On the Trinity 1.7–1.11

That those who believe in the … escape, therefore, the charge of holding the opinion that there are created gods, … guarantees. Further, he also calls godless those who before this knew God the Father alone, without the Son (since the Son is not ranked among the things made), writing in one place: "Remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, who are called uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision made in the flesh by hands, were at that time without Christ, alienated from the hope of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world"; and in another: "But then, not knowing God, you served those who by nature are not gods; but now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and beggarly elements …" … to the older law the ever new saving proclamation that does not decline into old age, the proclamation about Christ and the Holy Spirit; and he holds the church's ordinance to be superior, because it is perfect and has neither … nor anything finer or greater … "… as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to the righteousness that is in the law, blameless. But whatever gain I had, I count it as loss for Christ's sake. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Jesus Christ our Lord, for whose sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I count them as refuse, in order that I may gain Christ"; and to the Romans: "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 what was he looking to, and what did he have in mind, when he wrote once more things that belong to a pure knowledge of God: to the Corinthians, in the second letter, that if anyone is reconciled to the Son, he has been reconciled to God, and that the world's agreement with God is in Christ? It runs: "That is, God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God." And again, as all the other things which … he proclaimed, boasting greatly that even what seems to be a reproach to Christ, because of his loving dispensation, teems with all glory and strength, … doing this in deed, so that one who from the glorious passion does not discern the uncreated and pure … Godhead … Scripture … might be found liable. And he said such things as these: "I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified"; and to the Romans: "But the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ, to all and upon all who believe", he says … each one from God … And to the Galatians: "Knowing that a man is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, we too have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no flesh will be justified." And elsewhere too he explains that "neither circumcision … but faith working through love". Since the argument goes deep, its sense must be unfolded. He wishes to teach, then, that the appearing of Christ discovered a new and the only faith for all men, in which it has left no place either to Judaism or to Hellenism. And this … according to "Behold, new things have come …" … the true and free light, the Son; … unknown to some of them … because of the memory of polytheism from Egypt still ringing in their ears. The venerable Son of God, then, bears witness that his own nature is free from above, and that he does not have creation as a sister, as it were. For everything brought into being is a slave of the one who brought it into being. … "from their sons? … then the sons are free … that we may not … the sea … take the fish … take that …" …

On those who tell the myth that the Father made the Son for the service of creation. … they say that the Father made the Son as most useful, to serve him with respect to the rest of the creatures. They no longer perceive that on this … of their conjectural reasoning there hang envy and sloth and other material passions; for these too must surely be looked at. For if creating is good (as indeed it is good, and alone proper and alone distinctive of the divine, ungrudging nature, so that it may also be glorified by …), why did he not create everything through himself, but, so to speak, shrank from the work? And if it is a great thing for creatures to be made by the greater … (if indeed, according to them, the Father is greater than his own Son, the Word), then he begrudged those who would glorify him a making by himself. And if … is not wholly free of arrogance and weakness together … the one who produces something through himself displays greater glory than the one who makes through another; for not yet … obeys the nods of the one who always is, and … not yet brought to completion, and fitting measures, and has nothing lacking in anything … but already … all things would be shown, as many as … substance … alone … arrogant … the same … to make through another. According to their mind, this shows God the Father, whose thoughts are deeds, unable to accomplish the universe through himself without the help of the one through whom, or in whom, he makes; and the Son as some lifeless instrument. How will anyone not spit hard at this, and, raising his upturned hands against such savage blasphemies, withdraw, afraid that he may become liable before the divine court even for having heard them against his will?

