On the Trinity 3.29–3.36

And in Matthew, he says, when the mother of the sons of Zebedee, blessed in her children, asked that they might sit with him on either side, at his right and at his left, in his kingdom of heaven, … [he said, “To sit at my right hand and at my left] is not mine to give, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father” … the prize. For the facts are not always as the arrangement of the words alone has it; but sometimes it completes the sense also with reference to things not … the servant’s form; or rather in order to [prevent] God-hated claims to precedence that are not according to rank and reason; or also because she had conceit about her fortunate children, and thought her sons worthy both of apostolic primacy and of sitting together with God. For the secrets of the heart did not escape him, as John says: “But Jesus did not entrust himself to them, because he knew all men and needed no one to bear witness about man; for he himself knew what was in man.” Hear, then, what follows, and be persuaded that my understanding was not mistaken. At once [when the ten were indignant at] these two brothers, the Master said: “Among you, whoever wishes to become great will be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first will be your slave.” And how in Luke too he forbids [taking the first places] …. For it was not like the just God, who prepares what is to come according to each person’s way of life, to grant anyone an unjust or boastful request, to place the first among the last, and to grieve the apostles, who did not leave their rank and did not desire office, and with them our forefathers who pleased him before and were admired for virtue, with whom he made covenants, and to whom it is altogether likely that he promised beforehand the precedence on either side of him, into whose bosoms these men of whom we speak were also going to rest; and besides these Moses too; since he himself is Lord both of the thing requested and of all judgment, and it is he who predestined the thrones for the apostles, bringing them forward most royally and promising, “You will sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” Setting down, then, one incontestable rule, that no one should boast great things and ascribe them to himself, he says: “If I bear witness about myself, my witness is nothing; but there is one who bears witness …” … “is my Son.” That it was said thus for the reason mentioned alone, he himself confirms again, saying, “Even if I bear witness about myself, my witness is true”; and again, “The works themselves bear witness about me, and Moses bears witness about me.”

Such is the meaning also of what was said by the Savior in Luke: “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” Through his own person he commits [to the Father] the humanity that is given life by faith in him, which he deigned to call his members. Or perhaps he teaches everyone, on the one hand, to know that in this too Arius erred, supposing him to have been without a soul in the economy; and on the other, to use the same words when praying with their last breaths, gratefully confessing that the existence of us men is from our God, and our departure is back to him. What happened, then, was a law.

They extend their heretical impiety not only as far as the Only-begotten, but even to the Holy Spirit. For [they use] not only the Savior’s words set out above, “I have not spoken on my own,” and, “The Holy Spirit will not speak on his own,” and Paul’s, which has “to the only wise God,” and moreover the other texts brought forward in the book On the Holy Spirit, dismissively, so as to diminish the [dignity of the Spirit] …, but also the prophecy of Amos, as though it indicated [that the Spirit is a creature], though it makes no such suggestion about him at all, either in this part or in any other. It runs thus: “I overthrew you, as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and you became like a brand plucked out of the fire; and not even so did you return to me, says the Lord. Therefore thus I will do to you, Israel; but since I will do thus to you, prepare to call upon your God, Israel. For behold, he who makes firm the thunder and creates wind, and announces to men his Christ, who makes the dawn and the mist, and treads on the high places of the earth: the Lord God Almighty is his name.” Of the three [persons] …, one saying “I overthrew,” another of whom it says “as God overthrew,” another where it has “his Christ,” the saying is found to have been spoken fittingly and consistently not in the person of the Father, nor about his Holy Spirit, but by the Holy Spirit, who also spoke about the wind, which naturally accompanies the thunder that sounds in men’s ears. Therefore he goes on to mention dawn and mist. For how could the Father have said, “announcing to men his Christ,” and not “my Christ,” as he said in the hundred and thirty-first psalm, “I have prepared a lamp for my Christ”? Or, “his name,” when he should have said, “my name”? And if it be granted that the saying is the Father’s, the Holy Spirit appears as God Almighty. Nor does this wording suit the prophet speaking about the Father; for a man does not overthrow as God does; nor is it proper to a prophet to speak boastfully and blasphemously at once. And the facts that it has “creating wind,” not “having created a spirit,” that the making firm of the thunder is placed first and the creating of the wind second, and moreover that “creating wind” is prophesied barely, without the article and without “holy,” show through all of these that the word refers to the air. For the Holy Spirit of God is rarely [named] without “holy” or “of God” attached, or the article, or its participation; as when it writes, “the spirit of Elijah,” and, “Walk by the Spirit.” And he said “creating wind” because the air arises, when the season calls, for what is profitable to the needs for which it came to be. For we too are accustomed to say even now, “A great wind arose,” not as having been created now, but as having just been roused violently.

