On the
Trinity.
————————————
Book I.
1. When I was seeking an employment adequate to
the powers of human life and righteous in itself, whether prompted by
nature or suggested by the researches of the wise, whereby I might
attain to some result worthy of that Divine gift of understanding which
has been given us, many things occurred to me which in general esteem
were thought to render life both useful and desirable. And
especially that which now, as always in the past, is regarded as most
to be desired, leisure combined with wealth, came before my mind.
The one without the other seemed rather a source of evil than an
opportunity for good, for leisure in poverty is felt to be almost an
exile from life itself, while wealth possessed amid anxiety is in
itself an affliction, rendered the worse by the deeper humiliation
which he must suffer who loses, after possessing, the things that most
are wished and sought. And yet, though these two embrace the
highest and best of the luxuries of life, they seem not far removed
from the normal pleasures of the beasts which, as they roam through
shady places rich in herbage, enjoy at once their safety from toil and
the abundance of their food. For if this be regarded as the best
and most perfect conduct of the life of man, it results that one object
is common, though the range of feelings differ, to us and the whole
unreasoning animal world, since all of them, in that bounteous
provision and absolute leisure which nature bestows, have full scope
for enjoyment without anxiety for possession.
2. I believe that the mass of mankind have spurned
from themselves and censured in others this acquiescence in a
thoughtless, animal life, for no other reason than that nature herself
has taught them that it is unworthy of humanity to hold themselves born
only to gratify their greed and their sloth, and ushered into life for
no high aim of glorious deed or fair accomplishment, and that this very
life was granted without the power of progress towards immortality; a
life, indeed, which then we should confidently assert did not deserve
to be regarded as a gift of God, since, racked by pain and laden with
trouble, it wastes itself upon itself from the blank mind of infancy to
the wanderings of age. I believe that men, prompted by nature
herself, have raised themselves through teaching and practice to the
virtues which we name patience and temperance and forbearance, under
the conviction that right living means right action and right thought,
and that Immortal God has not given life only to end in death; for none
can believe that the Giver of good has bestowed the pleasant sense of
life in order that it may be overcast by the gloomy fear of dying.
3. And yet, though I could not tax with folly and
uselessness this counsel of theirs to keep the soul free from blame,
and evade by foresight or elude by skill or endure with patience the
troubles of life, still I could not regard these men as guides
competent to lead me to the good and happy Life. Their precepts
were platitudes, on the mere level of human impulse; animal instinct
could not fail to comprehend them, and he who understood but disobeyed
would have fallen into an insanity baser than animal unreason.
Moreover, my soul was eager not merely to do the things, neglect of
which brings shame and suffering, but to know the God and Father Who
had given this great gift, to Whom, it felt, it owed its whole self,
Whose service was its true honour, on Whom all its hopes were fixed, in
Whose lovingkindness, as in a safe home and haven, it could rest amid
all the troubles of this anxious life. It was inflamed with a
passionate desire to apprehend Him or to know Him.
4. Some of these teachers brought forward large
households of dubious deities, and under the persuasion that there is a
sexual activity in divine beings narrated births and lineages from god
to god. Others asserted that there were gods greater and less, of
distinction proportionate to their
power. Some denied the existence of any gods whatever, and
confined their reverence to a nature which, in their opinion, owes its
being to chance-led vibrations and collisions. On the other hand,
many followed the common belief in asserting the existence of a God,
but proclaimed Him heedless and indifferent to the affairs of
men. Again, some worshipped in the elements of earth and air the
actual bodily and visible forms of created things; and, finally, some
made their gods dwell within images of men or of beasts, tame or wild,
of birds or of snakes, and confined the Lord of the universe and Father
of infinity within these narrow prisons of metal or stone or
wood. These, I was sure, could be no exponents of truth, for
though they were at one in the absurdity, the foulness, the impiety of
their observances, they were at variance concerning the essential
articles of their senseless belief. My soul was distracted amid
all these claims, yet still it pressed along that profitable road which
leads inevitably to the true knowledge of God. It could not hold
that neglect of a world created by Himself was worthily to be
attributed to God, or that deities endowed with sex, and lines of
begetters and begotten, were compatible with the pure and mighty nature
of the Godhead. Nay, rather, it was sure that that which is
Divine and eternal must be one without distinction of sex, for that
which is self-existent cannot have left outside itself anything
superior to itself. Hence omnipotence and eternity are the
possession of One only, for omnipotence is incapable of degrees of
strength or weakness, and eternity of priority or succession. In
God we must worship absolute eternity and absolute power.