On what the heretics say: "When was the Son begotten, and when did the Spirit proceed?", and the rest. Though there are so many and such clear proofs, and Scripture warns against various and strange … utterances, the heterodox, at a loss to establish the tenets of their religion from the Scriptures, like drunken men, here and there … the argument on each point, put forward things devised by them with evil art and long rehearsed, among which are these: "Are not all things, then," he says, "from God?" To which we must answer: Yes, but not by way of begetting, as the Son is, nor by way of procession, as the Spirit of God is; nor do they belong to such activities, nor were they counted worthy of such admirable modes of existence. Then: "When, then, was the Son begotten?" Then, when the Father was not begotten. For even to inquire after him … and as unlawful; for in place … since … and the begotten … in time. For the Son and Word would be God … the Spirit … And concerning the Holy Spirit: "The Spirit goes forth from me"; and if David sings, "By the word of the Lord the heavens were made firm, and by the breath of his mouth all their host"; and if Job says, "The divine Spirit is what made me, and the breath of the Almighty is what teaches me"; and if the Lord teaches, "The Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father"; and if Paul writes that he is the Spirit of God, as in men the … "by the word of the Lord the heavens, and their host" … nevertheless this surpasses every mind, as the same apostle writes to the Corinthians: "But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and through us makes known the fragrance of the knowledge", as though we shared not in the whole of the knowledge, because it cannot be contained, but only in a kind of image or breath of it. And again: "We see through a mirror and in a riddle" the things concerning him. And with good reason; for "The glory of the Lord hides a word", according to the divine saying, since it lies beyond all created perception in a way that is ineffable and infinite; not only because it is too great to bear, but because what is before the ages and before all creation, had it not been revealed by the Scriptures, … to creation. And again to the same people, in the second letter: "We will not boast beyond measure, but according to the measure of the rule which God apportioned to us as a measure, to reach even to you." And in the first letter he says: "If anyone thinks he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know." … "But we have not …" … the difference between the begetting and the procession … as the manner is unknown, so also is the difference, if indeed it is permitted even to hear or to speak of this very thing. For to assign causes to what is beyond every cause and understanding is rash; but to marvel at the Divine, and to hold that the thought of him is fearful and a matter for fear, is safe. "Did God beget willing," he says, "or not willing?" But we must first state their aim, and so answer. The aim is that, before simple people, from either expression … If one says, "He begot not willing" (though no one gives them this answer), they say: "Then God, not willing it, endured begetting the Son, the necessity of nature forcing him to this against his will." And if they are granted, "He begot willing", they infer: "Then the begetting of the Son depends on the Father's will, which gives him existence as a craftsman does." But the following answer is the most sensible. The God and Father who begot precedes will and unwillingness and every thought, and so does the radiance, which … can be conceived only together with the one from whom it is. Likewise also the image of God. And again the Son is a first existence, neither beginning nor ceasing, prior to will or unwillingness. He begot, then, in a nature that is beyond counsel and mind. But this proposition of theirs too is full of absurdity. For it presupposes, for willing, the passion of desire; and for not willing yet acting, the force of necessity; and with this it conceives the will first, and before the will the thought of the Father's hypostasis, which in every way and altogether has the radiance existing with it. Besides, if they believe that all things came into being from the will of the Father through the Son, the will does not exist before the Son. For it is impossible and inconceivable that … not … For if he himself says, "I am, and I have not changed", how could the unchangeable nature undergo change, not standing in the identity of the persons according to the hypostases, but moving and shifting? Further, this too: if it is true, as indeed it is, that "whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does likewise", the Son too will make another son, so that he may do all things like the Father; but if he has not made one and does not make one, the Son is not a creature, nor does the Father's will precede him. And I would say something else: if the Savior says, "This is the will of him who sent me, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him should have eternal life", it is not the Son who is from will, but the one who sees him. For here too the will is found after the Son. And one could reject this argument of theirs altogether more quickly, not only by what has been said but also by what we shall add: that is, if one asks them a like question in return: "Does the Father exist by having willed it, or not?" For the very things they rehearsed will confront them in equal measure: against "not having willed", that his existence came about contrary to his intent, the necessity of nature turning him to it against his will; and against the second, that he did not exist before the will. For his existence will be traced back to his will, which, according to their babblings, drives him into being as a craftsman would. Likewise another question, differing only in wording from the one before: "Is God immortal and good by will, or not by will?" For the same consequences will follow. But one will do better to answer them briefly that nothing accrues to the all-perfect God and nothing is lacking to him; and that just as will does not precede the Father's existence, immortality and goodness, so neither does it precede the begetting; and that all such questions are out of tune with right thought about God. Concerning created things, they should know that David sings in the 113th psalm: "Our God, in heaven and on earth, has done all things whatever he willed"; and "In wisdom you made all things", that is, in the Son, and not in will. And in the 72nd psalm: "You held my right hand; by your counsel you guided me, and with glory you received me"; and in the 29th: "For wrath is in his anger, and life in his will"; and in the 25th: "In your will you granted strength to my beauty"; and in the 17th: "He will deliver me, because he willed me." For just as the Father, being immortal and good, wills to be these things and, willing, is these things, without the will being, so to speak, the cause … the will is the cause. In our case, however, we have some things from God's activity and some from the will that is in our power. For it is not by our own will but by God's that we acquire being composed of soul and body, and being rational. For we who did not yet exist, how could we will or not will? But by our own choice we have being good or bad, and knowledgeable by diligence or ignorant by laziness. They have come to this point because they do not accept with exact contemplation the words "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased"; for otherwise they would have had from this a firm anchor of right faith. But as it is, they say that "in whom I am well pleased" shows … the whole sense of it inclines toward … For since, when he said, "I am the Son of God", they retorted, "You blaspheme", the Father cast his vote for him: "This one alone is my genuine Son." For "this", and "beloved", and his being called "Son" with the article, show this. "In this one," he says, "I was well pleased that salvation should be procured for you through his becoming man." And even if one takes "I am well pleased" of his Godhead, their sophism is made void; for not every expression spoken by God, especially about God the Word, carries a meaning of worldly usage. Then, if he said "in whom I am well pleased" of the Son who already existed, good pleasure is not found to be the cause of his existence. To make clearer what such an expression shows, let us use as witness the one who sings in the 149th psalm: "For the Lord is well pleased with his people." But the good pleasure did not come about before the people, but after it. For he was well pleased with it, and sent peace and grace, when it served him rightly; but when it did not serve him rightly, the opposite, as he now prophesies: "When he killed them, then they sought him"; and in the 43rd psalm: "Their arm did not save them, but your right hand, and your arm, and the light of your face, because you were well pleased with them": right hand and … of his face, naming the Son. And in the 105th psalm: "Remember us, Lord, in your good pleasure toward your people."

