Letters 238.9–238.29

If you remember that these things happened as I have told them, you see how wrong it is for you to boast among men that I did not dare to state my faith to you, since you would not keep faith with our agreement; and that so great a man, who for the loyalty you owe the state do not fear the curses of provincials, for the faith you owe Christ fear false charges from bishops. Then, since you wanted men of rank to be present at our debate, I wonder how, in the very avoidance of false charges, you fear having your words written down by stenographers and do not fear their being heard from your mouth by most distinguished witnesses. Do you not see that people will hardly suspect that you feared any false charge from us, so that you would not let your words be taken down, but rather that, when you thought you had been held to a word written by your own hand before lunch, you also thought that you could not delete the stenographers' tablets as easily as you tore up that sheet? But if you say these things did not happen as I have told them, either you are deceived by forgetfulness (for I do not dare to say you are lying), or I am likewise deceived or lying. You see, then, how rightly I say that what is done above all in these matters ought to be taken down and written, and how rightly this had pleased you too, had not your afternoon fear broken your morning agreement.

Hear now, then, my faith. The mercy of the Lord our God is able to grant me to speak what I have believed in such a way as to offend neither his truth nor your courtesy. I profess that I believe in God the Father almighty, and that he is eternal with that eternity, that is, I mean immortality, which God alone has. This I believe also of his only-begotten Son in the form of God; this also of the Holy Spirit of God, who is the Spirit of God the Father and of his only-begotten Son. But since the only-begotten Son of God the Father himself, our Lord and God Jesus Christ, after the fullness of time came, fittingly for the day of our salvation took the form of a servant, many things are said of him in the Scriptures according to the form of God and many according to the form of a servant. Of these I mention two for example, so that each may be referred to its own. According to the form of God he said of himself, “I and the Father are one”; according to the form of a servant, “For the Father is greater than I.”

What is written of God, “who alone has immortality,” and, “To the invisible, only God be honor and glory,” and other things of this kind, we take not of the Father only but also of the Son, as regards the form of God, and of the Holy Spirit. For the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are one God, and the only true God, and the only immortal one, according to their altogether unchangeable substance. For if it is said of flesh of different sexes, “He who joins himself to a harlot is one body,” and of the spirit of man, which is not what the Lord is, it is consequently written, “But he who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit,” how much more are God the Father in the Son and God the Son in the Father and the Spirit of the Father and the Son one God, where there is no different nature, since even of different things joined in some way to each other it is said “one spirit” or “one body”!

And if from soul and body joined to each other one man is spoken of, why should not one God be spoken of all the more from Father and Son joined to each other, since they are joined inseparably, as body and soul are not? And if body and soul are one man, though body and soul are not one, why are not the Father and Son much more one God, since the Father and the Son are one, according to that voice of truth, “I and the Father are one”? Again, although the inner man and the outer man are not one (for the outer is not of the same nature as the inner, since the outer is called man together with the body, while the inner is understood in the rational soul alone), yet the two together are called not two men but one; how much more are the Father and Son one God, since the Father and the Son are one, because they are of the same nature or substance, or whatever other word more fittingly expresses what God is, whence it was said, “I and the Father are one”! So the one spirit of the Lord and the one spirit of a man are not one, and yet, when the latter is joined to the Lord, they are not two but one spirit; and the one inner man and the one outer man are not one, and yet, because of the connection of the natural bond, both together are not two but one man; much more, since the Son of God says, “I and the Father are one,” is the Father one God and the Son one God, and yet both together not two gods but one God.

For what one faith, one hope and one love did in many saints called to the adoption of sons and fellow heirs with Christ, so that they had one soul and one heart toward God, compels us above all to understand the one and the same nature, or, if it should be so said, deity, of the Father and the Son, so that the Father and the Son, who are one, and inseparably one, and eternally one, are not two gods but one God. For those men were one through sharing and communion in the one and the same nature by which they were all men, though at times, because of differences of will and opinion and dissimilarity of character, they were not one; but they will be fully and perfectly one when that end is reached in which God will be all in all. But God the Father and his Son, his Word, God with God, are always and ineffably one; hence all the more not two gods but one God.

But men who do not understand well what is said on account of what, want to have hasty opinions, and, without searching the Scriptures diligently, seize on a defense of whatever opinion they hold, and from it are turned either never or with difficulty, as long as they desire to be thought learned and wise rather than to be so. For they want to transfer to the form of God what was said on account of the form of a servant; and again, what was said so that the persons are related to one another, they want to be names of nature and substance. But our faith is to believe and confess that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are one God, and yet not to call him who is the Son the Father, nor him who is the Father the Son, nor to name him who is the Spirit of the Father and the Son either Father or Son. For these names signify that they are related to one another, not the substance itself by which they are one. For when “Father” is said, it is said only of some son, and “Son” is understood only of some father, and “Spirit,” insofar as it is related to something, is of someone who breathes, and the one who breathes certainly breathes a spirit.

