On the Trinity 2.7–2.30

And I would rather have thought these things about the Father than said them: for I am well aware that all speech is weak for expressing what is his. He must be thought of as invisible, incomprehensible, eternal. But to say that he is in himself and from himself and through himself, that he is invisible, incomprehensible, and immortal: in these there is indeed a confession of honor, an indication of thought, and a kind of outline of opinion; but speech gives way before his nature, and words do not unfold the thing as it is. For when you hear that he is in himself, human reason finds no solution; for to have and to be had are distinguished, and what is will be one thing and that in which it is another. If again you take it that he is from himself, no one is both giver and gift to himself. If that he is immortal, then there is something not derived from him to which he is not subject; and what this word claims for him over against another is not his alone. If that he is incomprehensible, then what is said to be beyond reach will be nowhere. If that he is invisible, whatever does not appear to sight lacks its own existence. Confession therefore fails in naming him; whatever words are fitted to him will not express God as he is and how great he is. Perfect knowledge is so to know God that you know him to be, not unknowable, yet beyond telling. He is to be believed, understood, and adored; and by these acts of devotion he is to be expressed.

We have been carried out from harborless places into the deep on a troubled sea, and can neither go back nor go forward without danger; yet there is more difficulty in what remains to be crossed than in what has been crossed. The Father is as he is, and must be believed to be as he is. The mind is dismayed at touching upon the Son, and all speech trembles to venture forth. For he is the offspring of the unbegotten, one from one, true from true, living from living, perfect from perfect, power of power, wisdom of wisdom, glory of glory, the image of the invisible God, the form of the unbegotten Father. But what kind of offspring shall we think the only-begotten is, from the unbegotten? For the Father cries again and again from heaven: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” It is not a cutting off or a division: for he who begot is impassible, and he who was born is the image of the invisible God; and he testifies: “The Father is in me, and I in the Father.” It is not an adoption: for he is the true Son of God, and cries out: “He who has seen me has seen the Father also.” Nor was he commanded to exist, as other things were: for the Only-begotten is from the one, and has life in himself, as he who begot him has life in himself; for he says: “As the Father has life in himself, so he has given the Son to have life in himself.” Nor is there a part of the Father in the Son; for the Son testifies: “All that the Father has is mine”; and again: “And all mine are yours, and yours mine”; and: “Whatever the Father has, he has given to the Son”; and the Apostle testifies: “For in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.” And what is a portion does not by nature have all things. He is perfect from perfect, because he who has all has given all. Nor must he be thought not to have given because he still has, or not to have because he has given.

Each of them, then, holds the secret of this birth. And if anyone perhaps blames his own understanding because he cannot attain the mystery of this generation, though both the Father and the Son are understood without qualification, he will hear from me, with still greater sorrow, that I too do not know it. I do not know it; I do not inquire; and yet I will console myself. Archangels do not know it, angels have not heard it, the ages do not hold it, the prophet did not perceive it, the apostle did not ask it, the Son himself has not disclosed it. Let the sorrow of complaint cease. Whoever you are who inquire into these things, I do not call you back to the heights, I do not stretch you toward the breadth, I do not lead you down into the depth: will you not calmly be ignorant of the Creator's birth, when you are ignorant of the origin of the creature? This at least I ask: do you perceive that you were begotten, and do you understand what is begotten from you? I do not ask from where you drew perception, from where you received life, from where you obtained understanding, what it is in you that gives smell, perception, sight, and hearing; surely no one is ignorant of what he himself does. I ask from where you give these things to those whom you beget, how you implant perception, kindle the eyes, fix the heart. Explain these things, if you can. You have, then, what you do not know, and you give what you do not understand: calmly unskilled in your own affairs, insolently ignorant in the affairs of God.

Hear, then, of the unbegotten Father; hear of the only-begotten Son. Hear: “The Father is greater than I”; hear: “I and the Father are one”; hear: “He who has seen me has seen the Father also”; hear: “The Father is in me, and I in the Father”; hear: “I came out from the Father”; and, “Who is in the bosom of the Father”; and, “All that the Father has he has handed over to the Son”; and, “The Son has life in himself, as the Father also has in himself.” Hear that the Son is the image, wisdom, power, and glory of God; and understand the Holy Spirit proclaiming: “Who will tell his generation?”; and rebuke, if you will, the Lord when he testifies: “No one knows the Son except the Father, nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and he to whom the Son wills to reveal him.” Then thrust yourself into this secret, and, between the one unbegotten God and the one only-begotten God, plunge yourself into the hidden depth of an inconceivable birth. Begin, run on, persevere: although I know you will not arrive, I will still congratulate you on your progress. For he who piously pursues infinite things, though he never reaches them, will still advance by going forward. Here understanding comes to a stand, at the end of words.

