On the Trinity 6.2–6.20

For my part, besides the obligation of my calling and office, by which, as bishop of this church, I owe the ministry of preaching the gospel, I was all the more eager to write the more people were held in the danger of an unbelieving understanding; seeking a richer joy from the salvation of many, if, once they knew the mysteries of perfect faith in God, they would abandon the impious teachings of human folly, give themselves back to God, rejecting the heretics, and, leaving the food of death with which birds are lured into the snare, rise into the flight of free security; and would follow Christ as leader, the prophets as heralds, the apostles as forerunners, a faith made complete, and a salvation perfected in the confession of the Father and the Son; and, remembering what was said by the Lord's mouth, “He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him,” would turn to honoring the Father through honoring the Son.

For lately a pestilent and deadly plague has arisen among the peoples, which, raging with enormous contagion, has brought the ruin of a pitiable death. Neither the sudden devastation of cities collapsing into the abyss with their people, nor the frequent and deadly slaughters of wars, nor the widespread contagion of incurable sickness has raged so fiercely as this deadly heresy has spread to the destruction of the human race. For to God, for whom all among the dead live, only that perishes which destroys itself. For he who will judge all, and who in the mercy of his majesty will temper the punishment deserved by ignorant error, will no longer judge those who deny him, but will deny them.

For the raging heresy denies, it denies the mystery of the true faith, using the first principles of religion for the teaching of its impiety, when it began the exposition of its unbelief, as is contained in the earlier books, thus: “We know one God, alone unmade, alone everlasting, alone without beginning, alone true, alone having immortality, alone best, alone powerful.” This beginning, taken from a pious confession, serves their purpose when it says, “One God, alone unmade, alone without beginning,” so that under what was religiously displayed in words the rest might be impiously added. For after much else, which it had set out about the Son with an equally feigned profession of religion, it added: “a perfect creature of God, but not as one of the creatures; a work, but not as the other works.” And after much else, in which confessions of the truth were inserted to overshadow the intention of heretical impiety, so as to defend, by the subtlety of clever interpretation, that he came to subsist from things that did not exist, it says: “And created and founded before the ages, he was not before he was born.” Finally, as though everything were now most strongly fortified for the defense of impiety, so that he might be understood neither as Son nor as God, it added: “For if the phrases ‘from him,’ and ‘from the womb,’ and ‘I came forth from the Father and have come’ are understood as meaning a part of him, of one substance, and as an extended emanation, then the Father will be composite, divisible, changeable, and a body, according to them; and, as far as lies with them, God who is without body will be subject to what follows from being a body.” And since our discourse against this exposition of most impious teaching will now be wholly from the Gospel, we thought it fitting to insert again in this sixth book the whole published statement of this heresy, though it was already written out in an earlier book: so that a fresh reading, and a comparison with the answer set beneath each point, may draw out the sense of the truth through the teachings of the Gospels and the apostles, even from the unwilling and contradicting. They say, then:

“We know one God, alone unmade, alone everlasting, alone without beginning, alone having immortality, alone best, alone powerful, creator of all, ordainer and disposer, unchangeable, immutable, just and best, God of the Law and the Prophets and the New Testament; that this God begot an only-begotten Son before all ages, through whom he made both the ages and all things; begotten not in appearance but in truth, having followed his will, immutable and unchangeable, a perfect creature of God, but not as one of the creatures; a work, but not as the other works; not, as Valentinus imagined, the offspring of the Father as an emanation; nor, as Mani set forth, the offspring as a part of the one substance of the Father; nor, as Sabellius, who divides the unity, said, that the Son is the same as the Father; nor, as Hieracas said, a lamp from a lamp, or a torch divided into two parts; nor one who existed before and was afterward born or created anew into a Son, as you yourself, most blessed pope, in the midst of the church and in the assembly, have often refuted those who bring in such things; but, as we have said, created by the will of God before times and ages, receiving life and being from the Father, and glories, the Father causing them to subsist with him. For the Father, in giving him the inheritance of all things, did not deprive himself of what he holds in himself without being made; for he is the source of all.

