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| That the Son is Very God, of the Same Substance with the Father. Not Only the Father, But the Trinity, is Affirmed to Be Immortal. All Things are Not from the Father Alone, But Also from the Son. That the Holy Spirit is Very God, Equal with the Father and the Son.
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Chapter
6.—That the Son is Very God, of the Same Substance with the
Father. Not Only the Father, But the Trinity, is Affirmed to Be
Immortal. All Things are Not from the Father Alone, But Also from
the Son. That the Holy Spirit is Very God, Equal with the Father
and the Son.
9. They who have said that our Lord
Jesus Christ is not God, or not very God, or not with the Father
the One and only God, or not truly immortal because changeable, are
proved wrong by the most plain and unanimous voice of divine
testimonies; as, for instance, “In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” For it is plain
that we are to take the Word of God to be the only Son of God, of
whom it is afterwards said, “And the Word was made flesh, and
dwelt among us,” on account of that birth of His incarnation,
which was wrought in time of the Virgin. But herein is declared,
not only that He is God, but also that He is of the same substance
with the Father; because, after saying, “And the Word was God,”
it is said also, “The same was in the beginning with God: all
things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything
made.”34
Not simply
“all things;” but only all things that were made, that
is; the whole creature. From which it appears clearly, that He
Himself was not made, by whom all things were made. And if He was
not made, then He is not a creature; but if He is not a creature,
then He is of the same substance with the Father. For all substance
that is not God is creature; and all that is not creature is God.35
| 35
[Augustin here postulates the theistic doctrines
of two substances—infinite and finite; in contradiction to the
postulate of pantheism, that there is only one substance—the
infinite.—W.G.T.S.] | And if the
Son is not of the same
substance with the Father, then He is a substance that was made:
and if He is a substance that was made, then all things were not
made by Him; but “all things were made by Him,” therefore He is
of one and the same substance with the Father. And so He is not
only God, but also very God. And the same John most expressly
affirms this in his epistle: “For we know that the Son of God is
come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know the true
God, and that we may be in His true Son Jesus Christ. This is the
true God, and eternal life.”36
10. Hence also it follows by
consequence, that the Apostle Paul did not say, “Who alone has
immortality,” of the Father merely; but of the One and only God,
which is the Trinity itself. For that which is itself eternal life
is not mortal according to any changeableness; and hence the Son of
God, because “He is Eternal Life,” is also Himself understood
with the Father, where it is said, “Who only hath immortality.”
For we, too, are made partakers of this eternal life, and become,
in our own measure, immortal. But the eternal life itself, of which
we are made partakers, is one thing; we ourselves, who, by
partaking of it, shall live eternally, are another. For if He had
said, “Whom in His own time the Father will show, who is the
blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords;
who only hath immortality;” not even so would it be necessarily
understood that the Son is excluded. For neither has the Son
separated the Father from Himself, because He Himself, speaking
elsewhere with the voice of wisdom (for He Himself is the Wisdom of
God),37
says, “I
alone compassed the circuit of heaven.”38
And therefore so much the more is it
not necessary that the words, “Who hath immortality,” should be
understood of the Father alone, omitting the Son; when they are
said thus: “That thou keep this commandment without spot,
unrebukeable, until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ: whom in
His own time He will show, who is the blessed and only Potentate,
the King of kings, and Lord of lords; who only hath immortality,
dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto; whom no man
hath seen, nor can see: to whom be honor and power everlasting.
Amen.”39
In which words
neither is the Father specially named, nor the Son, nor the Holy
Spirit; but the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings, and
Lord of lords; that is, the One and only and true God, the Trinity
itself.
11. But perhaps what follows may
interfere with this meaning; because it is said, “Whom no man
hath seen, nor can see:” although this may also be taken as
belonging to Christ according to His divinity, which the Jews did
not see, who yet saw and crucified Him in the flesh; whereas His
divinity can in no wise be seen by human sight, but is seen with
that sight with which they who see are no longer men, but beyond
men. Rightly, therefore, is God Himself, the Trinity, understood to
be the “blessed and only Potentate,” who “shows the coming of
our Lord Jesus Christ in His own time.” For the words, “Who
only hath immortality,” are said in the same way as it is said,
“Who only doeth wondrous things.”40
And I should be glad to know of whom
they take these words to be said. If only of the Father, how then
is that true which the Son Himself says, “For what things soever
the Father doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise?” Is there
any, among wonderful works, more wonderful than to raise up and
quicken the dead? Yet the same Son saith, “As the Father raiseth
up the dead, and quickeneth them, even so the Son quickeneth whom
He will.”41
How, then,
does the Father alone “do wondrous things,” when these words
allow us to understand neither the Father only, nor the Son only,
but assuredly the one only true God, that is, the Father, and the
Son, and the Holy Spirit?42
| 42
[Nothing is more important, in order to a correct
interpretation of the New Testament, than a correct explanation of
the term God. Sometimes it denotes the Trinity, and sometimes a
person of the Trinity. The context always shows which it is. The
examples given here by Augustin are only a few out of
many.—W.G.T.S.] |
12. Also, when the same apostle
says, “But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are
all things, and we in Him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are
all things, and we by Him,”43
who can doubt that he speaks of all things which are created; as
does John, when he says, “All things were made by Him”? I ask,
therefore, of whom he speaks in another place: “For of Him, and
through Him, and in Him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever.
