On the Trinity 1.18–1.20

On the holy Trinity. And that because of the sameness of substance the same names are said of both hypostases, except fatherhood and sonship and the procession of the Spirit; for this is proper to each hypostasis individually. And that sometimes the Father, sometimes the Son, sometimes the Spirit is placed first. And that both the threefold and the single are shown in Scripture. From all that has been said, then, it has been established that their views are in every way foreign to the truth. For it is the work of sophistry to invent arguments, but of wisdom to search the Scriptures with reverence and with fitting acceptance. It remains necessary, then, … having come, and having washed out, as the saying goes, their briny ears with the drinkable intelligible water of the Holy Spirit, to show that the Scriptures, because of the sameness of the Godhead, sometimes name one of the divine hypostases and sometimes the three, and assign the good equally to each of them. So when Moses says, "Hear, Israel: the Lord our God …", he signifies the one Godhead, and by "Lord", then "God", and again "Lord", the Trinity, from whom every good in the world and above the world has come and will come to men. And again: "God said, Let there be a firmament. And God made the firmament. And God saw that it was good." It must be noted that it both names three hypostases, calling each God, and shows the concord and the co-operation of the one who spoke, the one who made, and the one who praised. And again God commands Moses, it says, saying: "Speak to Aaron and his sons: Thus you shall bless Israel: The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine upon you; the Lord lift up his face upon you and give you peace." To show three persons, he did not say once, "The Lord bless you and shine upon you and give you peace", but named the Lord a third time. And so when they prophesy: Haggai, bringing a divinely uttered word in the person of the Father, which runs thus: "Be strong, Zerubbabel, for I am with you, and my good Word, and my Spirit is in your midst"; and Isaiah, saying that the sending was of equal honor, coming from the equally honored and self-complete hypostases, and showing in a brief saying their whole communion, when he cries: "And now the Lord, the Lord has sent me, and his Spirit." For he did not name "Lord" a second time without reason, but … the hypostases, and to show the one Godhead and will. And David (for he too lends help on such a point) fills everything with song and shows what faith he held, in these words: in the 17th psalm, "Who is God except the Lord? And who is God except our God, the God who girds me with power?"; and in the 58th, "You, God, are my helper. My God, his mercy will go before me; my God will show me among my enemies"; and in the 95th, "Sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the earth; sing to the Lord, bless his name." For by naming "Lord" or "God" three times he indicated the Trinity. And also she who prayed, in the books of Kingdoms, … the Trinity … Sabaoth; for "Adonai" in the Hebrew tongue is interpreted "Lord"; and again in the Greek tongue she said "Lord"; and the third time she said in Hebrew "Eloi Sabaoth"; she called upon a Trinity, and taught us too not to believe and glorify otherwise. And by the water-carriers too he indicated that the three all-praised hypostases act everywhere in all things with equal power and equal honor. And if you wish, I will make the point in question known to you once more from a divine voice. For in the book of Genesis, at the building of the tower, the God and Father revealed the blessed hypostases, saying to his own Son and his Holy Spirit: "Come, let us go down and confuse their tongues there, so that they may not understand, each one, the voice of his neighbor." And Moses, showing, I think, the equality of the Trinity, set forth one vine on three stems, saying that no one stem was more deeply rooted than another, so that no one should think that this hypostasis takes precedence over that, but that we should all believe that the three are joined in one Godhead. For this reason the inspired Scripture also forbade making steps at the altar at which the Trinity is glorified, so that men might not mark off the divine hypostases, as by steps, as being in some inferiority. And, in a word, the Old Testament, bearing the type of the New, speaks mystically and with the greatest forethought, hinting rather than stating in many places, and in the same places stating more than hinting the mystery revealed later; so as neither to strike the uninitiated, who were not yet steady and able to receive the vision of God, with a sudden assault, nor to deprive them altogether; for the one would have been inexperience, the other inhumanity. And often what here may perhaps be hard for us to reach, it has given the solution of through another scripture. But the New Testament speaks no longer as in shadow and behind a veil, but clearly and expressly, as these testify: Paul writing to the Romans, "Since God is one"; to the Galatians and the Corinthians, "God is one". And again to the Corinthians, in the second letter: "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all." Here, because of the sameness of the Godhead, he mentioned the Son first, then the Father, then his Holy Spirit; and he spoke of the fellowship of the Holy Spirit with Father and Son, of the one Godhead and glory and kingdom; for what other fellowship is there in God? To the Ephesians: "One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all." Then to the same: "For this reason I bow my knees to the God and Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that he may grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith." Here again likewise, because of the equal honor of the hypostases, after the Father he mentioned the Spirit first, and then the Son. And again to the Corinthians: "I urge you, brothers, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, to strive together with me in your prayers to God on my behalf." And to the Hebrews: "For if the word spoken through angels proved firm, and every transgression and disobedience received a just retribution, how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? It was declared at first through the Lord, and was confirmed