On the Trinity 5.22–6.1

It is the angel of God who appeared in fire from the bush; and from the bush, in the fire, God speaks. You have the dispensation in the angel, because “angel” denotes an office, not a nature; you have God in the name of the nature, because the angel of God is God. But perhaps he is not true God. Is the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob not true? For their angel, speaking from the bush, is God forever. And so that you may not steal an occasion for calling the name adoptive, that God who is speaks to Moses. For so it is written: “And the Lord said to Moses, I am who I am. And he said, Thus you shall say to the children of Israel: He who is has sent me to you.” The speech begins from the angel of God, so that the mystery of human salvation in the Son may be understood; the same one is the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, so that he may have the name of his nature; then God who is sends to Israel, so that what God is might be truly understood to be.

What lie do you tell against these things, with a mad spirit, ineffectual folly of heretical impiety, sowing by night among the wheat of noble seed, against the knowledge of such great patriarchs, tares to be burned? But if you believed Moses, you would also believe God, the Son of God: unless perhaps you will deny that Moses spoke about him. If you wish to deny this, you will hear in the words of God: “For if you believed Moses, you would perhaps believe me also; for he wrote of me.” He will plainly refute you; he will refute you with the whole volume of the Law, which he received, ordained through angels by the hand of a Mediator. And ask whether he who gave the Law is true God, since the one who gave it is certainly the Mediator. Did not Moses lead the people out to the mountain to meet God? Did not God come down on the mountain? Or is this perhaps a false and adopted name rather than the name of his nature? Consider the sounding trumpets, the flames of the torches, the smoke of furnaces seething from the mountain, the trembling of human weakness, conscious of itself, at God's coming, and the death that the people confessed they would suffer under God's voice when they begged Moses to speak. Is he not true God to you, heretic, at whose mere speaking Israel feared to die, and whose voice human weakness could not bear? Is he not God to you because he spoke through the weakness of a man, so that you might hear and see? Moses went up the mountain; over forty days and nights he gained the knowledge of divine and heavenly mysteries; he arranged everything according to the pattern of the truth shown him on the mountain; through the familiarity of God speaking with him he took on the glory of a brightness no one could look upon, and the unbearable light of the majesty near him filled the corruptible appearance of his face; he bears witness to God, speaks of God, summons the angels of God, with the rejoicing of the nations, to worship him, and calls down upon the crown of Joseph's head the blessings pleasing to him: and after this, does anyone dare to grant him only the name and deny that he is true?

Now, we think it has been shown by all our discussion that no reasoning has been offered by which a true God and a false God could enter the mind's understanding, since the Law spoke of God and God, Lord and Lord; and that no difference was signified in names and natures that would prevent the nature from being understood by the name and the name by the nature; since the might of God, the power of God, the works of God, and the name of God were in him whom the Law preached as God. For the Law, following the arrangement of the gospel mystery, showed, so as to signify the person, God obedient to the words of God in creating the world; God the Creator of an image common to himself and God in forming man; the Lord as judge from the Lord in judging the Sodomites; and the angel of God as God in bestowing blessings and in ordaining the mysteries of the Law: so that God, always shown as God for a saving confession in God the Father and God the Son, might teach the truth of the nature by the very name of the nature, since the Law, signifying both as God, left no ambiguity about the truth.

Now it is time that we not allow what the Law taught piously and religiously to be preached impiously through the theft of heretical folly, which, intending to deny the Son of God, began thus: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one.” And because its impiety was endangered by the name, since the Law had spoken of God and God, in order to deny the nature behind the name by the authority of a prophetic saying, it added: “They will bless you, the true God”: so that by this the Law would have spoken of one God, and in the Son of God, God, there would be a name rather than truth, only one true God being understood. And perhaps you think, fool, that we contradict your words so as to deny one true God. We certainly do not deny it; we confess it as you do. For this is our faith, this our conscience, this our speech. But we understand one God, and the same God as true. Nor is our confession endangered by the name, since it preaches one and true God in the nature of the Son. Learn the meaning of your own confession, and know the one and true God, so that you may piously preach one and true God. For you seize the profession of our religion for your impiety; and you deny what is, while you do not deny what is. So you deceive foolish wisdom, destroying the truth under the appearance of truth. You confess one true God in order to deny one true God. Your profession is thought pious in the very point where it is most impious, true where it is false. So one and true God is preached by you in such a way that he is not. For you deny that the Son of God is true God, though you do not deny that he is God; yet you confess him God not by nature but by name. If his birth is a matter of name rather than of truth, you can take the truth away from the name; but if God was truly born, I ask how what was born can fail truly to be? Either deny that he is, so that he may not be; or, if he is, how will what is not be, since what is cannot be so as not to be? Of the birth we will speak soon. Meanwhile I will convict the impiety of your lie about the truth of God's nature by the prophet's confession; yet in such a way that, while we preach one and true God, neither the heresy of Sabellius, which professed the Father himself to be also the Son to himself, may presume on it, nor may you lie about the truth of the Son of God by preaching only one true God.

