'For what man knows the things of a man, except the spirit of a man that is in him? So also the things of God no one has known, but the Spirit of God' (1 Corinthians 2:11). Concerning him the same Doctor of the Gentiles says: 'For to us God has revealed them through his Spirit' (1 Corinthians 2:10). Concerning this he again writes thus to the Ephesians: 'That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and of revelation' (Ephesians 1:17). And to show that the knowledge of God works in us the revelation of the Spirit, when he had said: 'May he give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation,' he added: 'in the knowledge of him.'
But the Trinity alone can reveal itself, because the Trinity alone can fully know itself, and as much as it gives itself to be known, so much it grants itself to be revealed; but there is full knowledge of itself where there is no natural distinction: for the immeasurable is fully known by the immeasurable, and the infinity of knowledge remains where the substance has no end, nor is the limit of knowledge attained by any creature, where that which is immeasurable is in no way bounded. CHAPTER XI. God comes to men not by mobility, but by mercy. There is therefore one sole Trinity, which, when it manifests itself, comes ineffably, and when it hides itself from the unworthy, departs altogether ineffably.
The Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit come and go in their own and incomprehensible manner: yet neither the Father, nor the Son, nor the Spirit is moved locally. They know how to come and go in such a way that they neither come to a place locally, nor depart from a place locally. This coming of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit shows not the mobility, but the mercy of the God who comes: for the one deity of the Trinity, which fills all things and contains all things, is said to come to him to whom it deigns to manifest itself;
and it departs from him from whom it hides the light of its love, yet it is not thereby made locally absent, when it justly abandons the unworthy, nor is it made locally present, when it mercifully visits him whom it has made worthy. Therefore, although God says: 'I fill heaven and earth' (Jeremiah 23:24), yet it is said concerning a certain one: 'God is not before his eyes' (Psalm 10:5); and although the Father fills the whole, yet it is said in the book of Wisdom: 'For perverse thoughts separate from God' (Wisdom 1:3). And although it is said concerning the Son, that is, concerning the wisdom of God: 'She reaches mightily from end to end, and orders all things sweetly' (Wisdom 8:1), yet the same wisdom says of herself: 'The wicked seek me, and shall not find me.'
And again it is said: 'Into a malevolent soul wisdom will not enter, nor dwell in a body subject to sins.' The Holy Spirit too, although he is proclaimed in every way immeasurable, since 'the Spirit of the Lord has filled the world of the earth,' yet it is said concerning the same: 'For the holy Spirit will flee deceit, and will withdraw himself from thoughts that are without understanding.' As therefore to his substance and power, the Trinity is everywhere—one God whole, filling the whole by virtue, not by mass, whole in each, whole at once in all creatures. But as regards our thoughts, God is said to descend to us, when he so tempers his word to us divinely that,
speaking with us in a human manner, he deigns to make his knowledge and his love intimate to us; but he ascends in us when we ascend through charity and knowledge of the deity, so that we may learn neither to conceive anything local in the immeasurable, nor to esteem anything lowly of the most high, nor to believe anything changeable in God, nor to think anything temporal in the eternal. CHAPTER XII. God rested and worked by will, not by labor. Such is to be believed the coming of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit; for just as, the work of the world having been completed at the outset, God is said to have rested—who yet did not labor in the work, because he wrought all things by will alone; for to him it is said:
'For power is at hand to you when you will' (Wisdom 12:18), just as we also hear in the psalm: 'All things whatsoever he willed, he did, in heaven, and in earth, and in the sea, and in all the deeps' (Psalm 135:6). The omnipotence of this will that Gospel leper, enlightened by divine illumination, having recognized, testifies to suffice for the effect of his cleansing, saying: 'Lord, if you will, you can make me clean' (Matthew 8:2); when he says, 'if you will, you can,' he shows the divine will itself to be the fullest power. Finally, the Lord too mercifully showed by the effect of the cure that he who had asked had believed faithfully; for he says: 'I will, be made clean'; and immediately his leprosy was cleansed.
As therefore, cleansing him with confidence, he felt no discomfort of any labor, such that he might restore by a spell of rest strengths exhausted by the labor of working; but when he says that he rested, he shows that we shall rest after good works: so when he is said to have come, or to have descended, the grace of divine revelation toward us is commended; and when he is said not to descend, but to ascend, the advance of our illumination and knowledge is shown. CHAPTER XIII. On the sense of the saying: 'Do not touch me,' etc. The resolution of the apparent contradiction between the Gospels. Such an ascent did the Lord Jesus signify, when he forbade to Mary Magdalene the possibility of touching him.
