論聖三一對話錄 第 1 章 第 7/23 段

'Is it not the case, then, that although the Father is always by nature and without beginning a Creator, yet the things made have not been wrought timelessly? For he does not have creation as co-eternal with himself, but brought it into being in its own time out of things that were not.'

'shall we then grant that his unchangeable nature has been moved and has undergone a shadow of turning? And then who would dare say this? If, then,' he says, 'it should likewise be said that he begets, passing from potentiality to actuality, this thing is not a turning nor a movement toward change, but rather a fitness of nature disposed in this way with regard to begetting.'

{A.} How readily your mind inclines to levity, if you suppose the perverse to have truly grasped any necessary point!

For we must examine as closely as possible the manner of movement in both cases, and what it is that intervenes and reveals the difference lying between them.

and thus you will finally recognize the old wives' tale that belongs to their ignorance.

For that which is said to beget something of itself, and which has advanced from potentiality to actuality, has been shaken, as it were, within its own nature.

For it would undergo the movement into actuality not with respect to certain other things, but with respect to itself.

But that which has passed from not doing something to the need to work, we shall find has its movement not with respect to itself, but with respect to, and directed at, other things.

{B.} You would do us no less a service than before, by making your explanation clearer for us.

{A.} Well then, let us speak, for instance, as in the case of a man.

For being by nature capable of begetting, and being this potentially at first, he comes in time to exercise this also in actuality.

and he also fashions the forms of bronze reliefs, or accomplishes some other similar work.

Does it seem to you, then, that he has been moved in equal manner and by the same principle — both when he has passed from being father in potentiality to being father in actuality, and when he advances to being the maker of whatever comes from craft? {B.} I would never suppose so.

For the one has not been moved with respect to himself, but rather makes manifest, upon external things, the knowledge inherent within him.

But the other is, as it were, essentially moved with respect to himself, and will thereby produce for us a certain transposition and turning within his very nature — that is, within the nature's own actuality and potentiality with regard to anything whatsoever.

{A.} And indeed this is exactly what I was saying just now, wishing that the difference in the manner of being moved should be examined in both cases.

There is, then, nothing that compels us of necessity to say that the nature of God has been moved, and has undergone essential disturbance with regard to some existing thing, should he in the course of time proceed to the necessity of creating.

But he would undergo that movement with respect to his very essence, if he were, I know not how, transferred, in the matter of begetting, from potentiality into actuality.

{A.} And there is another way too — for I think that those who would choose to hunt lovingly for the discoveries of truth ought to imitate the keenest-scented of hounds — by which one might perceive the argument of our opponents to be weak and inelegant.

For nothing at all, I think, among the arguments that pertain to matters of necessity, could prevent the divine and supra-mundane offspring from co-subsisting with its own Begetter, God being conceived and existing eternally and without beginning as Father.

But since creation is the work of a mighty creative energy, how and from where could it possibly have the privilege of co-subsisting with God, and of possessing the glory of existing eternally, since it is not without beginning, existing in time, and has its movement into being out of things that are not? Or do you not say that it is necessary that the creating nature should in every respect and altogether be conceived beforehand and pre-exist, prior to everything that is called into existence creatively? {B.} Yes, I say it is necessary.

{A.} Therefore, creation had not yet been brought into being, and yet God was even then Creator.

And it is not because he is Creator that he is thereby Father, but because he has begotten.

Since, then, in the case of Creator and creation, co-existence is not necessary, whereas the exactness of the concepts would introduce, in the case of God — whether he be named Father or Son — an unavoidable co-existence, how could the one arise before, and the other in some way appear before it, if each is what it is precisely by being conceived as co-existing, and not deprived of their mutual concurrence? For he is Father in relation to the Son, and conversely.

Does the argument seem to you to have been forced toward something not rightly held? {B.} Not at all.

{A.} But if it appeared to God the Father to be something wise and altogether good that he should beget of himself, and be seen as Father of a Son according to nature, then what deliberation could there have been, or from where could it have arisen, concerning the need to beget? What obstacle was there, entreating usefully and necessarily that God should not yet need to be Father? For that men are always fathers potentially, but not yet also in actuality, is unclear to none of existing beings;

and quite evident is the obstacle lying immediately at hand and preventing it.

For while the age of the body has not yet arrived at puberty, its own powers still remain, as it were, closed and at rest in accordance with nature, and it awaits, so to speak, the fitting time for their manifest disclosure.

For then the Only-Begotten will no longer be the maker of the ages, if time, in some manner unknown, has slipped in and holds an assumption prior to that of the Father and God being said to beget in actuality;

if indeed the passage from unbegottenness still — that is, from the potential — to the begetting in actuality would not occur without time, even if the interval between them were conceived to be exceedingly brief and instantaneous.

