On the Trinity 30

Let these things, then, concerning the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, be said by us briefly and set down concisely, and not drawn out in a long discussion. For they could have been extended more widely and drawn out in a fuller discussion, since the whole Old and New Testament could be brought in as testimony that the true faith is so. But since the heretics, always struggling against the truth, are accustomed to drag the sincere tradition and the catholic faith into controversy, being scandalized at Christ because he is asserted to be God both through the Scriptures and believed by us to be so, we must rightly (so that every heretical slander may be removed from our faith) so argue concerning Christ's being God as not to hinder the truth of Scripture, nor yet our faith, by which one God is both proclaimed through the Scriptures and held and believed by us. For both those who say that Jesus Christ is God the Father himself, and those who would have him be only man, have snatched the origins and causes of their error and perversity from this: that, noticing it is written that God is one, they thought they could hold that view in no other way than by thinking that Christ must be believed either only man or else God the Father. For they are accustomed to gather up their slanders thus, as they strive to prove their own error. Those who say that Jesus Christ is the Father put forward this: “If God is one, and Christ is God, Christ is the Father, since God is one; if Christ is not the Father, since Christ the Son is also God, two Gods would seem to have been brought in, contrary to the Scriptures.” But those who contend that Christ is only man reason from the opposite side thus: “If the Father is one and the Son another, and the Father is God and Christ is God, then there is not one God, but two gods are brought in together, the Father and the Son; and if God is one, it follows that Christ is man, so that rightly the Father is the one God.” Truly the Lord is crucified as if between two thieves, as he was once fixed to the cross; and so he receives the sacrilegious reproaches of these heretics from either side.

But neither the holy Scriptures nor we give them causes of perdition and blindness, if they either will not or cannot see what is plainly set in the midst of the divine writings. For we both know and read and believe and hold that there is one God, who made heaven and earth alike, since we neither know another nor shall ever be able to know one, since there is none. “I am God,” he says, “and there is none besides me, righteous and saving.” And in another place: “I am the first and the last, and besides me there is no God. Who is like me?” And: “Who has measured heaven with his palm, and the earth with his fist? Who has hung the mountains in a balance, and the groves in scales?” And Hezekiah: “That all may know that you alone are God.” Moreover the Lord himself: “Why do you ask me about the good? God alone is good.” The apostle Paul too: “Who alone,” he says, “has immortality, and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see.” And in another place: “Now a mediator is not of one; but God is one.” But as we hold and read and believe this, so we must pass over no part of the heavenly Scriptures; since we must in no way refuse even those marks of Christ's divinity that are set down in the Scriptures, lest, by corrupting the authority of the Scriptures, we be held to have corrupted the integrity of the holy faith. Let us then believe this also, since it is most faithful: that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is our Lord and God; since “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.” And: “The Word became flesh and dwelt in us.” And: “My Lord and my God.” And: “Of whom are the fathers, and from whom is Christ according to the flesh, who is God over all, blessed forever.”

What, then, shall we say? Does Scripture set forth two Gods? How then does it say that God is one? Or is Christ not God as well? How then was it said to Christ, “My Lord and my God”? Unless, then, we hold all this with due reverence and lawful reasoning, we shall rightly be believed to have given the heretics a scandal; not, surely, from any fault of the heavenly Scriptures, which never deceive, but from the presumption of human error by which they chose to be heretics. And first of all this must be turned back on those who presume to raise against us the dispute about two Gods. It is written, and they cannot deny it, that there is one Lord. What then do they think of Christ: that he is Lord, or that he is not Lord at all? But they do not doubt at all that he is Lord; so if their reasoning is true, there are now two Lords. How then, according to the Scriptures, is there one Lord? And Christ is called the one Teacher; yet we read that the apostle Paul too is a teacher. There is no longer, then, one Teacher; for by this reasoning we infer two teachers. How then, according to the Scriptures, is Christ the one Teacher? In the Scriptures God is called the one who is good; but in the same Scriptures Christ too is set down as good. If they infer rightly, then, there is not one who is good, but two who are good. How then, according to the faith of the Scriptures, is one said to be good? But if they do not think that the fact that there is one Lord can in any way be impaired by the fact that Christ too is Lord; nor that there is one Teacher, by the fact that Paul too is a teacher; nor that there is one who is good, by the fact that Christ too has been called good: let them understand by the same reasoning that the fact that God is one cannot be impaired by the fact that Christ too has been declared God.