But these things are not perceived bodily nor understood in the usual way in God, who is able to do, as the apostle says, beyond what we ask and understand; and if to do, how much more to be! For the name “spirit” is used not according to relation to something but as signifying a certain nature. Every incorporeal nature is called spirit in the Scriptures; hence this word fits not only the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit but every rational creature and soul. So the Lord says, “God is spirit, and therefore those who worship God must worship in spirit and truth”; it is also written, “who makes his angels spirits”; and it is said of certain men, “for they are flesh and a spirit that goes and does not return”; and the apostle says, “No one knows what goes on in a man except the spirit of the man that is in him”; again it is written, “Who knows whether the spirit of the sons of men goes upward, and the spirit of the beast goes down to the earth?” In the Scriptures “spirit” is also used by a certain distinction within the one soul of one man, so that the apostle says, “and may your spirit and soul and body be kept whole in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ”; and again elsewhere, “If I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my mind is unfruitful. What then? I will pray with the spirit, I will pray with the mind also.” But the Holy Spirit is so called in a particular way insofar as he is related to the Father and the Son, being their Spirit. For as to substance, since it has once been said, “God is spirit,” the Father is spirit and the Son and the Holy Spirit himself, and yet not three spirits but one spirit, just as not three gods but one God.

Why are you surprised? Such is the power of peace, not of any kind, as it is usually understood, nor such as is praised in this life through the harmony and love of believers, but that peace of God which, as the apostle says, surpasses all understanding: whose understanding, if not ours, that is, of every rational creature? Therefore, considering our weakness and hearing the apostle confess and say, “Brothers, I do not consider that I have laid hold of it,” and, “Whoever thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know,” let us converse with the divine Scriptures as far as we can, peacefully, without contention, not striving with empty and childish animosity to defeat each other, so that rather the peace of Christ may conquer in our hearts, as far as he has granted us to receive it even in this life. And considering what that same peace did among the brothers, making of so many souls and many hearts one soul and one heart toward God, let us believe with due piety that much more in that peace of God which surpasses all understanding the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are not three gods but one God, as much more excellently than those men's soul and heart were one, as that peace which surpasses all understanding is more excellent than this peace which held the one heart and one soul of all of them toward God.

We call the same one the Son of Man whom we call the Son of God, not, however, on account of the form of God, in which he is equal to God the Father, but on account of the form of a servant that he took, in which the Father is greater. And because we call the same one the Son of Man, for this reason we also confess that the Son of God was crucified, not from the power of his divinity but from the weakness of his humanity, not by the abiding of his own nature but by his taking up of ours.

Now consider for a little which words of the Scriptures compel us to confess one Lord God, whether we are asked about the Father alone, or the Son alone, or the Holy Spirit alone, or about the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit together. Certainly it is written: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one Lord.” Of whom do you think this was said? If of the Father only, then our Lord Jesus Christ is not Lord God; and where is that cry of Thomas as he touched him, “My Lord and my God,” which Christ himself did not rebuke but approved, saying, “Because you have seen, you have believed”? Further, if the Son is Lord God and the Father is Lord God, and both are now two lords and two gods, how will it be true that “the Lord your God is one Lord”? Or perhaps the Father is one Lord, but the Son is not one Lord but only a lord, as there are many gods and many lords, not as that one of whom it is written, “The Lord your God is one Lord”? What then shall we answer the apostle when he says, “For although there are those called gods, whether in heaven or on earth, as there are many gods and many lords, yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we in him, and one Lord, our Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and we through him”? Further, if what is said of one God the Father forces the Son to be separated from it, let those who dare say that the Father can no longer be understood as Lord, because, it says, “one Lord, our Jesus Christ.” For if one, certainly alone; if alone, how is the Father Lord too, unless because he and the Father are one God and God alone, the Holy Spirit not being separated? So the Father is one God, and with him the Son is one God, though not with him one Father; and likewise Jesus Christ is one Lord, and with him the Father is one Lord, though not with him one Jesus Christ, as if the Father too were Jesus Christ; for this name was taken from the dispensation of mercy and the humanity assumed.