5. While my mind was dwelling on these and
on many like thoughts, I chanced upon the books which, according to the
tradition of the Hebrew faith, were written by Moses and the prophets,
and found in these words spoken by God the Creator testifying of
Himself ‘I Am that I Am, and again,
He that is hath sent me unto
you508
.’ I confess that I was
amazed
to find in them an indication concerning
God so exact that it expressed
in the terms
best adapted to human understanding an unattainable
insight into the
mystery of the
Divine nature. For no property of
God which the
mind can grasp is more characteristic of Him than
existence, since existence, in the absolute sense, cannot be predicated
of that which shall come to an end, or of that which has had a
beginning, and He who now joins continuity of being with the possession
of
perfect felicity could not in the past, nor can in the future, be
non-existent; for whatsoever is
Divine can neither be originated nor
destroyed. Wherefore, since
God’s
eternity is inseparable
from Himself, it was worthy of Him to
reveal this one thing, that He
is, as the assurance of His absolute
eternity.
6. For such an indication of God’s
infinity the words ‘I Am that I
Am’ were clearly adequate; but, in addition, we needed to
apprehend the operation of His majesty and power. For while
absolute existence is peculiar to Him Who, abiding eternally, had no
beginning in a past however remote, we hear again an utterance worthy
of Himself issuing from the eternal and Holy God, Who says, Who
holdeth the heaven in His palm and the earth in His hand509
, and again,
The heaven is My throne and
the earth is the footstool of My feet. What house will ye build
Me or what shall be the place of My rest510
? The whole
heaven is held in the
palm of
God, the whole
earth grasped in His
hand. Now the word of
God, profitable as it is to the cursory thought of a pious
mind,
reveals a deeper meaning to the
patient student than to the momentary
hearer. For this
heaven which is held in the
palm of
God is also
His
throne, and the
earth which is grasped in His
hand is also the
footstool beneath His
feet. This was not written that from
throne
and
footstool, metaphors drawn from the posture of one sitting, we
should conclude that He has extension in space, as of a body, for that
which is His
throne and
footstool is also held in
hand and
palm by that
infinite Omnipotence. It was written that in all
born and
created
things
God might be known within them and without, overshadowing and
indwelling, surrounding all and interfused through all, since
palm and
hand, which hold,
reveal the might of His external control, while
throne and
footstool, by their support of a sitter, display the
subservience of outward things to One within Who, Himself outside them,
encloses all in His grasp, yet dwells within the external
world which
is His own. In this
wise does
God, from within and from without,
control and correspond to the universe; being infinite He is present in
all things, in Him Who is infinite all are included. In
devout
thoughts such as these my
soul, engrossed in the pursuit of
truth, took
its
delight. For it seemed that the greatness of
God so
far
surpassed the mental powers of His handiwork, that however
far the
limited
mind of man might strain in the hazardous effort to define Him, the gap was not
lessened between the finite
nature which struggled and the boundless
infinity that lay beyond its ken
511
| 511 Reading mens
finita and naturæ finitatim for the infinita and
infinitatem of the Benedictine Edition. |
, I had come by
reverent reflection on my own part to understand this, but I found it
confirmed by the words of the
prophet,
Whither shall I go from Thy
Spirit? Or whither shall I flee from Thy face? If I ascend
up into heaven, Thou art there; if I go down into hell, Thou art there
also; if I have taken my wings before dawn and made my dwelling in the
uttermost parts of the sea (Thou art there). For thither Thy hand
shall guide me and Thy right hand shall hold me512
. There is no space where
God is not;
space does not exist apart from Him. He is in
heaven, in
hell,
beyond the
seas; dwelling in all things and enveloping all. Thus
He embraces, and is embraced by, the universe, confined to no part of
it but pervading all.