Prophetically, then, and with inverted order, it was said by the divine Spirit thus: “I overthrew you,” that is, the stiff-necked Jews, uncircumcised in heart, “as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah,” which had inhabitants, he means, who lived without repentance, like the Jews. Therefore, “prepare to call upon your God, Israel,” whom, he says, you have not been seen to acknowledge clearly even today. He meant the only-begotten Son of God. “For [behold, he who makes firm the thunder and creates wind, who makes the] dawn and the mist, and treads on the high places of the earth: the Lord God Almighty is his name; behold, announcing to men his Christ.” When, then, and how did he announce him? When he said from on high, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” In many places one of the three divine hypostases is seen speaking about another one or about the other two, as this point was explained with many proofs in the first book. Indeed this is found a little before the prophecy of Amos mentioned; for it says, “Thus says the Lord: For three transgressions of the sons of Judah, and for four, I will not turn them back, in order to heal them. [Because they rejected] the law of the Lord …, and the vain things which they made led them astray, after which their fathers followed; and I will send fire upon Judah, and it will devour the foundations of Jerusalem.” They ought, then, if not about the wind, at least to think that the prophecy speaks about their own spirit, which the oracles often mention: as when Paul writes to the Thessalonians in the first Letter, “May the God of peace himself sanctify you wholly; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept whole and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ”; and as when Stephen says in prayer, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit”; and as Luke said in the Gospel, when the Savior raised the dead girl, “And her spirit returned.” They ought to hold this view, if they were moderate; but they did not suppose it to be this spirit, and they arrive at the extreme of blasphemy. One should also see that it has “announcing his Christ,” said of God the Father, and not “creating.” For about the things made manifest to us in a hidden way on account of the ineffable Trinity it was written, “Who is wise and will understand these things?” And it is plain who that is: the one who has understood fittingly and intelligently. For in truth it is hard for those trained in worldly or heretical learning to attend to the exactness of the Scriptures. Hence he said, “My Spirit will not remain on them, because they are flesh.” Even the wisdom outside hands down that the hidden power in these treasures, and its discernment, comes from God, as all things do, saying thus: “For God has ordained all things for men, whatever he wills, and untaught he hears all things for mortals …”

“But all things,” he says, “came to be through the Son”; if, then, it is “all things,” the Holy Spirit too. But he said “all things,” that is, created things; and nowhere is the Spirit of God written to be a creature, as neither is the Son. For a creature is a servant; and a servant neither sets free, as the Holy Spirit does, nor knows what his lord is doing, nor creates anew what was created by the Master, nor has man as a temple equally with God, nor is written to be divine. And in another way it is signified … was cast into the uttermost of the uttermost.

The Jews supposed that the Lord was not the Son of God but the son of David; he asked them about himself, whose son he is, and they answered, David’s; then he said to them, “How then does David in the Holy Spirit call him Lord, [saying, The Lord said to my Lord …]?” … making clear that David, prophesying in the Holy Spirit the one who would be his son by succession of descent according to the incarnation, calls him his own Lord according to the Godhead; as the same David says also in the histories of the Kings, “The Spirit of the Lord spoke in me.” The heretics, misunderstanding this wickedly and ignorantly at once, say that the Holy Spirit called Christ its own Lord through David. But the conclusion refutes them, which runs, “If then David calls him Lord, how is he his son?” He said everything with the Holy Spirit sounding within him. For he himself was necessarily ignorant of what was to come and of heavenly things; and for this reason it has “in the Holy Spirit.” But he did not prophesy everything in the person [of the Spirit, or of the Fa]ther, or of creation, but also in his own person, as in the words mentioned, and as when he says, “Against you alone have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight,” and, “In iniquities I was conceived, and in sins my mother bore me.” Otherwise one would have to take of the divine Spirit also what David himself and the other prophets say (for all spoke in the Holy Spirit): “I am the Lord your God, the Almighty,” and again, “Besides me there is no God,” and the like.