to us by those who heard, while God bore witness with signs and wonders and various powers and distributions of the Holy Spirit according to his will." By "the Lord" the Son is shown; by "God", the Father; and then also the self-determination and almighty power of the Holy Spirit. And the Son showed the one Godhead by saying, "Why do you call me good? No one is good except one, God"; and the three hypostases, equal in honor and equal in power, by his teaching about baptism; not saying … testing, examining … the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ … "Why do you call me good?" He showed that he too is good, equally with the Father, and that his goodness shines forth from the Father's goodness, and that he is shown to be good, begotten from the good. "For if," he says, "you know me to be good, and do not attach the word to 'teacher' (as in 'Well done, good servant'; and 'The good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good'; and 'Samuel was good with God and with men'; and 'Saul, son of Kish, of the tribe of Benjamin, was good, taller than all Israel from the shoulders upward'; and 'A living dog is good, more than a dead lion'), take nothing away from the first-working good, but acknowledge me as God, not other than the Father in Godhead, since otherwise the first good would no longer be found to be one. For you have read somewhere," he says, "that 'It is good to trust in the Lord rather than to trust in man.' For to cleave to God is good; and I have always urged you to follow me, as one who is good, and to walk behind me." Therefore he did not say, "No one is good except one, the Father", but "No one is good except one, God"; as he also says somewhere else, "Why do you call me Lord, Lord, and do not do my words?" For creation, he says, has goodness by participation, imitating according to its own capacity, if it is right to say so, the innate and perfect goodness of God, and being preserved by it; and the existence of the good in it is its sharing in God's goodness, cleaving to him by obedience and by love for him. For it is written: "Those who keep themselves far from you shall perish"; and "God is far from the impious"; and "Salvation is far from sinners." It is clear that this is by relation and disposition, because of opposition to the good and slowness toward virtue, and not by place. And that he too is good, since he is by nature one with the good Father, he himself says in Matthew: "Is your eye evil because I am good?" And again: "Mary has chosen the good portion, which shall not be taken away from her." By the good portion he meant himself. And men who are not obscure, but deeply conversant with the divine Spirit, proclaim it along with him; among the others who follow them are these: the sacred psalmist in the 117th psalm, "Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good"; and in the same, "The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul that seeks him"; and Isaiah, "The Lord is a good judge to the house of Israel." And that the Holy Spirit of God is good, the David already mentioned sings in the 24th psalm: "Your good Spirit will lead me on level ground." Besides these, if eternal life is good, and so are the words of the Son (for he said, "The words that I … to you are spirit and are life"), and if the sanctification of the Holy Spirit is good, and his working in illumination (for he is named along with them as working with them), and further the distribution of the heavenly gifts, then the Son and the Holy Spirit are certainly good. We were taught not only by hearing; we have also beheld, as far as is possible, the distinctness of the hypostases of the venerable and consubstantial Trinity: the Father saying from the heavens, "This is my beloved Son"; his Only-begotten being baptized on earth; and his one and only Holy Spirit descending in the form of a dove and remaining upon the only-begotten God and Son himself. And a treasure of David in the … psalm confirms this, that the … was being testified to as Son. The saying is known to all; it runs: "Truth has risen from the earth, and righteousness has looked down from heaven." Likewise, because there is no difference of Godhead in the awesome and undefiled Trinity, the oracles sometimes show the Father with the Son, as when David says, "The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand", and Paul, "Grace to you and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ"; and sometimes they join the Father with the Holy Spirit, as when Haggai prophesies, "For I am with you, says the Lord Almighty, and my Spirit stands in your midst"; and again … in the saying. For since the heterodox sometimes say, when the Spirit is mentioned with the Father, that some power without hypostasis is meant, the present saying is guarded against this. And Isaiah: "And now the Lord has sent me, and his Spirit"; and again: "There the deer met and saw one another's faces; they passed by in number, and not one of them perished; one did not seek the other; for the Lord commanded them, and his Spirit …" … "and the Spirit of God dwells in you?" And again: "The love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit"; and again: "But God has revealed it to us through his Spirit." At other times they name the Son alone, as when Isaiah prophesies, "And now, Lord, you are our father, and we are clay, all of us the work of your hands"; and Paul to the Galatians, "For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ." At other times they proclaim the Only-begotten with the Holy Spirit, as when Paul writes to the Corinthians, "But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God"; and to the Romans, "I speak the truth in Christ, I do not lie, my conscience bearing witness with me in the Holy Spirit"; and again, "For if someone comes and preaches another Jesus than the one we preached, or you receive a different Spirit from the one you received." And at other times Scripture mentions the Holy Spirit alone, as when Isaiah prophesies, "They disobeyed and provoked the Holy Spirit"; and again, "The Spirit came down from the Lord and guided them." And Paul writes to the Corinthians, "The fleshly man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God"; and as Stephen says in the Acts, "You resist the Holy Spirit." And again: "We are