7. Therefore, although my soul drew joy from
the apprehension of this august and unfathomable Mind, because it could
worship as its own Father and Creator so limitless an Infinity, yet
with a still more eager desire it sought to know the true aspect of its
infinite and eternal Lord, that it might be able to believe that that
immeasurable Deity was apparelled in splendour befitting the beauty of
His wisdom. Then, while the devout soul was baffled and astray
through its own feebleness, it caught from the prophet’s voice
this scale of comparison for God, admirably expressed, By the
greatness of His works and the beauty of the things that He hath made
the Creator of worlds is rightly discerned513
. The Creator of great things is
supreme in greatness, of
beautiful things in
beauty. Since the
work transcends our thoughts, all thought must be transcended by the
Maker. Thus
heaven and
air and
earth and
seas are fair:
fair also the whole universe, as the
Greeks agree, who from its
beautiful ordering call it
κόσμος, that is,
order. But if our thought can estimate this
beauty of the
universe by a
natural instinct—an instinct such as we see in
certain
birds and
beasts whose voice, though it fall below the level of
our understanding, yet has a sense clear to them though they cannot
utter it, and in which, since all
speech is the expression of some
thought, there
lies a meaning patent to themselves—must not the
Lord of this universal
beauty be recognised as Himself most
beautiful
amid all the
beauty that surrounds Him? For though the splendour
of His
eternal glory overtax our
mind’s
best powers, it cannot
fail to see that He is
beautiful. We must in
truth confess that
God is most
beautiful, and that with a
beauty which, though it
transcend our comprehension, forces itself upon our
perception.
8. Thus my mind, full of these results which by
its own reflection and the teaching of Scripture it had attained,
rested with assurance, as on some peaceful watch-tower, upon that
glorious conclusion, recognising that its true nature made it capable
of one homage to its Creator, and of none other, whether greater or
less; the homage namely of conviction that His is a greatness too vast
for our comprehension but not for our faith. For a reasonable
faith is akin to reason and accepts its aid, even though that same
reason cannot cope with the vastness of eternal Omnipotence.
9. Beneath all these thoughts lay an instinctive
hope, which strengthened my assertion of the faith, in some perfect
blessedness hereafter to be earned by devout thoughts concerning God
and upright life; the reward, as it were, that awaits the triumphant
warrior. For true faith in God would pass unrewarded, if the soul
be destroyed by death, and quenched in the extinction of bodily
life. Even unaided reason pleaded that it was unworthy of God to
usher man into an existence which has some share of His thought and
wisdom, only to await the sentence of life withdrawn and of eternal
death; to create him out of nothing to take his place in the World,
only that when he has taken it he may perish. For, on the only
rational theory of creation, its purpose was that things non-existent
should come into being, not that things existing should cease to
be.
10. Yet my soul was weighed down with fear
both for itself and for the body. It retained a firm conviction,
and a devout loyalty to the true faith concerning God, but had come to
harbour a deep anxiety concerning itself and the bodily dwelling which
must, it thought, share its destruction. While in this state, in
addition to its knowledge of the teaching of the Law and Prophets, it
learned the truths taught by the Apostle in the Gospel;—In the
beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was
God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things
were made through Him, and without Him was not anything made.
That which was made in Him is life514
| 514 Cf. Hilary’s
explanation of this passage in Book ii. §§ 19, 20. |
,
and the life was the light of men, and the light shineth in darkness,
and the darkness apprehended it not. There was a man sent from
God, whose name was John. He came for witness, that he might bear
witness of the light. That was the true light, which lighteneth
every man that cometh into this world. He was in the world,
and the world was made through Him, and the world knew Him not.
He came unto His own things, and they that were His own received Him
not. But to as many as received Him He gave power to become sons
of God, even to them that believe on His Name; which were born, not of
blood, nor of the will of man, nor of the will of the flesh, but of
God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld
His glory, glory as of the Only-begotten from the Father, full of grace
and truth515
. Here the
soul
makes an advance beyond the attainment of its
natural capacities, is
taught more than it had
dreamed concerning
God. For it
learns
that its Creator is
God of
God; it hears that the Word is
God and was
with
God in the beginning. It comes to understand that the
Light
of the
world was
abiding in the
world and that the
world knew Him not;
that He came to His own possession and that they that were His own
received Him not; but that they who do receive Him by
virtue of their
faith advance to be sons of
God, being
born not of the embrace of the
flesh nor of the conception of the
blood nor of bodily desire, but of
God; finally, it
learns that the Word became
flesh and dwelt among us,
and that His
glory was seen, which, as of the Only-begotten from the
Father, is
perfect through
grace and
truth.