On the saying, "If the unbegotten God is generative at all, he did not beget from his substance"; and, "If his substance was changed into an offspring, the substance of God is not unchangeable." … put in these words: "If the unbegotten God is wholly generative, the one begotten was not begotten from his substance, since his whole substance has begetting, not being begotten." But let them hear: if light is wholly generative, it does not beget its radiance from its substance but takes it on from outside, since its whole substance has begetting, not being begotten. But if light does not take on its radiance from outside, but begets it from its whole substance without interval, neither did God acquire the Son from outside, but begot him from his whole hypostasis without interval, since he is incorporeal. Hence he is truly Father. Again they add, everywhere pursuing the order contrary to Scripture: "If the substance of God, by being transformed, is called offspring, his substance is not unchangeable, since the change has produced the Son's being his own." But no one grants them leave to say this either; for the Scripture mentioned refutes these things as alien to Christians, … every heretic … If light, by being transformed, becomes radiance, light is not unchangeable, since the change produces the radiance's being its own. But if light has begotten radiance without being changed, remaining light itself and having the radiance from itself, perfect and of one nature with it, then God too remains God unchangeably, being Father of his own radiance, not having taken it on from outside, but having begotten it perfect from his substance.

On those who talk nonsense, saying that because of the name "Father" his substance differs from that of the Son. Going round and round the same things on the same subjects, and to the very end counterfeiting the beauty of the truth, they say this too, with no love for God: "Things whose names are different must also differ in substance." For he says: "The word 'Father' does not signify the Son, nor again does the name 'Son' show the hypostasis of the Father." Let them hear, first, that if the divine hypostases had not been made known by corresponding titles, what sign could anyone use, without saying the title "Father", to make known both the Father himself and that he has a Son? Or, without naming the titles "Son" and "Spirit", how would he address the Son himself or the Spirit, and show that the Son has a Father, and that the Spirit is the Spirit of God? Second, that in the case of the holy Trinity, apart from the one who truly is Father being called Father, and the Only-begotten God being so named, being exactly what he is called, the Father's Son, all the other names are the same: God, Lord, holy, righteous, good, light, life. Is it not then the opposite: in the case of the blessed Trinity alone, those whose names are the same have also one substance, so that it follows that like is characterized by like? For to the true and eternal light, in relation to the true and eternal light, and to the …