And what was said in John, “For [the Spirit] was not yet [given, because Jesus was not yet glorified]” … not all had knowledge of the Spirit of God; it was not yet known under the sun and glorified with the Father and the Son. For God’s “coming to be” for us is the knowledge of him; and we know this not when we wish, but when we gain perfection of understanding; and when, cleansed by the virtues won in struggle, we become worthy, then the Spirit itself, of its own accord, gives us its illumination. For after the resurrection the Master Christ, breathing on the faces of the apostles, said, “Receive the Holy Spirit”; and after his ascension, at Pentecost, “[there appeared to them divided tongues as of fire, and it] sat upon each one of them, and they were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance,” as the Acts testify. Therefore the Master foretold to them, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.” And “Jesus was not yet glorified” stands, he says, in place of: he had not yet suffered, risen, raised with himself a multitude of the dead, and been taken up. For it was not yet believed by all that he is the beloved Son of God before the ages, and he was not yet glorified as the God of the fathers; that is, the glory concerning him was not yet confirmed among all; therefore he says later, “Father, the hour has come”; that is, all that was foretold about me in the inviolable Scriptures has been fulfilled; “glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you.” As you understand “Jesus was not yet glorified,” then, so you should take “The Holy Spirit was not yet”; for otherwise, even if you do not say it, you will appear to hold this view no less: that what came before this … of the Spirit is older …; a bare thought, as the saying goes, running past all insensibility. Others have understood “Jesus was not yet glorified” to have been said either because of the servant’s form which he bore, since it had not yet gone up to heaven, having become for the faithful the firstfruits of all other blessedness and indeed of the ascent into heaven (for Christ is the firstfruits, as was said above); or because of us, of whom he is written to be the firstfruits according to the incarnation; as it was said, “I sanctify myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth”; and that “he seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus”; and again, “But our citizenship is in heaven.”

Nor is what Paul [wrote] to the Romans sound in their hands: “[The Spirit himself intercedes for] us with groanings too deep for words; and he who searches the hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because it intercedes for the saints according to God.” For he signified most of all, by having “too deep for words,” that such things are not to be inquired into; for they are incomprehensible, he says, and inexpressible; and by having “according to God,” that these things are not after our manner and must not be understood according to human usage; for it surpasses every mind and puts the nature of speech to shame. Then he did not say absolutely, “It intercedes,” or, “It intercedes against us,” and “against the saints,” but “It intercedes on our behalf,” and “on behalf of the saints.” Love for humankind is the property of the Holy Spirit, as of God. Yet since they bring forward these things in a human way, and not in a way worthy of God, … “to intercede” is said; as we are accustomed to say, “I read [literally, I met with] the book”; and one might say this more properly; for some call … for pleasure “meeting.” “To ask” is said rather than “to intercede.” And by “groanings” he means here compassions. So the Spirit of God, he says, watches over what is for our good with incomprehensible compassions; for this too, said in a hidden way, so far surpasses creation that he at once assigned to God, the knower of hearts, as something great, knowing the mind of the Holy Spirit. Then the Son too likewise intercedes for us; and yet he is great, holder of authority, and true God. For the same apostle writes about him, to the Hebrews, “Always living to [make intercession for them]”; [and to the Romans, “… It is Christ] Jesus who died, or rather who was raised from the dead, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us.” And that the name “Paraclete” and “interceding for us” must not be taken according to the apparent sense of the word and worldly usage can be learned from similar sayings: as when it writes of God the Father in the eighty-fifth psalm, “Work with me a sign for good, and let those who hate me see and be ashamed, because you, Lord, helped me and comforted me”; and Paul, “Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God the Father, comfort your hearts”; and elsewhere, “He who repents over the evils of men,” that is, who pardons or has compassion; for it is not as though he himself were the cause of the evil that he repents. And Scripture often sets down a word that here signifies one thing as though it indicated another in appearance: as when it says in Exodus, “Moses was tending the sheep of Jethro his son-in-law”; whereas, on the contrary, Jethro was the father-in-law and Moses the son-in-law. And that the invisible God is uncontainable and unattainable to every mind (which is why, in general, the divine sayings are not plain to all simply as it happens, but have a hidden sense) one can find also in the books of the philosophies outside. For they have this: “Things which it is not lawful for a mortal to take up, measuring the unmeasured …”