I say it is utterly shameful and unseemly to suppose that the sun and fire were, at some time, perhaps, not what they now are, and never even to have had any station or seat — the one conceived only in potentiality — but to have arrived at actuality by way of a movement in time and by nature, and rather to have obtained by nature, concurrent with the very beginning of their coming-to-be, the properties inherent in them; and yet to say that God is not superior to bodies, nor even to suppose that, in the necessity of begetting, he follows the ordinances proper to his own nature, in whatever manner would befit himself alone.

THIRD DISCOURSE: That the Son is True God, Just as the Father Is

{A.} O Hermias, you yourself, I know, would probably say that it is best to take delight in pursuits leading to virtue, and to dwell especially upon discourses that lead to piety — and these would be the discourses concerning God.

For this reason, too, the sacred Scripture says:

'And you shall speak of them, sitting in your house and walking on the road, lying down and rising up.' For I think that our having the divine word ceaselessly upon our tongue is not without its use for benefit, and would befit none more fittingly than those whose concern is to live in a manner pleasing to God.

Since, then, the discourse concerning the divine and ineffable begetting has, for the present, been sufficiently examined by us — showing that the Son sprang forth from nowhere else at all, but shone forth for us from the very essence of God the Father —

what is it, then, that still persuades our opponents to suppose that the Father alone exists as God by nature and truly, numbering with him no one at all, but rather thrusting away, along with everything else, far from true deity, the nature of the only and truly existing Son? {A.} As to what persuades them — since you seem inclined to ask — I would say, concerning those who have thus divided the truth, that 'their vine is of the vine of Sodom, and their branches are of Gomorrah.'

'Their grapes are grapes of gall, their cluster is one of bitterness; their wine is bitterness to them.' For, being as it were drunk with false assertions discovered from I know not where, they belch forth evil things out of the evil treasure of their heart.

And, unbridled, having let loose their tongue in blasphemies against the Son, suffering as it were from a madness sister and neighbor to the godlessness of the Pharisees, let them hear, along with those Pharisees:

'Offspring of vipers, how can you speak good things, being evil?' And yet, surely, those who apply their mind to such reverent and hidden inquiries ought not to suppose that whatever seems right to them is altogether good and beyond reproach; but rather, carrying about, as it were, their inward and hidden eye in a circle, and ranging over the breadth of countless considerations, they ought to depart as far as possible from what has been put together out of levity, and, having tested with precision what conduces to benefit and is guided toward comprehension by straightforward discernment and by a pure and unadulterated argument, to settle upon the doctrines of truth alone.

For it is, I think, a stroke of madness and derangement of mind to say that the Son who has appeared from God is not by nature and truly God — as a word from the mind, or, one might say, as the radiance of light — and instead to swim about, as it were, in random reasonings, and to take pride in counterfeit discoveries of thought.

Is it not better, then, to see with a docile mind that wherever begetting according to nature is not counterfeit, there, surely, in every case, the relation of the begotten to the begetter would not be merely relational or falsely so called, but natural? For that which is truly begotten will be of the very essence of the one who begot it.

How, then, according to them, could that which has been begotten of God fail and fall short of truly being God? {B.} Indeed, they might perhaps also say of him that he is both God and of God, but in a different and altered manner.

{A.} Well then, I myself do not fully understand what this 'in a different manner' amounts to; but you yourself might perhaps explain it, if indeed you know.

For they say that the Father is true God, while the Son is not so — even though he may be called God, and is indeed of God.

{A.} And indeed this is nothing other than to cry aloud, without disguise, that the Son is not God at all, but is of God in the same manner as all other things — that is, plainly, in the manner of creation — and that he has therefore been brought into being, and has been transferred from not existing to existing, and shall henceforth be ranked with creation as with a sister.

For I think it best and wisest, now, to strip the argument bare of the shadowy devices of cunning craft, and not to allow our opponents — who hold no true opinion concerning him — to gild the nature of the Son with elegantly polished little phrases, but rather to persuade them to say outright what they actually believe him to be.

For then, I think, every argument will thoroughly dance in triumph over their folly.

And that one, if he possessed an uncorrupted mind, would suppose that the Son's having appeared from God signifies nothing other than that he has been begotten and has sprung forth from the very essence of the Father — this our discourse, so recently completed and near at hand, has already shown.

But for the other point, I shall consider it necessary to sharpen a mind skilled in careful examination.

B. You would most gladly act, being urged on to this.

But that which they have determined must be brought forth against our arguments is this:

'For,' they say, 'one alone is named true God, the Father, both in the older and in the newer Scriptures.'

'Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one Lord.' And indeed he has also brought God himself into the odes, crying aloud:

'See now, see that I am he, and there is no God besides me.' And again:

'I am God the first, and I am after these things, and there is none besides me.' And indeed the Son himself also says to his own Father:

'And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God.' They would, without effort, adduce countless other such passages, and contend rather boldly for their own arguments; and indeed it will not be far from their hope that some might be persuaded to agree in choosing to hold that the Father alone is truly and by nature the one and only God, and that besides him there is absolutely no other.

A. But tell me, what is it that persuades them, sweating over nothing? For, my good man, we should need no labor at all in this matter, since we ourselves also run together most readily, having received in faith the Father as the one true God by nature.

For how, or from what quarter, could anyone raise a doubt about this? But if indeed they should say that besides him there is absolutely no other God, this will in no way harm the nature of the Son.

For he is outside all things and is not reckoned among 'all things,' since he coexists with his own Father and shines forth together with him always, and is conceived together with the One who begot him in the one nature of the Godhead.

One, therefore, is God, and this is the true one.

But leaving these matters aside for the present, let us proceed to that other point:

for it seems to you that this is how it must be.

B. What do you mean? A. The Son said that the Father alone is the true God.

A. And indeed the ancient oracle proclaimed to us that there is no other God besides him.

A. We too, then, my friend, must go to the sacred Scripture, and, diligently searching out the words of the saints, come, let us examine whether indeed anyone has called the Son alone God, and has also named him true.

A. Then straightway the wise John will come to our aid, he who is also named the son of thunder, crying out expressly:

'And we know that the Son of God has come, and has given us understanding, that we may know the true God, and we are in his true Son Jesus Christ.'

'This is the true God and eternal life.' And in turn the great Baruch will also run to join us and will make plain his proclamation concerning the nature and glory of the Son, likewise crying aloud in this way, all but pointing him out with his finger:

'our God; no other shall be reckoned beside him.'

'He found out every way of knowledge, and gave it to Jacob his servant, and to Israel his beloved.'

'Afterward he appeared on earth and lived among men.' And indeed I could say that our sacred Paul spoke of one Lord Jesus Christ.

Is it not, then, most clearly and most plainly proclaimed, through the voice of the theologians, that the Only-begotten was announced as one and only and true God? B. True.

A. Since, then, the Father has been brought before us as the only and true God, while the Son in turn stands in the same manner and without variance —

for absolutely no other besides him could be reckoned as such —

where then will the mind of believers run, if the two of them should each thrust the other out on their own account, and they should stand insecurely in the glory that befits God, having received a nature altogether easily shaken and easily overturned? Or is it not true to say that, if we should admit that the Father alone is the true God, we would thereby at once stamp a difference of nature upon the Son, and, driving him from the bounds of true Godhead, would regard him as having come to be in some other nature? But if, on the other hand, ascribing the name and reality of true Godhead to the Son alone, we should reckon that no one else at all is such besides him, would we not be curtailing the Father's glory in a way it is not lawful to say? B. The force of these thoughts does indeed tend in that direction;

yet perhaps our opponents would also be likely to say this: that it would altogether follow for us, if the Son is truly God, that we should speak not of one God, but of two gods.

A. There is nothing so utterly outlandish that they will not attempt it; every path of blasphemy is, for them, level ground and open to the chariot.

But our aim is not at all to say this from any quarter; rather, reason drives us together into the confession that one must understand the Son to have sprung forth from the essence of God the Father through true generation, true God from true God, not having grown into some alien and degenerate nature, but being essentially that very thing which the Father too is understood to be, except only for being Father.

For, the Holy Spirit being thus also numbered together and rising up together into this theology, the one true and natural Godhead is thereafter worshiped in a consubstantial Trinity.

B. But if we are to grant, they say, that there are three hypostases, then the Godhead too would, by reasonable inference, be conceived as threefold.

A. But the doctrine of true mystagogy has taught us that these things are not so.

For we have been baptized into the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and we do not at all say that our faith is into three gods, but into one Godhead, worshiped in a Trinity.

Why then do you go off course, and try to bring down under human reasonings things that are above mind and reason, which I think ought to be honored by faith alone, without curious meddling? For it is altogether unholy, and reaches the very summit of impiety, to inquire with excessive curiosity just how, and what, the Trinity is, and how the nature of the Godhead stands in itself. It is rather more pious to wish to consider rightly in what manner, in the Holy Trinity, one nature of the Godhead is worshiped.

Say, then, Hermias, that we think and hold this opinion rightly, but that those on the opposite side act impiously, unintelligently subjecting to examination, by the wretched inventions of their reasonings, things that surpass all mind.

For I myself indeed say that this is what they do.

How then is God one among us, if the Father and the Son are each conceived in their own hypostases? A. We shall of necessity take as our helper and ally for this the manner of consubstantiality, which binds together into a unity that which is twofold in hypostases through both, and which is well able to gather back into sameness what seems to be dispersed into the property peculiar to each severally — so that the duality should not be predicated at all of the simple and uncomposite nature in any respect whatsoever, nor yet, out of fear of seeming to injure the principle of simplicity, should we be caught abolishing the duality that exists in the hypostases.

— brought to us from the sacred Scriptures.

For the Father, being alone by nature and truly God, could not admit the Son — who alone is by nature and truly God — as existing in his own proper subsistence and also in natural identity with him, in any way other than this: that the Son himself exists from the Father and in him, while the Son in turn possesses in his own nature the One who begot him; only in this way would they be understood — and truly be — one.

And indeed the good Philip, as we know, was rebuked, not decking out the teachableness of his mind with overly elaborate words.

For although it was possible to behold, in the Son, the nature of God the Father, he entreated, saying:

'Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.' And in reply to this, Christ said:

'Have I been with you so long a time, and you have not known me, Philip? Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in me? He who has seen me has seen the Father.'

'I and the Father are one.' And the saying is true.

For since the Son has shone forth from the essence of God the Father, he himself exists in his own Father, and would exhibit in himself, through natural identity, the nature of the One who begot him as well.

The Father could be conceived in no other way than through the Son and in the Son, since the Son is the exact imprint of his hypostasis, making the nature from which he sprang shine forth in his own proper form.

For I think it necessary also for us to say, according to our custom:

therefore also, whatever might chance to be said of both together will indeed apply altogether, and distinctly, to each one severally, and will do injustice to the glory of neither.

B. How, then, do you mean this too? A. Do you not hear, my friend, the blessed Paul crying out concerning God the Father:

'that God may be all in all'? B. Well, what of it? A. Come then, and observe that which assigns an equal weight of glory to the Son, and gilds the nature of the Only-begotten with the very things by which the Father himself would be greatly exalted.

'The fullness of him who fills all in all.' B. Yes, so he said.

A. Would not anyone, I think, be at a loss, pondering somewhat in this way how the matter stands?

For since God the Father fills all things for us, and is in all things and is understood to be so in a manner befitting God, I do not see to what further point the fullness that comes through the Son could still extend.

Is it not, then, necessary to consider that, if each of the two is not essentially in both, then, as it seems, the fullness that comes from God the Father will prove superfluous, since the fullness through the Son would very sufficiently avail us for this purpose; or else, the fullness through the Son is introduced upon existing things in vain and no longer fittingly, since the Father is most sufficient and by no means incapable of filling all things.

Of what, then, could anyone still show that all things stand in need, when they already have the fullness that comes from the Father? Will it not appear, then, my friend, that the wise John has turned out to be superfluous in his words, and has rhapsodized in vain concerning the saints and the Son, saying:

'For of his fullness we have all received'? For, being in need of what, do they still receive the things that come from the fullness of the Son, when God the Father is in himself sufficient, in what pertains to himself, for establishing creation, in need of nothing at all from anyone else? B. You have spoken most rightly.

A. But if we wish also to inquire closely into what exactly this fullness through each of the two is, would it not become clear to everyone that, if the principle of essence in both has been divided so as to be different, then each would likewise, according to whatever nature he has, effect the fullness toward us? B. Necessarily so.

A. And if the Father is true God, then his activity too will certainly be divine; but if the Son falls short of true Godhead, then his activity will no longer be divine, but will altogether correspond to what he is, and so will the power of his fullness.

We have, then, been wrought upon toward fullness in two ways, and dissimilarly.

— in a lesser measure, if indeed the fullness of God the Father would not by itself have sufficed entirely to save us.

But I say that it is a charge and indictment of the utmost derangement to think and assert that these things are beyond reproach.

Therefore let such nonsense be cast away as far as possible.

For natures that have come into difference from one another, understood as otherness, and have been carried off altogether into estrangement, would not have identity of activity and unvarying equality with respect to certain existing things; but wherever the principle of how a thing exists proves different for certain things, there too, without fail, a corresponding dissimilarity of activity will follow.

Yet I would most gladly ask you how, in us, the fullness of the Father and of the Son might be understood and effected as being one and not different.

A. And indeed there is nothing at all difficult or hard to attain in this.

For how else than through the Holy Spirit, who through himself fills us with divine gifts and makes us partakers of the ineffable nature? For thus, I believe, the Savior's disciple somewhere says:

But that which is persuading you that you must be eager to inquire, and pressing you to learn further — namely, how it might come about that, through the one Spirit, the activity from both should come to pass, tending toward fullness — that, I think, is this:

How, then, could the fullness that comes from both still be in us through the one Holy Spirit, if he were not merely, in a ministerial way, signifying what belongs to each and fulfilling a serving function in us, but were rather bringing in, as within his own nature, that which belongs to both? B. You have spoken most thoughtfully.

For this is indeed what is turning over in my mind.

A. Let, then, the earnest effort of our discourse be turned to this very point:

I would say that whatever, through itself, produces in others participation in some reality would in no way depart from its natural affinity with that reality, but will operate in such a way as if that very reality itself were, perhaps, likewise present.

For, I think, by a necessary law all things that appear to have received, in relation to one another, activity of equal power, are bound together toward essential identity.

B. Come, explain to me by examples, for I am not following very well.

A. Well then, I shall proceed, and indeed I will speak.

For the sun is conceived and exists as something in itself, and it traverses a certain lofty course, having received, by the commands of its Maker, its place there.

But sending down its ray and touching the things upon the earth, it instills the sensation of heat.

But if we should wish to inquire minutely what sort of nature it has received by lot, we shall accomplish this without toil.

For that it is hot and fiery, anyone at all who has once had experience of it could easily perceive, taking as proof the warm ray that peeps forth and pours out from it.

For he will understand, since indeed the matter is not laborious.

A. Then how is it not evident, after all, to those who have understanding? B. What do you mean? A. That what pours forth from it upon the things capable of sensation is surely not of a different nature from the nature of the sun, whatever that nature may be.

For how could that which operates as it does be otherwise, if it did not have the nature of the sun as, so to speak, the root and mother of its own emanation, so that, from that of which it is believed to be, it might be shown forth as having in itself the whole quality of the substance of that which emitted it? B. It could not be otherwise.

...and will the Spirit be ranked together with the Son and must it be inscribed within the one nature of the Godhead, or not? B. They say that the Father alone is the one true God, and they number no one else at all together with him.

A. Then, according to them, the Spirit too, together with the Son, will be thrust out from true Godhead and will slide down into the multitude of created things; and according to them it will be of the same nature as the Son with respect to being created, but will be as far as possible removed from the substance of God the Father.

What sort of God, then, is still in us, even if the Spirit should lodge in and dwell within those who are baptized — let them show us.

For concerning God the Father, not even they themselves would say it, as I suppose.

For no one could ever obtain participation in the natural and true Godhead through a created Spirit, since this would not be a natural participation in that Godhead.

It remains, then, to say that the Son alone would be in us, although according to them he is called of a different nature and one who has departed from the substance of God the Father, and for this reason is numbered together with creation.

A creature, then, is in us, no longer God, and through the created Spirit creation grows rich in sanctification, having nothing from God the Father.

But if, abandoning this position, they should turn to the better course and say that the Son is God, let them explain this: will there then be in us a duality of gods, since the Father and the Son have come to dwell in us, or rather one alone? For Christ said:

But they will perhaps turn to what is right and blameless, granting one God in us, the true and natural one, and they would perhaps themselves add: the Father alone.

A. Then it is necessary, even unwillingly now in a way, to venture to say that, if the Father alone is the one God in us, the Son no longer enters in with us for any useful purpose, but rather now superfluously — even though he does not even possess the being of true God — and his indwelling fullness in us will be, as it were, a random, useless crowd.

And in another way too, the things pertaining to this timely coming-together would not have been accomplished in fitting order.

For if we are temples of God, and surely not of gods, then let it be proclaimed now, going out from the heart of all — but rather, why should he at all promise to join in from the beginning, if no one is going to be joined with him, since the Father is God by nature and sufficiently well fills, as a temple, whomever he comes to be in? Therefore — for I shall turn the argument on this point once more — neither is there God in us through the Spirit:

for it will in no way effect in us participation in the divine nature, since, according to them, it is not from that nature;

and the Son, it seems, running together with his own Father, is superfluous, and nothing any longer prevents us from calling the blessed Paul one who speaks amiss and idly, even though he wrote clearly that Christ is in us as God through the Spirit, who through himself calls us to participation in the natural and true Godhead.

B. These are surely nonsense, and words that have reached the very extreme of impiety.

For thus there could no longer be conceived two gods in us, but one alone, worshiped in the Holy Trinity.

Do you think we should rebuke these people, or that it would not even be fitting to attempt to say so? B. Not at all.