On the Trinity 1.32–1.36

On the glorifying of the Son of God himself. Accordingly, consider also concerning his glory what the saints bear witness to once more, "of whom," it says, "the world was not worthy"; teaching us, who by grace have been called sons on earth, to glorify the only-begotten Son, who is from the hypostasis of the Father, with glory equal to the Father's, and to look to the glory that he had with the Father before the world existed, the Father who does not begrudge the Beloved; for the Divine is free from envy and from every passion. David, in the 71st psalm, which by common consent he prophesied about Christ, says: "His name shall be blessed for ever; his name endures before the sun, and before the moon, for generations of generations; and in him shall all the tribes of the earth be blessed; all the nations shall call him blessed. Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, who alone does wonders; and blessed be the name of his glory for ever, and for ever and ever; and the whole earth shall be filled with his glory. So be it." "Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel", he said, meaning glorified, or praised. For God is blessed by his works, that is, glorified; and he himself blesses his own creatures, that is, sanctifies them. And it must be noted that he too is called God of Israel, that is, God of the fathers, as his Father is called. And in the 85th psalm, showing the almighty and all-powerful nature of the Only-begotten, and that he ought to be glorified, he sings: "All the nations you have made shall come and worship before you, Lord, and shall glorify your name; for you are great and do wonders; you alone are God"; and in the 18th: "The heavens declare the glory of God." How? By showing, from the greatness and beauty given to them, that the one who created them, who is God the Word, is unsurpassable and glorified. For "by the Word of the Lord the heavens were made firm, and by the Spirit of his mouth all their host." … the testimony of the Holy Spirit. And in the 23rd: "Lift up your gates, O rulers, and be lifted up, you everlasting gates, and the King of glory shall come in." He bids the creation below lift up the gates at his becoming man, and the creation above at his ascension. And in the 116th: "Praise the Lord, all nations, and let all the peoples praise him." And Isaiah: "You shall see a king with glory." And Ezekiel: "Blessed be the glory of the Lord from his place"; and "This is the vision, the likeness of the glory of the Lord." Then Paul: "Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for the likeness of an image of corruptible man"; and again to the Romans: "Therefore he gave them up in the desires of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves; for they exchanged the glory of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen." And who is the Creator of all, whom he says is blessed for ever, if not the Only-begotten? And who are those who have exchanged his glory? Those who say, "Glory to the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit"; who also say that he is a creature, and do not glorify him even as eternal King. Then he says to the same people: "so that they are without excuse; for although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God or give thanks, but became futile … their senseless heart." And who is the God who was known and yet not acknowledged by heretics and Jews and Greeks, if not God the Word, who appeared in the flesh? And to the Corinthians, in the first letter, showing that he is by nature the Lord of glory, he writes thus: "For if they had known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory"; and elsewhere: "so that at the name of Jesus Christ every knee should bow, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father", meaning that he exists in the very glory of the Father. And further: "For we see Jesus, made lower because of the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor …" But he also calls him glory, since he is by nature the radiance of the Father's glory, in the words: "The God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory." He said "God" with reference to the ineffable incarnation, and "Father" with reference to the beginningless begetting. And again John: "We have beheld his glory, glory as of the Only-begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth." And again in Mark, from the Savior: "When the Son comes in the glory of his Father", showing that his glory is equal in honor with the glory of the Father; and in Matthew: "When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all his angels with him." And once more John, establishing that he is in glory and that glory is owed to him by all, said: "Though Jesus had done so many signs, the Jews did not believe in him, so that the word spoken through Isaiah might be fulfilled: You will hear with your ears and will not understand." And in between he adds: "He said these things when he saw his glory, and spoke of him." And Peter, in the first epistle: "Insofar as you share Christ's sufferings, rejoice, so that you may also rejoice and exult when his glory is revealed"; and in the second: "His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and virtue"; meaning that the glory of the Only-begotten, the glory of his nature, of his miracles, of his