11. Herein my soul, trembling and distressed,
found a hope wider than it had imagined. First came its
introduction to the knowledge of God the Father. Then it learnt
that the eternity and infinity and beauty which, by the light of
natural reason, it had attributed to its Creator belonged also to God
the Only-begotten. It did not disperse its faith among a
plurality of deities, for it heard that He is God of God; nor did it
fall into the error of attributing a difference of nature to this God
of God, for it learnt that He is full of grace and truth. Nor yet
did my soul perceive anything contrary to reason in God of God, since
He was revealed as having been in the beginning God with God. It
saw that there are very few who attain to the knowledge of this saving
faith, though its reward be great, for even His own received Him not
though they who receive Him are promoted to be sons of God by a birth,
not of the flesh but of faith. It learnt also that this sonship
to God is not a compulsion but a possibility, for, while the Divine
gift is offered to all, it is no heredity inevitably imprinted but a
prize awarded to willing choice. And lest this very truth that
whosoever will may become a son of God should stagger the weakness of
our faith (for most we desire, but least expect, that which from its
very greatness we find it hard to hope for), God the Word became flesh,
that through His Incarnation our flesh might attain to union with God
the Word. And lest we should think that this incarnate Word was
some other than God the Word, or that His flesh was of a body different
from ours, He dwelt among us that by His dwelling He might be known as
the indwelling God, and, by His dwelling among us, known as God
incarnate in no other flesh than our own, and moreover, though He had
condescended to take our flesh, not destitute of His own attributes;
for He, the Only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth, is
fully possessed of His own attributes and truly endowed with ours.
12. This lesson in the Divine mysteries was gladly
welcomed by my soul, now drawing near through the flesh to God, called
to new birth through faith, entrusted with liberty and power to win the
heavenly regeneration, conscious of the love of its Father and Creator,
sure that He would not annihilate a creature whom He had summoned out
of nothing into life. And it could estimate how high are these
truths above the mental vision of man; for the reason which deals with
the common objects of thought can conceive of nothing as existent
beyond what it perceives within itself or can create out of
itself. My soul measured the mighty workings of God, wrought on
the scale of His eternal omnipotence, not by its own powers of
perception but by a boundless faith; and therefore refused to
disbelieve, because it could not understand, that God was in the
beginning with God, and that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us,
but bore in mind the truth that with the will to believe would come the
power to understand.
13. And lest the soul should stray and
linger in some delusion of heathen philosophy, it receives this further
lesson of perfect loyalty to the holy faith, taught by the Apostle in
words inspired:—Beware lest any man spoil you through
philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the
rudiments of the word, and not after Christ; for in Him dwelleth all
the fulness of the Godhead bodily, and ye are made full in Him, Which
is the Head of all principality and power; in Whom ye were also
circumcised with a circumcision not made with hands, in putting off the
body, of the flesh, but with the circumcision of Christ; buried with
Him in Baptism, wherein also ye have risen again through faith in the
working of God, Who raised Him from the dead. And you, when ye
were dead in sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, He hath
quickened with Him, having forgiven you all your sins, blotting out the
bond which was against us by its ordinances, which was contrary to us;
and He hath taken it out of the way, nailing it to the Cross; and
having put off the flesh He made a show of powers openly, triumphing
over them through confidence in Himself516
. Steadfast
faith rejects the
vain subtleties of philosophic enquiry;
truth refuses to be vanquished
by these treacherous
devices of human
folly, and
enslaved by
falsehood. It will not confine
God within the limits which barred
our common reason, nor
judge after the rudiments of the world
concerning
Christ,
in Whom dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead
bodily, and in such
wise that the utmost efforts of the earthly
mind to comprehend Him are baffled by that immeasurable
Eternity and
Omnipotence. My
soul judged of Him as One Who, drawing us upward
to partake of His own
Divine nature, has loosened henceforth the
bond
of bodily observances Who, unlike the Symbolic
Law, has initiated us
into no rites of mutilating the
flesh, but Whose purpose is that our
spirit, circumcised from vice, should
purify all the
natural faculties
of the body by
abstinence from
sin, that we being buried with His
Death
in
Baptism may return to the
life of
eternity (since
regeneration to
life is
death to the former
life), and dying to our
sins be
born again
to immortality, that even as He abandoned His immortality to
die for
us, so should we
awaken from
death to immortality with Him. For
He took upon Him the
flesh in which we have
sinned that by wearing our
flesh He might
forgive sins; a
flesh which He shares with us by wearing
it, not by
sinning in it. He
blotted out through
death the
sentence of
death, that by a new
creation of our race in Himself He
might sweep away the penalty
appointed by the former
Law. He let
them
nail Him to the
cross that He might
nail to the
curse of the
cross
and
abolish all the
curses to which the
world is
condemned. He
suffered as man to the utmost that He might put powers to
shame.