“Therefore there are three substances, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And God is the cause of all, wholly without beginning and solitary; but the Son, put forth by the Father apart from time, and created and founded before the ages, was not before he was born; but, born apart from time before all things, he alone came into being from the Father alone. For he is not eternal, or co-eternal, or unmade together with the Father, nor does he have being together with the Father, as some say, or as those say who bring in two unborn principles; but as the unity and principle of all, so God is before all. Therefore he is also before the Son, as we have learned from you too, when you preached in the midst of the church. Inasmuch, then, as he has from God his being, and glories, and life, and all things have been handed over to him, in this respect God is his principle. And he rules over him as his God, since he is before him. For if the phrases ‘from him,’ and ‘from the womb,’ and ‘I came forth from the Father and have come’ are understood as meaning a part of him, of one substance, and as an extended emanation, then the Father will be composite, divisible, changeable, and a body, according to them; and, as far as lies with them, God who is without body will be subject to what follows from being a body.”

Who does not sense in these words the slippery windings of a serpent's path, or fail to see the viper's knots in its twisted coils, within which the chief power of its poisonous mouth is enclosed by the gathered circle of its bent body? But when all is stretched out and unrolled, the whole venom of the hidden head will be laid open. For first the names of truth are pressed upon us, so that the poison of falsehood may enter. Good is in the mouth, so that evil may creep in from the heart. And in all this I nowhere hear them call the Son of God God; nowhere do I find the Son proclaimed in such a way that he is a son. The name of Son is pressed upon us so that the nature may be passed over in silence; the nature is taken away so that the name may be foreign to him. Other heresies are held up so that this heresy may lie about itself. One only God, alone true, is pressed upon us, so that it may not be left to the Son of God to be truly and properly what God is.

Although, then, in the earlier books we taught from the preaching of the Law and the Prophets about God and God, true God and true God, and that in the true God the Father and the true God the Son one true God is to be understood according to unity of nature, not union of person; yet the complete exposition of this faith must be given from the teaching of the Gospels and the apostles, so that the true Son of God may be understood to be God, not of a nature foreign to and different from the Father, but of the same divinity, existing through the truth of birth. And I do not think anyone can be so mad as either not to understand God's declarations about himself once known, or, having understood them, to wish them not understood, or to think they must be corrected by the opinion of human prudence. But before we begin to speak of the realities of the saving mysteries, so that the profession of heresy may not flatter itself in any respect by naming other heretics, the whole veil of this clever malice must be exposed: so that the very means by which the hidden poison covers itself may betray and reveal it, and the sense of the public conscience may come to understand the flattering venom.

The heretics, then, wishing the Son of God not to be from God, nor God born from God of and in the nature of God, after mentioning one God alone true without adding “Father,” so as to deny, by excluding the property of birth, that the Father and the Son are of one truth, said: “Not as Valentinus imagined the offspring of the Father as an emanation”: so that, under the appearance of the Valentinian heresy, by rejecting the name of emanation they might reject the birth of God from God. For Valentinus, inventing ridiculous and foul things, brought in, besides the chief God, a family of gods and numerous powers of aeons, and then asserted that our Lord Jesus Christ was put forth by the mystery of a hidden will. This empty emanation, sought out by the frenzy of a rash and foolish author, the gospel and apostolic faith of the church does not know. It knows nothing of Valentinus's Depth, and Silence, and thrice ten aeons; but it knows nothing other than one God the Father, from whom are all things, and one Lord, our Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, God born from God. But because God was born from God, and neither by his birth took from God being what God is, nor is himself not God in his birth; and because what he is as God did not begin, but was born from God; and because what is born seems, according to the sense of human nature, to be put forth, so that putting forth itself is thought to be birth: therefore an attempt was made, through the heresy of Valentinus, to exclude the name of emanation, so that the truth of the birth might not remain; since the understanding of emanation, by earthly opinion, would not be far from the nature of earthly birth. The slow and difficult understanding of human nature in divine things requires that we be reminded often of what we have said once: that examples from human comparison are not to be believed to do justice to the mysteries of divine power, but that the likeness of an earthly kind is brought in only to train the mind spiritually about heavenly things, so that by this step of our nature we may be carried forward to an understanding of the divine majesty. The birth of God is not to be judged by the emanations of human births. For where one is from one, and God is born from God, earthly birth brings only an understanding of what is meant; but the origin of those who are born, which includes intercourse, conception, time, and childbirth, does not serve as an example for comparison, since God born from God is to be understood as nothing else than born. We will treat the truth of the divine birth, according to the gospel and apostolic faith, in its place; meanwhile, the ingenuity of heretical art had to be shown, which, to abolish the truth of the birth, would extinguish the name of emanation.

