Some think that the equality of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit is hindered from being understood by this, that it is written, 'Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God,' so that on this account equality does not seem to hold, because the Father himself is not power and wisdom, but the begetter of power and wisdom. And indeed it is wont to be inquired with no slight attention how God is said to be the Father of power and wisdom. For the Apostle says: 'Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.' And hence some of ours have argued in this manner against the Arians—those, at least, who first raised themselves against the catholic faith. For Arius himself is reported to have said: 'If he is a Son, he was born.
If he was born, there was a time when the Son was not'—not understanding that even to be born is, to God, to be everlasting, so that the Son is coeternal with the Father, just as the splendor which is begotten by fire and diffused is coeval with it, and would be coeternal if the fire were eternal. Whence indeed the later Arians rejected that opinion and confessed that the Son of God did not begin from time. But amid the disputations which our men held against those who said, 'There was a time when the Son was not,' some also inserted this reasoning: 'If the Son of God is the power and wisdom of God, and God was never without power and wisdom, then the Son is coeternal with God the Father. But the Apostle says:
Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God, and to say that God at some time did not have power or wisdom is the mark of a madman. There was not, therefore, a time when the Son was not.' Which reasoning drives us to say that God the Father is not wise except by having the wisdom which he begot, and is not himself of himself the Father, the very wisdom. And then, if it is so, the Son himself too, just as he is called God of God, light of light, it must be considered whether he can be called wisdom of wisdom, if God the Father is not himself the very wisdom but only the begetter of wisdom.
And if we hold this, why is he not also the begetter of his own greatness and goodness, eternity, and omnipotence, so that he is not himself his own greatness and his own goodness and his own eternity and his own omnipotence, but is great by that greatness which he begot, and good by that goodness, and eternal by that eternity, and omnipotent by that omnipotence which was born of him—just as he is not himself his own wisdom, but is wise by that wisdom which was born of him? For that is not to be feared, that we should be compelled to say there are many sons of God (besides the adoption of the creature) coeternal with the Father, if he is the begetter of his own greatness and goodness and eternity and omnipotence.
For to this cavil it is easily answered that it does not follow, because many things are named, that he is the father of many coeternal sons—just as it does not follow that he is the father of two when it is said, 'Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.' For the same power is that which is wisdom, and the same wisdom that which is power. Is it, then, likewise so concerning the rest, that the same greatness is that which is power, and whatever other things there are, whether mentioned above or such as can still be mentioned?
But if nothing is said of him in himself except what is said in relation to the Son—that is, Father or begetter or his beginning; and if, further, the begetter is consequently beginning to that which he begets of himself; but whatever else is said, is said with the Son, or rather in the Son—whether great by that greatness which he begot, or just by that justice which he begot, or good by that goodness which he begot, or powerful by that power or strength which he begot, or wise by that wisdom which he begot—while greatness itself is not called Father but the generator of greatness; whereas the Son, just as he is called Son in himself (which is not said with the Father but in relation to the Father), so is he not great in himself, but with the Father whose greatness he himself is;
so too he is called wise with the Father whose wisdom he himself is, just as the Father is wise with the Son, because he is wise by that wisdom which he begot—whatever, therefore, they are called in relation to themselves, the one is not called so without the other; that is, whatever they are called which their substance displays, both are called so at once. If these things are so, then neither is the Father God without the Son, nor the Son God without the Father, but both together are God. And what was said, 'In the beginning was the Word,' is understood as 'in the Father was the Word.' Or if 'in the beginning' was said as if it were said 'before all things,' then what follows, 'And the Word was with God,' the Word is taken to be the Son alone, not at once the Father and the Son as though both were one Word. For thus is Word as Image;
but the Father and the Son are not both together the Image, but the Son alone is the Image of the Father, just as also the Son; for both are not together the Son. But as to what is added, 'And the Word was with God,' it is much that it should be so understood: the Word, which is the Son alone, was with God, which is not the Father alone but the Father and the Son together, God. But what wonder is it if this can be said of two things far different from each other? For what is so different as soul and body? Yet it can be said that the soul was with the man—that is, in the man—since the soul is not body, whereas man is soul and body together. So that what is consequently written, 'And the Word was God,' may be understood thus: the Word, which is not the Father, was God together with the Father.