kingdom, and of the very praise given to him, is like and equal to the glory of the Father, from whom he was begotten by nature and without interval, and he has all things in himself as Only-begotten; so that even when he became flesh he underwent no change or lessening. So also the three young men, burning not with the Babylonian flame but with longing for their Creator and benefactor, and attending less to the furnace around them than to the Gehenna prepared for the worshipers of creatures, urged creation to glorify the one who appeared with them in the furnace, of whom it is written: "And the appearance of the fourth is like a son of God"; "Bless the Lord, all you works of the Lord, … for ever." And when the Lord-killers, it says, were vexed with the children and the crowds because they glorified Jesus as God, saying, "Hosanna in the highest; blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord", he reminded them of the Scripture that says, "Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babes you have prepared praise", applying this saying to himself and showing that glory is not unfittingly brought to him. And angels too, it says, said at his birth: "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace." … fitting and owed to him, but not to a creature, as the saints set down below write: David in the 94th psalm: "Come, let us worship and fall down before him, and weep before the Lord who made us; for he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand"; and in the 21st: "All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall worship before him; for the kingdom is the Lord's, and he rules over the nations." What, then, will they say, who assign the names separately, "God" to the Father and "Lord" to the Son, when they hear here that the Lord is worshiped and rules and that the kingdom is his? And again in the 9th psalm: "And I will worship you, Lord, my strength"; and in the 131st: "Let us worship at the place where his feet stood." Paul, writing from the song of Deuteronomy: "And when he brings the Firstborn into the world, he says: And let all the angels of God worship him." And the evangelist: "The magi said," it says, "We saw his star in the east and have come to worship him"; and again: "Behold," it says, "a leper came and worshiped him"; and again in Matthew it says: "The wind ceased; and those in the boat worshiped him, saying: Truly you are the Son of God", and not, he means, in the way we are, who have been called sons by a generous gift. And: "A ruler worshiped him." And after his resurrection, it says, on the mountain, "the apostles, seeing him, worshiped him."

On faith in God the Father. Just as, then, when Scripture, to all appearance, says many things about the Son that are greater than what it says about the Father, and shows him to be Almighty, and maker of the ages, and Creator of all; and true God, having no God before him; and above all, and great God and over all, beside whom no other shall be reckoned; and sitting at the right hand of the Father, and being in his bosom; and that he is eternal life, and the true light, and Lord of all, and only Master and Ruler; whose peace has no limit but surpasses all understanding, and whose kingdom has no end; and that in no one else is there salvation; and that the Father draws the worthy to the Son: just as, then, the Father, or his Spirit, is not thought to be inferior in anything (God forbid!), in the same way, when it speaks lofty things of the Father, the Only-begotten or the Holy Spirit ought not to be reckoned less or unlike. For it belongs to no created power, but only to the uncreated, to do the things mentioned: to create substance out of nothing, and rational substance; to give life; to forgive sins; to call creation one's own; to know the Father equally, as one is known by him; to work equally with God the Father; to be in the Father, and to have the Father in oneself equally; to be served by angels; and, surpassing these, to be the only-begotten Son, and God, and light from light, and eternal life, and truth, and being, and to have all things established in oneself; and to grant ungrudgingly to all the kingdom of heaven and the divine peace as one's own; and to give to those who believe and call upon him security for everlasting salvation. For those who call the true Son a creature, and not without beginning, … God, and perhaps not even in the Father. For they transgress the commandment, on the one hand, of the Father who commands: "Hear, my people, and I will speak to you, Israel, and I will testify to you. If you listen to me, there shall be no new god among you, nor shall you worship a foreign god"; that is, one who once did not exist, or one of another substance. And: "You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve"; and: "You shall have no other gods besides me"; and: "Cursed is everyone who puts his hope in man", that is, in a thing made. And on the other hand, the commandment of the Son, who says in Matthew: "No one can serve two masters", that is, two natures; or: "They worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator." And of Moses the lawgiver: "Whoever sacrifices to foreign gods, except to the Lord alone, shall be stoned." And a new and foreign god is one who is not consubstantial with God the Father, and once did not exist. And those who say, "Glory