On the Trinity 6.36–7.2

The faith of the Gospels and the apostles is not to have believed the Son of God by name rather than by nature. For if this naming is one of adoption, and he is not the Son because he came forth from God, I ask from where blessed Simon Bar-Jona confessed, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God”? Or is it because all have the power, through the mystery of regeneration, to be born as sons of God? If Christ is Son of God by this kind of naming, I ask what it was that flesh and blood did not reveal to Peter, but the Father who is in heaven? What merit is there in a general profession? Or what glory of revelation is there in public knowledge? If he is Son by adoption, from where is this blessed confession in Peter, offering to the Son what is common to the saints? But apostolic faith reaches beyond human understanding. He had often heard, “He who receives you receives me; and he who receives me receives him who sent me.” He already knew, then, that he was sent; and he had heard the one he knew was sent professing, “All things have been handed over to me by the Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, nor does anyone know the Father except the Son.” What is it that the Father now reveals to Peter, which receives the glory of a blessed confession? Did he not know the names of Father and Son? Yet he had often heard them. But he speaks what no human voice had yet uttered: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” For although, abiding in the body, he had professed himself Son of God, yet apostolic faith now for the first time recognized the nature of divinity in him. Nor was praise given to Peter only for the honor he confessed, but for recognizing the mystery: because he confessed not only the Christ, but the Christ, the Son of God. For to confess his honor it would have been enough to say, “You are the Christ.” But it would have been empty for him to confess the Christ unless he confessed the Son of God. For in saying “You are,” he unfolded the force and property of natural truth. And the Father, by saying “This is my Son,” revealed to Peter that he should say, “You are the Son of God”: for in “This is” there is the sign of the one revealing, and in the answer “You are” the recognition of the one confessing. On this rock of confession, then, is the building of the church. But the sense of flesh and blood does not reveal the understanding of this confession. This is the mystery of divine revelation: not only to call Christ the Son of God, but to believe it. Or was it a naming rather than a nature that was revealed to Peter? If a naming, he had already often heard it from the Lord, who confessed himself the Son of God. In what, then, is the glory of revelation? Of the nature, surely, not of the name, since the profession of the name had already been frequent.

This faith is the foundation of the church; through this faith the gates of hell are powerless against her. This faith holds the keys of the heavenly kingdom. What this faith has loosed or bound on earth is both bound and loosed in heaven. This faith is the gift of the Father's revelation: not to falsely call Christ a creature from nothing, but to confess him as the Son of God according to the nature of what is proper to him. O impious frenzy of wretched folly, not understanding the martyr of a blessed old age and of this faith, Peter the martyr, for whom the Father was asked that his faith might not fail in temptation; who, after repeating the profession of love for God that was asked of him, grieved that he was tested yet again by a third question, as though doubtful and uncertain; and who therefore, after this third cleansing of his weaknesses by testing, was worthy to hear three times from the Lord, “Feed my sheep”; who, while all the apostles were silent, understanding the Son of God by the Father's revelation beyond the measure of human weakness, earned surpassing glory by the confession of his blessed faith! Into what necessity of interpreting his words are we now led? He confessed Christ the Son of God; but you today, lying priesthood of a new apostolate, press upon me Christ as a creature from nothing. What violence do you do to glorious words? He is blessed for this, that he confessed the Son of God. This is the Father's revelation, this the foundation of the church, this the security of eternity. From this the church has the keys of the kingdom of heaven; from this its earthly judgments are heavenly judgments. He learned by revelation the mystery hidden from the ages, spoke the faith, declared the nature, confessed the Son of God. Whoever denies this by confessing rather a creature must first deny Peter's apostleship, faith, blessedness, priesthood, and martyrdom; and after that let him understand that he is a stranger to Christ, since Peter earned these things by confessing the Son.

Or do you think, wretched heretic, whoever you are today, that Peter would have been more blessed if he had said: “You are the Christ, the perfect creature of God, a work surpassing all works, who began to be from nothing, and through the goodness of God, who alone is good, earned the name of son by adoption, and who were not born from God”? And I ask you what he would have heard on saying this, he who, when he answered on hearing of the passion, “Be merciful to yourself, Lord; this shall not be,” heard it said to him: “Get behind me, Satan; you are a stumbling block to me”? Yet human ignorance did not make Peter guilty of a crime, for the Father had not yet revealed to him the whole mystery of the passion; but a small faith received a sentence of condemnation. Why, then, did the Father not reveal to Peter this faith of confession, namely creation and adoption? God begrudged it to Peter, I suppose, putting it off to later times and keeping it now for you new preachers. Let there indeed be another faith, if there are other keys of the kingdom of heaven. Let there be another faith, if there is to be another church, against which the gates of hell will not prevail. Let there be another faith, if there will be another apostolate, binding and loosing in heaven what is bound and loosed by it on earth. Let there be another faith, if another Christ, Son of God, will be preached besides the one who is. But if this faith alone, which confessed Christ the Son of God, earned in Peter the glory of all blessings, then the faith that will confess him rather as a creature from nothing, not having obtained the keys of the kingdom of heaven and being placed outside apostolic faith and power, must be neither the church's nor Christ's.