For after the resurrection, when he mercifully appeared to her as she wept, John records that he said: 'Do not touch me, for I have not yet ascended to my Father' (John 20:17). This touch, of which the Lord speaks, is proved to be of belief, not of the body; otherwise the assertion of the evangelists would be found repugnant; for while John testifies that the possibility of touching the Lord was taken away from Mary by the command of the Lord himself, saying: 'Do not touch me, for I have not yet ascended to my Father,'
and Scripture confirms that the Lord, according to his humanity, ascended into heaven on the fortieth day of the resurrection (which not only the undefiled faith of the holy catholic Church retains, but even the diverse and manifold belief of the various heresies—at least those which do not deny the sacrament of true flesh in the Son of God—celebrates together with entirely unanimous assent), if before the Lord had ascended to the Father he was unwilling to be touched by Mary's bodily approach, how does Matthew record that on the very day of the resurrection Mary Magdalene and the other Mary held the feet of Jesus? That this may be more clearly recognized, we have thought fit to insert into this work the whole chapter of that same passage, as Matthew set it down. He says therefore:
'And in the end of the sabbath, when it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulchre. And behold there was a great earthquake. For an angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and coming, rolled back the stone, and sat upon it: and his countenance was as lightning, and his raiment as snow. And for fear of him the guards were struck with terror, and became as dead men. And the angel answering said to the women: Fear not you: for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified; he is not here: for he is risen, as he said; come, see the place where the Lord was laid. And going quickly, tell his disciples that he is risen;'
'and behold he goes before you into Galilee: there you shall see him. Lo, I have told you. And they departed quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy, running to tell his disciples. And behold Jesus met them, saying: Hail. But they came up and held his feet, and adored him' (Matthew 28:4-9). How therefore did he, because he had not yet ascended to the Father, forbid himself to be touched by Mary Magdalene, by whom on the same day he permitted his feet to be held? Or is anyone so carried away by a perverse sense as to think that the judgments of Christ were varied by momentary impulses, as though he who afterward, on better reflection, granted to Mary what he had before denied?
But the Vessel of election straightway resists such a thought, who, concerning the immutability of the eternal divinity in the Son of God, does not permit us to err by any suspicion of mutability, writing thus to the Corinthians: 'For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us, by me and Silvanus and Timothy, was not in him "yes" and "no," but in him it was "yes." For all the promises of God are in him "yes"; therefore also through him we say "Amen" to God unto your glory' (2 Corinthians 1:19-20). Not here therefore does the understanding of the evangelists disagree; nor did Christ either vainly forbid himself to be touched, not having yet ascended to the Father, or permit his feet to be held to no purpose.
For in the one he demonstrated the truth of the flesh, in the other he intimated the glory of the deity; there he permitted the hand, here he removed the understanding; so that in the man Christ the truth of the resurrected flesh might be touched, and in the same Christ who is God the equality of the paternal divinity might be believed. Therefore he says: 'Do not touch me, because I have not yet ascended to my Father,' because Mary Magdalene did not yet believe him equal to the Father, whom she mourned with womanly devotion as though extinguished. For what is: 'Do not touch me, for I have not yet ascended to my Father,' but, 'Do not believe in me only that which you think, do not establish in your heart that which you suppose'? For as long as you attend in me only to those things which are of the flesh, you do not perceive my equality with the Father.