The Son is from that Father who is: only-begotten from unbegotten, offspring from parent, living from living. As the Father has life in himself, so to the Son also has been given life in himself. Perfect from perfect, because whole from whole; not a division or cutting, because each is in the other, and the fullness of divinity is in the Son. Incomprehensible from incomprehensible; for no one knows them except each other. Invisible from invisible: because he is the image of the invisible God, and because he who has seen the Son has seen the Father also. One from another, because they are Father and Son; not one nature of divinity and another, because both are one. God from God: from one unbegotten God, one only-begotten God; not two gods, but one from one; not two unbegotten, because he was born from the unborn; the one differing in nothing from the other, because the life of the living one is in the living one. These things we have touched on concerning the nature of the divinity, not grasping the height of understanding, but understanding that what we speak of is incomprehensible. Then, you say, faith has no task, if nothing can be comprehended. On the contrary, faith professes this as its task: to know that what it inquires into is incomprehensible to it.

There remains still something to say about the unspeakable generation of the Son; or rather, that something is still the whole. I am in turmoil, I am torn, I grow dull, and I do not know where to begin. For I do not know when the Son was born; and yet it is wrong for me not to know that he was born. Whom shall I entreat? Whom shall I implore? From what books shall I take words to explain such great difficulties? Shall I unroll all the schools of Greece? But I have read: “Where is the wise man? Where is the debater of this age?” In this matter, then, the sophists of the world and the wise of the age are mute; for they have rejected the wisdom of God. Shall I consult, then, the scribe of the Law? But he does not know; for the cross of Christ is a stumbling block to him. Shall I perhaps urge you to shut your eyes and be silent, because it is enough for the veneration of the one preached that lepers were cleansed, the deaf heard, the lame ran, paralytics stood, the blind received light, a man blind from the womb gained his eyes, demons were put to flight, the sick recovered, the dead lived? But the heretics confess these things, and perish.

Expect, then, nothing less than the running of the lame, the sight of the blind, the flight of demons, the life of the dead. For there stands with me, to defend me in the difficulties set out above, a fisherman, poor, ignorant, unlearned, his hands busy with the net, his clothes wet, his feet smeared with mud, a boatman through and through. Ask and understand whether it was more wonderful to raise the dead or to impart to an unlearned man the knowledge of this teaching. For he says: “In the beginning was the Word.” What is this, “In the beginning was”? Times are passed over, ages crossed, eras taken away. Posit whatever beginning you like in your own thinking: you do not hold him in time, for he of whom we treat already was. Look at the world; understand what is written of it: “In the beginning God made heaven and earth.” What is created, then, is made in the beginning, and what is held in the beginning so as to be made is contained by time. But my fisherman, unlettered and unlearned, is free from time, released from the ages; he has overcome every beginning: for he was, the one who is, and he is not shut within any time so as to have begun, since he rather was in the beginning than was being made.

But perhaps we shall find that our fisherman has strayed from the order of the plan he set out: for he has freed the Word from time, and what is free belongs to itself and is for itself, solitary and obedient to no one. Let us prick up our ears for the rest. He says: “And the Word was with God.” Now that which was before the beginning is with God, without beginning. He who was, then, is with God; and he who is beyond the time of our knowing is not apart from his author. Our fisherman has escaped; but perhaps he will be caught on what follows.

For you will say: a word is the sound of a voice, the declaring of matters, the utterance of thoughts. This was with God and was in the beginning, because the speech of thought is eternal, since he who thinks is eternal. For the moment I answer you briefly on behalf of my fisherman, while we see how he defends his own rusticity. A word has it in its nature that it can be, and what follows for it is that it has been; but it exists only while it is heard. And how was that in the beginning which exists neither before time nor after time? And I do not know whether it can even exist in time itself: for the word of speakers does not exist before they speak, and when they have spoken it will not exist; and in the very act of speaking, by the time they finish, the part with which they began no longer exists. So much from me, as one among others. But the fisherman will speak otherwise for himself; and first he will rebuke you for having listened carelessly. For even if, as an untrained hearer, you had missed the first sentence, “In the beginning was the Word,” why do you complain about the next, “And the Word was with God”? Had you heard “in God” and not “with God,” so as to take it as the word of a hidden thought? Or had the rustic not known the difference between being in and being with? For what was in the beginning is declared to be, not in another, but with another. But I take nothing from what goes before; let what follows stand by itself. Wait for the standing and the name of the Word. For he says: “And the Word was God.” The sound of a voice ceases, and so does the utterance of thought. This Word is a reality, not a sound; a nature, not speech; God, not emptiness.