The heresy keeps the same malicious fraud of its art in the rest, saying: “Nor as Mani set forth the offspring as a part of the one substance of the Father.” Emanation was denied above, so that birth might be denied; now too, under Mani's name, a portion of one substance is brought forward to be denied, so that God may not be believed to be from God. For Mani, with a frenzy that broke out in rejecting the Law and the Prophets, an avowed champion of the devil as far as he could be, and a worshipper of the sun who did not know it, preached that what was in the Virgin was a portion of the one substance, and wished that to be understood as the Son which, drawn off as some part of God's substance, appeared in the flesh. So, to take away both the birth of the only-begotten Son and the name of one substance, a portion of one substance in the Son's birth is held up: so that, because a birth asserted to be from a portion of one substance is profanely preached, first the birth itself might not exist, being condemned in Mani for professing a portion; then the name and faith of one substance might be taken away, because among heretics it went with a portion; and thereby he would not be God from God, because the property of the divine nature would not be in him. Why does impious fury feign mad anxieties under a false appearance of religion? The faith of the church condemns Mani, just as the preachers of heretical madness do. For it knows no portion in the Son; but it knows whole God from whole God; one from one; not cut off, but born; it knows that the birth of God is neither a diminution of the one begetting nor a weakness of the one born. If it knows this from itself, bring the charge of a rashly claimed knowledge; but if it learned it from its Lord, allow the one born the knowledge of his own birth. For it learned these things from the only-begotten God: that the Father and the Son are one, that the fullness of the deity is in the Son; and therefore it both hates the attribution of a portion of one substance to the Son, and, through the truth of the birth, venerates in the Son the property of true divinity. But, deferring a fuller completion of the answers to each point, let us run through the rest.

For there follows: “Nor as Sabellius, who divides the unity, said that the Son is the same as the Father.” Sabellius, believing thus, does not know the mysteries of the Gospels and the apostles. But this is not condemned in a heretic by the heretics in simple honesty. For, wishing nothing to be one between the Father and the Son, they reproach Sabellius with the crime of dividing the union: a division of the union which did not bring in a birth, but divided the same one in the Virgin. But for us, birth is in our confession; and, detesting union, we hold the unity of divinity: that is, that God from God are one in the kind of their nature, since what came into existence from God as God through the truth of birth subsists from no other source than God. And what remains from no other source than God must remain in the truth in which God is; and so they are one, since he who is God from God is neither something else himself, nor is what he is as God from elsewhere. The impiety of union in Sabellius is held up so that the religion of unity may be taken from the faith of the church. I will follow the other devices of the heretical mind, lest I be thought, with suspicions rather than true concerns, a malicious interpreter of another's simplicity; I will show, by the conclusion of the whole profession, to what end the preface of so crafty a speech was designed.

