On the Trinity 3.5–3.15

Their third proposition is the prophecy spoken in the person of the Lord who gave subsistence to all things: “I am the beginning and the end.” From this, by unpersuasive interpretations, they refashion his existence, which is timeless and beyond the mind, into a temporal one, and they strive to have their wickedness taken for virtue. But those who, unlike these men, are not ignorant of this only-begotten God, rich in words, also possess the theology of this golden saying. For “beginning” shows that he is the cause, as being without beginning, just as God the Father is, of the constitution of all things. For whoever is the beginning has no one existing before him, as the last has no one last after him. For “beginning,” as Aristotle says in the fifth book of the Metaphysics, is said in many ways. It is said also temporally, as this day is the beginning of the year; it is said also naturally, as the seed is the beginning of the infant; and it is said also according to cause, as the sculptor is the beginning of the statue. In this way, then, we call him … but without beginning. For time runs together with the world, but before … the beginning, as cause and Creator; and the end, as [all things tend] toward him, as uncircumscribed and the only one who has immortality … [so that, after] the fullness of this universe, he remains forever and infinitely. So then the infinite cannot have a coming-into-being; and not being able to, he himself is uncreated, though he is begotten by nature from the hypostasis of God the Father, while created things have come to be from him by way of creation. Consistently with this one might understand also what Paul declared to the Colossians in this way: “And he is before all things”: not as made (God forbid!), but as begotten. For if he had not been truly and consubstantially begotten, without beginning, before all things, we would not, after his image, have been born consubstantial with the one who begot us; and if he did not exist [first], things made and provided for would not exist by creation.

Fourth, with unbridled tongue, they put forward what was said by Peter in the Acts: “Let all the house of Israel know that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.” This too was written not about the divine and incomprehensible substance of God the Word, who was in the beginning, and was with God, and did not count being equal to God a thing to be grasped, but about the one from Mary, conformed to our lowliness. For the mention of the cross, and the joining of “whom you crucified” to “made,” showed that it is he of whom Scripture speaks in many places. So also when the same Peter says in the Acts: “The God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob, the God of our fathers, glorified his servant Jesus, whom you delivered over and denied before Pilate, when he had decided to release him; but you denied the Holy and Righteous One and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, and you killed the Author of life.” And Zechariah says: “I will pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem a Spirit of grace and compassion; and they will look upon me, whom they pierced, and they will mourn for him as for a firstborn.” Remembering this prophecy after the saving cross, John said: “They will look on him whom they pierced.” Of him also the angel, rejoicing with men, said: “To you is born today a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.” But the one born today could never be understood to be the one who is before the ages. One must attend, then, to this marvel of the Scripture too: that angels and men celebrated the feast of one new knowledge of God, agreeing in voice and in mind with equal disposition.

We speak thus, signifying his ineffable economy by a certain way of thinking and avoiding the blasphemy that reaches to his Godhead, but not believing that the Son from the Father is one, and the one who became flesh and was crucified another; since the Godhead is never by nature divided from itself, nor changed. For the Apostle would not have thought of two when he said, “Since therefore Christ suffered for us in the flesh.” And the sacred psalmist too, at once somehow hiding this secret mystery of the economy and openly revealing it, and concealing it rather than being ignorant of it, and being ignorant of it rather than concealing it, prophesies in the hundred and eighth psalm in a manner like the word of Peter just mentioned: “And let them know that this is your hand, and you, Lord, have made it”; calling God the Word the hand of the Father, because he coexists consubstantially with the Father and all things came to be by him; and [saying “made”] because [he became] flesh unchangeably, as he knows, by the one whose hand he is. But “made” is not always understood in place of “created,” but also by relation: as when someone makes one who is already a teacher in his being the teacher of his own children, at the time when the teacher begins to teach the children; and as when someone makes a boy a soldier or an orator at the time when the boy takes up soldiering or oratory. In this sense it said of the Father and God, “He became my helper and protector for salvation”; and Isaiah: “You became a helper to every lowly city.” And the sacred psalmist in the twenty-ninth psalm: “The Lord became my helper”; and in the thirtieth: “Be to me a protecting God and a house of refuge, to save me”; and Abraham to Sarah his wife: “She became my wife”; and Paul: “Let God be true, and every man [a liar]” … “But I was established king by him on Zion, his holy mountain.” For it does not show his substance …; and he did not say simply, “I was established,” but “on Mount Zion.” For being King of all from infinity to infinity (for it says, “The Lord is king for ever and ever and beyond”; and, “Your kingdom is a kingdom of all the ages”), he seemed somehow not yet to reign over those who did not know him, but to have become king over them too in the incarnation; for this David himself asked in the ninth psalm: “Appoint, O Lord, a lawgiver over them; let the nations know that they are men”; and Micah prophesied: “And the Lord reigns from now and for ever.” And those outside too declared about this: “For God immortal is king in name, never ceasing ….”

Similar to this is also: “Receive the high priest of your confession, who is faithful to the one who made him.” For again it speaks of him who from us became conformed to us, and urges us to receive him, made high priest then for our sake, since he was in the world, and the world came to be through him, and the world did not know him, having fled from his uncreated Godhead. Consistently with this is understood also Paul’s word to the Corinthians: “From him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for you wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption; so that, as it is written, Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.” For it is according to God, they say, that men are both good and wise; and the opposites of these: “For the superfluous and useless bodies …” …. For in the way that, having been set to be a light of the nations, he did not then become light in substance, but [the light] by which those who acknowledge him are enlightened (“For he was,” it says, “the true light, which enlightens every man coming into the world”), so too “he was established king” and “became Lord,” though he is Lord by nature and without beginning, when the disciples, as it is written, became his servants; when the Apostle wrote, “Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ”; when all too [came to know] his lordship, sharing as servants in the Master’s name; as he says in Isaiah: “But to those who serve me a new name will be given, which will be blessed upon the [earth] …” … prophesies our race, of which the same says: “These are a seed blessed by God”; and, “Everlasting joy will be upon their head.” Such too is what is in the Song: “Chosen out of ten thousands,” that is, picked out: not as the only one of many sons, but since from David, or rather from the God-bearer, Christ according to the flesh was chosen out of all for the economy; and fittingly he was well pleased in him too, and it says, “Who will be likened to the Lord among the sons of God?” Or else, chosen, as Only-begotten, out of all, in the incarnation ….

Going from blasphemy to blasphemy, right after the foregoing they put forward what Paul said in speaking of God: “Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God”; interpreting it syllogistically as seems good to them, that such a statement shows that he was created by the power and wisdom of God. But both the phrasing and the sense point to his incarnation. For in it, he says, he was named Christ, in likeness to those called christs before him. And if the saying must also be taken of his Godhead, it at once signifies the purity of his consubstantiality with his Father, and shows that all the paternal power and wisdom is laid up in him, as the creative Word and his true Son.

This too is a heretical affliction, to say: “If Scripture compared Christ to a vine, men to branches, and the Father to a farmer, and the vine is of the same nature as the branches and not as the farmer, then the Son,” he says, “appears to be of the same nature as us, not as God the Father.” But we, meeting their argument, say that according to the Godhead he is the fruit of the farmer’s hypostasis, while according to the flesh we are his branches; attending not least to Paul, who maintains as doctrine: “For we are the body of Christ, and members in part”; and again: “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?” For by such an apostolic phrase both these heretics are thrown out and those who judge that the flesh of the Master is from heaven, and not human.

