On the Trinity 1 part 5/6

But the source, as I suppose, of this error of the heretics arose hence: that they think there is no difference between the Son of God and the Son of man, lest, the distinction being made, Jesus Christ should easily be proved to be both man and God. 2. For they will have the same and the very same—that is, the man, the Son of man—to be seen also as the Son of God, so that the man, and the flesh, and that frail substance, the same and the very same, should be said to be the Son of God; whence, since no distinction of the Son of man and the Son of God is separated out, but the very Son of man is claimed as the Son of God, Christ as man only is asserted to be the same as the Son of God. 3.

By this they strive to exclude 'The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us,' and 'You shall call His name Emmanuel, which is interpreted, God with us.' 4. For they put forward and hold out those things which are reported in the Gospel of Luke, from which they attempt to assert not what is, but only what they want to be: 'The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee; therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.' 5. If, then, they say, the angel of God says to Mary, 'that which shall be born of thee is holy,' the substance of flesh and body is from Mary. And this substance—that is, this holy thing which was begotten of her—he set forth to be the Son of God.

The man himself, they say, and that flesh of the body, that which was called holy—it is itself the Son of God; so that both when the Scripture says 'holy,' we should understand Christ the Son of man to be man, and when it sets forth 'the Son of God,' we ought to perceive not God, but man. 6. But indeed the divine Scripture easily convicts and uncovers both the frauds and the thefts of the heretics. For if it were only thus: 'The Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee; therefore what shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God'—perhaps we should have to struggle against them by another method, and we should have to seek other arguments and take up other weapons by which we might overcome both their snares and their tricks.

But since the heavenly Scripture itself, abounding in fullness, strips itself of the calumnies of these heretics, we easily rely on the very thing that is written and overcome these errors without any doubt. 7. For it did not say, as we have already expressed, 'Therefore what shall be born of thee is holy,' but it added a conjunction; for it says, 'Therefore also what shall be born of thee is holy'—so as to show that not principally is this holy thing which is born of her, that is, that substance of flesh and body, the Son of God, but consequently and in the second place; while principally the Son of God is the Word of God made incarnate through that Spirit of whom the angel reports: 'The Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee.' 8.

For this is the legitimate Son of God, who is from God Himself; who, while He takes up this holy thing and joins to Himself the Son of man, and seizes him to Himself and transfers him, by His own connection and a fellowship of intermixture grants and makes him the Son of God, which by nature he was not—so that the principal force of this name 'Son of God' should be in the Spirit of the Lord who descended and came, while the sequel of this name should be in the Son of God and of man; and with reason he was consequently made the Son of God, while he is not principally the Son of God. 9. And therefore the angel, seeing this arrangement and unfolding this order of the mystery, not so confounding all things that he placed no trace of distinction, set down a distinction by saying:

'Therefore also that which shall be born of thee, the holy thing, shall be called the Son of God'—lest, if he had not dispensed this distribution with its proper balances, but had left it mingled in confusion, he should truly have furnished the heretics with an occasion to declare that the Son of man, inasmuch as He is man, is the same as the Son both of God and of man. 10. But now, expounding piecemeal the order and reason of so great a mystery, he evidently expressed it, so as to say:

'And that which shall be born of thee, the holy thing, shall be called the Son of God'—proving that the Son of God descended, who, while He took up the Son of man into Himself, consequently made him the Son of God, because He associated and joined him to Himself as the Son of God, so that, while the Son of man cleaves in nativity to the Son of God, he might hold by that very intermixture, as borrowed and on loan, what he could not possess of his own nature. 11.

And thus there was made by the voice of the angel—what the heretics do not want—a distinction between the Son of God and the Son of man, yet with their association, urging them to understand Christ both as the Son of man, a man, and also as the Son of God; and to receive the man, the Son of God—that is, the Word of God, as it is written—as God; and therefore to acknowledge, by the truth of the Scripture which says this very thing, that Christ Jesus the Lord, connected, so to speak, from both, woven and compacted together from both, and in the same concord of the two substances associated by the binding of a mutual covenant with one another, is both man and God. XXV. 1.