Let us bring forward, then, all the professions of apostolic faith in which, confessing the Son of God, they confess in him not the name of adoption but the property of nature, and testify not to the baseness of creation in him but to the glory of birth. Let John speak, who remains thus until the Lord's coming, left behind and set apart under the mystery of the divine will, since it is said not that he will not die, but that he will remain. Let him speak, then, in his own voice, as he is accustomed: “No one has ever seen God, except the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father.” Faith in the nature did not seem to him sufficiently set out by the name of Son, unless the force of what is proper were added from outside by a word signifying exception. For by naming him not only Son but also Only-begotten, he cut away completely any suspicion of adoption, since the nature of the Only-begotten guarantees the truth of the name.

I do not yet ask what “who is in the bosom of the Father” means; that question has its own order. I ask what the meaning of “only-begotten” requires. And let us see whether it is what you profess him to be, that is, a perfect creature of God; so that “perfect” would belong to “only-begotten,” and “creature” would refer to “son.” But John called the only-begotten Son God, not a perfect creature. He was not unaware of these names of blasphemy, saying, “who is in the bosom of the Father,” and hearing from his Lord: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.” God, loving the world, gave this testimony of his love for it, that he gave his only-begotten Son. If the proof of love lies in having provided a creature for creatures, having given for the world what belongs to the world, and having offered, to redeem things brought into being from nothing, one who came into being from nothing, then a cheap and contemptible loss does not make a faith of great merit. But it is precious things that commend love, and great things are valued by great. God, loving the world, gave a Son not adopted but his own, his only-begotten. Here is what is proper, here is birth, here is truth; not creation, not adoption, not falsehood. This is the proof of love and charity: to have given for the world's salvation a Son who is both his own and only-begotten.

I pass over all the titles given to the Son. Passing over is no loss when choice comes from abundance. The success of an undertaking always has a cause, and every work has a clear necessity for the task undertaken. In writing the Gospel, he surely had to give the reason for writing; and let us see what he showed it to be, when he says: “But these things are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.” He gave no other reason for writing the Gospel than that all might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. If it is enough for salvation to believe in Christ, why did he add “the Son of God”? But if faith in Christ is only this, to have believed not merely Christ but Christ the Son of God, then the name of Son in Christ, the only-begotten God, which is proper to him for salvation, does not come from the custom of adoption. If, then, salvation lies in confessing the name, I ask why there is no truth in the name. And if there is truth in the name, by what authority will he be called a creation, when it is not the confession of a creation but of a Son that will bring salvation?

This, then, is true salvation, this the merit of perfect faith: to have believed that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. For there is no love in us toward God the Father except through faith in the Son. And let us hear him speaking in his letter: “Everyone who loves the Father loves him who was born from him.” What, I ask, is it to be born from him? Is it the same as to be created through him? Or why does the evangelist lie, saying that he was born from him whom the heretic teaches rather to have been created through him? And let us all hear what this teacher says. For it is said: “This is the antichrist, who denies the Father and the Son.” What are you doing, champion of a creature, new maker of Christ from things that did not exist? If you hold the profession, recognize the name of the one who professes it. Or when you preach Father and Son as Creator and creature, do you think you can, by imitating the words of the names, avoid being understood to be an antichrist? If in your faith he is Father by nature and Son by nature, I am a slanderer, bringing against you the reproach of a name not yours. But if everything is feigned, and named rather than proper, learn from the apostle the surname of your faith, and hear what faith in the Son believed is. For there follows: “He who denies the Son does not have the Father either; he who confesses the Son has both the Son and the Father.” He who denies the Son lacks the Father; he who confesses and has the Son has the Father. I ask what place adoptive names have here. Is not this whole matter one of nature? And hear how much it is.