Over other divine sayings too they have been at variance with the truth, and they still dispute: for instance, over the prophecy of Isaiah where the Father said, “It is a great thing for you to be called my servant”; and over what is written by Paul: “Who was designated Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness.” These too they cast upon his Godhead, though they were said of the servant’s form from Mary, about which the angel said to her: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the holy one to be born will be called Son of God.” Further, they dispute over “The God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory,” assigning the whole to his Godhead. But here he says “Father” of the one who is not seen, and “God” of the one who is seen. Of him the same angel, a little before, appears at the fitting time announcing the good news with the new names mentioned, thus: “You will bear a son and call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High.” Further they dispute (for their thoughts and words are a disgrace) over this saying of the Master: “Go to my brothers and tell them, I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” For here too he calls him Father: his own by nature, ours by grace; and God: his own because of his new form, ours in truth; so that both what is ancient and what is new may be signified. For the Master, having condescended to his servants in all things, made his own Father, who is our God, our Father too out of goodness, though we are not sons by nature; and he called him his own God too because of his incarnation, which he proclaimed more clearly beforehand, saying, “From my mother’s womb you are my God.” For how could there be a God of his only-begotten Son, who is the true and great God? So just as he is our God in truth, and not our Father by nature, so he is truly and in substance Father of him alone, and not his God according to the generation above. And as we, having become partakers of Christ, are counted worthy to call upon the heavenly God, “Our Father who art in heaven,” so also the Beloved, having shared, as Paul says writing to the Hebrews, in blood and flesh like the children, calls the Father God. Besides, by not saying jointly, “our Father and our God,” but separately, “my Father and your Father, my God and your God,” he showed the difference between himself and us mentioned before. For he is never found to have said “our Father” of himself and men in common. But also in the Gospel according to John, concerning those who with boldness and freedom of speech confess him before men as God and only-begotten Son of God, that is, consubstantial, he promises: “And I,” he says, “will confess him before my Father,” not “before our Father.” What could be greater among good things than that we should be confessed [by him; and among evils, than to be denied, as those who have rejected] the knowledge that comes from God, as having chosen falsehood instead of truth? And “I am ascending to the Father” he said because of the economy, announcing the good news to the disciples, whom out of love he called brothers: that when the firstfruits taken from us is taken up, he who always is ascends to his truly existing Father. For indeed he says, “No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, who is in heaven,” by such words signifying at once mystically and clearly that he is there by his Godhead.

And Paul wrote to the Philippians about the incomparable self-emptying of God the Word, made for us in the economy: “Let this mind be in you which was also [in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not count] being equal with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men; and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross. Therefore God highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” These men apply “and he bestowed on him the name which is above every name” to him who, being in the form of God and equal to God, emptied himself in taking the form of a servant and in coming to be in the lowliness of men, and disarmed the principalities and powers, not under another’s compulsion but willingly; though he is unchangeable, and though the word “therefore” signifies that it was because he had shared in flesh and blood like the children that then, and at no other time, the servile measure was highly exalted, and there was bestowed on him the name above every name, the most excellent of all; not that the Only-begotten acquired these things as gifts (he of whom the son of thunder says that he is true God and true Son of God, and Paul that before the emptying he was in the form and equality of God the Father). For very absurd consequences are brought in by this. One, that if the Son is distinguished as God in a bare name only, he will have an advantage over creation that is either small or nothing at all …, as far as the gift came into reckoning; [another,] that what is given is not established and permanent in every respect, but somehow easily lost; third, that if he is thought to have received the divine name according to his Godhead at the time when he appeared in the world, he will be found not to have had before this what he received later, but to have obtained it as a gift, or a wage, for his coming to us. But he, from infinite height, emptied himself for us into our condition; and because he is by nature Son and Word, in the form of God, equal to God, and God being in the beginning with God, neither holding the incomparable name as something brought in from outside and, as it were, spurious, nor having been honored with it later, he returned again to the height which he always was and which is supreme from the beginning, to his innate honor and glory, and to his own [session] at the right hand of his Father ….

How then did he highly exalt him and bestow on him the name above every name? I will say: because even while he bore the servant’s image, he said, “This is my beloved Son,” and willed that he be called God even then, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, as was said before. For before the Son’s appearance in the world only the things in heaven bent the knee to him and glorified him, knowing the glory of the holy Trinity, equal in Godhead; so that the seraphim cry “Holy” three times and “Lord” once, in order both to send up the hymn alike to each hypostasis and to proclaim that they have one lordship. But the things on earth and under the earth did not know him as they came to know him in the economy. From then, therefore, they too began to bend the knee to him, to glorify him, and to call him God; and in sudden crises, overtaken by the swiftness of events, not to use long prayer, nor to babble as people do, but to call out, “Christ, help!” since this name is for salvation to all. And by saying “in the likeness of men, and found in appearance,” he does not indicate that his incarnation was an apparition, as some have supposed; on the contrary, that God the Word truly bore the likeness and appearance of men. It may be understood in another way too: from his look, his dress, and his conduct each person is shown to be what he is and what he means to do. For even if he does not go about announcing it aloud, still he has nature to give the matter away, even if he says nothing. So the Savior, wishing to save us through the unchangeable incarnation, and having all that is ours apart from sin, was of necessity supposed to commit the sin that belongs to men in intention and in deeds. For the much-suffering Job cried out on behalf of all of us: “No one is sinless, not even if his life is of one hour. For what is man, that you magnified him, or that you set your mind on him, or that you visit him till morning and judge him for rest?” But he, that is, the Master, “committed no sin,” as was said before, “nor was deceit found in his mouth.” And the words “but no one, even if his life on earth is one day” … [agree with] “in the likeness and appearance of men.”