And in truth Christ has not yet ascended to the Father for those who do not confess the Son equal to the Father. Therefore one must hasten, so that each one, believing the perfection and truth of human nature in the Son of God, may as it were hold the feet of Christ, and confess the substance of the same Son as born of the Father, so that to him Christ may ascend to the Father through the equality of natural divinity. For what is: 'I have not yet ascended to my Father,' but, 'you esteem below the Father him whom you bewail as dead'? And what is: 'Do not touch me,' but, 'do not fix the motion of your faith in that'? For whenever we wish to touch something with any member, unless we have ended the motion of that same member, we do not speak of a touch;
but we must move that member for so long, until we come to the thing which we wish to touch; yet we do not extend the motion of the member any further, after we have come to a complete touch. So too we fix the motion of our mind there where we establish in our heart by belief. Therefore, if we believe things worthy and fitting concerning Christ, then we touch Christ. But whoever does not believe the Son of God, according to the divine nature, equal to the Father, to him Christ has not yet ascended to the Father; and he to whom the Son has not ascended to the Father does not receive the faculty of touching Christ;
but truly the Son ascends to the Father for that man who does not doubt the Son to be equal to the Father in the parity of eternity and immensity, so that he esteems the Son, God begotten naturally of God the Father, neither later nor lesser: because he is not equal, if he is less than the immeasurable, nor coeternal, if he is later than the eternal; and either sense separates from the touch of Christ, because it does not make the Son equal to the Father, but diminishes him. But one of this kind worthily hears from Christ: 'Do not touch me, for I have not yet ascended to my Father.' For whoever is not permitted to touch Christ is assuredly separated from his body;
But what is the body of Christ, if not the Church of Christ? From this it is understood that, so long as anyone does not believe the Son of God, according to His divine substance, to be equal to the Father, he cannot be joined to the members of Christ by the touch of faith; but he indeed holds the framework of the Lord's body, for whom the Son ascends to the Father; and to that man the Son ascends to the Father who confesses the Godhead of the Son to be equal to God the Father. Plainly, therefore, it is clear that by that ascent of the Son to the Father the advancement rather of our faith is demonstrated; for we in a certain way exalt Him in our hearts when we so grow in the understanding of Him that concerning Him, as concerning the true God, we think such things as are worthy of the divine loftiness.
CHAPTER XIV. What it is to exalt God; what it is to sanctify Him. To this exaltation of God holy David exhorts us, saying: Exalt the Lord our God, and adore His footstool, for it is holy (Ps. 98:5). And a little after: Exalt the Lord our God, and adore on His holy mountain, for the Lord our God is holy (ibid., 9). But what is it to exalt the Lord, if not to believe the highest things concerning the Most High? This surely is to adore on the mountain, that when we think of God we should hold no lowly thing about Him. Thus in us He is truly exalted, when we exalt Him, though He Himself is always the Most High;
just as in us He is sanctified, when we sanctify Him, though He Himself always remains holy. For blessed Peter admonishes us, saying: But sanctify the Lord Christ in your hearts (1 Pet. 3:15). And what is it to sanctify Christ, if not to think concerning Christ the things that are holy? This thought sanctifies not Him, but us, and by sanctifying preserves us, as Solomon says: A holy thought will keep you. The Lord Himself also commands that in prayer we say: Hallowed be Thy name; and yet blessed Cyprian is known to have so understood this passage of the prayer, that in this sanctification of the divine name he said not that God is sanctified, but that the gift of sanctification is conferred upon us.
For in his epistle on the Lord's Prayer, after certain things premised, he speaks thus: After this we say: Hallowed be Thy name, not that we wish for God that He be sanctified by our prayers, but that we ask of Him that His name be sanctified in us. For besides, by whom is God sanctified, who Himself sanctifies? But because He Himself said: Be holy, for I also am holy (Lev. 11:44), we ask and pray this, that we who have been sanctified in baptism may persevere in that which we have begun to be; and this we entreat daily. For we have need of daily sanctification, that we who daily transgress may cleanse our offenses anew by continual sanctification.
If therefore, in sanctifying Christ, we ourselves are sanctified, and in asking that the name of God be sanctified, we receive the gift of sanctification, why should we not rather believe that, in exalting God, we ourselves are exalted through the advancement of understanding? But if, in exalting God, it is rather we who are exalted, likewise when He is said to come to us, we ought to believe it to be our own advancement, in that the divine majesty deigns to reveal itself to our hearts. CHAPTER XV. How virtue went forth from Christ when the woman touched the hem of His garment. How Christ is said to come to us, or to come unto His own. The Holy Spirit also is immense. The whole Trinity is immense. For if the Son of God descended to us by local motion, then virtue went forth from Him locally:
for when a certain woman, afflicted with an issue of blood (Luke 8:43 ff.), her means and strength consumed, spent all that she had because of her infirmity, and yet could not put an end to the one infirmity which she did not wish to have, and, desiring to be freely healed by the heavenly Physician, secretly touching the hem, by a faithful theft stole for herself the effect of healing—He, conscious of her belief and of her cure, said: Someone touched Me; for I know that virtue has gone forth from Me. What then is this virtue that went forth from the Lord? Did it, in going forth, depart? Or could it, thus going forth to heal, arrive, in such a way that it could not go forth locally from the Savior?