Impiety has nothing of wisdom in it; and where the fear of God, which is the beginning of wisdom, is lacking, it takes away with it every beginning of prudence. For, to weaken faith in true God in the Son, they bring forward the prophetic saying: “And they will bless you, the true God.” The first folly of this impiety was that what was said earlier by the same prophet was either not understood, or, if understood, was passed over in silence. Then it equipped itself for fraud by adding a syllable that is not found in the books, using the lie of its folly as though its own words deserved so much belief that it thought the very authority of the prophetic sayings need not be checked. For it is not written, “They will bless you, the true God,” but, “They will bless the true God.” And there is no small difference, for ambiguity, between “you, the true God” and “the true God.” For where there is “you,” the pronoun seems to belong to another person; but where the syllable of the pronoun is absent, the name too is referred to the author of the saying.

And so that the reasoning for understanding the truth may be complete, the prophet's very words will be set out in full: “Therefore thus says the Lord: Behold, those who serve me will eat, but you will be hungry; behold, those who serve me will drink, but you will be thirsty; behold, those who serve me will exult in gladness, but you will cry out for sorrow of heart and howl for affliction of spirit. For you will leave your name for gladness to my chosen ones, but the Lord will slay you. But those who serve me will be called by a new name, which will be blessed on earth; and they will bless the true God, and those who swear on the earth will swear by the true God.” It is never without reason that the customary manner of preaching is exceeded; and the reason for something new is supplied by the reason of a falsehood to come. For since so many prophecies about God had been given before, and only the simple name of God had been used to show his dignity and nature, we must ask why the Spirit of prophecy now foretells through Isaiah that the true God is to be blessed and that oaths are to be sworn on earth by the true God. And first we must recognize that this saying announces things of a future time. And I ask whether he was not true God who was then, in the opinion of the Jews, both blessed and sworn by. For the Jews, not knowing the mystery of God and therefore ignorant of the Son of God, worshipped God only, not also the Father. For surely, if they had worshipped the Father, they would have worshipped the Son also. These, then, blessed God and swore by him. But the prophet testifies that the true God is to be blessed, speaking of the true God for this reason: that through the mystery of the body he assumed, the truth of God in him would not be understood by all. Confirmation of the true was needed where the assertion of the false was going to break out. Let us review each of the sentences of this passage.

“Therefore thus says the Lord: Behold, those who serve me will eat, but you will be hungry; behold, those who serve me will drink, but you will be thirsty.” Recognize under the same saying the signification of both times, so that you may grasp the mystery of the ages. For “those who serve me will eat”: he rewards present religion with future rewards, so that the punishment of future thirst and hunger will consume the impiety of the present. Then he added: “Behold, those who serve me will exult in gladness, but you will cry out for sorrow of heart and howl for contrition of spirit.” In keeping with the sense above, here too future and present time are shown: those who serve will exult in gladness, but those who do not serve will remain in crying and howling through sorrow of heart and contrition of spirit. Then he added: “For you will leave your name for gladness to my chosen ones, but the Lord will slay you.” The speech is to Israel according to the flesh, signifying a future time: Israel is reproached because it would leave its name to God's chosen ones. I ask what this name is. Surely Israel, to whom the speech was then addressed. Then I ask who is Israel today. And the Apostle indeed testifies that those who are so in spirit, not in letter, who walk by the rule of Christ, are the Israel of God.

Further, since it was said above, “Therefore thus says the Lord,” we must understand why there follows, “But the Lord will slay you,” and then what this saying means: “But those who serve me will be called by a new name, which will be blessed on earth.” Is there any doubt that the words, “Therefore thus says the Lord,” and what follows, “But the Lord will slay you,” showed that the one who spoke and the one who would slay are to be understood as none other than the Lord: who would afterward reward those who served him with a new name, and who, as all would know, both spoke in the prophets and would be judge of the pious and the impious? So the rest of the passage unfolded the mystery of the gospel sacrament, so that there could be no doubt about the Lord who speaks and the Lord who slays: “But those who serve me will be called by a new name, which will be blessed on earth.” All of this speaks of a future time. And what is this new name of religion which will be blessed on earth? If the blessedness of the Christian name had ever existed from past ages, it would not be new now. But if this name, hallowed by our devotion to God, is new, then surely this newness of profession is the reward of heavenly blessings on earth.