For he says: “For we know that the Son of God has come, and became flesh for us, and suffered, and rising from the dead took us to himself, and gave us the best understanding, that we may understand the true one and be in his true Son Jesus Christ: he is the true one, and eternal life, and our resurrection.” O unhappy understanding, lacking the Spirit of God and advancing toward the spirit and name of antichrist, not knowing that the Son of God came for the mystery of our salvation (and so unworthy of the sense of this best understanding), having confessed that Jesus Christ is a creature with an adoptive name rather than the true Son of God: by what secrets of hidden mysteries were you taught this? Or who today is the new author of this knowledge of yours? Did the Lord show it to you in secret when you reclined on his breast in the intimacy of love? Or, following alone to the cross, among the other commands to take Mary as your mother, did you learn this too in that special testimony of love toward you? Or did you obtain it running to the tomb before Peter? Or among the assemblies of angels and the unbreakable bonds of the sealed books, the manifold powers of heavenly signs, and the everlasting hymns of new and incomprehensible songs, was this pious teaching revealed to you by the Lamb as guide: that the Father is not father, the Son not son, the nature not nature, the truth not truth? For with you all these are changed into falsehoods. The apostle, granted the best understanding, calls him the true Son of God; you affirm creation, preach adoption, deny birth. And since this true Son of God is for us eternal life and resurrection, there is neither eternal life nor resurrection for one to whom he is not true. So says John, the disciple loved by the Lord.

But the apostle who became, from persecutor, the chosen vessel preached nothing unlike these things. For which of his words is not under the confession of the Son? Which letter did not begin from the mystery of this truth? In which name is there no signification of what is proper? For when it is said: “We were reconciled to God through the death of his Son”; and again: “God sent his Son in the likeness of sinful flesh”; and again: “God is faithful, through whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son”: what room is left here for the theft of the heretics? He is his own Son, his Son; not his adoption, not his creature. The name speaks the nature, the property declares the truth, the confession testifies to the faith: I do not understand what could be added to the nature of a son. For that he is the Son of him who is believed to be Father: the chosen vessel did not speak uncertainly or weakly, nor did the teacher of the nations and apostle of Christ leave the error of an ambiguous teaching. He knows who are sons by adoption, and who have earned by faith to be and be called this. For he says: “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery again to fear, but you received the spirit of adoption, in which we cry, Abba, Father.” This name belongs to our faith through the mystery of regeneration, and our profession gives us adoption. For works done according to the Spirit of God earn the name of sons of God; and “Abba, Father” is cried by us rather than remaining ours from the property of nature; for the act of the voice is outside the property of nature, and to be called and to be are not the same.

But let us understand what the Apostle's faith about the Son of God is. For although in all the speech he had for the teaching of the church he never spoke of the Father without confessing the Son, yet, to show the truth of this name with as much meaning as human speech could, he says: “What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but handed him over for us.” Will there still be a naming by adoption in him in whom there is the name of what is proper? For the Apostle, wishing to show God's love toward us, so that the greatness of God's love might be known by a kind of comparison, taught that God did not spare his own Son: certainly not an adopted one for those to be adopted, nor a creature for creatures, but his own for strangers, his proper Son for those to be named sons with him. Seek the force of the saying, so that you may understand the greatness of the love. Weigh what “proper” is, so that you may not be ignorant of the truth. For here the Apostle says “own Son,” though elsewhere he had often said “his Son” or “the Son of him.” And though many manuscripts, through the simple understanding of translators, have in this place “his Son” instead of “his own Son,” yet the Greek, the language in which the Apostle spoke, here names him “own” rather than “his.” And although in common understanding there is not much difference between “own” and “his,” yet the Apostle, though in other sayings he had spoken of “his Son,” which in Greek is τὸν ἑαυτοῦ υἱόν, in this place, where he says ὅς γε τοῦ ἰδίου υἱοῦ, “who did not spare his own Son,” expressed the truth of the nature pointedly: so that he who had shown above many sons through the spirit of adoption should now show the only-begotten God as the Son who is his own.

This is not a human error, nor is there a fault of ignorance in denying the Son of God, where what is denied cannot be unknown. The Son of God is called a creature subsisting from nothing. If neither the Father said this, nor the Son testified it, nor the Apostle preached it, yet to dare to say it is not merely not to know Christ but to hate him. For when the Father says of his Son, “This is,” and the Son says of himself, “He who speaks with you is he,” and Peter confesses, “You are,” and John testifies, “This is the true one,” and Paul does not cease to preach of the “own” Son, I understand nothing else but a hatred that denies, where the error of inexperience is no excuse for the crime. He who will afterward speak in the Antichrist is meanwhile speaking these things, speaking plainly through the prophets and forerunners of his coming, disturbing the saving confession of faith with these new assaults: first to tear from our consciousness, since we believe so, the understanding of a natural Son; then to shut out even the remaining name, which will be adoptive. For with those in whose view Christ is a creature, the Antichrist himself must be Christ; since a creature does not have the property of a son, and that one will falsely claim to be the Son of God; and so by those who now deny that this one is the Son of God, that one will then be believed to be Christ.