Do we then say that the Father is the generator of greatness—that is, the generator of his own power or of his own wisdom—but the Son is greatness, power, and wisdom; while God is great, almighty, wise, both together? How then is he God of God, light of light? For not both together are God of God, but the Son alone of God, namely the Father; nor are both together light of light, but the Son alone of the Father who is light.
Unless perhaps, in order to insinuate and most briefly impress that the Son is coeternal with the Father, it was so said 'God of God' and 'light of light,' and whatever is said in this manner, as if it were said: this which is not the Son without the Father, of this which is not the Father without the Son; that is, this light which is not light without the Father, of this light the Father which is not light without the Son—so that when God is said, which is not the Son without the Father, and 'of God,' which is not the Father without the Son, it may be perfectly understood that the begetter did not precede that which he begot. And if it is so, this alone cannot be said of them: that of the one which both are not together. As Word cannot be said of Word, because both are not together Word, but the Son alone;
nor Image of Image, because both are not together Image; nor Son of Son, because both are not together Son. According to which is said: 'I and the Father are one.' For 'we are one' was said; that which he is, this am I too, according to essence, not according to relation. And I know not whether it is found said anywhere in the Scriptures that things whose nature is diverse 'are one.' But if there be also several things of the same nature, and they think diversely, they are not one in so far as they think diversely. For if they were already one from the fact that they were men, he would not say, 'That they may be one, as we also are one,' when he commended his disciples to the Father. But indeed Paul and Apollos, because they were both men and thought the same: 'He that planteth,' he says, 'and he that watereth are one.'
When, then, 'one' is so said that it is not added what one, and many things are called one, the same nature and essence, not differing nor dissenting, is signified. But when it is added what one, something may be signified as made one out of many, though diverse in nature. As soul and body are certainly not one (for what is so diverse?), unless there be added or understood what one—that is, one man or one animal. Hence the Apostle: 'He that cleaveth to a harlot,' he says, 'is one body.' He did not say 'they are one' or 'it is one,' but added 'body,' as though one body composed by conjunction out of two diverse, male and female. And: 'He that cleaveth,' he says, 'to the Lord is one spirit.'
He did not say 'he that cleaveth to the Lord is one' or 'they are one,' but added 'spirit.' For the spirit of man and the spirit of God are diverse in nature, but by cleaving there comes to be one spirit out of the two diverse, so that without the human spirit the Spirit of God is blessed and perfect, but the spirit of man is blessed only with God. And not in vain, as I judge, when in the Gospel according to John the Lord said so much and so often concerning that very unity, whether his own with the Father or ours mutually with one another, did he nowhere say, 'That we and they may be one,' but 'That they may be one, as we also are one.' The Father, therefore, and the Son are one, assuredly according to the unity of substance, and there is one God, and one great, and one wise, as has been treated. Whence then is the Father greater?
For if greater, then greater in greatness. But since his greatness is the Son, neither is he assuredly greater than him who begot himself, nor is he greater than that greatness by which he is great; therefore they are equal. For whence is he equal, if not by that in which, to him, to be and to be great are not different? Or if the Father is greater in eternity, the Son is not equal in any respect whatever. For whence is he equal? If you say in greatness, that greatness is not equal which is less eternal, and so with the rest. Or is he perhaps equal in power, but in wisdom not equal? But how is that power equal which is less wise? Or is he equal in wisdom, but in power not equal? But how is that wisdom equal which is less powerful?
It remains, therefore, that if he is not equal in any one respect, he is not equal. But Scripture cries out: 'He thought it not robbery to be equal with God.' Every adversary of the truth, then, who is at all held by apostolic authority, is compelled to confess the Son equal to God in any one respect whatever. Let him choose which he will. From this it will be shown to him that he is equal in all the things which are said of his substance.