to the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit", do not glorify the Son or the Spirit of God. For they send up glory to one through another in another, or rather to neither; and they violate, on the one hand, the will of the Father (who says, "My glory I will not give to another", that is, I will not give it to one of another nature, and who wills that the Son be honored equally) … calling, but striking him with their hands and crying, "Prophesy to us, Christ: who is it that struck you?"; who also said, "We believe as Moses and the prophets", but crucified the very one who was prophesied. When, then, God the Father too is disobeyed together with the only-begotten God, and faith in a creature is useless, able to harm rather than to save, let them consider for themselves whether they have a faith free of danger, when they deny salvation; for one must be saved by believing rightly; for to be saved, they say, is good, and the rest is another matter. And the children of Macedonius, just as they do not keep the glory of the Holy Spirit, so they do not keep that of the Only-begotten either, calling him of like substance with the Father and not consubstantial, so that he is understood to be of another, similar substance. So it remains for the heretics either to change the name of the Father in their rites, since for them he is not in truth Father, and also the names of the only-begotten Son and of the Spirit of God, as though they did not exist (may the holy and venerable consubstantial Trinity, whom we glorify, forgive us for saying it), and above all to change their own name, and neither be called Christians or spiritual nor regard themselves as sons of the same kind as their own fathers; or else not to estrange the true Son and his Holy Spirit from the Godhead and glory of the Father. For it is the way of the Jews to honor the Father alone, and the way of the Greeks to revere a multitude of demons, great and small, temporal and of different substance.

How the theological statements of the Scriptures must be understood. I, the unworthy one, have been led to join in the contest on behalf of the theology concerning the only-begotten Son and the Holy Spirit, without harming even in thought the ineffable glory of God the Father (for it is not unknown, as if it had not been made known before both the divine hypostases spoken of; but nevertheless both hypostases are from him by nature, sharing his nature, that of the Son by begetting, and that of his Spirit … setting aside their interpretations, and establishing that by the very means by which they seem, contrary to Scripture, to honor the Father more, they both grieve him and insult his Only-begotten and his Spirit.

And this too on the same subject. The orthodox, then, must know that even concerning a small work of God (if one may dare to call any work of God small), those who wish to treat of it have need of words, and of works before words, and of faith before … the highest; so that, being counted worthy through these to know that even the small is not to be grasped by thought, but itself infinitely surpasses human things (for if it is a work of God, even if it seems small, it is great, as God's; "and how could one grasp great things by small labors? It is folly even to wish it," as they say), they may know that much more does the understanding of the ineffable God himself surpass even the perception of archangels; and leaving the search into these things to God alone, they may say with the apostle, "I believed, and so I spoke"; and may understand the theological statements of the Scriptures thus. When they speak from one person, it is because of the one nature and will; when from both, because … and again: "I am, and there is no other God besides me", because of the one Godhead and concord, as was said before. When the Holy Spirit seems not to be mentioned, it is because he is included with God, whose Spirit he is. When the Master, handing down the mystagogy, says, "Baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit", it is because of their equal honor, equal strength and consubstantiality, and the distinctness of the hypostases. When what is said now of God the Father is recorded elsewhere of the Only-begotten or of the Holy Spirit, it is for the reasons given before. When they teach in various ways that both hypostases do the same works and the same activity, it is for the reason given before. When, though each hypostasis was able to create and to make all things, God the Father was pleased that all things should come into being through the Son and God and be sanctified through the Holy Spirit, it is because of the one will of the Trinity, and to show that all good things are supplied from it, and so that we may offer up to it common and equal thanksgiving and praise. When they use the same names for the blessed Trinity, such as God, Lord, holy, righteous, good, and the like (except that the Father alone is, and is always, Father; and the true Son is Son and God; and the Holy Spirit is, without beginning, the one and the same Spirit of God), it is because of their communion in nature and kingdom and all things; and this belongs to the Trinity alone. When they speak in veiled terms, it is because the mystery of the faith is always guarded, being revealed to the faithful alone. When they say that God the Father begot …