But if virtue went forth locally from Him who is called Virtue, let it be said in what way virtue departed from Virtue. But if such a belief seems incongruous with the Christian faith, let us suppose that going-forth of virtue from Christ to be nothing other than the effect of divine healing: for then the Savior's virtue went forth to the woman, when she knew in herself the virtue of divine healing. So then the Son of God, who is the Virtue and Wisdom of God, the Creator of places and of times, just as, being eternal, He precedes all time, so, being immense, He surpasses every place; who is then said to come to us, when He deigns to enlighten us. For concerning Him the evangelist says: He was in the world, and the world was made through Him,
and the world knew Him not: He came unto His own, and His own received Him not. How then is He said both to have been in the world, and affirmed to have come into the world? Is the former to be assigned to power, the latter to grace? Just so, plainly: for according to His divinity He was never absent from heaven, nor from hell, nor from the world—for all things were created through Him and in Him, and He is before all, and all things consist in Him (Col. 1:16-17); but according to grace He then came into the world, when with wondrous mercy He came to the aid of the perishing world, which He Himself also attests, saying: For God sent not His Son to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him (John 3:17).
The Son of God, therefore, is immense, like the Father and the Spirit, since concerning Him it is said: He is great, and has no end, exalted and immense (Baruch 3:25); of whom a little after it is said: After this He was seen upon earth, and conversed with men (ibid., 38). The Holy Spirit also is immense: which the prophet, knowing, said to God: Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit, and whither shall I flee from Thy face? (Ps. 138:7). And that the said prophet might show this Spirit of God to be the Holy Spirit Himself, he says to God: Cast me not away from Thy face, and take not Thy Holy Spirit from me (Ps. 50:13). And that this Spirit of God is the Holy Spirit Himself the Apostle also signifies by this testimony:
Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, in whom you were sealed unto the day of redemption (Eph. 4:30). And in another place: He who despises these things despises not man, but God, who also gave His Holy Spirit into us (1 Thess. 4:8). This Holy Spirit of God David proclaims to be so immense, that he says to God (as we mentioned above): Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit, and whither shall I flee from Thy face? If I ascend into heaven, Thou art there; and if I descend into hell, Thou art present; and if I take my wings straight forward, or (as another translation has it) before the dawn, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea: even there shall Thy hand lead me, and Thy right hand shall hold me.
No one doubts that the hand of the Father names the Son, concerning whom God Himself says: Did not My hand make all these things? Yet the prophet, that he might proclaim the Trinity equally immense, both signified the Father, to whom he said: Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit? and the Spirit Himself, from whom he attests he can in no way go or flee; and he demonstrated the Son, where he proclaims that he is to be led by the hand of God even in the uttermost parts of the sea: so that there might be acknowledged one immensity of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and one presence in all creatures. This is the Trinity, one God, who, as He alone could found the universe, so He alone can fill all things, neither local in place, nor temporal in time, nor limitable by the limit of a creature. CHAPTER XVI.
God is with you, nay, He hears prayers even in secret. For blessed martyr Cyprian affirms the immensity of the divinity of the Son of God by manifest proclamation and by the attestation of the divine oracles, in his epistle on the Lord's Prayer, saying: Finally, by His own teaching the Lord commanded us to pray in secret, in hidden and secret places, in our very chambers, which better befits faith; that we may know that God is everywhere present, that He hears and sees all, and that by the fullness of His majesty He penetrates even into hidden and secret things, as it is written: I am a God at hand, and not a God afar off. If a man be hidden in secret places, shall I then not see him? Do I not fill heaven and earth? (Jer. 23:23-24).
