On the Trinity 8.50–9.11

He is, then, the firstborn of all creation, because in him all things were created. And so that no one should dare not to refer to him the fact that all things were created in him, he says: "All things were founded through him and in him, and he is before all, and all things hold together in him." All things, then, hold together in him who is before all things and in whom all things are. These words concern the beginnings of creatures. But on account of the dispensation of our body he says: "And he is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things he himself might hold the first place; because in him it pleased all the fullness to dwell, and through him all things to be reconciled to him." The apostle has set bodily operations alongside the spiritual mysteries. For he who is the image of the invisible God is also the head of the body, the church; and he who is the firstborn of all creation is also the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that in all things he may hold the first place, since he who is the image of God is a body for us; since he who is the firstborn of creation is also the firstborn into eternity; so that, as spiritual things owe it to him that they endure, being created in the firstborn, human things too may owe it to him that they are reborn eternal in the firstborn from the dead. For he is the beginning, who, being Son, is image; being image, is of God. He is also the firstborn of all creation, containing in himself the beginning of the universe. And again he is the head of the body, the church, and the firstborn from the dead, so that in all things he may hold the first place. And because all things hold together in him, the fullness well pleasing stands in him, since in him, through him, all things are reconciled to him, in whom, through him, all things were created in him.

Do you now perceive what it is to be the image of God? It is surely that all things are created in him through him. Since all things are created in him, understand also that he whose image he is creates all things in him. And since what is created in him is created through him, recognize also that in him who is the image the nature of him whose image he is is present. For he creates through himself what is created in him, just as all things are reconciled in him through him. Since they are reconciled in him, grasp the nature of the Father's unity in him, reconciling all things to himself in him. Since all things are reconciled through him, understand that he reconciles to the Father in himself all that he reconciled through himself. For the same apostle says: "But all things are from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; since God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself." Compare with these the whole mystery of the gospel faith. He who is seen in the one seen, who works in the one working, who speaks in the one speaking, the same reconciles in the one reconciling. And therefore reconciliation is in him and through him, because the Father, abiding in him through an undifferenced nature, was himself restoring the world to himself in reconciliation through him and in him.

Caring for human weakness, then, God did not teach the faith by an uncertain bareness of words. For although the authority of the Lord's word alone would have imposed the necessity of believing, he still trained our sense through the understanding of a reason set forth, so that we might know what he had said, "I and the Father are one," through the very cause of the unity explained. For in saying that he speaks through the one speaking, works through the one working, judges through the one judging, is seen through the one seen, reconciles through the one reconciling, and abides in him who abides in him, I ask what other, more fitting language he could have used in his explanation to the sense of our understanding, so that they might be understood to be one, than this, by which, through the truth of birth and the unity of nature, whatever the Son did and said, the Father spoke and did in the Son? This, then, does not belong to a nature foreign to itself, nor to one acquired as God through creation, nor to one born as God from a portion of God, but to a divinity begotten by a perfect birth as perfect God, whose natural confidence of consciousness it is to say: "I in the Father, and the Father in me," and again: "All that is the Father's is mine." For nothing of God is lacking to him, by whose working, speaking, and being seen God works, speaks, and is seen. There are not two in the working, speaking, or being seen of one. Nor is God solitary, who in God working, speaking, and seen has worked, spoken, and been seen as God. This the church understands, this the synagogue does not believe, this philosophy does not grasp: that one from one, whole from whole, God and Son, neither by birth took from the Father what is whole, nor in being born failed to hold this whole along with him. And whoever is held in this folly of unbelief is a follower either of the Jews or of the Gentiles.

But so that you may understand the Lord's saying, "All that is the Father's is mine," learn the teaching and faith of the apostle, who says: "See that no one leads you astray through philosophy and empty deceit according to the tradition of men, according to the elements of the world, and not according to Christ; because in him dwells all the fullness of divinity bodily." He is of the world, savours the teachings of men, and is the prey of philosophy, whoever does not know Christ as true God, whoever is ignorant of the fullness of divinity in him. The human mind savours only what it understands, and the world believes only what it can, reckoning possible, according to the natures of the elements, only what it sees or does. For the elements of the world came to be from nothing; but Christ does not endure from things that did not exist, nor did he begin at an origin; he took an eternal origin from an origin. The elements of the world are either lifeless or have advanced to life; but Christ is life, born from the living God into living God. The elements of the world were established by God and are not God; Christ, God from God, is himself wholly this which God is. The elements of the world, since they are within, cannot stand out from themselves so as not to be within; Christ, having God in himself under a mystery, is in God. The elements of the world, when they beget from themselves offspring of their kind into life, provide from themselves the beginnings of birth through bodily passions, but they are not themselves alive in those born; but all the fullness of divinity is in Christ bodily.

