movement into actuality, it would reasonably pass over, I think, into something other than what it was at first — since they do not assign one and the same place to what exists potentially and to what exists actually.

{A.} If, then, they say there is nothing that separates the two, but will bring them together and establish them in one and the same place, then God was Father in actuality and without beginning.

For nothing would then prevent us from saying this any longer, once the potential and the actual have been brought by us to the same point.

But if this is by no means so, and the two stand apart from one another by no small difference, how have the things of God not been altered — no longer preserving the state of rest that belongs to potentiality, but having undergone, as it were, the movement into actuality? {B.} What you have said is reasonable; yet I think that our opponents have also come to have this thought in mind, and indeed choose to say: