On the Trinity 10.7–10.31

And preaching this generation of the Only-begotten, timeless, unspeakable, and surpassing every sense of human understanding, we have also taught the mystery of God born as man from the childbearing of the Virgin; showing that, according to the dispensation of the flesh he took up, when, emptying himself out of the form of God, he took the form of a servant, the weakness of the human condition did not weaken the nature of God, but, the power of divinity being kept whole in the man, the power of God was gained for man. For when God was born into man, he was not born so as not to remain God, but so that, God remaining, man might be born into God. For his name is Emmanuel, which is "God with us," so that there is not a falling away of God to man, but an advance of man to God. Or when he asks to be glorified, this surely profits not the nature of God but the lowliness he took up. For he asks for that glory which he had with God before the foundation of the world.

Answering their most foolish professions too, we went down to the demonstration about the unknown hour: which, even if, according to them, it had not been grasped by the Son, would still not pertain to an insult to the only-begotten divinity; because nature would not allow his birth to drive him back into the beginningless subsistence of unbegottenness, the Father still reserving in his own power the moment of fixing the day, to show the unbegotten authority; nor could a nature be understood as weak in which there was as much from the birth of the nature as a perfect birth could fill; nor was ignorance of the day and hour to be counted against the only-begotten God as a difference of divinity, since, to show against the Sabellian heretics an unbegotten and beginningless power in the Father, this exception of power in him is that of the unbegotten. But since we have taught that this profession of not knowing the day is not the weakness of ignorance but a dispensation of silence, every occasion of impious assertion must now also be cleared away, and all the proclamations of heretical blasphemy must be gone through, so that the truth of the gospel may shine out through the very things by which it seems to be obscured.

For many of them hold, from his fear of the passion and from the weakness of suffering, that he was not in the nature of the impassible God: that he who feared and grieved was not in that security of power which does not fear, nor in that incorruption of Spirit which does not grieve, but, of a nature lower than God the Father, trembled with fear of human suffering and groaned at the cruelty of bodily punishment. And they rest this assertion of their impiety on what is written: "My soul is sorrowful even to death"; and again: "Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me"; and also: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" They add this too: "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit." For they seize all these professions of our pious faith for the use of their impiety: that he feared, who is sorrowful and who prayed that the cup be taken from him; that he grieved, who complained that he was forsaken by God in his passion; that he was also weak, who commended his spirit to the Father; and that his anguish does not admit the likeness of a nature made equal to God in the birth of the Only-begotten, a nature which testifies to its weakness and difference by the prayer about the cup, the complaint of desolation, and the confession of commendation.

And first, before we show from these very sayings that no weakness either of fearing for himself or of grieving befell him, we must ask what he could seem to have feared, so that dread of unbearable pain befell him. And I think no other cause for fear is put forward here than the passion and death. And I ask those who think so whether it stands to reason that he feared to die, who, driving every terror of death from the apostles, exhorted them to the glory of martyrdom, saying: "He who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me; and he who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses it for my sake will find it." Since to die for him is life, what grief is he to be thought to have felt in the mystery of death, who repays life to those who die for him? And when he warns that those who kill the body are not to be feared, did death itself terrify him into fear of bodily suffering?

Then, what pain of death would he fear, who was to die by the freedom of his own power? For in the human race death is hastened either by an outward force, that is, fever, wound, accident, or collapse, assailing the body; or the very nature of our body, overcome by age, yields to that same death. But the only-begotten God, having power to lay down his life as well as to take it up again, in order to carry out in himself the mystery of death, when, having drunk the vinegar, he had testified that he had completed the whole work of human sufferings, bowed his head and gave up his spirit. If this right has been left to man's nature, that, breathing out his spirit by himself, he should go to rest in death, and that the soul should not depart shaken loose by the dissolving of the body, nor the spirit burst out or flow away as from a violated dwelling when the limbs are broken, pierced, or crushed: then let fear of death fall on the Lord of life, if, in dying by giving up his spirit, he did not use the power of his freedom to die. But if he died of himself and gave back his spirit by himself, there is no terror of death in the power of dying.

But perhaps, with the timidity of human ignorance, he feared this very power of dying in himself, so that, though he died of himself, he still feared the very fact that he was going to die. And if there are any who think so, let them decide to which thing they think death was terrible, to the Spirit or to the body. If to the body, are they ignorant that he was to raise the temple of his body within three days, the Holy One who would not see corruption? But if death is terrible to the Spirit, would Christ fear the chaos of the underworld, while Lazarus rejoices in Abraham's bosom? These things are foolish and ridiculous: that he, in the power of laying down his life and taking it up again, should fear to die, he who, for the mystery of human life, was to die under the freedom of his own will. There is no fear of death in the will of one dying and in the power of not being long dead; because both the will to die and the power to live again are outside the nature of fear, since death cannot be feared both in the will to die and in the power to live.

But perhaps the punishments of the body hanging on the cross, the violent bonds of the cords tying it, and the raw wounds of the driven nails are what he feared? Let us see, then, of what body the man Christ is, that pain should have stayed in flesh hung, bound, and pierced.

For the nature of bodies is such that, animated by fellowship with a soul into a certain sense of the soul that feels, it is not dull and lifeless matter, but feels when touched, hurts when pricked, stiffens when cold, is glad when warmed, wastes with hunger, and grows fat with food. For by a certain passing through of the soul that holds and penetrates it, it is either delighted or hurt according to the things in which it is. When, then, bodies hurt when pricked or dug into, the sense of the soul poured into them admits the sense of pain. In fact, a wound of the body hurts only up to this point, and the clippings of nails growing out from the flesh of the fingers feel nothing. And if at any time, by a disease setting in, some part of the limbs has decayed and lost the sense of living flesh, when it is cut off or burned it will not feel whatever pain there could have been, since the mingling of the soul does not remain in it. Or when the grave necessity of cutting the body remains, the vigour of the soul is lulled by a medicated drink, and the mind, seized by stronger juices, is reduced to a dead forgetfulness of its own sense. Then the limbs are cut without knowing pain, and the dead sense of the flesh escapes the whole blow of a deep wound through the sense of the soul grown torpid in it. The animated body, then, brings pain into its own weak sense through the mingling of a weak soul.

If, then, the man Jesus Christ lived in the body through the beginnings of our body and soul, and God, made in the likeness of man and found in condition as a man, was not, as God, the author of his own soul as of his own body, he would have felt the pain of our body, animated in the body with our soul and body both in conception and in beginning. But if, having taken flesh for himself by himself from the Virgin, he himself, of himself, fitted a soul to the body conceived through himself, then according to the nature of the soul and body there must also have been the nature of the sufferings. For emptying himself out of the form of God, taking the form of a servant, and being born Son of Man as well as Son of God, not failing from himself and his power, God the Word perfected a living man. For how will the Son of God have been born Son of Man, or, abiding in the form of God, have taken the form of a servant, unless, God the Word being able of himself both to take flesh within the Virgin and to give a soul to the flesh, the man Christ Jesus was born perfect for the redemption of our soul and body; and took a body in such a way that, conceived from the Virgin, it made him the form of a servant? For the Virgin bore what she bore only from his Holy Spirit. And although she gave of herself to the birth of the flesh as much as women contribute of themselves, receiving the beginnings of bodies to be brought forth, yet Jesus Christ did not grow together through the nature of human conception. But the whole cause of birth, brought in through the Spirit, held in the birth of the man what is the mother's, while yet it had, in the power of its origin, what God is.

Hence the Lord himself showed that greatest and most beautiful mystery of the man taken up, saying: "No one has ascended into heaven except he who came down from heaven, the Son of Man who is in heaven." That he came down from heaven is the cause of the origin conceived from the Spirit. For Mary did not give the body its origin, although she contributed to the growth and birth of the body all that is natural to her sex. That he is the Son of Man is the birth of the flesh taken up in the Virgin. That he is in heaven is the power of the nature that always abides, which, when the flesh was begun and founded through himself, did not, out of the power of its infinity, confine itself within the region of a bounded body. Abiding in the form of a servant by the power of the Spirit and the might of the Word of God, the Lord of heaven and world was not absent from any part of the whole circle of heaven and world, within or without. Through this, then, he both came down from heaven, and is the Son of Man, and is in heaven; because the Word made flesh had not lost abiding as what the Word is. For as he is the Word, he is in heaven; as he is flesh, he is the Son of Man; as the Word has become flesh, he is both from heaven, and Son of Man, and in heaven: because the power of the Word, abiding not in bodily ways, did not leave the place from which he had come down; and the flesh had taken its origin from nowhere else than from the Word; and the Word made flesh, while it was flesh, was nonetheless still the Word.

The blessed apostle also spoke completely the mystery of this unspeakable bodily birth, saying: "The first man is from the clay of the earth, the second man from heaven." By saying "man" he taught the birth from the Virgin, who, using the mother's office, carried out the nature of her sex in the conception and birth of a man. And when he says "the second man from heaven," he testified to his origin from the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the Virgin; and so, since he is both man and from heaven, this man's birth is from the Virgin and his conception from the Spirit. This the apostle says.

The Lord himself, opening the mystery of this birth of his, spoke thus: "I am the living bread who came down from heaven; if anyone eats of my bread, he will live for ever," calling himself bread; for he himself is the origin of his body. And so that the power and nature of the Word might not be thought to have failed from itself into flesh, he said again that the bread was his own; so that through the fact that the bread comes down from heaven, the origin of the body might not be thought to be from human conception, since the body is shown to be heavenly. But since the bread is his own, it is a profession of the body taken up by the Word; for he added: "Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you will not have life in you"; so that, since he who is the Son of Man is himself the bread that came down from heaven, through his bread coming down from heaven, and through the flesh and blood of the Son of Man, the taking up of flesh conceived from the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin may be understood.

Of this body, then, is the man Jesus Christ, both Son of God and Son of Man, who, emptying himself out of the form of God, took the form of a servant. The Son of Man is no other than he who is the Son of God, and he in the form of God is no other than he who in the form of a servant was born perfect man; so that, as through the nature established for us by God, the founder of our origin, man is born of body and soul, so Jesus Christ, through his own power, was man and God of flesh and soul, having in himself both the whole and true reality of man and the whole and true reality of God.

Yet many, by the art of confirming their heresy, are accustomed so to mock the ears of the unlearned as to say that, because both the body and the soul of Adam were in sin, the Lord also received the flesh and soul of Adam from the Virgin, and that the Virgin did not conceive the whole man from the Holy Spirit. If they understood the mystery of the flesh taken up, they would also understand the mystery of the same one being both Son of Man and Son of God. As though, if he had taken only the flesh from the Virgin, he had taken the soul also from her: whereas every soul is the work of God, while the generation of flesh is always from flesh.

But wishing that the only-begotten God, who in the beginning was God the Word with God, should not be God subsisting, but the speech of an uttered voice, so that what their own word is to speakers, the Son is to God the Father, they cleverly try to creep in so that the subsisting Word, God, and abiding in the form of God, should not have been born Christ the man; so that, since the cause of a human origin rather than the mystery of a spiritual conception gave life to that man, God the Word would not have come to exist making himself man from the childbearing of the Virgin, but, as the Spirit of prophecy was in the prophets, so the Word of God was in Jesus. And they are accustomed to accuse us of saying that Christ was born a man not of our body and soul; whereas we preach the Word made flesh, and Christ emptying himself out of the form of God and taking the form of a servant, perfect according to the condition of human formation, and born a man in our likeness, so that the true Son of God is truly the Son of Man; neither not born from God as man, nor, because born from God as man, therefore failing to be God.

But as he took for himself through himself a body from the Virgin, so he took for himself from himself a soul, which in any case is never supplied by man from the origins of those who beget. For if the Virgin had the conception of the flesh only from God, much more must the soul of the body have come from nowhere else than from God. And since that Son of Man is himself the one who is also the Son of God, because the whole Son of Man is the whole Son of God, how ridiculous it would be to preach, besides the Son of God who is the Word made flesh, some other one, as a prophet animated by the Word of God, when the Lord Jesus Christ is both Son of Man and Son of God! From the facts that his soul is sorrowful even to death and that he has power to lay down his soul and take it up again, they want to reckon the soul as coming from outside, not from the Holy Spirit as the body too was conceived from him; whereas God the Word, abiding in the mystery of his nature, was born man. And he was born, not so as to be one and another, but so that he who was God before the man, taking up man, might be understood as man and God. For how was Jesus Christ the Son of God born of Mary, except that the Word became flesh: namely, that the Son of God, being in the form of God, took the form of a servant? That he who was in the form of God took the form of a servant is a comparison of contraries, so that, as true as it is that he abides in the form of God, so true is it that he took the form of a servant. For we are driven to understand the property of the nature by the meaning of a word common to both. For he who is in the form of God is also in the form of a servant. And though the one belongs to nature and the other to dispensation, both are in the property of the same truth, so that he is as truly in the form of God as truly in that of a servant. And as to have taken the form of a servant is nothing other than to have been born man, so to be in the form of God is nothing other than to be God, professing him one and the same, not by a failing of God but by a taking up of man, to have been both in the form of God through the divine nature and in the form of a servant, from the conception by the Holy Spirit, found in condition as a man. So, since Jesus Christ was born, suffered, died, and was buried, he also rose again. He cannot, in these different mysteries, be so divided from himself as not to be Christ: since no other Christ than he who was in the form of God took the form of a servant; nor did any other die than he who was born; nor did any other rise than he who died; nor is any other in heaven than he who rose; and in heaven is no other than he who first came down from heaven.