And I ask: whose fullness of divinity is in him? If it is not the Father's, what other God, you deceitful preacher of one God, do you impose on me, whose fullness of divinity dwells in Christ? But if it is the Father's, explain how this fullness dwells in him bodily. For if you believe the Father is in the Son in a bodily manner, the Father dwelling in the Son will not exist in himself. But if, as is rather the case, the divinity abiding in him bodily signifies the truth of the nature in him of God from God, since God is in him not by condescension or by will but by generation, true and whole, abiding in bodily fullness according to himself; since what he himself is has also been born, through the birth of God, into God; and since there is nothing different or diverse in God from what dwells bodily in Christ, and whatever dwells bodily is that very thing according to the fullness of divinity: why do you follow human things? Why do you cling to the teachings of empty deceits? Why do you offer me unanimity, concord, a creature? The fullness of divinity is in Christ bodily.

The apostle kept the law of his faith in this also, teaching that the fullness of divinity dwells in Christ bodily, so that the language of faith should not fall into an impious union, nor irreligious madness break out into the notion of another nature. For the fullness of divinity dwelling in Christ bodily is neither single nor separable, since the bodily fullness does not allow itself to be distinguished from the bodily fullness, nor can the indwelling divinity be understood to be the very dwelling-place of divinity. And so Christ is such that the fullness of divinity is in Christ bodily; and the fullness of divinity is in Christ bodily in such a way that the fullness dwelling in him is understood to be nothing other than Christ. Steal whatever openings in the words you like, and rouse the stings of your irreligious wit. At least make up a lie about whose fullness of divinity dwells in Christ bodily. For there is Christ, and there is also the fullness of divinity dwelling in him bodily.

And if you ask what a bodily dwelling is, understand what it is to speak in the one speaking, to be seen in the one seen, to work in the one working, God in God, whole from whole, one from one; and so recognize the bodily fullness of divinity. And whose fullness of divinity this is, dwelling bodily, remember that the apostle does not keep silent, when he says: "For his invisible things, from the founding of the world, are understood and clearly seen through the things that are made, his eternal power also and divinity." His divinity, then, is bodily in Christ, not in part but whole; it is not a portion but the fullness; abiding bodily in such a way that they are one; one in such a way that God does not differ from God; God undifferenced from God in such a way that a perfect birth has produced perfect God; and the perfect birth so subsists that in God born from God the fullness of divinity dwells bodily.

In the preceding book we treated of the undifferenced nature of God the Father and God the Son, and showed that the saying "I and the Father are one" does not lead to a solitary God but to the unity of a divinity undivided according to generation, since God was born from nowhere else than from God, and God from God cannot but be what God is. Having run through testimonies of the divine and apostolic sayings, if not all, yet enough for understanding, by which the inseparable nature and power of the Father and the Son was taught, we came to this passage of the apostolic faith, where he says: "See that no one leads you astray through philosophy and empty deceit according to the tradition of men, according to the elements of the world, and not according to Christ; because in him dwells all the fullness of divinity bodily." In it we taught that, through the fullness of divinity dwelling bodily in him, he is shown to be true and perfect God and of the Father's nature, so that the indwelling fullness was understood to signify neither a different one nor a single one: since the bodily dwelling of the incorporeal God taught the property of natural unity in God who had come to subsist from God, and God dwelling in Christ, being his indweller, showed the birth of Christ who subsists. By this, I think, more than enough answer has been given to the impiety of those who referred the Lord's sayings, "He who has seen me has seen the Father also," and "The Father in me and I in the Father," and "I and the Father are one," and "All that is the Father's is mine," to a unity and concord of will; so that, while belief in the saying remained, the false religion of a deceitful teaching might corrupt the understanding of the saying; and, since agreement of wills could not be denied in those in whom unity of nature is proclaimed, a fellowship of concord alone might be believed in order to abolish the unity that is according to birth. But when the blessed apostle, after many unambiguous proclamations of the natural truth, taught the fullness of divinity dwelling bodily in Christ, every assertion of impious rashness was cut off, since the bodily dwelling of the incorporeal divinity brought about a natural unity: so that the facts that the Son is not alone but the Father abides in him, and not only abides but works and speaks, and not only works and speaks but is seen, are not nominal but real; since through the mystery of birth he has in himself power from power, might from might, and nature from nature, holding by birth what is his own, and bearing forth from himself through the image what is in himself, being both the image and the truth of the author; because a perfect birth provides a perfect image, and the fullness of divinity dwelling bodily holds a natural truth.