Now the next words confirm the inward assurance of our whole faith, saying: “And they will bless the true God, and those who swear on the earth will swear by the true God.” Certainly those whose name in God's service is new will bless the true God; and the God by whom they are to swear is true God. Is there any doubt who is sworn by, who is blessed, through whom those who serve him have a new and blessed name? The complete faith of the church's teaching stands with me against your impious preaching, heretic: the faith of the name made new through you, O Christ, and of the title blessed from you on earth through the profession of service, swearing that you are true God. For every mouth of believers speaks of you, Christ, as God. All the faith of believers swears by you as God, confessing you to be true God, preaching you to be true God, inwardly knowing you to be true God.

This whole prophetic passage, then, leaves no difficulty in understanding that it signifies God: the one who is served under the new name, through whom the newness of that name is blessed on earth, who is blessed as true God, and who is sworn by as true God; all of which the pious faith of the church, in the fullness of time, professes in devotion to the Lord Christ. (And the prophetic word was so fitted to him that it did not bring in the signification of another person by adding a pronoun. For if it had added “you, the true God,” the speaker's words could have been referred to another; but when it says “the true God,” it left the meaning with the speaker.) And although there is no doubt whom the present passage signifies, yet the words joined to it above show whose profession this is to be understood to be. For he says: “I appeared openly to those who did not ask for me; I was found by those who did not seek me. I said, Here I am, to a nation that did not call on my name. I stretched out my hands all day to an unbelieving and contradicting people.” Is the impious falsehood of a stealthy preaching hidden, and will the true God who says these things be unknown? I ask, who appeared to those who did not ask, and who was found by those who did not seek? And to which nations does he belong that had not called on his name before? And who stretched out his hands all day to an unbelieving and contradicting people? Compare with these that sacred and divine Song of Deuteronomy, in which God, provoked by those who are no gods, moves the unbelievers to jealousy by a no-nation and a foolish nation; and understand who becomes manifest to those who did not know him, who is claimed by strangers as their own, and who spread out his hands before an unbelieving and contradicting people, nailing to the cross the handwriting of the former decree. For it is of him that the Spirit of the prophet said, in a passage continuous and connected in order: “But those who serve me will be called by a new name, which will be blessed on earth; and they will bless the true God, and those who swear on the earth will swear by the true God.”

If heretical folly and impiety, to deceive the ignorant and simple, falsely claim that these things were said in the person of God the Father, so that the meaning of this saying may not be applied to God the Son, let them hear the guilt of their lie from the Apostle and teacher of the nations, who proclaims all these things of the mystery of the Lord's passion and of the times of the gospel faith, when he reproaches the unbelief of Israel, which did not understand the Lord's coming in the flesh. For he says: “For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. How will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how will they believe him whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher? And how will they preach unless they are sent? As it is written: How beautiful are the feet of those who announce peace, of those who announce good things! But not all obey the gospel. For Isaiah says: Lord, who has believed our report? So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word. But I say: Have they not heard? Indeed, their sound has gone out into all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world. But I say: Did Israel not know? First Moses says: I will provoke you to jealousy by those who are no nation; by a senseless nation I will anger you. And Isaiah is bold and says: I appeared to those who did not seek me; I was found by those who did not ask for me. But to Israel what does he say? All day I have stretched out my hands to a people that does not listen.” Who are you, that you have gone out through the circles of heaven, whether in the body or out of it uncertain, and have become a more faithful interpreter of the prophetic sayings than Paul? Who are you, that you have heard and kept silent the unspeakable sacraments of heavenly mysteries, and preached with greater confidence the knowledge revealed to you by God? Who are you, that, reserved for the cross to fill up the Lord's passion and before that caught up into paradise, you have taught better from the divine Scriptures than the chosen vessel, you who do not know that these things were said and done by the true God, and preached by his true and chosen apostle so that the true God might be understood?

Unless perhaps the Apostle, using prophetic sayings not taken up by the spirit of prophecy, is a rash interpreter of another's words. The Apostle indeed says everything through the revelation of Christ; but he knew the sayings of Isaiah from the sayings of Isaiah himself. For at the beginning of the passage in which the true God is to be blessed and sworn by those who serve him, this prayer of the prophet is read: “From of old we have not heard, nor have our eyes seen a God besides you, and your works which you will do for those who wait for your mercy.” Isaiah says that he has seen no God but this one. For he saw the glory of God, whose mystery of embodiment from a virgin he had foretold. And if you, heretic, do not know that he saw the only-begotten God in that glory, hear John the evangelist saying: “Isaiah said these things when he saw his glory and spoke of him.” Here by apostolic, here by gospel, here by prophetic sayings, impious heretic, you are shut in. For Isaiah saw God; and though it is written, “No one has ever seen God, except the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father; he has declared him,” yet the prophet saw God, and beheld his glory, so that his prophetic dignity aroused envy. For it was for this reason that he was brought to a sentence of death by the Jews.

God, then, whom no one has seen, the only-begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father has declared. Either dissolve the Only-begotten's declaration, or believe that he was seen who appeared to those who did not understand him, became the God of the nations that did not call on him, and spread out his hands before a contradicting people; yet so that a new name is called upon those who serve him, and the true God is blessed and sworn by on earth. Prophecy speaks, the Gospel testifies, the Apostle interprets, the church confesses that he who was seen is true God; though no one says that God the Father was seen. And the insanity of heretical fury has broken out so far that, while it pretends to confess, it denies. For it denies by a new and impious scheme of confession, and by a crafty art eludes the faith while it counterfeits it. For when one God has been confessed, the same true and alone just, alone wise, alone unchangeable, alone immortal, alone powerful, and the Son is then set beneath him in a difference of substance, not born from God as God but taken into sonship by creation, not having the name of nature but having received the title of adoption, the Son must lack all those things which were proclaimed as the privilege of a solitary majesty in the Father.

Heretical perversity does not know how to know and confess one true God; the faith and understanding of this confession lie outside the mind of impiety. The Father and the Son must first be confessed, so that one true God may be understood; and once the mysteries of human salvation are known, which are completed in us for life in the Father and the Son through the power of regeneration, the mysteries of the Law and the Prophets are to be pursued. Impiety, ignorant of the preaching of the Gospels and the apostles, does not grasp one true God. We will set out the understanding of it, up to the most complete profession of true piety, from their teaching, so that the Only-begotten may be understood as subsisting from the Father, undivided and inseparable, not by person but by nature, and so one God, because he is God from the nature of God. Yet the faith of this perfect unity must be built up from the prophetic sayings, and the foundations of the gospel house laid on them; so that, through the same nature of the one divinity, one God may be understood by the fact that the only-begotten God is not counted as another God. For throughout this book we have kept this order: in the same passages in which in the previous book we taught that the Son is God, we have now shown that he is true God. And, as I hope, the explanation of all the sayings was such that he who was not denied to be God was understood to be true God. The rest of our discourse will now advance to this: that he who is understood to be true God is not counted as another God; and that what does not tend to another may be understood as one; yet so that this oneness does not destroy the subsisting nature in the Son, but preserves, in God and God, the nature of the one God.

The reasoning of truth demands that the beginning of this understanding be taken from him through whom God began to be made known to the world, that is, from Moses, through whose mouth the only-begotten God professed this of himself: “See, see that I am God, and there is no God besides me.” And lest heretical impiety refer the force of this saying to the unbegotten Father, both the reasoning of the saying itself and the Apostle as authority stand in the way. The Apostle, as we taught above, is the interpreter for understanding this whole passage as spoken in the person of the only-begotten God; and he showed that the words, “Rejoice, nations, with his people,” belong to him, adding, to confirm the saying: “And there will be the root of Jesse, and he who rises to rule the nations; in him the nations will hope.” Since, then, Moses showed that he who had said, “There is no God besides me,” is the one of whom he said, “Rejoice, nations, together with him,” and the Apostle understood this of our Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten God, in whom, rising according to the flesh from the root of Jesse as king of the nations, lies the hope of the nations, we must now treat the meaning of the saying itself, so that, since there is no doubt who said it, we may understand in what sense it was said.