They say, therefore: If Christ is not man only, but also God, and the Scripture reports that Christ died for us and was raised again, then the Scripture now teaches us to believe that God died. Or if God does not die, but Christ is reported to have died, Christ will not be God, since God cannot be taken to have died. 2. If they ever understood, or had understood, what they read, they would never speak at all so perilously. But error is always an abrupt madness, and it is nothing new if they who have forsaken the legitimate faith descend even to perilous things. 3. For if the Scripture set forth Christ as God only, and there were mingled in Him no association of human frailty, then with reason this twisted argument of theirs would have had some force here:

'If Christ is God, but Christ died, therefore God died.' 4. But since the Scripture establishes Him to be not only—as we have already frequently shown—God, but also man, it follows that what is immortal is held to have remained incorrupt. For who does not understand that the divinity is impassible, but human frailty is passible? 5. Since, therefore, Christ is understood to be commingled and associated both from that which is God and also from that which is man—for 'the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us'—who does not, without any teacher or interpreter, of himself easily recognize that it was not that in Christ which is God which died, but that in Him which is man? 6.

For what if the divinity in Christ does not die, but the substance of the flesh alone is extinguished—seeing that in the rest of men also, who are not flesh only, but flesh and soul, the flesh alone indeed suffers the onset of destruction and death, while the soul, beyond the laws of destruction and death, is seen to be incorrupt? 7. For this also the Lord Himself said, exhorting us to martyrdom and to the contempt of all human power: 'Fear not them who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul.' 8.

But if an immortal soul cannot be slain or killed in any other person, although the body and the flesh alone can be killed, how much more certainly could the Word of God and the God in Christ in no way be killed, since the flesh alone and the body were put to death? 9. For if the soul possesses in any human being this nobility of immortality, that it cannot be slain, much more does the nobility of the Word of God possess this power, that it cannot be killed. For if the power of men fails when it would slay the sacred power of God, and if human cruelty fails when it would slay the soul, much more must it fail when it would slay the Word of God.

For since the soul itself, which was made through the Word of God, is not slain by men, much more surely will it be believed that the Word of God cannot be destroyed. 10. And if the bloody savagery of men can do no more against men than merely kill the body, how much more certainly will it have no power in Christ than likewise merely to kill the body—so that, since by these things it is concluded that nothing but the man in Christ was slain, it may appear that the Word was not in any sense brought down to mortality. 11. For if Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, who are agreed to have been only men, manifestly live—for, He says, they all live unto God, and death does not destroy in them the soul, though it dissolves the bodies themselves;

for death was able to exercise its right over the bodies, but had no power to exercise it over the souls; for one thing in them is mortal and therefore dead, while another in them is immortal and therefore understood not to be extinguished—for which reason they were pronounced and called to live unto God—much more certainly was death able in Christ to prevail only against the substance of the body, but could not exert itself against the divinity of the Word. For the power of death is broken where the authority of immortality intervenes. XXVI. 1.

But on this occasion, because Christ is approved by the sacred authorities of the divine writings to be not man only, but also God, other heretics, bursting forth, contrive to shake the state of religion in Christ, wishing by this very thing to show that Christ is God the Father, since He is asserted to be not man only, but is also proclaimed to be God. 2. For thus they say: if it is promised that there is one God, but Christ is God, therefore, they say, if the Father and Christ are one God, Christ will be called the Father. In which they are proved to err, not knowing Christ, but merely approving the sound of the name; for they will not have Him to be the second person after the Father, but the Father Himself. 3. To whom, because they are easily answered, a few things shall be said.

For who would not acknowledge that the person of the Son is second after the Father, when he reads what was said by the Father, addressing the Son: Let us make man after our image and likeness; and afterwards it is recorded: And God made man, after the image of God He made him? 4. Or when he holds in his hands: The Lord rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah fire and brimstone from the Lord out of heaven? 5. Or when he reads addressed to Christ: Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee; ask of me, and I will give thee the nations for thine inheritance and thy possession the ends of the earth? 6. Or when also that longed-for scribe says: The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool? 7.

Or when, expounding the prophecies of Isaiah, he finds it thus set down: Thus saith the Lord to my Christ, my Lord? 8. Or when he reads: I came down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of him that sent me? 9. Or while he finds it set down: For he who sent me is greater than I? 10. Or when he considers what is written: I go to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God? 11. Or when he has it placed among the rest: But in your law it is written that the testimony of two is true; I bear witness of myself, and the Father that sent me beareth witness of me? 12. Or when the voice from heaven is rendered: I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again? 13. Or when it is answered by Peter and said: Thou art the Son of the living God? 14.