Or perhaps in what the apostle says, “one Lord, our Jesus Christ, through whom are all things,” you do not want “one” to be joined to “Lord” but to “through whom are all things,” so that it is understood not as one Lord but as the one through whom are all things, so that the Father is not the one through whom are all things, but the Father alone is the one from whom are all things, and the Son alone the one through whom are all things? If so, then at last confess that the Father and the Son are our one Lord and God. For “who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? Or who has first given to him, that it should be repaid him? For from him and through him and in him are all things; to him be glory.” For he did not say “from the Father all things and through the Son all things,” but “from him and through him and in him.” From whom, but the Lord of whom he says, “For who has known the mind of the Lord?” So all things are from the Lord and through the Lord and in the Lord, not from one and through another, but from one Lord, because he did not say “to them be glory” but “to him be glory.”

But if anyone says that in the apostle's words, “one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things,” we are to understand not one Lord, nor the one through whom are all things, but one Jesus Christ, who, being one Jesus Christ, is also called Lord, yet not so as to be one Lord but one Jesus Christ, what will he say when he hears the same apostle proclaim, “One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all”? For since he mentions God the Father here, where he says, “one God and Father of all,” without doubt above, where he said “one Lord,” whom did he wish to be understood but the Lord Jesus Christ? If, then, it pleases them, let the Father cease to be Lord, because there is one Lord, Jesus Christ. But if it is absurd and impious to think so, let us learn to understand the unity of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, so that what has been said of one God alone we are not at once forbidden to understand of the Son or of the Holy Spirit; because the Father indeed is not the Son, and the Son is not the Father, and the Spirit of both is neither Father nor Son, but yet the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are one, who alone is the true Lord God.

For if the Holy Spirit were not God or true God, our bodies would not be his temple. “Do you not know,” he says, “that your bodies are a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?” And so that no one would deny that the Spirit himself is God, he went on at once: “And you are not your own; for you were bought with a price. Glorify God, then, in your body,” that is, him whose temple he had just said our bodies are. Now this is a wonder, if what I hear you say is true, that the Holy Spirit is less than the Son just as the Son is less than the Father. For since our bodies are members of Christ, as the apostle says, and likewise our bodies are a temple of the Holy Spirit, as the same apostle says, I am greatly astonished how the members of the greater can be the temple of the lesser. Or perhaps you now wish to say that the Holy Spirit is greater than the Lord Jesus Christ? For that saying too seems to support this opinion: “Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him, either in this age or in the age to come.” For it is more dangerous to sin against the greater than against the lesser; and it is not right to separate the Son of Man from the Son of God, since the Son of God himself became the Son of Man, not by changing what he was but by taking what he was not. But far be such impiety too, that the Holy Spirit should be believed greater than the Son. So let not sayings that seem to show one greater than another easily move anyone to perversity.

For some things are said in such a way that, to people of little understanding, even the Son seems greater than the Father. For who, asked which is greater, the true or truth, would not rather answer that truth is greater? For whatever things are true are true by it. But it is not so in God. For neither of us says the Son is greater than the Father, and yet the Son is called the Truth: “I am,” he says, “the way and the truth and the life.” But you wish the saying, “that they may know you, the one true God, and Jesus Christ whom you sent,” to be understood of the Father only, where we understand Jesus Christ also as true God, so that the sense is: “that they may know you and Jesus Christ whom you sent as the one true God”; lest that absurdity follow that, if Jesus Christ is not true God because it was said to the Father, “you, the one true God,” then the Father is not Lord because it was said of Christ, “one Lord.” Yet by a perverse understanding, or rather error, God the Truth is greater than the true God, since the true is from the truth; so the Son would be greater than the Father, because he is the Truth and the Father is true. This perversity is driven from the mind of one who has learned that the Father is true God by begetting the Truth, not by participating in it; and the substance of the true one who begets is not other than that of the Truth begotten.

But since the eye of the human heart is weak for contemplating these things, it happens besides that it is also troubled by contention. And when will it behold them? Scripture says that the Son of God, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, is the Word of God and the Truth and the Wisdom; and men say that before the incarnation, which he received from the Virgin Mary, without taking up any bodily creature at all, by his very nature and substance, by which he is the Word of God and the Wisdom of God, he was visible and corruptible, while they want to hold, as they think, that “to the invisible, incorruptible, only God” was said of the Father alone! I ask you: a man's word is not visible, much less the Word of God. And as for that Wisdom of which it was said, “She reaches everywhere because of her purity,” and, “Nothing defiled enters into her,” and, “Remaining in herself she renews all things,” and other such things that cannot be counted, if she is corruptible, I do not know what to say, except to grieve at human presumption and wonder at divine patience.

