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| A Brief Recapitulation of All the Previous Books.
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Chapter 3.—A Brief
Recapitulation of All the Previous Books.
4. But since the necessities of our
discussion and argument have compelled us to say a great many
things in the course of fourteen books, which we cannot view at
once in one glance, so as to be able to refer them quickly in
thought to that which we desire to grasp, I will attempt, by the
help of God, to the best of my power, to put briefly together,
without arguing, whatever I have established in the several books
by argument as known, and to place, as it were, under one mental
view, not the way in which we have been convinced of each point,
but the points themselves of which we have been convinced; in order
that what follows may not be so far separated from that which
precedes, as that the perusal of the former shall produce
forgetfulness of the latter; or at any rate, if it have produced
such forgetfulness, that what has escaped the memory may be
speedily recalled by re-perusal.
5. In the first book, the unity and
equality of that highest Trinity is shown from Holy Scripture. In
the second, and third, and fourth, the same: but a careful handling
of the question respecting the sending of the Son and of the Holy
Spirit has resulted in three books; and we have demonstrated, that
He who is sent is not therefore less than He who sends because the
one sent, the other was sent; since the Trinity, which is in all
things equal, being also equally in its own nature unchangeable,
and invisible, and everywhere present, works indivisibly. In the
fifth,—with a view to those who think that the substance of the
Father and of the Son is therefore not the same, because they
suppose everything that is predicated of God to be predicated
according to substance, and therefore contend that to beget and to
be begotten, or to be begotten and unbegotten, as being diverse,
are diverse substances,—it is demonstrated that not everything
that is predicated of God is predicated according to substance, as
He is called good and great according to substance, or anything
else that is predicated of Him in respect to Himself, but that some
things also are predicated relatively, i.e. not in respect
to Himself, but in respect to something which is not Himself; as He
is called the Father in respect to the Son, or the Lord in respect
to the creature that serves Him; and that here, if anything thus
relatively predicated, i.e. predicated in respect to
something that is not Himself, is predicated also as in time, as,
e.g., “Lord, Thou hast become our refuge,”945
then nothing
happens to Him so as to work a change in Him, but He Himself
continues altogether unchangeable in His own nature or essence. In
the sixth, the question how Christ is called by the mouth of the
apostle “the power of God and the wisdom of God,”946
is so far
argued that the more careful handling of that question is deferred,
viz. whether He from whom Christ is begotten is not wisdom
Himself, but only the father of His own wisdom, or whether wisdom
begat wisdom. But be it which it may, the equality of the Trinity
became apparent in this book also, and that God was not triple, but
a Trinity; and that the Father and the Son are not, as it were, a
double as opposed to the single Holy Spirit: for therein three are
not anything more than one. We considered, too, how to understand
the words of Bishop Hilary, “Eternity in the Father, form in the
Image, use in the Gift.” In the seventh, the question is
explained which had been deferred: in what way that God who begat
the Son is not only Father of His own power and wisdom, but is
Himself also power and wisdom; so, too, the Holy Spirit; and yet
that they are not three powers or three wisdoms, but one power and
one wisdom, as one God and one essence. It was next inquired, in
what way they are called one essence, three persons, or by some
Greeks one essence, three substances; and we found that the words
were so used through the needs of speech, that there might be one
term by which to answer, when it is asked what the three are, whom
we truly confess to be three, viz. Father, and Son, and Holy
Spirit. In the eighth, it is made plain by reason also to those who
understand, that not only the Father is not greater than the Son in
the substance of truth, but that both together are not anything
greater than the Holy Spirit alone, nor that any two at all in the
same Trinity are anything greater than one, nor all three together
anything greater than each severally. Next, I have pointed out,
that by means of the truth, which is beheld by the understanding,
and by means of the highest good, from which is all good, and by
means of the righteousness for which a righteous mind is loved even
by a mind not yet righteous, we might understand, so far as it is
possible to understand, that not only incorporeal but also
unchangeable nature which is God; and by means, too, of love, which
in the Holy Scriptures is called God,947
by which, first of all, those who
have understanding begin also, however feebly, to discern the
Trinity, to wit, one that loves, and that which is loved, and love.
In the ninth, the argument advances as far as to the image of God,
viz. man in respect to his mind; and in this we found a kind
of trinity, i.e. the mind, and the knowledge whereby the
mind knows itself, and the love whereby it loves both itself and
its knowledge of itself; and these three are shown to be mutually
equal, and of one essence. In the tenth, the same subject is more
carefully and subtly handled, and is brought to this point, that we
found in the mind a still more manifest trinity of the mind,
viz. in memory, and understanding, and will. But since it
turned out also, that the mind could never be in such a case as not
to remember, understand, and love itself, although it did not
always think of itself; but that when it did think of itself, it
did not in the same act of thought distinguish itself from things
corporeal; the argument respecting the Trinity, of which this is an
image, was deferred, in order to find a trinity also in the things
themselves that are seen with the body, and to exercise the
reader’s attention more distinctly in that. Accordingly, in the
eleventh, we chose the sense of sight, wherein that which should
have been there found to hold good might be recognized also in the
other four bodily senses, although not expressly mentioned; and so
a trinity of the outer man first showed itself in those things
which are discerned from without, to wit, from the bodily object
which is seen, and from the form which is thence impressed upon the
eye of the beholder, and from the purpose of the will combining the
two. But these three things, as was patent, were not mutually equal
and of one substance. Next, we found yet another trinity in the
mind itself, introduced into it, as it were, by the things
perceived from without; wherein the same three things, as it
appeared, were of one substance: the image of the bodily object
which is in the memory, and the form thence impressed when the
mind’s eye of the thinker is turned to it, and the purpose of the
will combining the two. But we found this trinity to pertain to the
outer man, on this account, that it was introduced into the mind
from bodily objects which are perceived from without. In the
twelfth, we thought good to distinguish wisdom from knowledge, and
to seek first, as being the lower of the two, a kind of appropriate
and special trinity in that which is specially called knowledge;
but that although we have got now in this to something pertaining
to the inner man, yet it is not yet to be either called or thought
an image of God. And this is discussed in the thirteenth book by
the commendation of Christian faith. In the fourteenth
we discuss the true wisdom of man, viz. that which is
granted him by God’s gift in the partaking of that very God
Himself, which is distinct from knowledge; and the discussion
reached this point, that a trinity is discovered in the image of
God, which is man in respect to his mind, which mind is “renewed
in the knowledge” of God, “after the image of Him that
created” man;948
“after His
own image;”949
and so
obtains wisdom, wherein is the contemplation of things
eternal.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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