And the passage in John that runs, “And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent”; and again, “Believe in God, believe also in me”: the Macedonians have pondered these very blasphemously, saying that the Holy Spirit is not mentioned, as being, forsooth, alien in nature, and for this reason excluded from being true God. But much has already been said about this in reply to similar problems, especially in the first book in the tenth chapter, and in this book in the fourteenth chapter; but it will be said now too. If, then, eternal life, which concerns the … [and the Spirit] has been proved to be life and the Spirit of God, then it too is the only true God, being always understood with the Father, as his Spirit. Therefore in the text set out he taught one knowledge, and not a different one, following on the one eternal life. And the evangelist too, saying, “By this we know that God is in us, from his Spirit which he has given us,” shows that it is mentioned together with the Father and present together with him. And that the Son is not understood without the Holy Spirit either is plain; for the Father says to him, “My Spirit which is upon you,” and he himself says, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.” And Paul [shows] the commonness of the Godhead, and that the Holy Spirit is named together in the sense of Scripture: “Eager to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” At other times, then, he mentions the Holy Spirit again, either alone or with the Father. I think it necessary, then, that they should rather say, like the all-wise Moses, “If I have found favor with you, show yourself to me; let me see you so as to know you”; so that at long last they may know the Trinity undivided in nature and in concord. For, as it seems, they do not yet know so as to know what many prophets and kings desired to see and hear and did not obtain; but we not only hear, we also see, as it says in Luke.

They have erred equally about what is written in Luke: “No one knows the Son except the Father, nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him”; and elsewhere: “Not that anyone has seen God, except he who is from God.” For they think that the words “no one else knows” exclude the divine Spirit from the divine knowledge; not attending to the fact that the saying “except he who is from God” does not exclude it from seeing and knowing the Father, since Paul likewise wrote of it, “the Spirit who is from God,” and the Son said, “the Spirit, who proceeds from the Father.” And then elsewhere Paul again, keeping silent about the Son in word but not in sense, taught that the Spirit alone sees and knows the Father, in these syllables: “The Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God. For who among men knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man that is in him? So too no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God”; and again, “For God knows what is the mind of the Spirit.” But one who does not see God and is not with him does not search him; and one who does not know him and is not of the same Godhead does not know the things of God; for it is impossible to know the things of God as God knows them, and to possess knowledge equal to his, without being of the same substance and knowledge as he. And that which knows the things of God and rests upon the Son knows the things of the Son too. “No one knows the Father” (or the Son), then, is said with reference to created beings; nor indeed does anyone see him as he is; for the understanding that is possible is not in all, since not all are worthy; and in those in whom it is, it is not equal in each. For according to Paul’s word, “To one is given knowledge of wisdom,” and to another this or that; and according to the Gospel, he to whom more is given incurs greater accountability. But the heretics say, “It searches the depths of God as one that is ignorant.” But he added that “it knows the things of God.” For “the servant does not know what his lord is doing.” And that searching is not always the same as seeking, the oracles make clear. When it prophesies, “Searching what person or what time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating,” it shows seeking and learning, like the one who says, “Search the Scriptures.” But when the Apostle writes of God the Father, “And he who searches the hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because it intercedes for the saints according to God”; or when [the psalmist] says in the thirtieth psalm, “For the Lord seeks out truth”; or in the seventh, “God who tests hearts and kidneys”; or elsewhere, “Searching the inner chambers of the belly”; it shows not examining and learning, but encompassing the heart, so that nothing it ever pondered or thought escapes him; which the Knower of hearts knows even without tracking it down. For if the whole of knowledge were assigned to searching, God too would be found searching as one ignorant, and this, said by him in Zephaniah by a metaphor taken from men, would bring him discredit according to them: “I will search out Jerusalem with a lamp.” Such a word in fact gives a great indication of his power. The divine Spirit, then, searches God not as one ignorant, but as the Spirit of God united with him in nature. Hence the Psalmist, not separating it from the substance and knowledge of God the Father, but rather persuading us that it is subsistently his wisdom, equally with the Only-begotten, prayed, “Do not take your Holy Spirit from me”: the Spirit, he means, that reveals to me the uncertain and hidden things of your wisdom.