But since it is said of her, “For she is the brightness of eternal light,” not even your people, I think, now say that the light of the Father, which is nothing but his substance, was ever without the brightness begotten from it, as such things can be believed and somehow understood in divine, spiritual, incorporeal and unchangeable matters; for I hear they have now corrected this. Or is it perhaps false that they once said that the Father was once without the Son, as if eternal light had been without the brightness it begot? What, then, do we say? If the Son of God has been born of the Father, the Father has ceased begetting; and if he ceased, he began; but if he began to beget, he was once without a Son. But he was never without a Son, because his Son is his Wisdom, which is the brightness of eternal light; therefore the Father always begets and the Son is always born. Here again we must fear lest the generation be thought imperfect if we say not that he has been born but that he is being born. Have compassion on me, I beg you, in these straits of human thought and speech, and let us take refuge together in the Spirit of God, who says through the prophet: “Who shall declare his generation?”

For now I ask this one thing: that you diligently inquire whether divine Scripture anywhere says of different substances that they are one. For if it is not found said except of things that are agreed to be of one and the same substance, what need is there for us to rebel against the true and Catholic faith? But if you find this written somewhere even of different substances, then I will be forced to look for something else by which to show that the Father and the Son are rightly called homoousios. For if those who either do not know our Scriptures or do not search them laboriously, and yet believe that the Son is of the same substance as the Father and equal to him, say to those who will not believe this, although they believe that God the Father has an only-begotten Son, “Did God not wish to have an equal Son, or was he unable? If he did not wish it, he is envious; if he was unable, he is weak; and to think either of these of God is sacrilege,” I do not know whether they can find anything to say, unless they want to say the most absurd and foolish things.

There, as best I could, I have set out my faith to you. More could indeed be said and argued more carefully, but I fear that even what I have said may be a burden to your busy life. Yet I wished it not only dictated and written down, but I also took care to sign it with my own hand, which indeed I had wished before too, if what we had agreed had been kept. But now surely I think it can no longer be said by you that I was afraid to tell you my faith, since I have not only told it but signed it in writing, so that no one may say that I said what I did not say or did not say what I said. Do the same yourself, if you seek judges, not ones who would revere your person in your presence, but ones who exercise their freedom over your writing. For if you fear a false charge, which I would in no way dare to say had you not said it yourself, you may refrain from signing; for I too did not want your name written in this letter of mine, in case you perhaps did not wish it.

It is easy for anyone to defeat Augustine; let others see whether by truth or by shouting. It is not for me to say, except that it is easy for anyone to defeat Augustine, how much more to seem to have won, or, even if he does not seem to have won, to be said to have won! This is easy: I do not want you to think it great, I do not want you to seek it as something great. For when people notice so great a flame in your heart on this matter, many will rejoice to have found an occasion, with a few cries of “Bravo, bravo,” to make so powerful a man their friend; I do not like to say that, if they do not support you or if they put forward the contrary view, they may even fear you as an enemy, foolishly and stupidly indeed, but most people are like that.

So do not pay attention to how Augustine, a single man of whatever worth, may be defeated, but rather to whether homoousios can be defeated: not the Greek word itself, which is easy for those who do not understand it to mock, but what is written, “I and the Father are one,” and, “Holy Father, keep in your name those whom you have given me, that they may be one, as we are.” And again a little later: “I do not pray for these only,” he says, “but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they all may be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be one in us, that the world may believe that you sent me. And the glory you gave me I have given them, that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may be made perfect in one.” See how often he said “that they may be one, as we also are one”; yet nowhere did he say “that they and we are one,” but “as I and you are one, so they too may be one in us”; because, as they were of one and the same substance, whom he also wished to make sharers in one eternal life, so it was said of the Father and the Son, “We are one,” because they are of one and the same substance, and are not sharers in eternal life but are themselves, originally, eternal life. And he could have said, according to the form of a servant, “I and they are one,” or “let us be one”; yet he did not say it, because he wished to show the one substance of the Father and himself, and the one substance of the disciples. But if he had said, “that you and they may be one, as I and you are one,” or, “that you and I and they may be one, as I and you are one,” none of us would refuse to grant that even different substances can be said to be one. But now you see how it is not so, because he did not say so, and by saying it often he strongly emphasized what he did say.

You do find in the Scriptures something called one from different natures, as we showed above, but something is added or understood: “one” what, as from soul and body we say that there is, or they are, one animal, one person, one man. But if you find in the Scriptures “they are one” said without any addition except of those who are of one substance, you will most justly demand that we bring forward other things by which to demonstrate homoousios. For there are many others; but for now think about this one, putting aside the zeal for contention, so that you may have God favorable. For it is not good for a man to conquer a man; but it is good for a man that the truth conquer him willing, because it is bad for a man that the truth conquer him unwilling. For it must conquer, whether he denies or confesses. Pardon me if I have said anything rather freely, not to insult you but to defend myself. For I presumed on your gravity and prudence, since you can consider how great a necessity of replying you laid on me; or, if I did not do right in this either, pardon me for this too. I, Augustine, have signed this writing, dictated and reread by me.