But I tremble at the saying, and the unaccustomed language disturbs me. I hear: “And the Word was God,” I to whom the prophets announced one God. But lest my trembling go any further, explain, my fisherman, the plan of so great a mystery, and refer all things to the one God without insult, without abolition, without time. He says: “He was in the beginning with God.” Since he was in the beginning, he is not held in time; since he is God, he is not reduced to a voice; since he is with God, nothing is wronged and nothing taken away: for he is not dissolved into another, and he is declared to be with the one unbegotten God, from whom he himself is the one only-begotten God.

We still wait, fisherman, for the fullness of the Word from you. He was indeed in the beginning, but he could have not been before the beginning. Here too I offer you something on behalf of my fisherman: what was could not have not been; for “was” does not allow of a time when he was not. But what does he say for himself? “All things were made through him.” If, then, nothing exists without him through whom all things began, he through whom everything that is was made is himself without limit. For time is the measured indication of an extent, not in place but in duration. And since all things are from him, nothing is not from him; and therefore time is from him.

But someone says to you, my fisherman: “You have been too easy and indiscriminate here; ‘all things were made through him’ has no limit. There is the unbegotten, who was made by no one; there is also he who is begotten from the unborn. ‘All things’ is without exception and leaves nothing outside.” But while we dare to say nothing further, or perhaps while we are trying to say it, you come to meet us: “And without him nothing was made.” You have restored the Author, while professing a partner. For since nothing is without him, I understand that he is not alone; for one is he through whom, another he without whom: the two expressions distinguish the meaning of the one who mediates and the one who acts.

But when I was anxious for the Author, who alone is unbegotten, lest nothing should be excepted when you said “all things,” you removed my fear by saying, “And without him nothing was made.” Yet I am confused and troubled by this very phrase, that without him nothing was made. So there is something made through another, which nevertheless was not made without him; and if something is through another, though not without him, then not all things are through him; for it is one thing to have made, another to have stood by the maker. Here, my fisherman, I have nothing of my own to offer, as I had on the other points; the answer must come at once from your own words: “All things were made through him.” I understand. For the Apostle taught: “Things visible and invisible, whether thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers, all things through him and in him.”

Since, then, all things are through him, come to my aid and tell what it is that was not made without him. “What was made in him is life.” This, then, is what was not made without him: what was made in him. For what was made in him was also made through him; for all things were created through him and in him. And they were created in him because he was born as God the Creator. But further, nothing that was made in him was made without him for this reason, that God in being born was life; and he who was life did not become life after he was born; for in him what was born is not one thing and what he received when born another. In him there is no time between birth and growth. Nothing, then, of what was being made in him was made without him, because he in whom they were made is life, and God who was born from God came to be God not after he was born, but in being born. For, born living from the living, true from the true, perfect from the perfect, he was not born without the power of his birth: not perceiving his birth afterward, but understanding himself as God in the very fact that he was being born God from God. This is the Only-begotten from the Unbegotten; this is “I and the Father are one”; this is one God in the confession of the Father and the Son; this is the Father in the Son and the Son in the Father. Hence: “He who has seen me has seen the Father also.” Hence: “All that the Father has he has given to the Son.” Hence: “As the Father has life in himself, so he has given the Son to have life in himself.” Hence: “No one knows the Son except the Father, nor the Father except the Son.” Hence: “In him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.”