witnesses of these words, and so is the Holy Spirit", just as we commonly say, "We alone are here, and God." And … of the Spirit, saying: "When he comes, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you into all the truth." And the Acts likewise bear witness about him: "While Peter was pondering the word, the Holy Spirit said to him: Rise, go down, and go with them without hesitating, for I have sent them." And again: "Thus says the Holy Spirit: Set apart for me Paul and Barnabas for the work to which I have called them." And again the Holy Spirit said to Peter: "Rise, go to the house of Cornelius." And once more the Acts of the Apostles, in their elegance, give scope to such an argument; for they contain: "Then … him." And further: "For Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to the people." Likewise the equal weight and equal power of the all-honored hypostases is signified also in that the Master, God the Word, through his all-praised word about baptism mentioned before, preserved for himself and for the Holy Spirit equality of honor with the Father. Because of this the sacred books sometimes mention the Father first, and then the Son or the Holy Spirit; and sometimes they mention the Son first, because the nature is undivided and the theology admits no difference; as when Job says, plainly showing the Trinity: "As the Lord lives, who has so judged me, and the Almighty who has embittered my soul, while my breath is still in me, and the divine Spirit that is in my nostrils." The Holy Spirit who gives me life, he means, and still makes me breathe. And as when Paul writes to the Thessalonians in the second letter, "Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God our Father, comfort your hearts." And to the Galatians: "Paul, an apostle, not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father." And to the Corinthians, as said before: "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God the Father, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit." And the Savior says: "I and the Father will come and make our dwelling with him." Sometimes they name the Holy Spirit first, and afterwards the Father or the Son, as when David sings: "Where shall I go from your Spirit? And from your presence where shall I flee?" And Job, showing his gratitude, says: "The divine Spirit is what made me, and the breath of the Almighty is what teaches me." And as Paul writes in his first epistle to the Corinthians: "There are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and varieties of service, but the same Lord; and varieties of workings, but the same God, who works all things in all." Sometimes they speak of two hypostases without naming them, as when Zechariah says, "The Lord said to the devil: The Lord rebuke you, devil." And this was shown above at greater length.

On the fact that what is said now of the Father is said at another time of the Son, or of the Holy Spirit, because the Trinity exists in one Godhead. Knowing, then, the glorious Trinity in one Godhead, and that its theology is shared, the sacred teachers declare at other times, some of them, of the Son or of the Holy Spirit what they have just now said of the Father; not contradicting themselves, but so that we too may know this very point, the chief point of the right faith, and that whichever hypostasis we mention, we have in every case included the others too in our faith, since they are inseparable. The truthful interpreters of God must of necessity speak truly, and those who … the simple and true faith must be pure of any opinion that denies the truth. For it is not lawful, they say, for the impure to touch the pure; and they were pure, and strangers to every false opinion. We shall find this at once in the vision of God that Isaiah saw. And why should I not first recall that whole passage as it stands? He says: "I saw the Lord Sabaoth sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the house was full of his glory. And seraphim stood around him; six wings to the one, and six wings to the other; and with two wings they covered their faces, and with two their feet, and with two they flew; and they cried one to the other: Holy, holy, holy, Lord Sabaoth; heaven and all the earth are full of his glory." "You will hear with your ears and will not understand; and seeing you will see and will not perceive. For the heart of this people has grown fat, and with their ears they have heard heavily, and they have shut their eyes, lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart, and turn, and I heal them." And among other things he adds: "And my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Sabaoth", "to me one of the seraphim", and what follows. The Lord Sabaoth and King who was seen, then, this Isaiah knows to be God the Father himself; but Paul, in the book of the Acts of the Apostles, declared it to be the Holy Spirit, speaking thus: "Well did the Holy Spirit speak to your fathers through Isaiah the prophet, saying: Go to this people and say to them: You will hear with your ears and will not understand", and the rest as above. And John in the Gospel determined that it is the Son of God; for he said: "Though Jesus had done so many signs, they could not believe, because Isaiah said: He has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, lest they see with their eyes and understand with their heart and turn, and I heal them." And at once he adds: "Isaiah said these things when he saw his glory", that is, the glory of the Son of God. So much, then, on this. But hear also other things of the same force: David in the 94th psalm, singing on the lyre in the person of God the Father thus: "Your fathers tested me, and saw my works forty years. Therefore I was angry with this generation, and said: They always go astray in their heart; and they did not know my ways. As I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest." Paul, writing to the Hebrews, assigns the words of the same psalm to the Holy Spirit, in this way: "As the Holy Spirit says," he writes, "If you hear my voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, on the day of testing, where your fathers tested me, and saw my works forty years." And Stephen, in the Acts of the Apostles, shaming the Jews from the same Scripture, said: "Stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit; as your fathers did, so do you." Likewise, that … led them out of Egypt … "and there was no foreign god with them." And Jeremiah likewise: "And you did not say," he says, "Where is the Lord who brought you up out of the land of Egypt, who led you through the wilderness?" But Isaiah says that it was the Holy Spirit who led them: "For he led them through the deep," he says, "like a horse through the wilderness, and they did not grow weary; and like cattle through a plain. The Spirit came down from the Lord and guided them." And Paul teaches that Christ was their guide: "For they drank," he says, "from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ." In agreement with which Jude too writes in his catholic epistle: "For the Lord Jesus, having once saved a people out of Egypt, afterwards destroyed those who did not believe him." Here, then, the attempt of those who say that the venerable Son and the divine Spirit are creatures is refuted in two ways: from the fact that what indicates the one infinite nature has been declared of each hypostasis, and from the words placed beside it, "there was no foreign god with them", that is, none of another substance. In the same way Moses says: "There shall be no portion or inheritance for the Levites in the land; the Lord himself is their portion"; and Jeremiah: "He who formed all things," he says, "he is the inheritance of Jacob; the Lord is his name"; and David in the 15th psalm: "The Lord is the portion of my inheritance and of my cup." But Paul writes to the Ephesians that the Holy Spirit is the inheritance: "In whom," he says, "having believed, we were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the pledge of our inheritance." Likewise Paul writes to the Corinthians: "There are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and varieties of service, and the same Lord; and varieties of workings, but the same God, who works all things in all." And showing the … he mentions the Spirit, then the Son, and so the Father; and he who has just said that God works all things adds a little later: "All these the one and the same Spirit works, distributing to each individually as he wills"; clearly and expressly presenting him as God, consubstantial with the Father and the Son, and at the same time self-determining. One may hear God the Father saying in Isaiah, "And my glory I will not give to another"; and John saying, "That all may honor the Son as they honor the Father" (for he already knew clearly that the glory is not given back to the Only-begotten and the Holy Spirit as to beings of another substance); and again Mark, saying from Christ: "For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him the Son of Man also will be ashamed, when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels." Matthew, setting out the same passage, did not say "in the glory of the Father" but in that of the Son, writing thus: "When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory." And in John he says: "Glorify me with the glory that I had with you before the world existed."

On the fact that, because they are consubstantial and equal in power, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit dwell in the faithful. And against the objection of the heterodox. We shall find the consubstantiality of the Trinity further, and that all things are possible to it without variation, if we understand that it alone, being beyond what is immaterial and invisible, can be shared in according to substance and can fill the temple it has created; and to it not only the fact but also the word belongs. For unchangeableness follows upon being shared in, and upon this being uncreated, which is also being without beginning. Nothing created, as far as the usage of the Scriptures goes, can be shared in by way of participation, or fill a man substantially, but only by way of a habit, good or bad. For we say metaphorically that some are filled with virtue and knowledge, and are able to bring forth with understanding the rewards of virtue and knowledge, like those who have received a pure share of the grace of the Holy Spirit. It is testified, then, that the Father, the Son and the Spirit dwell in us, as when Paul writes to the Corinthians in the second letter, from Jeremiah: "For we are the temple of the living God, as God said: I will dwell in them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people"; and again: "Do you not know that you are God's temple and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?" and "Do you not know that your bodies … whom you have from God?" And to the Ephesians: "that he may grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith." And as when the Master says in John: "The Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him; but you know him, for he remains with you and will be in you"; and again: "If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him." This will be still plainer to one who considers that the all-powerful God the Word, when he willed it, both remained unchangeable and was carried in the womb by the Virgin. But they object again, saying: It is written, of course, of Ananias, "Why has Satan filled your heart?", and of Judas, that "Satan entered into him." To them it must be said that Satan fills, not by being shared in, nor as if riding upon the soul, but by deceiving … and making it a by-work of his own wickedness, the one who does not heed the words "Do not let your foot be moved, and he who keeps you will not slumber"; in the way he filled Elymas, his son, by the suggestion of satanic action. For Paul says to him, who was abominable in mind and deeds, full of diabolical wickedness and outwitting the saints, so that his father, the author of evil, seemed to dwell in him: "O full of all deceit and all villainy, son of the devil." And further, as he filled the false elders in the case of the most modest Susanna with a licentious mind; it runs thus: "And the two elders came, full of their lawless intent." And so as not to weary the ear with a great crowd of words, we pass over much that we could say on this and will say briefly: if this argument of theirs prevails, see that you do not think it any great thing that the divine serenity dwells in the faithful, but rather that it has this glory in appearance only.