Or when by the Lord Himself the mystery of this revelation is approved and it is said: Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona, for this hath not been revealed to thee by flesh and blood, but by my Father who is in heaven? 15. Or when it is expressed by Christ Himself: Father, glorify me with that honour which I had with thee before the world was? 16. Or when it is said by the same: Father, I knew that thou always hearest me, but because of those standing around I said it, that they may believe that thou hast sent me? 17. Or when the definition of the rule is set forth by Christ Himself and it is said: And this is life eternal, that they may know thee the one and true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent. I have glorified thee upon the earth, I have finished the work which thou gavest me? 18.

Or when likewise by the same it is asserted and said: All things have been delivered unto me by my Father? 19. Or when His sitting at the right hand of the Father is approved both by the prophets and by the apostles? 20. And I make it too long a matter if I strive to gather absolutely all the utterances to this point, since the divine Scripture, not so much of the Old as also of the New Testament, everywhere shows Him born of the Father, through whom all things were made and without whom nothing was made, who has always obeyed the Father and obeys Him, always having power over all things—yet power handed to Him, power granted Him, power bestowed upon Him by His own Father. 21.

For what can be so evident, that He is not the Father but the Son, as the fact that He is set forth as obedient to God the Father—lest, if He be believed to be the Father, Christ should be said to be subject to another God the Father? XXVII. 1. But because they frequently throw at us that passage where it is said: I and the Father are one, in this too we shall vanquish them with equal ease. 2. For if Christ were, as the heretics think, the Father, He ought to have said, 'I the Father am one.'

But when He says 'I,' and then brings in the Father by saying 'I and the Father,' He distinguishes and separates the property of His own person, that is, of the Son, from the paternal authority—not only by the sound of the name, but also by the order of the disposed power—He who could have said 'I the Father,' if He had remembered Himself to be the Father. 3. And because He said 'one' (unum), let the heretics understand that He did not say 'one' (unus). For 'one' put in the neuter signifies the concord of fellowship, not the unity of person. For it is said to be 'one thing' (unum), not 'one' (unus); since it does not refer to number, but is uttered with respect to fellowship with another. 4. Finally He adds, saying 'we are' (sumus), not 'I am' (sum), in order to show by this—by saying 'we are' and 'the Father'—that there are two persons.

But the 'one' which He says pertains to concord and to the same mind and to that very fellowship of love, so that fittingly the Father and the Son are one through concord and through affection and through love. 5. And since whatever the Son is, He is from the Father, yet the distinction remaining, so that He who is the Son is not the Father, because neither is He who is the Father the Son. For He would not have added 'we are,' if He had remembered that He, the Son, had been made one and solitary Father. 6. Finally, the apostle Paul too knew this unity of concord, yet with a distinction of persons. For when he wrote to the Corinthians, I, he says, planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase.

So then neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase. Now he who plants and he who waters are one. 7. But who would not understand that Apollos is one, Paul another, and not the very same Apollos at once and equally Paul? Indeed the offices of each one are set forth as different; for it is one who plants and another who waters. Yet the apostle Paul set forth these two, not as being one (unus), but as being one thing (unum), so that Apollos is indeed one, and Paul another, as far as pertains to the distinction of persons, but as far as pertains to concord, both are one. 8.

For when there is one mind of two, there is one truth, there is one faith, there is one and the same religion, there is also one fear of God: they are one, even though they be two; they are the same thing, while they are of the same mind. 9. For indeed those whom the principle of persons divides from one another, the principle of religion in turn brings together. And although they are not the very same identical ones, while they think the same, they are the same thing; and though they are two, they are one, having fellowship in faith, even though they bear a diversity in their persons. 10. Finally, when at these words of the Lord the Jewish ignorance had been stirred up and rashly even kindled to the very stones, so that they ran about and said:

We stone thee not for a good work, but for blasphemy, and because thou, being a man, makest thyself God—the Lord set a distinction in rendering His account, in what way He had either called Himself God or wished to be understood as God. He whom the Father sanctified, He says, and sent into this world, ye say that he blasphemeth, because I said, I am the Son of God? 11. Here too He said that He has a Father. He is therefore the Son, not the Father. For He would have confessed Himself to be the Father, if He had remembered that He was the Father. 12. And He sets forth that He was sanctified by His own Father. Since therefore He receives sanctification from the Father, He is less than the Father; but being less than the Father, He is consequently not the Father, but the Son. For if He had been the Father, He would have given the sanctification, not received it.