This life is the light of men, this light that illuminates the darkness. And so that the fisherman might console us for the impossibility of telling his generation, according to the prophet, he added: “And the darkness did not grasp it.” Language gives way before the nature and has nowhere further to run; and yet this fisherman received it as he reclined on the Lord's breast. This is not the language of the world, because what is treated is not a thing of the world. Let something be brought forward, if anything can be found in the meaning of the words beyond what has been said; and if there are any other names for the nature we have set out, let them be produced. If there are none, or rather because there are none, let us marvel at this teaching in a fisherman and perceive in him the oracles of God; and let us hold and adore the confession of the Father and the Son, of the unbegotten and the only-begotten, beyond telling and exceeding every grasp of language and perception; and, after John's example, let us recline upon the Lord Jesus, that we may be able to perceive these things and speak of them.

The integrity of this faith is commended by the authority of the Gospel, by the teaching of the apostles, and by the idle deceit of the heretics clamoring on every side. For this foundation stands firm and unmoved against all winds, rains, and torrents; it is not to be driven by blasts, penetrated by drippings, or undermined by floods; and that is best which, though attacked by very many, can be moved by none. As there are certain kinds of medicines so compounded that they are useful not only for single ailments but heal all alike, and have in themselves the power of a general remedy, so the catholic faith gives the help of a common cure not against single plagues but against all diseases; it is not to be weakened by kind, overcome by number, or deceived by variety, but stands one and the same against each and all. For it is a great thing that there are as many remedies in this one faith as there are diseases, and as many teachings of truth as there will be pursuits of falsehood. Let the names of the heretics be gathered into one, and let all their schools come forward: let them hear of one unbegotten God the Father, and one only-begotten Son of God, the perfect offspring of a perfect Father; not begotten by any diminution, not cut off as some part from a solid whole, but having all things, having received all things through his being begotten; not drawn off by derivation or flowing out, but born wholly from the whole and in the whole, from him who does not cease to be in all in which he is; free from time, released from the ages, through whom all things were made: for he could not be within the things that were established by him. This is the catholic and apostolic confession from the Gospels.

Let Sabellius, if he dares, preach that the Father and the Son are the same, and that he who is called by both names is one and the same person; so that for him the two are one person, not one thing. He will hear at once from the Gospels, not once or twice but often: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” He will hear: “The Father is greater than I.” He will hear: “I go to the Father”; and, “Father, I thank you”; and, “Glorify me, Father”; and, “You are the Son of the living God.” Let Ebion creep in, granting the Son of God a beginning from Mary and understanding the Word only from the days of the flesh. Let him read again: “Father, glorify me with yourself with the glory that I had with you before the world was”; and, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”; and, “All things were made through him”; and, “He was in the world, and the world was made through him, and the world did not know him.” Let the preachers of a new apostolate, an apostolate from Antichrist, come forward, mocking the Son of God with every insult; and let them hear: “I came out from the Father”; and, “The Son in the bosom of the Father”; and, “I and the Father are one”; and, “I am in the Father, and the Father in me.” And finally let them be angry along with the Jews that Christ, confessing God as his own Father, made himself equal to God; and let them hear along with them: “Believe at least my works, that the Father is in me and I in the Father.” This, then, is the one immovable foundation, this the one blessed rock of faith confessed by Peter's mouth: “You are the Son of the living God,” holding in itself as many proofs of the truth as there will be questions raised by perversity and slanders by unbelief.

In the rest, now, lies the dispensation of the Father's will. The Virgin, the birth, and the body; and after them the cross, death, and the underworld: these are our salvation. For the sake of the human race the Son of God was born of the Virgin and the Holy Spirit, he himself serving himself in this work; and by his own power, that is, God's overshadowing power, he sowed for himself the beginnings of a body and established the first beginnings of flesh; so that, made man from the Virgin, he might receive into himself the nature of flesh, and that through the fellowship of this mingling the body of the whole human race might be sanctified in him: so that, as all were founded in him through his willing to be bodily, so in turn he himself might be imparted to all through what in him is invisible. The invisible image of God, then, did not refuse the shame of a human beginning, and passed through conception, birth, wailing, and the cradle, all the indignities of our nature.

What worthy return, then, shall we make for the love shown in so great a condescension? The one only-begotten God, of an origin from God that cannot be told, is placed in the womb of the holy Virgin and grows into the form of a small human body. He who contains all things, within whom and through whom all things exist, is brought forth by the law of human birth; and he at whose voice archangels and angels tremble, and heaven and earth and all the elements of this world are dissolved, is heard in an infant's wailing. He who is invisible and incomprehensible, not to be measured by sight, perception, or touch, is wrapped in a cradle. If anyone considers these things unworthy of God, he will confess himself indebted for a benefit all the greater, the less these things befitted the majesty of God. He through whom man was made had no need to become man; but we needed God to become flesh and dwell in us, that is, by assuming one flesh to dwell within all flesh. His lowliness is our nobility; his shame is our honor: what he is, God abiding in flesh, that we in turn are, renewed from flesh into God.