What hopes, I ask, empty fury, do you seek? And with what confidence in your salvation do you contend with blasphemous mouth that Christ is a creature rather than a Son? You ought to have known and held the mystery of this faith from the Gospels. For though the Lord can do all things, yet in each of those who prayed for the effect of his working he willed there to be the merit of confession. Not that the confession of the one praying added power to him who is the Power of God; but to earn this was the reward of faith. For when he asked Martha, who was pleading for Lazarus, whether she did not believe that those who believed in him would never die, she spoke out the faith of her heart in reply, saying: “Yes, Lord, I have believed that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who have come into this world.” This confession is eternity, and this faith does not die. Martha, begging for her brother's life, when asked whether she believed so, believed so. What life, I ask, or from whom, does the one who denies this expect, when to believe so is the only life? For great is the mystery of this faith, and the blessedness of this confession is perfect.

The Lord had granted sight to a man blind from birth, and the Lord of nature had removed a loss of nature. And because this blind man had been born for the glory of God, so that the work of God might be understood in the work of Christ, no faith of confession was awaited from him; but he who did not know the author of so great a gift in receiving his eyes earned this afterward, to learn the faith. For the removal of blindness did not bring eternal life. Therefore the Lord asks him, already healed and cast out of the synagogue: “Do you believe in the Son of God?” So that he might not think it a loss to be without the synagogue, since this faith, once confessed, would give back to him immortality. And when he, still uncertain, had answered, “Who is he, Lord, that I may believe in him?” the Lord, not wishing the ignorance of the man to remain, whom after the recovery of his eyes he was rewarding with the understanding of so great a faith, said: “You have seen him, and he who speaks with you is he.” Does the Lord ask of this man, as of others who prayed for healing, a confession of faith to earn health? Certainly not. For he spoke these things to the blind man already seeing; but only so that he might answer, “I believe, Lord”; because the faith of the answer would bring not the healing of blindness, but life. And let us examine carefully the force of this saying. The Lord asks: “Do you believe in the Son of God?” If any confession of Christ whatever were the completion of faith, it would have been said, “Do you believe in Christ?” But because almost all heretics would have this name in their mouths, confessing Christ and yet denying the Son, what is proper to Christ is required for faith, namely, that one believe in the Son of God. But what does it profit to have believed in the Son of God, if one believes in a creature, since faith in Christ is required of us not as in a creature of God but as in the Son?

Or did the demons not know the proper meaning of this name? It is fitting that the heretics be refuted no longer by apostolic teaching but by the mouth of demons. For they cry out, and often cry out: “What have I to do with you, Jesus, Son of the most high God?” The truth drew out a confession from the unwilling, and the pain of obeying testifies to the power of his nature. They are conquered by power when they leave bodies long possessed; they pay honor when they confess his nature. Christ meanwhile testifies, by work and by name, that he is the Son of God. Where among these voices of confessing demons, heretic, do you find the name of a creature and the indulgence of adoption?

Learn what Christ is at least from those who do not know him, so that the very confession forced from the ignorant may convict your impiety. For though the Jews did not know Christ in the body, they nevertheless knew that he who was the Christ was the Son of God; when they were using false witnesses against him, without any assertion of truth, the priest asks him thus: “Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?” Not knowing the mystery, they are yet not ignorant of the nature. They do not ask whether the Christ is the Son of God, but whether this man is the Christ, the Son of God. The error is about the man, not about the Son of God. For there is no doubt that the Christ is the Son of God; and so, when it is asked whether this man is he, it is still not denied that the Christ is the Son of God. And with what faith, I ask, do you deny what not even those who do not know deny? For since perfect knowledge is to know that Christ the Son of God, abiding before the ages, was also born of the Virgin, even those who do not know that he was born of Mary nevertheless know that he is the Son of God. And see into what fellowship with Jewish impiety you have mixed yourself by denying the Son of God. For they testify what reason they brought for condemning him, saying: “And according to the law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God.” Is not this also the reproach of your impious voice, why he calls himself Son, whom you assert to be a creature? He, by confessing himself the Son of God, is judged guilty of death by them; you, by denying that he is the Son of God, what judgment, I ask, do you pass? For his profession displeases you as it did the Jews. I ask whether you remain of a different verdict from those from whom you do not differ in will. For with the same impiety you deny that he is the Son of God. Yet their crime is less, in that they do not know. For they do not know that Christ is from Mary, but they do not doubt that the Christ is the Son of God. You, because you cannot be ignorant that Christ is from Mary, nevertheless do not preach that Christ is the Son of God. For them, in what they do not know, salvation can still be safe if they believe; for you all ways to salvation are now shut, since you deny what you can no longer be ignorant of. For you are not ignorant that he is the Son of God, so much so that you grant the name of adoption, so as to call falsely a creature named “son” with others. Taking away the nature as far as you can, you would take away the name as well if you were allowed. But since that is not allowed, you do not leave the nature to the name, so that what is called a son may not be the true Son of God.