For Scripture had foretold that He Who is
God should
die; that the
victory and
triumph of them that
trust in Him lay in the fact that He,
Who is
immortal and cannot be overcome by
death, was to
die that
mortals might
gain eternity. These
deeds of
God,
wrought in a
manner beyond our comprehension, cannot, I repeat, be understood by our
natural faculties, for the
work of the Infinite and
Eternal can only be
grasped by an infinite intelligence. Hence, just as the truths
that
God became man, that the
Immortal died that the
Eternal was
buried, do not
belong to the rational order but are an unique
work of
power, so on the other
hand it is an effect not of intellect but of
omnipotence that He Who is man is also
God, that He Who
died is
immortal, that He Who was buried is
eternal. We, then, are
raised
together by
God in
Christ through His
death. But, since in
Christ
there is the fulness of the
Godhead, we have herein a revelation of
God
the
Father joining to raise us in Him Who
died; and we must confess
that
Christ Jesus is none other than
God in all the fulness of the
Deity.
14. In this calm assurance of safety did my soul
gladly and hopefully take its rest, and feared so little the
interruption of death, that death seemed only a name for eternal
life. And the life of this present body was so far from seeming a
burden or affliction that it was regarded as children regard their
alphabet, sick men their draught, shipwrecked sailors their swim, young
men the training for their profession, future commanders their first
campaign; that is, as an endurable submission to present necessities,
bearing the promise of a blissful immortality. And further, I
began to proclaim those truths in which my soul had a personal faith,
as a duty of the episcopate which had been laid upon me, employing my
office to promote the salvation of all men.
15. While I was thus engaged there came to light
certain fallacies of rash and wicked men, hopeless for themselves and
merciless towards others, who made their own feeble nature the measure
of the might of God’s nature. They claimed, not that they
had ascended to an infinite knowledge of infinite things, but that they
had reduced all knowledge, undefined before, within the scope of
ordinary reason, and fixed the limits of the faith. Whereas the
true work of religion is a service of obedience; and these were men
heedless of their own weakness, reckless of Divine realities, who
undertook to improve upon the teaching of God.
16. Not to touch upon the vain enquiries of other
heretics—concerning whom however, when the course of my argument
gives occasion, I will not be silent—there are those who tamper
with the faith of the Gospel by denying, under the cloak of loyalty to
the One God, the birth of God the Only-begotten. They assert that
there was an extension of God into man, not a descent; that He, Who for
the season that He took our flesh was Son of Man, had not been
previously, nor was then, Son of God; that there was no Divine birth in
His case, but an identity of Begetter and Begotten; and (to maintain
what they consider a perfect loyalty to the unity of God) that there was an unbroken
continuity in the Incarnation, the Father extending Himself into the
Virgin, and Himself being born as His own Son. Others, on the
contrary (heretics, because there is no salvation apart from Christ,
Who in the beginning was God the Word with God), deny that He was born
and declare that He was merely created. Birth, they hold, would
confess Him to be true God, while creation proves His Godhead unreal;
and though this explanation be a fraud against the faith in the unity
of God, regarded as an accurate definition, yet they think it may pass
muster as figurative language. They degrade, in name and in
belief, His true birth to the level of a creation, to cut Him off from
the Divine unity, that, as a creature called into being, He may not
claim the fulness of the Godhead, which is not His by a true birth.