And now, moreover, by professing that He had received sanctification from the Father, by this very thing whereby He proves Himself to be less than the Father in receiving sanctification from Him, He showed that He is the Son, not the Father. 13. He says, moreover, that He was sent, so that by this obedience, whereby the Lord Christ came as one sent, He may be proved to be not the Father, but the Son—who would certainly have done the sending, if He had been the Father. But the Father was not sent, lest the Father should be proved subject to another God while He is sent. 14. And yet after these things He adds that which would dissolve absolutely all ambiguity and extinguish the whole controversy of error. For He says in the last part of His discourse: Ye say that he blasphemeth, because I said, I am the Son of God?

Therefore if the Lord evidently testifies Himself to be the Son, not the Father, it is an example of great rashness and of enormous fury to stir up a controversy of divinity and religion against the testimony of Christ the Lord Himself, and to say that Christ Jesus is the Father, when one observes that He proved Himself to be not the Father, but the Son. XXVIII. 1. I will still add that part also, in which, while the heretic rejoices as if in a certain eye of his own—truth and light being lost—he may recognize the entire blindness of his error. 2. For again and again and frequently he objects that it was said: Have I been so long time with you, and ye do not know me? Philip, he who hath seen me hath seen the Father also. 3. But let him learn what he does not understand.

Philip is blamed, and rightly and deservedly indeed, because he said: Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us. For when had he either heard this from Christ or learned it, as though Christ were the Father, when on the contrary he had rather frequently heard and often learned that He was the Son, not that He was the Father? 4. For what the Lord said: If ye had known me, ye would have known my Father also; and from now ye know him and have seen him—He had not said this so as to wish to be understood to be the Father, but because whoever has come fully and completely and with all faith and all religion to the Son of God, shall in every way, through the Son Himself in whom he thus believes, come to the Father and likewise see Him. 5. For no man, He says, can come to the Father except through me.

And therefore he shall not only come to God the Father and know the Father Himself, but he ought also so to hold fast and so to presume in soul and mind, as though he had already known the Father and seen Him as well. 6. For divine Scripture often announces as done the things that are not yet done, because they will so come to pass; and the things that must by all means be done, it proclaims not as though they were to be, but relates as though they had been done. 7. Finally, when Christ had not yet been born in the times of the prophet Isaiah, For a child, he said, is born unto us; and when Mary had not yet been approached, And I went in unto the prophetess, he said, and she conceived and bore a son. 8. And when Christ had not yet laid open the bosom of the Father, he reported:

And his name shall be called the Angel of great counsel. 9. And when He had not yet suffered, As a sheep, he proclaimed, he was led to the slaughter. 10. And when the cross was as yet nowhere, he said: All the day long I stretched out my hands to a people that believed not. 11. And when He had not yet been insultingly given drink, In my thirst, he says, they gave me vinegar to drink. 12. And when He had not yet been stripped, he said: Upon my garment they cast lots, and they numbered my bones, they pierced my hands and my feet. 13. For divine Scripture, foreseeing, speaks of the things it knows are to be, as though done, and speaks of the things it holds to be, as though accomplished—things which without doubt are to come. 14. And therefore the Lord, in the present passage, said: From now ye know him and have seen him.

For He said that the Father would be seen by him, whoever should have followed the Son—not as though the Son Himself were the Father seen, but because whoever should have wished to follow Him and to be His disciple would obtain the reward of being able to see the Father. 15. For He is also the image of God the Father, so that to these things this too may be added, that as the Father works, so the Son also works, and the Son is the imitator of all the paternal works, so that everyone may hold it as though he had already seen the Father, while he sees Him who always imitates the invisible Father in all His works. 16. But if Christ Himself is the Father, how does He immediately add and say: He that believeth in me, the works that I do shall he also do, and greater than these shall he do, because I go to the Father?