For if the virtues which are in the human soul, although each is understood in one way and another, are yet in no way separated from one another—so that whoever are equal, say for example, in fortitude are equal also in prudence and justice and temperance (for if you say that these are equal in fortitude but that one excels in prudence, it follows that this one's fortitude is less prudent, and thereby they are not even equal in fortitude, since that one's fortitude is more prudent; and so you will find concerning the rest of the virtues, if you run through them all with the same consideration;
for it is not of the strength of the body that we are treating, but of the fortitude of the soul)—how much more, then, in that immutable and eternal substance, incomparably more simple than the human soul, do these things so hold? For to the human soul to be is not the same as to be brave or prudent or just or temperate; for a soul can exist and have none of these virtues. But to God, to be is the same as to be powerful or to be just or to be wise, and whatever you say of that simple multiplicity or manifold simplicity whereby his substance is signified.
Wherefore, whether it be so said 'God of God' that the name fits each singly, yet not so that both together are two gods, but that there be one God (for so do they cleave to each other that even in distant and diverse substances the Apostle testifies this comes to pass—for both the Lord alone is spirit and the spirit of man alone is assuredly spirit, yet if it cleave to the Lord it is one spirit; how much more there, where there is an altogether inseparable and eternal connection, lest it seem absurdly said as though he were the son of both when he is called the Son of God, if that which is called God is said only of both together); or whether whatever is said of God which indicates his substance be said only of both together, nay of the very Trinity together;
whether, then, it be this or that which must be more diligently discussed, for the present it is enough, for the matter in hand, to see that the Son is in no way equal to the Father if in anything, namely, which pertains to signifying his substance, he is found unequal, as we have already shown. But the Apostle said he is equal. In all things, therefore, the Son is equal to the Father, and is of one and the same substance. Wherefore the Holy Spirit also consists in the same unity of substance and equality.
For whether it be the unity of both, or the holiness, or the love; whether it be unity because love, and love because holiness—it is manifest that he is not some one of the two by whom both are joined, by whom the begotten is loved by the begetter and loves his generator, and by whom they are, not by participation but by their own essence, nor by the gift of some superior, but by their own proper gift, keeping the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Which we are bidden to imitate by grace, both toward God and toward ourselves; on which two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. Thus those three are one God, alone, great, wise, holy, blessed. But we are blessed from him and through him and in him, because by his gift we are among ourselves one;
but with him one spirit, because our soul is glued fast behind him. And it is good for us to cleave to God, because he will destroy everyone that goeth a-whoring from him. The Holy Spirit, therefore, is something common to the Father and the Son, whatever that be, or is that very communion, consubstantial and coeternal; which, if it can fittingly be called friendship, let it be so called, but more aptly is it called love; and this too is substance, because God is substance, and 'God is love,' as it is written. And as he is substance together with the Father and the Son, so is he together great and together good and together holy, and whatever else is said in relation to self, since it is not one thing for God to be and another to be great or good, and the rest, as we showed above.
For if charity there is less great than wisdom, then wisdom is loved less than it is; but it is loved as an equal, so that it is loved as much as wisdom is great. Now wisdom is equal to the Father, as we argued above; therefore the Holy Spirit also is equal, and if equal in all things, equal on account of the supreme simplicity that is in that substance. And so there are not more than three: one who loves him who is from him, and one who loves him from whom he is, and love itself. And if this love is nothing, how is God love? If it is not substance, how is God substance?
[VI 8] But if it is asked how that substance can be both simple and manifold, we must first observe why the creature is manifold, yet in no way truly simple. And first, every body assuredly consists of parts, so that one part there is greater and another lesser, and the whole is greater than any part whatsoever or of whatsoever size. For heaven and earth are parts of the whole mass of the world, and earth alone or heaven alone consists of innumerable parts; in a third of itself it is less than in the remainder, and in a half it is less than in the whole; and the whole body of the world, which is commonly named by its two chief parts, that is, heaven and earth, is assuredly greater than heaven alone or earth alone.
And in each single body, magnitude is one thing, colour another, shape another. For even with the magnitude diminished the same colour and the same shape can remain; and with the colour changed the same shape and the same magnitude can remain; and though the same shape does not remain, it can be just as great and coloured in the same way; and whatever other things are said together concerning a body can be changed both together and severally, several without the rest. And by this the nature of body is convicted of being manifold, and in no way simple. The spiritual creature also, such as the soul is, is indeed simpler in comparison with body; but apart from comparison with body it is manifold, itself also not simple.