Amen.”44
For if of the
Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, so as to assign each
clause severally to each person: of Him, that is to say, of the
Father; through Him, that is to say, through the Son; in Him, that
is to say, in the Holy Spirit,—it is manifest that the Father,
and the Son, and the Holy Spirit is one God, inasmuch as the words
continue in the singular number, “To whom45
be glory for ever.” For at the
beginning of the passage he does not say, “O the depth of the
riches both of the wisdom and knowledge” of the Father, or of the
Son, or of the Holy Spirit, but “of the wisdom and knowledge of
God!” “How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past
finding out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath
been His counsellor? Or who hath first given to Him and it shall be
recompensed unto him again? For of Him, and through Him, and in
Him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen.”46
But if they will have this to be
understood only of the Father, then in what way are all things by
the Father, as is said here; and all things by the Son, as where it
is said to the Corinthians, “And one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom
are all things,”47
and as in the
Gospel of John, “All things were made by Him?” For if some
things were made by the Father, and some by the Son, then all
things were not made by the Father, nor all things by the Son; but
if all things were made by the Father, and all things by the Son,
then the same things were made by the Father and by the Son. The
Son, therefore, is equal with the Father, and the working of the
Father and the Son is indivisible. Because if the Father made even
the Son, whom certainly the Son Himself did not make, then all
things were not made by the Son; but all things were made by the
Son: therefore He Himself was not made, that with the Father He
might make all things that were made. And the apostle has not
refrained from using the very word itself, but has said most
expressly, “Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery
to be equal with God;”48
using here the name of God specially of the Father;49
| 49 [It is not
generally safe to differ from Augustin in trinitarian exegesis. But
in Phil. ii. 6 “God”
must surely denote the Divine Essence, not the first Person of the
Essence. St. Paul describes “Christ Jesus” as “subsisting”
(ὑπάρχων)
originally, that is prior to incarnation, “in a form of
God”(ἐν μορφῇ
θεοῦ), and because he so
subsisted, as being “equal with God.” The word μορφῇ
is anarthrous in the text: a form, not the form, as
the A.V and R.V. render. St. Paul refers to one of three
“forms” of God—namely, that particular form of Sonship, which
is peculiar to the second person of the Godhead. Had the apostle
employed the article with
μορφῆ, the implication would
be that there is only one “form of God”—that is, only one
person in the Divine Essence.
If then θεοῦ, in this
place, denotes the Father, as Augustin says, St. Paul would teach
that the Logos subsisted “in a form of the Father,”
which would imply that the Father had more than one “form,” or
else (if
μορφῆ be rendered with the
article) that the Logos subsisted in the “form” of the Father,
neither of which is true. But if “God,” in this place, denotes
the Divine Essence, then St. Paul teaches that the unincarnate
Logos subsisted in a particular “form” of the Essence—the
Father and Spirit subsisting in other “forms” of it.
The student will observe
that Augustin is careful to teach that the Logos, when he took on
him “a form of a servant,” did not lay aside “a form
of God.” He understands the kenosis (ἐκένωσε) to be,
the humbling of the divinity by its union with the humanity,
not the exinanition of it in the extremest sense of entirely
divesting himself of the divinity, nor the less extreme sense of a
total non-use of it during the
humiliation.—W.G.T.S.] | as elsewhere, “But the head of
Christ is God.”50
13. Similar evidence has been
collected also concerning the Holy Spirit, of which those who have
discussed the subject before ourselves have most fully availed
themselves, that He too is God, and not a creature. But if not a
creature, then not only God (for men likewise are called gods51
), but also very God; and therefore
absolutely equal with the Father and the Son, and in the unity of
the Trinity consubstantial and co-eternal. But that the Holy Spirit
is not a creature is made quite plain by that passage above all
others, where we are commanded not to serve the creature, but the
Creator;52
not in the
sense in which we are commanded to “serve” one another by
love,53
which is in
Greek δουλεύειν, but in that in which God alone is served, which is in
Greek λατρεύειν. From whence they are called idolaters who tender that
service to images which is due to God. For it is this service
concerning which it is said, “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy
God, and Him only shalt thou serve.”54
For this is found also more
distinctly in the Greek Scriptures, which have λατρεύσεις. Now
if we are forbidden to serve the creature with such a service,
seeing that it is written, “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God,
and Him only shalt thou serve” (and hence, too, the apostle
repudiates those who worship and serve the creature more than the
Creator), then assuredly the Holy Spirit is not a creature, to whom
such a service is paid by all the saints; as says the apostle,
“For we are the circumcision, which serve the Spirit of God,”55
which is in the Greek λατρεύοντες. For
even most Latin copies also have it thus, “We who serve the
Spirit of God;” but all Greek ones, or almost all, have it so.
Although in some Latin copies we find, not “We worship the Spirit
of God,” but, “We worship God in the Spirit.” But let those
who err in this case, and refuse to give up to the more weighty
authority, tell us whether they find this text also varied in the
mss.: “Know ye not that your body is the
temple of the Holy Ghost, which is in you, which ye have of God?”
Yet what can be more senseless or more profane, than that any one
should dare to say that the members of Christ are the temple of one
who, in their opinion, is a creature inferior to Christ? For the
apostle says in another place, “Your bodies are members of
Christ.” But if the members of Christ are also the temple of the
Holy Spirit, then the Holy Spirit is not a creature; because we
must needs owe to Him, of whom our body is the temple, that
service wherewith God only is to be served, which in Greek is
called λατρεία. And accordingly the apostle says, “Therefore glorify
God in your body.”56
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