But lest the cradle, the wailing, the birth, and the conception should perhaps hold back the scrupulous thoughts of some minds, the dignity of God must be restored to each, so that the greatness of his power may go before the lowliness of his will, and his dignity may not abandon his condescension. Let us see, then, what ministries attended the conception. An angel speaks to Zechariah; offspring is promised to a barren woman; the priest comes out mute from the place of incense; John, still held in his mother's womb, bursts into utterance; an angel blesses Mary and promises that she, a virgin, will be the mother of the Son of God. She, conscious of her virginity, is troubled at the difficulty of the thing; the angel explains the efficacy of the divine working, for he says: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you from above, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.” The Holy Spirit, coming from above, sanctified the Virgin's inward parts, and, breathing in them, mingled himself with the nature of human flesh, and by his own force and power took possession of what was foreign to him; and so that nothing might be out of harmony through the weakness of the human body, the power of the Most High overshadowed the Virgin, strengthening her weakness as though by surrounding it with a shadow, so that the overshadowing of the divine power might temper her bodily substance for the fruitful working of the Spirit coming in. This is the dignity of the conception.

Let us see what dignity accompanies the birth, the wailing, and the cradle. The angel tells Joseph that the Virgin will give birth, and that he who is born is to be called Emmanuel, that is, God with us. The Spirit proclaims it through the prophet, the angel is witness: he who is born is God with us. The new light of a star is brought out of heaven for the Magi, and a heavenly sign attends the Lord of heaven. An angel announces to the shepherds that Christ the Lord is born, the salvation of all. A multitude of the heavenly host runs together in praise of the childbirth, and the joys of the divine company speak the proclamation of so great a work. Then glory to God in the heavens, and peace on earth to men of good will, is announced. Then the Magi arrive and adore him wrapped in swaddling clothes; and after the secret practices of their empty knowledge, they bend the knee to him laid in the cradle. So through the Magi the squalor of the cradle is adored; so the wailing is honored by the divine joys of the angels; so the Spirit proclaiming through the prophet, the angel announcing, and the star of new light serve the birth. So the Holy Spirit coming upon her and the power of the Most High overshadowing her bring about the beginnings of his birth. One thing is understood, another is seen; one thing is beheld by the eyes, another by the mind. A virgin gives birth: the offspring is from God. An infant wails: angels are heard praising. The swaddling clothes are soiled: God is adored. So the dignity of power is not lost while the lowliness of flesh is taken on.

The course of the rest of his life is of the same kind. For all the time he spent as man he filled with the works of God. There is no time to speak of each; only this must be observed in all the kinds of mighty works and cures: in the assumption of flesh he is man, but in the deeds he did he is God.

Concerning the Holy Spirit, however, we ought not to be silent, and yet there is no need to speak; but for the sake of those who do not know, we cannot be silent. There is no need to speak of him, who must be confessed with the Father and the Son as his authors. And indeed I think that whether he exists need not be discussed. For he exists, since he is given, received, and possessed; and he who is joined to the confession of the Father and the Son cannot be separated from the confession of the Father and the Son. For the whole is incomplete for us if anything is lacking from the whole. If anyone asks what we understand about him, we both read in the Apostle: “Because you are sons of God, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father.” And again: “Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, in whom you were sealed.” And again: “We have not received the spirit of this world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we may know the things that have been given us by God.” And again: “You are not in the flesh but in the spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God is in you. But if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not his.” And again: “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who dwells in you.” Since, then, he exists, is given, is possessed, and is of God, let the talk of slanderers cease. When they ask through whom he is, for what purpose he is, or of what kind he is: if our answer displeases them, when we speak of him “through whom are all things, and from whom are all things,” and say that he is the Spirit of God, the gift of the faithful, then let the apostles and prophets displease them too, who said of him only this, that he exists; and after them the Father and the Son will displease them.

I think that some remain in ignorance and doubt on this point because they see this third name, that is, the one called the Holy Spirit, often used to mean the Father and the Son. There is no difficulty in this: for whether Father or Son, he is both spirit and holy.