For there follows: “Nor as Hieracas, a lamp from a lamp, or a torch divided into two parts. Nor one who existed before and was afterward born or created anew into a Son.” Hieracas, not knowing the birth of the Only-begotten and not having attained the force of the gospel mysteries, preached two lights of one lamp, so that the twofold division of the wicks would imitate the substance of the Father and the Son, kindled into light from the oil of one vessel: as though there were an outer substance, like the oil in the lamp, containing the nature of both lights; or as though a torch, with the same papyrus woven through it, shone at both ends, the material in the middle putting forth both lights from itself. The error of human folly brought these things in, since they know what they know from themselves rather than from God. But because it is the profession of the true faith that God was born from God as light from light, which gives its nature from itself without loss to itself, so that it gives what it has and has what it has given, and what is born is what it is, since nothing other than what it is was born; and the birth received what was, and did not take away what it received; and both are one, since what is born is born from what is, and what is born is neither from elsewhere nor anything else, for it is light from light: so, to turn away the understanding of this faith, the torch or lamp of Hieracas was set up to bring the charge of confessing light from light, so that what was said impiously and has been condemned now and before might not be thought to be said religiously. Away, away with the most empty fear of the heretics; do not falsely claim to be protecting the church's faith with the pretense of an anxious assertion. With us there is nothing bodily, nothing lifeless in the things of God: what God is, is wholly God. There is nothing in him but power, life, light, blessedness, and spirit. That nature does not admit dull matter, nor does it consist of different parts in order to endure: God, as God, remains what he is, and, remaining God, begot God. They are not held together, like torch and torch, or wick and wick, by an outer nature. The birth of God from God, the Only-begotten, is not a series but an offspring; not a drawing-out but light from light. It is the unity of the nature of light, not an extension by connection.

And now, how great the heretical cunning, and how crafty the profession, in this: “Nor one who existed before and was afterward born or created anew into a Son.” God who was born from God was certainly not born from nothing, nor born from things that did not exist; his birth had a living nature. Nor was it the same God who already was who was born, but God was born from God who already was; and the birth had, in that very birth, the nature of its origin. If we speak from what is ours, we are presumptuous; but if we show that we have been taught by God to speak, the birth of God must be confessed according to God's teaching. It is this unity of nature in the Father and the Son, and this ineffable mystery of a living birth, that heretical fury tries to exclude when it says: “Not one who existed before and was afterward born or created anew into a Son.” For who will be so mad as to think that the Father ceased to be himself, so that the same one who had been was afterward born or created anew into a Son, and there was an abolition of God, followed by a birth out of that abolition, when the birth testifies that its author remains? Or who is so senseless as to admit that the Son came to subsist otherwise than by birth? Who, again, is so foolish as to dare to preach that God did not come into being from the fact that God is born? For it is not the abiding God who was born, but God was born from the abiding God, holding in himself, in the birth of the nature, the nature of the one begetting. And the birth of God, which came into being from God as God, holds not things that did not exist, but obtained, by the truth of being born, the things that were and are God's. So it was not he who was that was born; but God was born and came into being from and in the things that were God's. All this earlier speech of heretical deceit, then, prepared this road for its most impious teaching: that, intending to deny the only-begotten God, as though having first set out the reasoning of truth, it might preach him born from nothing rather than from God, referring his birth to the will to create out of things that did not exist.

Then, after much else, as though through an approach prepared for itself, it burst out to this, saying: “But the Son, put forth apart from time, and created and founded before the ages, was not before he was born.” The heretical speech balanced itself, as it thinks, both to confirm its impiety and to excuse itself from a charge, if the question were pressed, by saying, “he was not before he was born”: so that by “he was not before he was born” it might deny him the nature of a subsisting origin, and he would have begun to be from nothing, to whom no standing as existing before his birth was granted; and then, if this were judged an irreligious saying, a ready defense would be at hand: that he who already was could not be born, and that one who existed before would not have had the birth by which he came to be, since birth leads to this, that the one born comes to subsist. O fool and impious one, who would look for a birth in one who subsists without birth? Or how is one who is to be thought born, when birth is the nature of being born? But, striving craftily to deny the birth of the only-begotten God from God the Father, you wished to escape, through “he was not before he was born,” the fact that God, from whom the Son of God was born, was, and that the nature of God remained, from which the Son, God, subsists by birth. If, then, he was born from God, a birth from an abiding nature must be confessed; not that the God who was should be born, but that the birth of God from God who was should be understood.