17. My soul has been burning to answer these
insane attacks. I call to mind that the very centre of a saving
faith is the belief not merely in God, but in God as a Father; not
merely in Christ, but in Christ as the Son of God; in Him, not as a
creature, but as God the Creator, born of God. My prime object is
by the clear assertions of prophets and evangelists to refute the
insanity and ignorance of men who use the unity of God (in itself a
pious and profitable confession) as a cloak for their denial either
that in Christ God was born, or else that He is very God. Their
purpose is to isolate a solitary God at the heart of the faith by
making Christ, though mighty, only a creature; because, so they allege,
a birth of God widens the believer’s faith into a trust in more
gods than one. But we, divinely taught to confess neither two
Gods nor yet a solitary God, will adduce the evidence of the Gospels
and the prophets for our confession of God the Father and God the Son,
united, not confounded, in our faith. We will not admit Their
identity nor allow, as a compromise, that Christ is God in some
imperfect sense; for God, born of God, cannot be the same as His
Father, since He is His Son, nor yet can He be different in nature.
18. And you, whose warmth of faith and
passion for a truth unknown to the world and its philosophers shall
prompt to read me, must remember to eschew the feeble and baseless
conjectures of earthly minds, and in devout willingness to learn must
break down the barriers of prejudice and half-knowledge. The new
faculties of the regenerate intellect are needed; each must have his
understanding enlightened by the heavenly gift imparted to the
soul. First he must take his stand upon the sure ground
[substantia = ὑποστάσει]
of God, as holy Jeremiah says517
| 517 xxiii.
22, according to the LXX.,
ἐν
ὑποστάσει. |
, that since he is
to hear about that
nature [substantia] he may expand his thoughts till
they are worthy of the theme, not fixing some arbitrary standard for
himself, but judging as of infinity. And again, though he be
aware that he is partaker of the
Divine nature, as the holy
apostle
Peter says in his second
Epistle518
, yet he must
not measure the
Divine nature by the limitations of his own, but gauge
God’s assertions concerning Himself by the scale of His own
glorious self-revelation. For he is the
best student who does not
read his thoughts into the book, but lets it
reveal its own; who draws
from it its sense, and does not import his own into it, nor force upon
its words a meaning which he had determined was the right one before he
opened its pages. Since then we are to
discourse of the things of
God, let us assume that
God has full
knowledge of Himself, and bow with
humble reverence to His words. For He Whom we can only know
through His own utterances is the fitting witness concerning
Himself.
19. If in our discussion of the nature and birth
of God we adduce certain analogies, let no one suppose that such
comparisons are perfect and complete. There can be no comparison
between God and earthly things, yet the weakness of our understanding
forces us to seek for illustrations from a lower sphere to explain our
meaning about loftier themes. The course of daily life shews how
our experience in ordinary matters enables us to form conclusions on
unfamiliar subjects. We must therefore regard any comparison as
helpful to man rather than as descriptive of God, since it suggests,
rather than exhausts, the sense we seek. Nor let such a
comparison be thought too bold when it sets side by side carnal and
spiritual natures, things invisible and things palpable, since it avows
itself a necessary aid to the weakness of the human mind, and
deprecates the condemnation due to an imperfect analogy. On this
principle I proceed with my task, intending to use the terms supplied
by God, yet colouring my argument with illustrations drawn from human
life.
20. And first, I have so laid out the plan of the
whole work as to consult the advantage of the reader by the logical
order in which its books are arranged. It has been my resolve to
publish no half-finished and ill-considered treatise, lest its
disorderly array should resemble the confused clamour of a mob of
peasants. And since no one can scale a precipice unless there be
jutting ledges to aid his progress to the summit, I have here set down
in order the primary outlines of
our ascent leading our difficult course of argument up the easiest
path; not cutting steps in the face of the rock, but levelling it to a
gentle slope, that so the traveller, almost without a sense of effort
may reach the heights.