And although these things are as they are, because natural God from God can only be in that nature of his birth by which he is God, and the undifferenced unity of the living nature is inseparable from itself under the birth of the living nature, yet the heretics creep in through the saving confession of the gospel faith to destroy the truth, so as to take from the Son his natural unity, while they arrange sayings spoken in one way and for one purpose to be understood in another way and for another purpose. Denying the Son of God, they use the authority of his saying: "Why do you call me good? No one is good but one, God"; so that, because his profession spoke of one God, whatever else is afterwards called by the name of God no longer abides in the nature of God, because God is one. And so that his being called God himself may be by naming rather than in truth, they try to confirm it from his saying: "And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God." And so that he may be outside the property of true God, they add: "The Son can do nothing of himself except what he sees the Father doing." They try this also: "The Father is greater than I." Finally, as though with an unanswerable denial of his divinity, they boast that they have overthrown the church's faith when they read again: "But of that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone." For a nature seems not to be made equal through birth if it differs through the necessity of ignorance; and the Father by knowing and the Son by not knowing would show an unlikeness of divinity, since God ought to be ignorant of nothing, and one who is ignorant is not to be compared with one who knows. But all these things, neither understanding them by reason, nor distinguishing them by times, nor grasping them by the gospel mysteries, nor perceiving them by the force of the sayings, they speak against the nature of divinity with foolish and unlearned madness, quoting only these bare words to fill the ears of the ignorant, keeping silent either about how they are resolved or about their causes; whereas the understanding of sayings is to be sought either from what precedes or from what follows.

Before giving the reason for these sayings mentioned above from the very professions of the Gospels or the apostles, we think all who share the common faith must be reminded that in the confession in which eternal life lies, there too lies the understanding of eternity. He plainly does not know his own life, he does not know it, who is ignorant that Christ Jesus is true man as he is true God. And it is a matter of the same peril to deny that Christ Jesus is God the Spirit, or that he is flesh of our body. "Everyone therefore who confesses me before men, I also will confess before my Father who is in heaven. But whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven." The Word made flesh said this, and the man Jesus Christ, the Lord of majesty, taught it: himself established in himself as Mediator for the salvation of the church, and by that very mystery of mediator between God and men existing as one who is both, since he himself, from natures united into one, is the same reality of both natures; yet so that he lacked neither in either, lest by being born man he should cease to be God, or again by remaining God he should not be man. This, then, is the true faith of human blessedness: to preach God and man, to confess Word and flesh; neither to be ignorant that God is man, nor to be ignorant that the flesh is the Word.

Since, against the nature of our sense, God, remaining God, is born man, it is no longer against the nature of our hope that, born man, he remains God; for the higher nature, born into the lower, gives faith that the lower can be born into the higher. And indeed, according to the law and custom of the world, the effect is readier for our hope than for the divine mystery. For the world has, in the things that are born, the power of increase, but not the power of diminution. Look at trees, crops, cattle. Consider man himself, a sharer in reason: he always advances by growth, but is never contracted by diminution; nor does he lose himself in what has grown in himself. For although he may wither with age or be cut off by death, he has either change in time or an end in the constitution of living; but what he is, he does not have the power not to be, so as to make himself new by diminution out of the same self, that is, to go back from an old man into a little child. The necessity of our nature, then, always carried forward to growth by the law of the world, not unreasonably expects advancement into a higher nature, since for it increase is according to nature and diminution against nature. It was proper to God, then, to be other than he was remaining, and yet not to cease to be what he had remained; that God should be born in man and yet not cease to be God; that he should contract himself to conception, cradle, and infancy, and yet not depart from the power of God. This mystery is not for himself but for us. Nor is our being taken up an advancement for God; rather his will to suffer humiliation is our promotion, since he does not lose what God is, and gains for man that he should be God.

So the only-begotten God, born man of the Virgin, and in the fullness of times about to advance in himself man into God, kept throughout this manner of gospel speech: he taught that he should be believed the Son of God and urged that he be proclaimed the Son of Man; speaking and doing as man all that is God's, then speaking and doing as God all that is man's; yet so that in that very speech of both kinds he never spoke except with a signifying of both man and God; always showing one God the Father, and professing himself in the nature of the one God through the truth of birth; yet not failing to subject himself to God the Father both by the honour of a son and by the condition of a man, since every birth refers itself to its author, and all flesh professes itself weak before God. Hence the heretics find occasion to deceive the simple and ignorant, falsely claiming that what he said as man was said according to the weakness of the divine nature; and because one and the same is speaking all that he speaks, they contend that he said everything about himself.

We do not, of course, deny that all his speech, which remains his, belongs to his nature. But if Jesus Christ is both man and God, and neither was he first God when man, nor when also man was he not also God, nor after the man in God is he not wholly man, wholly God, then the mystery of his sayings must be one and the same as that of his kind. And when you distinguish in him man from God according to time, distinguish then the speech of God and of man. And when you confess God and man in time, judge the sayings of God and of man in time. But when, after man and God, you understand again the time of one wholly man and now wholly God, if anything was said to show that time, fit what was said to the time; so that, since God before the man is one thing, man and God another, and wholly man, wholly God after the man and God yet another, you do not confound the mystery of the dispensation by times and kinds, since, according to the quality of the kinds and natures, his speech in the mystery of the man must have been one when he was not yet born, another when he was still to die, another when he is now eternal.

For our sake, then, Jesus Christ, remaining what he is and born a man of our body, spoke all these things according to the custom of our nature, yet without omitting that his nature is God. For although in birth, suffering, and death he carried through the things of our nature, he still did all those things by the power of his own nature: since he is himself the origin of his own birth, since he wills to suffer what it is not possible for him to suffer, since he who lives dies. And yet, while God does these things through man, born from himself, suffering through himself, and dying of himself, he did not fail to act as man, since he was both born and suffered and died. These mysteries of heavenly secrets were established before the foundation of the world: that the only-begotten God should will to be born man, the man to remain for ever in God; that God should will to suffer, so that the devil, raging through the sufferings of human weakness, might not keep the law of sin in us, God having taken up our weakness; that God should will to die, so that no insolent power should stand against God, nor be able to usurp the nature of the power created in it, since the immortal God had placed himself within the law of death. So God is born for our taking up, suffers for our innocence, and finally dies for vengeance: so that our man abides in God, the sufferings of our weaknesses are partnered with God, and the spiritual powers of wickedness and malice are subdued by the triumph of the flesh, God dying through the flesh.

The apostle, then, aware of this mystery, and having gained the knowledge of faith through the Lord himself, knowing that the world, men, and philosophy could not grasp it, says: "See that no one leads you astray through philosophy and empty deceit according to the tradition of men, according to the elements of the world, and not according to Jesus Christ; because in him dwells all the fullness of divinity bodily, and you are filled in him, who is the head of all principality and power." Having set forth the fullness of divinity dwelling bodily in him, he at once added the mystery of our being taken up, saying: "You are filled in him." For as the fullness of divinity is in him, so we are filled in him. He does not say, "you are filled," but "you are filled in him," because all who have been or will be regenerated to eternal life through the hope of faith now abide in the body of Christ; they are to be filled afterwards, no longer in him but in themselves, at that time of which the apostle says: "Who will transform the body of our lowliness to be conformed to the body of his glory." Now, then, we are filled in him, that is, through the taking up of his flesh, in whom the fullness of divinity dwells bodily. And this hope of ours has no small power in him. For that in which we are filled is the head and beginning of all power, according to the saying: "That in his name every knee should bow, of things in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that the Lord Jesus is in the glory of God the Father." This, then, will be the confession: that Jesus is in the glory of God the Father, and that, born in man, he no longer abides in the weakness of our body but in the glory of God. Every tongue will confess this. And when things in heaven and on earth bow the knee, this is the headship of all principality and power: that all things should be subject to him, bowing the knee, in whom we are filled, and who, through the fullness of divinity dwelling in him bodily, is to be confessed in the glory of God the Father.