And again: In every place the eyes of God behold the good and the evil (Prov. 15:3). And when we come together in one with the brethren, and celebrate the divine sacrifices with God's priest, we ought to be mindful of reverence and of discipline: not to scatter our prayers everywhere with disordered voices, nor to cast forth in tumultuous loquacity the petition that ought to be modestly commended to God, because God is a hearer not of the voice but of the heart, nor is He to be admonished with shouts, who sees our thoughts, as the Lord approves and says: Why do you think evil in your hearts? (Matt. 9:4). And in another place: All the churches shall know that I am the searcher of the reins and the heart (Rev. 2:23). Blessed Cyprian, assuredly, [calls] God
—whom he said to be everywhere present, to hear all and see all, and by the fullness of His majesty to penetrate even into hidden and secret things—him he also asserts to be a hearer not of the voice but of the heart, nor to be admonished by shouts, who sees our thoughts; him also he sets forth as saying: Why do you think evil in your hearts? And in another place: All the churches shall know that I am the searcher of the reins and the heart. But who does not know that these things were said by the Son of God, as the Apocalypse and the Gospel testify? The Son, therefore (as holy Cyprian asserts), is everywhere present; the same One hears all and sees all, and by the fullness of His majesty penetrates even into hidden and secret things, nor is He, who sees our thoughts, to be admonished by shouts.
With this sense agree the sayings of John the evangelist, who says concerning certain men: That Jesus did not commit Himself unto them, because He Himself knew all men, and because He had no need that anyone should give testimony concerning man; for He Himself knew what was in man (John 2:24). CHAPTER XVII. Christ never leaves His own alone, because He is present everywhere. All things are manifest to God. Blessed Cyprian, writing also to the Thibaritans concerning the immensity of the Son of God, attests something similar in these words: He is not alone, whose companion Christ is in flight;
he is not alone who, keeping the temple of God, wherever he may be, is not without the Lord; and if a robber should overpower him fleeing in the wilderness and the mountains, or a wild beast attack him, or hunger or thirst or cold afflict him, or, as he hastens by headlong voyage over the seas, a tempest or storm should overwhelm him—Christ everywhere beholds His soldier fighting. In the epistle On the Lapsed, too, whoever wishes will find these words inserted: He sees the hearts and breasts of every one, and, about to judge not only our deeds but also our words and thoughts, He beholds the minds and wills of all, conceived within the very hidden recesses of the still-closed breast.
The Son of God, therefore, both by divine authority and by the faithful and truthful judgment of the holy Fathers, is proved, according to His divine nature, to be infinite and immense, everywhere present, filling all things, now a witness of thoughts and works, and the future judge and recompenser of all. But since the same Son of God, true God, born of God the Father, was made true man for us out of man (for He was made of the seed of David according to the flesh [Rom. 1:3]), containing in Himself the truth of both the divine and the human nature, He did not lose what belonged to true divinity, and received what belongs to true humanity: one and the same, according to the flesh temporally born of a mother, who according to the divinity remains eternal from the Father;
one and the same, a local man out of man, who is the immense God out of the Father; one and the same, according to His human substance absent from heaven while He was on earth, and forsaking earth when He had ascended into heaven; but according to His divine and immense substance, neither leaving heaven when He descended from heaven, nor deserting earth when He ascended to heaven. This can be known from the most certain saying of the Lord Himself, who, to show His local humanity, says to His disciples: I ascend to My Father and your Father, My God and your God (John 20:17). Concerning Lazarus too, when He had said: Lazarus is dead, He added, saying: And I am glad for your sakes, that you may believe, because I was not there (John 11:14-15).
But showing the immensity of His divinity, He says to His disciples: Behold, I am with you all the days, even to the consummation of the age (Matt. 28:20). But how did He ascend into heaven, unless because He is a local and true man? Or how is He present to His faithful ones, unless because the same is the immense and true God? Concerning Him the Scripture again says: For God truly dwells with men upon earth (2 Chron. 6:18); of whom the evangelist says: The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us. And that this Word, even when it was made flesh and dwelt among us, might be recognized never to have departed from heaven, David for this reason says: Forever, O Lord, Thy Word remains in heaven (Ps. 118:89).
Concerning this one and the same eternal Son of God, and the One who would then be the Son of man—in whom the true and immense divinity would have remained, and by whom the true and local humanity was to be assumed—Jeremiah, filled with the recognition of prophetic inspiration, had said: This is our God, and no other shall be accounted beside Him. He found out every way of discipline, and gave it to Jacob His servant and to Israel His beloved. After this He was seen upon earth, and conversed with men (Baruch 3:36-38). And since he had said of Him above: