Both before the ages, and after the age, it is eternity. And so the eternity of the Son of God has no beginning before the age, just as His eternity after the age has no end. But putting past time for future time in this way, Wisdom says, 'The Lord created me,' for that which is 'He will create me'; and thus He spoke of a thing as done which was surely to be done: just as through blessed David He said: 'They have dug my hands and my feet: they have numbered all my bones. But they themselves have looked and stared upon me. They have divided my garments among them, and upon my vesture they have cast lots' (Ps. XXI, 18, 19). Saying therefore, 'The Lord created me,' He showed in what manner He was to be made.
When he says also, 'They have pierced my hands and my feet,' he shows in what manner he was to be crucified. Now just as this was assuredly to come to pass, which the Son of God, through David, sang of his passion as though already accomplished, so too was that to come to pass which, through Solomon, he who is himself the Wisdom of God prophesied of his incarnation as though already accomplished. For Solomon himself says a little before: 'Wisdom hath builded herself a house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars' (Prov. IX, 1), which pertains to the birth of the Lord's incarnation. Isaiah too speaks thus of Christ's passion, so that he foretells what is to come as though it were past. For he himself says of Christ:
'He was led as a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb before its shearer is dumb, so he opened not his mouth' (Isa. LIII, 7). For that very nativity of the Only-begotten of God according to the flesh from the Virgin he not only sometimes foretells as future, but sometimes speaks of as past. Thus in one place he says: 'Behold, a virgin shall conceive in her womb, and shall bear a son' (Isa. VII, 14). And again in another place, intimating it as done and accomplished, he says: 'A child is born unto us, and a son is given unto us' (Isa. IX, 6). Who then does not see that all that was spoken through the prophets concerning the humanity and passion of the Only-begotten of God was at that same time to come in truth, just as it is now in truth past?
But to display the immutability of the divine counsel, it came about that the prophetic Scripture spoke as past in word what was awaited as future in deed. For God, of whom the prophet here says, 'Who made the things that are to come' (Isa. XLV, 11, according to the LXX), for this reason willed to narrate as already done the things that were yet to be done, because the things which come to pass changeably in time he had established by the unchangeable eternity of his ordering. And so even in those matters in which the effect of the work is not yet present, the ordination of the Creator remains firm in eternity. Thus therefore the Son of God, being about to be created together with his own work, called himself already created, just as, being about to be crucified, he did not hesitate to call himself crucified.
Furthermore, with perverse heart and sacrilegious mouth, the raving Fastidiosus wished from this to assert that the Son is separated from the Father and the Holy Spirit, because it is agreed that he alone entered the chamber of the virginal womb. Of whom it is said in the book of Psalms: 'And he, as a bridegroom coming forth from his chamber' (Ps. XVIII, 6). Then, desiring to confirm the sentence of his perversity, he did not hesitate to assert even that blasphemy, saying that the Trinity could in no way separate itself, which it is agreed cannot be divided at all.
Did then the whole Trinity assume flesh, did the whole Trinity feel the injury of the passions, did the whole Trinity lie in the sepulchre, did the whole Trinity penetrate hell, did the whole Trinity rise from the dead on the third day, did the whole Trinity ascend into the heavens on the fortieth day? At whose right hand does the whole Trinity sit? Or what Spirit did the whole Trinity send into the apostles on the day of Pentecost? Or to what God could the whole Trinity say upon the cross, 'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?'; or to what Father did the whole Trinity say, 'Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit'? Let them declare it, if they can. But if they cannot say it, they slay themselves with their own darts, they who contend that the Trinity is inseparable. Chapter X.
Thus far in that profane discourse are the words of Fastidiosus stretched out against the catholic faith. Yet in it, apart from those things which he blasphemed to the insult of the holy Trinity, almost everything, whether preceding or following, that most wicked man usurped from the sayings of others. In short, all that he set down against the Donatists he stole from certain two letters, in which, against the Pelagians and Donatists—when we who were established in exile in Sardinia were to write back by all of us to Stephania, the religious daughter of the Church—that most wicked man fraudulently set down under his own name; and they are found inserted in the very order of words in which those letters had them.
But that the knowledge of this matter might not be lacking to you, I have caused to be appended to this little work the two letters which the aforesaid Stephania sent to us, and those which we wrote back to her; so that you may recognize that in that discourse only those things were of Fastidiosus by which, leaping forth with a blind heart to the injury of the holy Trinity itself, he attempted to assail the catholic truth. Chapter XI. Now therefore, with the Lord's help, I reply to his blasphemies.
It was not the whole Trinity that assumed flesh, nor did the whole Trinity feel the injuries of the passions, nor did the whole Trinity lie in the sepulchre, nor did the whole Trinity penetrate hell, nor did the whole Trinity rise from the dead on the third day, and whatever else is proved, in that mystery of the incarnation, to pertain to the person of the Son alone. For these things which Fastidiosus, full of falsehood and perversity, objected to the catholic truth, can be truly objected to none but the Sabellians, that is, the Patripassians, in whom indeed those men, shut up and convicted, fail, who contend that of the holy Trinity there is one person, just as there is one nature.
There their perversity consequently hurls them into this absurdity, that they in no way believe in a divine nativity; yet they no less assign to the Father the nature according to the flesh, the passion and death, the resurrection from the dead, the ascension into heaven, and all those things which in the mystery of the incarnation pertain to the person of the one Son. But the catholic Church, divinely inspired, holding the truth of the faith, just as she knows how to assert the one nature of the holy Trinity, so most carefully attributes to each person what is proper to it.
The Son of God therefore, being about mercifully to redeem us, is rightly believed to have assumed alone, because he took human nature not in such a way that in him one nature of divinity and of flesh should come to be. For in Christ the Godhead could not be that which the flesh was, because, each nature retaining its own property, it could not come about that either of them should cease to be, or pass over into the other by an utter abolition. But if this were to happen, it would rightly be said that flesh was assumed by the whole Trinity, when the Son would convert his flesh into that divinity which we profess to remain common to him with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Chapter XII. But now, since we say that in Christ there is one nature divine and another human:
therefore assuredly we believe and confess that the human nature, that is, the flesh and the rational soul, was assumed not by the whole Trinity, but by the Son alone. For into the unity of person, not into the unity of nature, did God the Only-begotten take flesh and soul: because assuredly the person of the Son is not the same as that of the Father or of the Holy Spirit. The unity of person therefore, the property of each substance nevertheless remaining, just as it did not make the person double in Christ, so it did not make the assumption of the human nature common to the holy Trinity. For to the Son of God there is not, as there is one common nature with the Father and the Holy Spirit, so also one common person. Chapter XIII.
It is therefore proper to the Son alone to have mercifully received the form of a servant. For that reception of the servant's form pertained to the person of God the Word, which did not pass over into the divine nature by confusion. Therefore the reception of that servile form, according to which the Son of God—who is the Lord of all things, and in whom dwells all the fullness of the Godhead—became true and full man, took nothing away from him of the divine fullness, removed nothing of his dominion: because in that one same person the divine and human nature remained without confusion. Hence it is that in the one and same Christ both the truth of the human nature shone forth, and the eternal immutability of the divine nature remained.
For nothing was in any degree diminished in him, nor changed, of what he naturally had in eternity, through that which he received in time. He was indeed made a servant in condition, yet he did not cease to be by nature the Lord of all things. And he was made poor according to the flesh: nevertheless he remained most rich according to the divinity. Hence it is that the blessed Apostle asserts that Christians were enriched by poverty, saying: 'You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that for our sakes he became poor, though he was rich, that through his poverty you might be rich' (II Cor. VIII, 9). But he would in no way make us rich by his poverty, if, having become poor, he did not have in himself the riches of his natural divinity.
He became poor therefore according to the form of a servant, he remained rich according to the form of God. And so the poverty of the servile form is not common to him with the Father and the Holy Spirit; because after the poverty of the human nature was assumed into the unity of person, the divine substance remained rich in him. But what was the poverty of the rich Son of God, save our infirmity and our mortality? Yet whatever God the Only-begotten endured in infirmity and death according to the flesh, the divinity did not feel. For 'God sent his Son in the likeness of sinful flesh' (Rom. VIII, 3), in whom there was true flesh, but there was no pollution of sin.
The likeness of sinful flesh, therefore, was that in the flesh of Christ, since it was not the flesh of sin, that it was infirm, that it was passible and mortal, that it was subject to wounding and liable to pain. Yet all these things were common to the divinity and humanity of Christ not substantially, but personally. But the person of Christ is wholly distinguished from the person of the Father and of the Holy Spirit. This one person of divinity and of humanity so remains in Christ that it neither allows the one nature to be separated from the other, nor permits both to be confounded. Christ therefore, who is the way, the truth, and true life, is a way to us, because he had true infirmity in the truth of the flesh;
and he is true life to us, because true power remained in his true divinity. Distinguishing this, the Apostle says: 'For though he was crucified through weakness, yet he liveth by the power of God' (II Cor. XIII, 4). Chapter XIV. In the one and same Christ therefore, just as the infirmity of the human flesh could not give or restore life to itself, because that power of laying down the soul and of taking it up was not from human infirmity but from divine power; so the eternity of the divine power, to which it is naturally proper to live immutably and unfailingly, could feel nothing of infirmity or death upon the cross.
And so the Only-begotten Son of God is known to be, in that he was born of the Father, true God, and, in that he was made man of a mother, true man; because he both showed tokens of infirmity in the truth of the flesh, and displayed proofs of power in the truth of the divinity; showing, that is, in the unity of person, that one thing was naturally common to him with us, another with the Father and the Holy Spirit. For with us Christ has a natural fellowship of soul and flesh; but with the Father and the Holy Spirit he has a natural fellowship of Godhead. How then could the Son of God have the things which are of the flesh common with the Father and the Holy Spirit, he who in no way confounds his flesh with his divinity:
so it in no way prejudices the catholic faith that we believe our nature was assumed in the unity of person by the Only-begotten Saviour, while we confess that one substance of the holy Trinity remains. For that humanity of the Son the whole Trinity indeed made, but the whole Trinity did not assume it as the whole Trinity made it, because the person, which is not common to the Son with the Father and the Holy Spirit, is itself in Christ the one person of divinity and of flesh. But where any distinction, whether of persons or of substances, is found, whatever is found in a fellowship of work is not always referred to a fellowship of assumption.
But because this seems obscure when it is set forth in speech alone, it is better that ease of understanding be provided, as far as the matter permits, by a fitting example. Chapter XV. There is indeed a likeness ready at hand for the faithful unto knowledge, which God placed in his own likeness. Now this image is the human mind. For it is read that the Lord said: 'Let us make man to our image and likeness' (Gen. I, 26). In which saying the Arian heretics are much to be lamented, who read the holy Scriptures and do not understand; and confounded by blindness of heart, they do not acknowledge the natural unity in the holy Trinity, in which they distinguish by proclamation the persons of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Whereas indeed in that testimony which we set down above, the Trinity itself, which is the one, true, and good God, both shows the unity of its divinity, and evidently demonstrates the token of three persons. For he said, 'Let us make man to our image and likeness,' lest the unity of substance in the three persons be denied; nor did he say, 'I will make man to my image and likeness,' lest in that divine nature only one person be believed to be; but he healthfully mingled the plural with the singular number, and when we read God saying, 'Let us make man to our image and likeness,' we define this, which we say singularly to be of nature, to be plurally in the persons.
This image, then, that is, the inner man, is found to have naturally with itself three things, namely: memory, understanding, and will. Memory therefore is the power of the soul by which we remember. Understanding is that by which we turn over in thought those things which we have conceived by memory. Will is that by which we either desire something or shun it: that is, by which we are found either to love something or to hate it. These three, therefore, although they do not have proper persons in man, are nevertheless distinct from one another by distinction;
and thus in these three there is the one person of one man and the one substance of the human mind, yet in such a way that in that very nature of the rational soul, in which it is agreed that the image of God consists, we find one thing to be memory, another understanding, and another no less to be will. For although we can think nothing, or love nothing, or hate nothing which we do not have in memory—because what oblivion has taken away from the heart, there thought or will cannot in any way find—yet to recognize the distinction of memory, thought, and will, we often remember what we neither turn over in thought nor desire by will; likewise we think of some things which we do not love.
Our thought therefore, which is born and formed in the memory, is worthily called an interior word. For what is thought but interior speech? Wherefore it is written: 'The things which you say in your hearts, be pricked in your beds' (Ps. IV, 5). For in the Gospel also, when the Lord Jesus had said to that paralytic whom he healed, 'Thy sins are forgiven thee' (Luke V, 20); Luke the evangelist added, saying: 'And the scribes and Pharisees began to think, saying: Who is this that speaketh blasphemy? Who can forgive sins but God alone? But when Jesus knew their thoughts, answering he said to them: What think you evil in your hearts?' (ibid. 21, 22).
But what Luke said, 'The scribes and Pharisees began to think, saying'; this Matthew states thus: 'And behold, certain of the scribes said within themselves: He blasphemeth. And when Jesus saw their thoughts, he said: Wherefore do you think evil in your hearts?' (Matt. IX, 3, 4). In the book of Wisdom too it is said of certain men: 'They said within themselves, thinking not rightly' (Wis. II, 1). It is manifest therefore that this is to think, which is to say within oneself. There, then, one thinks invisibly. Without the noise of a bodily voice, therefore, each one says what he thinks, which nevertheless he brings to the hearing of another only by bodily speech. Chapter XVI.
That word, then, which is born of memory, according to the sole nature by which it is found to be born of memory, cannot be brought to the ears of any man without a bodily voice. Accordingly, that it may be uttered to others, it is clothed with the condition of a bodily voice. To which word a bodily voice is joined from the mouth. And thus it comes about that that word, which was wholly in the mind spiritually, both comes to others through a corporeal voice, and does not depart from the mind, from which and in which it spiritually remains. For it must remain wholly in the mind, even when it is wholly uttered in the voice. Nor yet can we say that that utterance of the word alone is not made by memory or by will.
For everyone who speaks both certainly remembers and thinks what he is to speak; and he speaks for this reason, because the will together with memory and thought works that speech alike. For inasmuch as whatever a man speaks knowingly, he certainly speaks only willingly, so that whatever a man is compelled to say unwillingly, he does not say, so long as the will is in no way inclined to speaking. Hence it is that not only those who now, pressed by fear or grief of temporal things, of tribulations, or of torments, forsaking the truth of the catholic faith, have passed over to impiety and perfidy, will be able to find no excuse to say that they denied the true faith unwillingly, since it appears that they did this by their own will.
For even if the mind was led by tribulation or by torment to deny the faith, yet it did not deny it unwillingly. For in order to deny the faith, it first thought and willed, and thus uttered that denial: because, that this might come to pass, thought together with will decreed it. Chapter XVII. That I may return, then, to what I was treating, in that very image of God, that is, in the very mind of man, the thought which is born and formed from memory, and is rightly called a word, receives only a bodily voice, so that it may be heard by bodily ears. So then in that holy and divine Trinity, the Word of the Father alone, which is 'the spotless mirror, and the image of God's goodness' (Wis. VII, 26), namely the brightness and figure of his substance (Heb.
I, 3),—'when he was in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God; but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant' (Phil. II, 6, 7). The Son alone therefore received flesh, that he might be seen with bodily eyes, handled with hands; the Son alone so received human nature that he made it his own, and through it mercifully poured forth also the knowledge of his own divinity. Yet he, revealing himself, in himself assuredly revealed also the Father. For, bestowing the recognition of his divinity, he at the same time granted the recognition also of the Father. For the divinity, which is one of the Father and the Son, causes both that the Son is not acknowledged without the Father, and the Father not without the Son. Hence it is that he says:
'Have I been so long a time with you, and you have not known me? Philip, he that seeth me, seeth the Father also' (John XIV, 9). Thus therefore the Son, who alone received flesh, naturally shows the Father in himself by right of the one divinity; just as a speaker, while he speaks the truth which he remembers, both indicates that which is uttered by him, and displays that which is laid up within in the mind. But that bodily voice with which the spiritual word is clothed, that it may be brought forth to the knowledge of the hearers, is made at once by memory, and by thought, and by will; yet it is received by thought alone, that is, by the interior word, that it may proceed to the bodily ears of the bystanders by the tidings of the interior thought.
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Illudautemverbum, sicuthabitucorporeævocisacceptototumadaudientesegreditur, sicincordatolumcummemoriaetvoluntatespiritaliterinvenitur. 355 Proindequisquishancimagineminmentehominisconspexerit, hæreticorumvaniloquiacitiusirridebit; quicarnaliterdespiritalibussentientes, noluntcredereinillasanctaTrinitatealiquidatribusfactum, quodabuaapersonatantunrfueritdivinadispositionesusceptum : cumillahumananaturatotiusquidem. Trinitatisoperesitfacta, asolotamenFiliofueritinunitatempersoaesuscepta. SicutenimcertumestquiaInprincipioeratVerbum, etVerbumeratapudDeum, etDeuerat, Verbum (Joan. I, 1);
But that word, just as, the condition of a bodily voice being received, it wholly goes forth to the hearers, so it is wholly found in the heart, spiritually, together with memory and will. Accordingly, whosoever shall have beheld this image in the mind of man will the sooner deride the vain babblings of the heretics; who, feeling carnally about spiritual things, are unwilling to believe that in that holy Trinity something was made by the three, which was by divine ordering assumed by one person alone: since that human nature was indeed made by the work of the whole Trinity, yet was assumed into the unity of person by the Son alone. For just as it is certain that 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God' (John I, 1);
so it is certain that 'the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us' (ibid. 14). But what have we received? The Word of the Lord and God, with whom the Word was—not the Father and the Son. Chapter XVIII. By the name of the Word, therefore, the distinct person of the Father and of the Son is shown: but because he was God, one substance of the Father and of the Son is taught. Not the Father's, then, nor the Holy Spirit's is that flesh which is the Word's alone: because God the Word has not with the Father and the Holy Spirit a fellowship of one person. For according to the operation of the divinity common to it, in which there is a trinity of persons, just as the Son received it, so the Father received it, and the Holy Spirit.