So the man Jesus Christ, the only-begotten God, through flesh and Word both Son of Man and Son of God, took a true man in the likeness of our man, not failing from himself as God; in whom, although a blow fell, or a wound went down, or knots were tied, or hanging raised him up, these brought indeed the onset of suffering, yet did not bring the pain of suffering: as a weapon piercing water, pricking fire, or wounding air brings all these sufferings of its own nature, to pierce, to prick, to wound; but the suffering brought does not keep its nature in these, since it is not in nature for water to be pierced, fire to be pricked, or air to be wounded, though it is of the nature of the weapon to wound, prick, and pierce. The Lord Jesus Christ did indeed suffer, when he was struck, hung, crucified, and died; but the suffering rushing upon the Lord's body was not, on the one hand, no suffering, and yet did not put forth the nature of suffering: while it raged in its penal office, and the power of the body, without the sense of punishment, received the force of the punishment raging against it. That body of the Lord would certainly have had the nature of our pain, if our body has such a nature as to tread the waves and walk upon the billows, not be weighed down in walking, the waters not yielding to its standing steps, and to pass through solid things and not be kept out by the barriers of a closed house. But if this is the nature of the Lord's body alone, that by its own power, its own soul, it is borne on the wet, stands on the liquid, and passes through built walls, why do we judge flesh conceived from the Spirit by the nature of a human body? That flesh, that is, that bread, is from heaven; and that man is from God. He had a body for suffering, and he suffered; but he did not have a nature for feeling pain. For that body is of its own proper nature, which is transformed into heavenly glory on the mountain, which drives away fevers by its touch, which forms eyes from its spittle.

But perhaps, since the experience of weeping, thirsting, and hungering remained in him, the nature of the other human sufferings must also be in him. Let him who does not know the mystery of the weeping, thirst, and hunger learn that he who weeps gives life, and weeps not for the death of Lazarus, at which he rejoices; that he who thirsts offers rivers of living water from himself, and is not parched with thirst, he who is able to give drink to the thirsty; and that, hungering, he condemns the tree that did not offer its fruit to the hungry, and that nature is not overcome by want of food which changes the nature of greenness by commanded dryness. But if, beyond the mystery of weeping, thirst, and hunger, the flesh taken up, that is, the whole man, was allowed the natures of sufferings, yet not so as to be worn out by the injuries of sufferings: so that weeping he did not weep for himself; thirsting, he did not drive away thirst by drinking; and hungering, he did not fill himself with the food of any meal. For when he thirsted, hungered, or wept, the Lord is not shown to have drunk, eaten, or grieved; but to show the truth of the body, the habit of the body was taken up, so that the habit of the body was satisfied by the habit of our nature. Or when he took drink and food, he gave himself not to the necessity of the body but to its habit.

For he had a body, but one proper to its origin; not existing out of the defects of human conception, but subsisting in the form of our body by the might of his own power; bearing us through the form of a servant, but free from the sins and defects of the human body; so that we were in him through the Virgin's giving birth, but our defects were not in him through the power of an origin proceeding from himself; since, born man, he was not born with the defects of human conception. For the apostle kept the mystery of showing this birth when he said: "But he humbled himself, taking the form of a servant, made in the likeness of man, and found in condition as a man"; so that, as he took the form of a servant, he might be understood to have been born in the form of a man; but as he was made in the likeness of man and found in condition as a man, the appearance and truth of the body testify to a man, while he who was found in condition as a man does not know the natures of defects. For the generation is in the likeness of nature, not in the property of defects. For since by his taking the form of a servant the nature of birth seemed to be signified, he added that he was made in the likeness of man and found in condition as a man, so that the property of a nature weak through defects should not be believed along with the truth of birth, since there was both a true birth in the form of a servant and a likeness of nature in his being found in condition as a man. He himself, through the Virgin, was born man of himself, and was found in the likeness of the defective flesh of sin. To this very thing the apostle testified when writing to the Romans: "For what was impossible for the law, in that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending his own Son in the likeness of the flesh of sin, also condemned sin by sin." That condition was not as if of a man, but as of a man; and that flesh was not the flesh of sin but the likeness of the flesh of sin; since both the condition of the flesh is in the truth of birth, and the likeness of the flesh of sin is foreign to the defects of human suffering. So the man Christ Jesus both is in the truth of birth, since he is man, and is not in the property of sin, since he is Christ; because he who is man could not fail to be man in that he was born, and he who is Christ could not have lost being Christ. And so, while he is the man Christ Jesus, he both has the birth of a man, being man, and is not in the defective weakness of man, being Christ.