17. And He still subjoins: If ye love me, keep my commandments; and I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate. 18. After which He also subjoins this: If anyone love me, he will keep my word; and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our abode with him. 19. And He also added this too: But that Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send, he shall teach you and bring to your remembrance all things whatsoever I have said. 20. He still puts forward that passage by which He shows Himself to be the Son, and fittingly subjoined and said: If ye loved me, ye would rejoice, because I go to the Father, because the Father is greater than I. 21. And what when He also subjoins those words: I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman;

every branch in me that bears no fruit, he takes it away, and every fruit-bearing branch he prunes, that it may bear more fruit? 22. He still presses on and adds: As the Father hath loved me, so I also have loved you. Abide in my love. If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love, even as I have kept the Father's commandments, and abide in his love. 23. He still urges and says: But I have called you friends, because all things that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. 24. He also gathers this: But all these things they will do to you for my name's sake, because they know not him that sent me. 25.

These things, then, evidently testifying Him to be not the Father, but the Son, the Lord would never have subjoined after those former ones, if either He had remembered that He was the Father, or had wished to be understood as the Father—except in order that He might express this: that each one ought henceforth so to hold, while he sees the image of God the Father through the Son, as if he had seen the Father; since each one who believes in the Son is exercised in the contemplation of the image, so that, accustomed to seeing the divinity in the image, he may be able to advance and grow even to the perfect contemplation of God the omnipotent Father; and because whoever has drunk this in with soul and mind, and has believed that it will so be concerning all things, holds the Father whom he is to see as though in a certain manner he had already seen Him, and now already holds Him as though he grasped what he knows for certain he shall possess.

26. But if He had been the Father Himself, why did He promise as a future reward what He had already bestowed and given? 27. For since He says: Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God, He is found to be promising the contemplation and sight of the Father. Therefore He had not yet given it. For why would He promise it, if He had already given it? For He would have given it, if He were the Father; for He was seen and touched. 28. But since, while Christ Himself is touched and seen, He nevertheless promises and says that whoever is pure in heart shall see God, by this very thing He proves that He is not the Father—He who, then present while He was being seen, promised that whoever should be pure in heart would see the Father. 29.

Therefore He who was promising these things was not the Father, but the Son; for He who was the Son was promising that which He had to be seen, whose promise would have been superfluous unless He were the Son. For why was He promising the pure in heart that they would see the Father, if even then those who were present were already seeing Christ as the Father? But because He was the Son, not the Father, fittingly the Son too, because He is the image of God, was then seen, and the Father, because He is invisible, is promised and noted as to be seen by the pure in heart. 30. Let these things, then, suffice to have been said even against this heretic—a few out of many.

For a field indeed broad and ample would open up, if we should wish to deal more fully with this heretic, since by those two passages alone, having had as it were his eyes dug out, he is wholly overcome, deprived of his sight, in the blindness of his own teaching. XXIX. 1. But indeed the order of reason and the authority of faith, the utterances and writings of the Lord being arranged, admonishes us after these things to believe also in the Holy Spirit, of old promised to the Church, but rendered at the appointed seasons of the times. 2. For He was promised through the prophet Joel, but rendered through Christ. In the last days, He says, I will pour out of my Spirit upon my servants and my handmaids. And the Lord: Receive the Holy Spirit;

whosesoever sins ye remit, they shall be remitted, and whosesoever ye retain, they shall be retained. 3. Now this Holy Spirit the Lord Christ at one time calls the Paraclete, at another declares to be the Spirit of truth, who is not new in the Gospel, nor newly given; for this same Spirit both accused the people in the prophets and bestowed the advocacy upon the Gentiles in the apostles. For those deserved to be accused, because they had despised the law; and they who from among the Gentiles believe deserve to be aided by the patronage of the Spirit, because they yearn to come to the evangelical law. 4.

There is indeed a difference of the kinds of offices in Him, since at different times the reason of the causes is different; nor is He on this account Himself diverse, who performs these things thus, nor is He another, while He acts thus, but He is one and the same, distributing His offices through the seasons and the occasions and moments of things. 5. Finally the apostle Paul says: Having the same spirit, as it is written: I believed, therefore have I spoken; we also believe, and therefore speak. 6. One therefore and the same is the Spirit who was in the prophets and in the apostles, except that there He was for a moment, here always. But there not so as to be in them always, here so as to remain always in them; and there moderately distributed, here wholly poured out;