The true, complete, and perfect mystery of our faith is to confess God from God and God in God: not in bodily ways, but by divine powers; not by a transfusion of nature into nature, but by the mystery and power of the nature. For God is from God not by cutting off, extension, or derivation, but subsists by birth from the power of the nature into the same nature. The next book, interpreting the sayings of the Gospels and the apostles, will speak of these things more plainly; but meanwhile what we say and believe must be taught from the Law and the Prophets. The birth of God, then, cannot fail to hold the nature from which it proceeded. For what subsists from no other source than God does not subsist as anything other than God. It is the same nature, not in such a way that he who begot is himself born (for how would he be himself, if he were begotten?), but so that the one begotten subsists in those very things which the one who begot wholly is, because what is begotten is from no other source. And so what subsists as one from one is not referred to another; nor is what lives from the living new in itself; nor is what the living one begot into life absent from him. And so in the generation of the Son the incorporeal and unchangeable God follows his own nature, begetting an incorporeal and unchangeable God; nor does the perfect birth of incorporeal and unchangeable God from incorporeal and unchangeable God abandon its nature: this is the mystery of God subsisting from God. The only-begotten God testifies to this through holy Moses: “See, see that I am the Lord, and there is no God besides me.” For there is no other nature of divinity, so that any God should be besides him. For though he himself is God, yet by the power of the nature God is also in him. And because he himself is God and God is in him, there is no God besides him; since what is God does not come from elsewhere, and God is in him, who has in himself both what he himself is and that from which he subsists.

The same one Spirit of prophecy, speaking in very many, confirms the true and saving profession of our faith, not changing the preaching of religious doctrine through the successions and intervals of time. For so that what was said through Moses in the person of the only-begotten God might be confirmed with fuller progress in understanding, the same Spirit of prophecy speaks again through Isaiah, in the words of God the Father, in the person of the men of stature: “For God is in you, and there is no God besides you. For you are God, and we did not know it, the God of Israel, the Savior.” Let the desperate fury of heretical impiety hurl itself against this inseparable profession of nature and name, and, if it can, tear apart with the rabid mouth of its madness what is united in words and in reality. God is in God, and besides him there is no God: let it separate the one who is within from the one in whom he is, and divide the understanding of this mystery by a variety of kinds. For in saying, “God is in you,” he taught the truth of the nature of God the Father in God the Son, since he who is God was understood to be in him. And in adding, “And besides you there is no God,” he showed that there is no God besides him, because God was within him who is God. The third, “You are God, and we did not know it,” testifies to the pious and faithful profession of human understanding, which, once it knew the mysteries of the birth and the name announced by the angel to Joseph, would confess: “For you are God, and we did not know it, the God of Israel, the Savior”: understanding that the nature of God subsists in him, since God is in God, and there is no other God besides him who is God; for he himself is God, and God is in him, and this leaves us no error of any other God. So Isaiah prophesied, bearing witness to the undivided and inseparable divinity of the Father and the Son.

And Jeremiah, with no less power of prophecy, taught that the only-begotten God is of a nature not separated from God the Father, saying: “This is our God, and no other will be counted beside him. He found every way of knowledge and gave it to Jacob his servant and to Israel his beloved. After this he was seen on earth and lived among men.” Why, heretic, do you put another God into the Son of God, God? Learn to understand and confess one true God. No other God is counted beside Christ to make him God. He is God by nature, by birth, from God. For what is God from God is not another God. For no other is counted beside him, because there is no truth in him other than God's. Why do you put together, under a false religion of one God, true and not true, degenerate and noble, one thing and another? The Father is God, the Son also is God. God is in God; besides him there is no God; no other is counted beside him to make him God. If in these words you understand God as one rather than solitary, you will profess the religion of the church, which confesses the Father in the Son. But if, ignorant of the heavenly mystery, you put forward one God in the sense of a solitary one, you are outside the knowledge of God, not confessing that God is in God.

I am well aware that I have undertaken to write these things against the mad heresy of the impious, which asserts that the Son of God is a creature, at a most difficult and harsh time; when many churches in almost all the provinces of the Roman Empire are already infected with the disease of this pestilent preaching, and, through long familiarity with the teaching and the false name of true religion, are steeped in it as though it were a rightly held conviction of pious faith. I know how hard it is to move toward amendment a will that the authority of an opinion now public, through the assent of very many, holds fast in its zeal for its error. For error in very many is grave and dangerous; and the fall of many, even if it recognizes itself, claims authority for itself out of shame at rising again, drawing from its numbers the shamelessness to want its error to be thought prudence, and to assert that what it errs in along with many is understanding of the truth, since there is thought to be less error in many.