Although, then, the apostolic faith instructs us toward an understanding of this mystery, testifying that the man Christ Jesus was found in condition as a man and sent in the likeness of the flesh of sin; so that, since he is in condition as a man, he is in the form of a servant and is not in the defects of nature; and since he is in the likeness of the flesh of sin, he is indeed the Word made flesh, but rather in the likeness of the flesh of sin than the very flesh of sin; and since he is the man Christ Jesus, he is indeed man, but in the man can be nothing other than what Christ is; and so he was born man from the birth of a body, and is not in the defects of man, not being in man's origin; because the Word made flesh could not fail to be flesh, which it was made, and the Word, though made flesh, did not lose being what the Word is; and since the Word made flesh cannot lack the nature of its origin, what the Word is could only remain in the origin of its nature, and the Word cannot fail to be truly understood to be the flesh that it was made; yet so that, because it dwelt among us, that flesh is not the Word, but the flesh of the Word dwelling in the flesh: these things being so, let us nevertheless see whether the whole order of the passion, as carried out, allows weakness of bodily pain to be understood in the Lord. For, putting off for a little the causes of those sayings from which heresy ascribes fear to the Lord, let us compare the events themselves as they were done. For it cannot be that fear is signified in the words of one whose confidence is contained in his deeds.

Does it seem to you, heretic, that the Lord of glory feared the passion? But for the error of this ignorance even Peter is Satan to him and an offence. And he, through love of Christ, whom not flesh and blood but the Father in heaven had revealed to him, recoiling from the mystery of the passion, was confirmed in the faith by such a sentence of severity. What hope will you pursue, denying that Christ is God and adding fear of the passion to him? Did he fear, who went out to meet the armed men coming to seize him? And was there weakness in his body, at whose meeting the ranks of his pursuers fell down in dismay, and, not bearing the majesty of one offering himself to be bound, fell back on their backs? What weakness, then, do you believe ruled over this body, whose nature had such great power?

But perhaps he feared the pain of the wounds. What horror, I ask, did he have of the nail entering his flesh, who restored the flesh of a severed ear by his touch alone? Explain to us, you who assert the Lord's weakness, this work of a weakened flesh at the very time of the passion. When Peter drew and drove home his sword, the high priest's servant stood with his ear cut off. How, from the wound of the severed ear, at Christ's touch, was the flesh of the ear restored? How, amid the flowing blood, after the very tracks of the cleaving sword, and in the very injury of the mutilated body, did what is not come forth, what does not exist follow, and what is lacking get repaid? Does the hand that brings forth this ear feel pain from a nail? Does he feel a wound for himself, who does not leave the pain of a wound to another? Is he sorrowful for fear of his flesh being pierced, whose touch can give flesh after slaughter? But if this power was in Christ's body, with what good faith, I ask, is it maintained that he was weak by nature, to whom it was natural to restrain the whole nature of human weaknesses?

But perhaps, by foolish and impious perversity, the assertion of a weak nature in him will be presumed from this, that his soul is sorrowful even to death. I do not yet charge you, heretic, with why you do not understand the force of the saying. Meanwhile, however, I ask you why you do not remember that, when Judas went out to the betrayal, it was said: "Now the Son of Man is glorified." For if the passion was going to glorify him, how had fear of the passion made him sorrowful? Unless perhaps he was so irrational as to fear suffering things that were going to glorify him in his suffering.

But perhaps he will be thought to have feared to the point of praying that the cup be taken from him, saying: "Abba, Father, all things are possible to you; take this cup from me." Not to quibble about the rest, should you not have refuted the dullness of your impiety from this alone, that you had read: "Put your sword back into its sheath: the cup which the Father has given me, shall I not drink it?" For how could he, through fear of suffering, pray that what he was hastening, through zeal for the dispensation, to fulfil should be taken from him? It does not fit that he who wished to suffer should not wish to suffer. And since you knew that he wished to suffer, it would have been more religious to confess that you did not understand the saying than to break out with the madness of impious folly into asserting that he whom you knew to wish to suffer prayed not to suffer.

But, I suppose, you will also arm yourself for the fight of your impiety with this utterance of the Lord's voice: "God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" For you may think that after the shame of the cross the favour of the Father's help withdrew from him, and hence arose the complaint of his forsaken weakness. If, then, contempt and weakness are in Christ for you, and the cross is a shame, you ought not to have forgotten this saying: "Truly I say to you, from now on you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power and coming with the clouds of heaven."