For that Son who according to the divinity was naturally alone born of the Father alone, it certainly befitted that very one to be naturally born according to the flesh of the Virgin. But in that Trinity, just as there are not two Fathers, nor two Holy Spirits, so neither shall there be two Sons. For that Trinity has in itself one Father, one Son, one Holy Spirit. But one Father, and one Holy Spirit according to the divine nature; but one Son, according to the divine and human substance. In the persons, therefore, the Trinity is distinct, although in nature the one divinity of the Trinity is not divided or separated. Therefore in the person of the Son alone is the humanity found assumed.
On account of the nature, therefore, the operation of the holy Trinity is always one; but on account of the persons, the human assumption is of the Son alone. Nevertheless, while we discuss these things for the instruction of the faithful, we ought to consider that heretics are certainly carnal and animal, and on this account incapable of spiritual things, of whom the Apostle says: 'But the animal man perceiveth not those things that are of the Spirit of God. For it is foolishness to him, and he cannot understand, because it is spiritually examined' (I Cor. II, 14). But apostolic authority testifies that heretics especially are carnal, or animal. For the blessed Paul places heresies among the works of the flesh.
The blessed Apostle Jude too calls those who separate themselves from the Church 'animal,' saying: 'These are they who separate themselves, sensual, having not the Spirit' (Jude 19). This is assuredly what we showed the blessed Paul to have said: 'But the animal man perceiveth not those things that are of the Spirit of God.' Let it be no wonder, therefore, that they cannot understand divine things who have not the Spirit of God. For it is written in the book of Wisdom: 'And who shall know thy thought, unless thou give wisdom, and send thy Holy Spirit from on high?' (Wis. IX, 17). Hence it is that the holy Apostle too asserts that the things which are of God are revealed by none but the Holy Spirit, saying: 'For God hath revealed them to us by his Spirit' (I Cor. II, 10).
And a little after he says: 'Now we have received not the spirit of this world, but the Spirit that is of God, that we may know the things that are given us from God' (ibid. 12). Nevertheless it is good that we too, insofar as we are divinely helped, imitating the blessed Apostle, should strive to become all things to all, that we may gain all (I Cor. IX, 22). Chapter XIX. Since therefore the Arians do not grasp what we have led them to—that in that one divine nature something was made by the whole Trinity which was not assumed by the whole Trinity, nor is it believed possible that the whole Trinity made that flesh, which nevertheless one person of the Trinity assumed—let us become, as the Apostle says (I Thess.
II, 7) become 'as little ones in the midst of them,' and set this example before them, to nourish the breadth of spiritual understanding, so that it may not weary nor disturb the narrowness of the heretic's heart. Let them know that that Trinity alone is divine, inseparable and individual, whose one nature can neither be divided by the trinity of persons, nor can the three persons be confounded by the unity of the indivisible nature. For the very mind of man too, in which we said the image of God is, so received it as to have in itself a certain token of the holy Trinity, yet not to have in itself the distinction of three persons. For this the divine Trinity kept proper to itself. Whence, although there be in the mind of man memory, understanding, and will;
those indeed are three, yet they cannot be three persons: because in each and every man, in whose mind—or whose mind is the divine image—there is found naturally to be one person not only of the mind itself, but of the soul and flesh together. In the creature therefore, insofar as the greatness of so great a matter of which we speak permits, seeking an example, we perhaps find in the natures some such thing as we could not find in the persons. For we said that the whole Trinity made the humanity of the Son of God, which nevertheless not the whole Trinity, but the Son alone received into his own person. By the whole Trinity indeed, that is, by the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit, that flesh was made; but the Word alone was made flesh.