For it is simpler than body in this, that it is not diffused as a mass through the space of a place, but in each single body it is whole in the whole and whole in any part of it whatsoever; and therefore when anything occurs in however tiny a particle of the body which the soul perceives, though it does not occur in the whole body, yet the whole soul perceives it, because it is not hidden from the whole. But nevertheless in the soul too, since it is one thing to be skilful, another to be dull, one thing to be keen, another to be retentive of memory; and desire is one thing, fear another, gladness another, sadness another; and these and countless other things can be found, some without others, and some more, some less, countlessly in the nature of the soul; it is manifest that the nature is not simple but manifold. For nothing simple is mutable;
but every creature is mutable. [VII] But God indeed is called in manifold ways great, good, wise, blessed, true, and whatever else it does not seem unworthy to call him; yet his greatness is the same as his wisdom (for he is not great in mass but in power), and his goodness is the same as his wisdom and greatness, and his truth the same as all these; and in him it is not one thing to be blessed and another to be great, or wise, or true, or good, or to be at all. Nor because he is Trinity is he therefore to be thought threefold; otherwise the Father alone or the Son alone would be less than the Father and the Son together —
although it cannot be found how either the Father alone or the Son alone can be said, since always and inseparably the one is with the Son and the other with the Father, not so that both are the Father or both the Son, but because they are always mutually in each other, neither being alone. But because we call even the Trinity itself God alone, although it is always with the holy spirits and souls, yet we say 'alone' because they are not God together with him; so we call the Father alone Father, not because he is separated from the Son, but because both together are not the Father. [VIII] Since therefore the Father alone, or the Son alone, or the Holy Spirit alone is as great as the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit together, he is in no way to be called threefold.
Bodies indeed grow by their conjunction. For although he who cleaves to his wife is one body, yet it becomes a greater body than if it were of the man alone or of the wife alone. But in spiritual things, when a lesser cleaves to a greater, as the creature to the Creator, the former becomes greater than it was, not the latter. For in those things which are not great in mass, to be greater is to be better. Now the spirit of any creature becomes better when it cleaves to the Creator than if it did not cleave, and therefore also greater, because better. He therefore who cleaves to the Lord is one spirit; yet the Lord does not therefore become greater, though he becomes greater who cleaves to the Lord.
In God himself, therefore, when the Son equal to the Father cleaves to the Father, or the Holy Spirit equal to the Father and the Son cleaves to them, God does not become greater than each of them singly, because there is nothing by which that perfection could grow. But whether Father or Son or Holy Spirit is perfect, and God the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit is perfect; and therefore Trinity rather than threefold. [IX 10] And since we have shown how the Father can be called alone, because none but he is Father there, we must consider that statement in which it is said that the one true God is not the Father alone but the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
For if anyone asks whether the Father alone is God, how shall it be answered that he is not, unless perhaps we say thus: that the Father is indeed God, but that he is not God alone, and that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are the only God? But what shall we do with that testimony of the Lord? For he was speaking to the Father and had named as Father the one to whom he was speaking, when he said: 'And this is eternal life, that they may know thee, the one true God.' Which indeed the Arians are wont to take as though the Son were not true God. When these are excluded, we must see whether we are compelled to understand, when it was said to the Father:
'That they may know thee, the one true God,' as if he wished thereby to insinuate that the Father alone is true God, lest we should understand God to be none but those three together, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Do we then, on the Lord's testimony, call both the Father the one true God, and the Son the one true God, and the Holy Spirit the one true God, and together the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, that is, the Trinity itself together, not three true Gods but one true God? Or, since he added, 'and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent,' is 'the one true God' to be supplied, and the order of the words is: 'that they may know thee and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent to be the one true God'? Why then was he silent concerning the Holy Spirit?
Is it because, wherever a one is named that cleaves to a one with such great peace that through this peace the two are one, it is thereby already understood that this very peace, though it be not mentioned, is present too? For in that place also the Apostle seems as it were to pass over the Holy Spirit, and yet he is understood there, where he says: 'All things are yours; but you are Christ's; and Christ is God's'; and again: 'The head of the woman is the man, the head of the man is Christ, and the head of Christ is God.' But again, if God is nothing but all three together, how is the head of Christ God, that is, the head of Christ the Trinity, since Christ is in the Trinity so as to be the Trinity? Or is that which the Father is with the Son the head of that which is the Son alone? For the Father with the Son is God;
but the Son alone is Christ, especially since it is now the Word made flesh that speaks, according to which humility of his the Father is even greater, as he says: 'For the Father is greater than I'; so that this very thing—to be God, which is one with the Father—is the head of the man Mediator, which he alone is. For if we rightly call the mind the ruling part of man, that is, as it were the head of the human substance, since man himself with the mind is man, why not much more fittingly and much more so is the Word with the Father, which together is God, the head of Christ, although Christ cannot be understood as man except with the Word which was made flesh? But this, as we have already said, we shall consider somewhat more carefully later.
But now the equality of the Trinity and its one and the same substance has been demonstrated, so far as we could briefly, so that, however this question may stand which we have deferred to be discussed with keener attention, nothing may hinder us from confessing the supreme equality of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. [X 11] A certain writer, wishing very briefly to convey the properties of the several persons in the Trinity, said: 'Eternity is in the Father, form in the Image, use in the Gift.'
And because this was a man of no mean authority in the treatment of the Scriptures and the assertion of the faith (for Hilary set this down in his books), having scrutinized as far as I am able the hidden meaning of these words—that is, of Father and Image and Gift, of eternity and form and use—I judge that in the term 'eternity' he followed nothing else than that the Father has no father from whom he is, whereas the Son is from the Father so as to exist and so as to be coeternal with him. For an image, if it perfectly fulfils that of which it is the image, is itself made equal to it, not it to its image.
In which Image he named form, I believe, on account of the beauty where there is already such great congruity and prime equality and prime likeness, differing in nothing and in no way unequal and dissimilar in no part, but answering back to that of which it is the image identically; where there is the prime and supreme life, to which to live is not one thing and to be another, but the same to be and to live; and the prime and supreme intellect, to which to live is not one thing and to understand another, but that which is to understand, this is to live, this is to be—all being one, as it were a perfect Word to which nothing is lacking, and a certain art of the omnipotent and wise God, full of all the living unchangeable rationales; and all are one in it, as it itself is one from the One with whom it is one.
There God knows all things which he made through it, and therefore, though times pass away and succeed one another, nothing passes away from or succeeds to the knowledge of God. For these things which have been created are not therefore known by God because they were made, but rather they were made, and are mutable, because they are immutably known by him. That ineffable embrace, therefore, as it were, of the Father and the Image is not without full enjoyment, without charity, without joy.
That love, therefore, that delight, that felicity or blessedness—if indeed it is worthily named by any human voice—was called 'use' by him in brief; and it is in the Trinity the Holy Spirit, not begotten but the sweetness of the Begetter and the Begotten, flooding all creatures according to their capacity with immense bounty and abundance, that they may keep their order and rest in their places. All these things, therefore, which have been made by divine art, display in themselves a certain unity and form and order.
For whatever of these things there is, is both some one thing, as are the natures of bodies and the endowments of souls; and is formed by some form, as are the figures or qualities of bodies and the teachings or arts of souls; and seeks or holds some order, as are the weights or arrangements of bodies and the loves or delights of souls. It behoves us, therefore, beholding the Creator understood through the things that are made, to understand the Trinity, of which a trace appears in the creature in such manner as is fitting. For in that Trinity is the supreme origin of all things, and the most perfect beauty, and the most blessed delight. And so those three seem both to be bounded by one another mutually, and to be infinite in themselves.
{But here in corporeal things one is not as much as three together, and two things are something more than one thing; whereas in the supreme Trinity one is as much as three together, nor are two anything more than one, and they are infinite in themselves.} So both each single one is in each, and all are in each, and each is in all, and all are in all, and all are one. Let him who sees this, whether in part or through a glass in an enigma, rejoice in knowing God, and honour him as God and give thanks; but let him who does not see stretch out through piety toward seeing, not through blindness toward slandering, since God is one, yet nevertheless Trinity. Nor is it to be taken confusedly, 'from whom are all things, through whom are all things, in whom are all things';