But heretical heat does not contain its irreligious passions; and through saying “he was not before he was born,” laboring to make him born from things that did not exist, that is, not born from God the Father as God the Son by a true and perfect birth, at the very end of its whole exposition it burst out into the final and most profane ardor of its irreligious fury, saying: “For if the phrases ‘from him,’ and ‘from the womb,’ and ‘I came forth from the Father and have come’ are understood as meaning a part of him, of one substance, and as an extended emanation, then the Father will be composite, divisible, changeable, and a body, according to them; and, as far as lies with them, God who is without body will be subject to what follows from being a body.” It would be a heavy and very difficult task to defend the truth of religion against the impiety of falsehood, if impiety took counsel as wisely as it dares boldly. But it is well that the will to irreligion comes from a lack of wisdom. And therefore, while an answer to folly is easy, the correction of fools is difficult: because, first, they do not seek the reasoning of understanding, and then, when it is offered by one who understands, they do not grasp it. But if any are held in error by the fear of God and ignorance of understanding, not by a will to impiety through foolishness, I hope they will be inclined to correction, since the demonstration of the truth will completely expose the folly of impiety.

You said, fools, and you still say it today, not knowing how to be wise toward God: “For if ‘from him,’ and ‘from the womb,’ and ‘I came forth from the Father and have come’…” I ask you: was all this said by God, or not? It certainly was said; and since it was said by God about himself, it must be understood in no other way than as it was said. We will treat these sayings in their place, showing the force of each. Meanwhile I ask everyone's understanding what he thinks is meant when it is said “from him”: is it to be understood as from another, or from nothing, or is he to be believed to be that very one? He is not from another, because he is from him, that is, so that he may be God from no source other than God. He is not from nothing, because he is from him; for the nature from which the birth comes is shown. He is not the same one, because where it says “from him,” the birth of the son is referred to the father. Then, when “from the womb” is said, I ask whether he can be believed to have been born from nothing, when the truth of the birth is revealed through the names of bodily functions. For God, who does not consist of bodily members, when he spoke of the Son's generation, said, “From the womb before the morning star I begot you,” but, confirming from the truth of his divinity that ineffable birth of the only-begotten Son from himself, he spoke for the faith of understanding: so as to instruct, about his own divine things, the sense of human nature toward the knowledge of faith according to human nature; so that, when he says “from the womb,” it might be taught that his Only-begotten did not subsist as a creation from nothing, but by a natural birth from himself. Finally, as to what he said, “I came forth from the Father and have come,” did he leave any doubt that what he is as God is understood to be from no other source than the Father? For coming forth from the Father, he had neither another nature of birth nor none; but he testifies that he from whom he declares he came forth is his author. But my later discussion will show and explain these things.

Meanwhile, let us see with what human confidence men forbid us to understand things about God which they do not deny God said about himself. O most grievous disgrace of human folly and insolence, not only to accuse God's profession about himself by not believing it, but to condemn it by correcting it; to defile and attack with human teachings that ineffable secret of his nature and power, and to dare to say: “If the Son is from God, God is changeable and bodily, since he has put forth or extended from himself what he would have as a son!” Why are you anxious lest God be changeable? We confess the birth, we preach the Only-begotten, taught by God; you, so that the birth may not remain and the only-begotten God may not be in the faith of the church, set against it the nature of the unchangeable God, which can be neither extended nor stretched out. I would bring you, wretched error, examples even from the things of the world, of certain natures that are begotten, so that you would not think birth an extension, nor believe the natures of those born to be losses to those who beget, since many living souls are even begotten from the living without bodily intercourse: were it not wrong not to have believed God about himself, and judged the madness of utmost fury to take away authority for faith from him to whom you profess veneration for life. For if life is only through him, how is not faith in life through him? And how is faith in life in him who is held to be an untrustworthy witness about himself?