And John’s “I live because of the Father” gives them a hold nowhere. For it was said either because of the manner of the economy mentioned before, or because he has appeared as life from the paternal life, as also light from light and God from God. Accordingly we have also heard him say this in the same John: “I am the life and the light”; and again: “The Son gives life to whom he will.” If then the Father too is life and light, … for life and light are one; and “There was when he was not” does not come near to being plausible in the case of the creative life itself and of the unfailing light. And in another way: one who lives because of another could never himself be eternal life; just as one who is holy by God’s imparting is not holy in himself; but he, by his own authority, sanctifies others too, through himself and through others.

And “I have come down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of the Father who sent me” shows this: not that [the will] of the humanity …, but that of the Godhead. For the beloved Son has no will separated from the will of God the Father; for the Trinity has one and the same will. By this marvelous obedience of his on our behalf, then, he undid our ancient disobedience; and just as, having come down into our likeness, as he knew and willed, he suffered, so, having made us conformed to himself, he transferred us to impassibility. Hence he said, “I have come down”: of his own choice, he means, not as a subordinate; as he says likewise in another place, “I am the bread that came down from heaven,” that is, not “was sent.”

And the Psalmist’s words, “Therefore God, your God, anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your fellows,” and what stands in John’s Gospel, “Whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world,” are said in the same way. For the Holy One, who rests among the holy, “the one Holy, one Lord Jesus Christ, to the glory of God the Father. Amen,” was anointed and sanctified at no other time than when, not laying aside what he was, he became without confusion also what he was not; so as to make us partakers of himself and sanctify us, as he said: “For their sake I sanctify myself, that they also may be …”

In keeping with this is understood also what is said in the psalm, “You will not abandon my soul to Hades, nor let your holy one see corruption,” and what is written in many places, that God raised Christ Jesus from the dead. For he did not receive the resurrection as a favor; rather he himself has given us the favor of rising again in the likeness of this resurrection of his. Indeed, teaching his equality of honor and of power with the Father in this head too, he said in Matthew and Luke, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up”; and, “I have authority to lay down my life, and I have authority to take it up again.” …

And the answer to the lawyer, who, testing the Lord as a man, said, “Good teacher,” and heard, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone,” is something like this. “No one is good” refers to the race of men; “except God alone” refers to the consubstantiality of the divine hypostases. For if you know me, he says, to be good, confess me as God, equal and like, being of the Father as in goodness, so also in substance. For humanity possesses goodness by participation, but the Godhead is the summit of goodness, and life, and light, and truth, and peace, and love. And he adds: “I have come as light into the world, so that everyone who follows me may not remain in darkness.” And persuading the lawyer that this was so, he said: “Sell all that you have, and come, follow me”; which he did not do, being overcome by his own judgment, which did not have the good innate in it. His goodness has already been attested in the first book. But what could be greater as proof than that he showed his own natural goodness by deeds rather than words, according to the one who says, “Jesus began both to do and to teach”? To “do”: in emptying himself and taking the form of a servant on behalf of servants, in healing every disease and every infirmity, driving out demons, making the sea walkable for men, filling the hungry crowds in the desert, washing the feet of servants, and, for the sake of the creature of his own hands, suffering at the hands of his creature, and supplying a hundredfold good things to those who do well, and adding eternal life. To “teach”: “Sell what you have and give to the poor, and come, follow me”; and, “What you hate, do not do to another”; and, “Do not repay evil for evil”; and, “Whoever does it to one of the least of these has done it to me”; and, “Give to everyone who asks you”; and, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself”; and, “By this all will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” And how, heretic, is he not good equally with his own Father, he who pardons you for saying these things?