You had, in the confession of those for whom, when the wind raged and the sea was troubled, calm was restored at the command of his word, a reason for you too to confess the true Son of God and to earn it with their words: “Truly he is the Son of God.” But a raging spirit drags you into the shipwreck of life, and a storm, pressing on the movements of your mind as on a stormy sea, masters you.

If this faith of the sailors seems to you uncertain because it will be thought to be that of the apostles, to me, though it offers less to wonder at, it brings more authority. But take also the faith of the Gentiles in him; for hear a soldier of the Roman cohort, subdued to faith amid the harsh guard of the cross. For the centurion, seeing the works of so great a power, says: “Truly this was the Son of God.” This is testified, after he gave up his spirit, by the torn veil of the temple, the shaken earth, the split rocks, the opened tombs, and the dead rising; and a man of Gentile unbelief confesses it: he recognizes the nature of power in the deeds, he professes the truth of the nature in the name. So great is the reasoning of truth and so great the force of faith that the compulsion of the truth overcomes the will, and not even one of those who had crucified him denied that Christ, the Lord of eternal glory, is truly the Son of God.

This seventh book is being written by us against the mad rashness of the new heresy: later than the others before it in number, but first, or greatest, for understanding the mystery of perfect faith. We are not unaware how difficult and steep is the road of gospel teaching that we are climbing. And though we are called back from it by the trembling of a mind conscious of its weakness, yet, driven by the heat of faith, stirred by the fury of the heretics, and troubled by the danger of the ignorant, we cannot be silent about what we do not dare to speak: subject to fear of both dangers, lest either our silence or our preaching be guilty of deserting the truth. For heretical subtlety has surrounded itself with incredible arts of a corrupted mind: first to feign religion, then to deceive with words the security of all simple ears, further to fit itself to the wisdom of the world, and finally to turn away the understanding of the truth under the appearance of a reasoning set forth. For by declaring one God, it feigned piety; by professing again the Son of God, it deceived its hearers in the name; by saying also that he was not before he was born, it satisfied the wisdom of the world; and by confessing God unchangeable and incorporeal, it excluded, by the display of a crafty reasoning, the birth of God from God: using our teachings against us, and fighting with the church's faith against the church's faith, preparing against us the most grievous danger either of answering or of silence, while through things that are not denied it preaches things that are denied.

And indeed we remember that in all the earlier books we warned our readers, as they examined the whole published blasphemy, to notice that its only labor was that our Lord Jesus Christ should be believed to be neither Son of God nor God, since, while names are granted him only by a kind of adoption, the nature both of God and of Son is denied him: since God is affirmed to be unchangeable and incorporeal, as indeed he is, for this reason, that the Son may not be born from God; and God the Father is the one God in their confession only so that Christ may not be God in our faith; for an incorporeal nature, they say, does not admit the understanding of a birth, and one God alone in confession dissolves for us the faith of God from God. But in the earlier books we taught from the Law and the Prophets against this deceitful and useless preaching of theirs, and kept a form of answer which, preaching God from God and professing one true God, neither fell short into the union of one true God nor went beyond into faith in another God; since in our confession God is neither solitary nor two. And meanwhile, neither denying nor confessing a mere one, the completeness of faith has been preserved, since what they are as one is referred to both, and yet each is not the one. Intending, then, to complete this indissoluble mystery of perfect faith from the teachings of the Gospels and apostles, our first duty was simply to make known to our hearers that the Son of God has the subsisting nature of a true birth, and to make plain that the Son is neither from elsewhere nor from nothing, but from God. And since, according to what was set out in the previous book, there can be no doubt that, the name of adoption being set aside, he is true Son by the truth of birth, we now bring forward from the Gospels also that, because he is true Son, he may be known to be true God as well: for he will be neither true Son unless he is also true God, nor true God unless he is also true Son.