For you seize, most impious heretic, the birth of the Son for a will to create; so that he is not born from God, but came to subsist from a creation by the will of the one who created. And so with you he is not God, because, God remaining one, the Son does not hold in his birth the nature of his origin; but, being founded in another substance, he is, as only-begotten, more excellent than the other created and made things: yet he was brought into being so as to have the bringing into being of the creation granted to him, and did not bring with him from his generation the nature of God; and you call him born because he came to subsist from nothing; and you name him Son, not because he was born from God, but because he was created through God; for you remember that religious men too were held worthy by God of being called by this name; and you grant him the name of God on no other condition than that by which it was said, “I said, You are gods, and all sons of the Most High,” so that he enjoys the condescension of the one who names him in the title, not the truth of nature in the name; and so with you he is son by adoption, god by naming, only-begotten by privilege, firstborn by order, wholly creation, from no one God; because his generation is not a natural birth from God, but the substance of a creature.

And first, having begged your pardon for my most impatient grief, allow me to speak before you, almighty God, and permit me, earth and ashes as I am, yet bound by devotion to your love, to speak freely in these words. I, unhappy one, was nothing before, without the sense of life, without understanding of myself; I lacked what I am. But your mercy is the cause of my living; and I do not doubt that you, being good, ordained that my being born should be good for me. For you, who have no need of me, would not have begun me as an origin of evil. But when you had given me life with a soul and also made me understand reason, you taught me to know you, as I think, by the sacred books given through your servants Moses and the prophets, in which you revealed that you are not to be worshipped in your solitude. I came to know there God with you, not another in nature, but one in the mystery of your substance. I came to know you, God, in God, not confused by mingling, but by the power of nature, since what you are as God was in him who is from you: not so that you were the same and were in him, but the truth of a perfect birth taught that you are in him who is from you. This the voices of the Gospels and the apostles tell me again, and the words set down in the books from the sacred mouth of your Only-begotten testify: that your Son, the only-begotten God from you the unbegotten God, was born a man from the Virgin for the mystery of my salvation; in whom the truth of his generation from you would contain you, and whom the nature of his birth from you, who abide in him, would keep in you.

Into what depth without hope of return, I pray, have you plunged me? For I have so learned these things, so believed them, and so hold them with the faith of a settled mind, that I can neither believe otherwise nor wish to. Why have you deceived me, wretched as I am, about yourself, and destroyed my unhappy flesh and soul with a teaching that makes me know what is foreign to you? After the dividing of the Red Sea, the glory of Moses coming down from the mountain deceived me, as he beheld with you all the secrets of heavenly mysteries. I believed him about you, in your own words. David, found to be after your own heart, destroyed me; and Solomon, worthy of the gift of divine wisdom; and Isaiah, preaching after he saw the Lord of hosts; and Jeremiah, sanctified in the womb before he was formed, prophet for uprooting and planting nations; and Ezekiel, witness of the mystery of the resurrection; and Daniel, the man of desires, who knew the times; and the consecrated choir of the prophets; and the whole mystery of gospel preaching: Matthew, chosen from a tax collector to be an apostle; and John, worthy, from his close friendship with the Lord, of the revelation of heavenly mysteries; and blessed Simon, who after his confession of the mystery was laid beneath the building of the church and received the keys of the heavenly kingdom; and all the rest who preached by the Holy Spirit; and Paul, from persecutor an apostle, your chosen vessel, living in the depth of the sea, a man in the third heaven, in paradise before his martyrdom, and in his martyrdom the complete libation of a perfect faith.