Having shown the mystery both of his nature and of our being taken up, since, while the fullness of divinity abides in him, we are filled in him through his being born man, he goes on to the rest of the dispensation of human salvation, saying: "In whom also you were circumcised with a circumcision not made with hands, in the stripping off of the body of the flesh, but in the circumcision of Christ, buried with him in baptism, in which you also rose with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead." We are circumcised, then, not with a fleshly circumcision but with the circumcision of Christ, that is, reborn into the new man. For when we are buried with him in his baptism, we must die out of the old man, because the regeneration of baptism is the power of resurrection. And this is the circumcision of Christ: not to be stripped of the flesh of the foreskin, but to die wholly with him, and through this afterwards to live wholly for him. For in him we rise again through faith in that God who raised him from the dead. God, then, is to be believed, by whose working Christ was raised from the dead, because this faith rises again in Christ.

Then the whole mystery of the man taken up is completed thus: "And you, when you were dead in trespasses and the foreskin of your flesh, he made alive together with him, forgiving you all trespasses, blotting out the handwriting that was against us in decrees, which was contrary to us; and he took it out of the way, nailing it to the cross; having put off the flesh, he made the powers a show, triumphing over them in himself." The man of this world does not grasp the apostolic faith, and no one but the speaker himself explains the words of his meaning. God raises Christ from the dead, the Christ in whom the fullness of divinity dwells bodily. But he made us alive together with him, forgiving us our sins, blotting out the handwriting of the law of sin which through earlier decrees was contrary to us, taking it out of the way and nailing it to the cross, stripping himself of the flesh by the law of death, making the powers a show, triumphing over them in himself. Of the powers triumphed over in himself and made a show, of the handwriting blotted out, and of our being made alive, we have already treated above. But who will grasp or speak this mystery? The working of God raises Christ from the dead; and this same working of God makes us alive with Christ; and this same working forgives sins, blots out the handwriting, and nails it to the cross; it puts off the flesh, makes the powers a show, and triumphs over them in himself. You have the working of God raising Christ from the dead; you have also Christ working in himself these very things that God works. For Christ died, stripping himself of the flesh. Hold, then, that Christ the man was raised from the dead by God; hold that Christ God worked the work of our salvation when he was about to die; so that, when God works these things in Christ, though it is God working, it is still Christ who, stripping himself of the flesh, was to die; and when Christ has died, though God worked before the death, the working of God still raises the dead Christ; since he who raises Christ from the dead is the same who as Christ worked before death, and the same who stripped himself of the flesh when about to die.

Do you now understand the mystery of the apostolic faith? Do you now know Christ? For I ask you who it is that strips himself of the flesh, and what that flesh is that was stripped off? For I hold from the apostle the meaning of a twofold understanding, of the flesh stripped off and of him who strips himself of the flesh; and between these I hear of Christ raised from the dead through the working of God. And since it is God who raises Christ from the dead, and it is Christ who is raised from the dead, I ask who it is that strips himself of the flesh, and who it is that raises Christ from the dead and makes us alive with Christ? For if the dead Christ is not the same as the flesh stripped off, show the name of the flesh stripped off, and again explain the nature of him who stripped himself of the flesh. For I find that the God Christ raised from the dead is the same who stripped himself of the flesh, and again that the flesh stripped off is Christ raised from the dead; then I find him making the principalities and powers a show and triumphing in himself. Do you understand this one who triumphs over the powers in himself? Do you perceive that the flesh stripped off and he who strips himself of the flesh do not differ from each other? For he triumphs in himself, that is, in that flesh of which he stripped himself. Do you see that God and man are so proclaimed that death is assigned to the man and the raising of the flesh to God, yet not so that he who died is one and he through whom the dead rises is another? For the flesh stripped off is the dead Christ; and again, he who raises Christ from the dead is the same Christ who strips himself of the flesh. Understand the nature of God in the power of the resurrection; recognize the dispensation of the man in the death. And since both were done by their own natures, remember nevertheless that he who is both is one Christ Jesus.