21. Thus, after the present first book, the second
expounds the mystery of the Divine birth, that those who shall be
baptized in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost
may know the true Names, and not be perplexed about their sense but
accurately informed as to fact and meaning, and so receive full
assurance that in the words which are used they have the true Names,
and that those Names involve the truth.
22. After this short and simple discourse
concerning the Trinity, the third book makes further progress, sure
though slow. Citing the greatest instances of His power, it
brings within the range of faith’s understanding that saying, in
itself beyond our comprehension, I in the Father and the Father in
Me519
, which
Christ utters concerning
Himself. Thus
truth beyond the dull wit of man is the
prize of
faith equipped with reason and
knowledge; for neither may we doubt
God’s Word concerning Himself, nor can we suppose that the
devout
reason is incapable of apprehending His might.
23. The fourth book starts with the
doctrines of the heretics, and disowns complicity in the fallacies
whereby they are traducing the faith of the Church. It publishes
that infidel creed which a number of them have lately
promulgated520
| 520 The letter of Arius to
Alexander; Book iv., §§ 12, 13. |
, and exposes the
dishonesty, and therefore the
wickedness, of their arguments from the
Law for what they call the
unity of
God. It sets out the whole
evidence of
Law and
Prophets to demonstrate the impiety of asserting
the
unity of
God to the exclusion of the
Godhead of
Christ, and the
treason of alleging that if
Christ be
God the Only-begotten, then
God
is not one.
24. The fifth book follows in reply the sequence
of heretical assertion. They had falsely declared that they
followed the law in the sense which they assigned to the unity of God,
and that they had proved from it that the true God is of one Person;
and this in order to rob the Lord Christ of His birth by their
conclusion concerning the One true God, for birth is the evidence of
origin. In answer I assert, step by step, what they deny; for
from the Law and the Prophets I demonstrate that there are not two
gods, nor one isolated true God, neither perverting the faith in the
Divine unity nor denying the birth of Christ. And since they say
that the Lord Jesus Christ, created rather than born, bears the Divine
Name by gift and not by right, I have proved His true Divinity from the
Prophets in such a way that, He being acknowledged very God, the
assurance of His inherent Godhead shall hold us fast to the certainty
that God is One.
25. The sixth book reveals the full deceitfulness
of this heretical teaching. To win credit for their assertions
they denounce the impious doctrine of heretics:—of Valentinus, to
wit, and Sabellius and Manichæus and Hieracas, and appropriate the
godly language of the Church as a cover for their blasphemy. They
reprove and alter the language of these heretics, correcting it into a
vague resemblance to orthodoxy, in order to suppress the holy faith
while apparently denouncing heresy. But we state clearly what is
the language and what the doctrine of each of these men, and acquit the
Church of any complicity or fellowship with condemned heretics.
Their words which deserve condemnation we condemn, and those which
claim our humble acceptance we accept. Thus that Divine Sonship
of Jesus Christ, which is the object of their most strenuous denial, we
prove by the witness of the Father, by Christ’s own assertion, by
the preaching of Apostles, by the faith of believers, by the cries of
devils, by the contradiction of Jews, in itself a confession, by the
recognition of the heathen who had not known God; and all this to
rescue from dispute a truth of which Christ had left us no excuse for
ignorance.
26. Next the seventh book, starting from the basis
of a true faith now attained, delivers its verdict in the great
debate. First, armed with its sound and incontrovertible proof of
the impregnable faith, it takes part in the conflict raging between
Sabellius and Hebion and these opponents of the true Godhead. It
joins issue with Sabellius on his denial of the pre-existence of
Christ, and with his assailants on their assertion that He is a
creature. Sabellius overlooked the eternity of the Son, but
believed that true God worked in a human body. Our present
adversaries deny that He was born, assert that He was created, and fail
to see in His deeds the works of very God. What both sides
dispute, we believe. Sabellius denies that it was the Son who was
working, and he is wrong; but he proves his case triumphantly when he
alleges that the work done was that of true God. The Church
shares his victory over those who deny that in Christ was very
God. But when Sabellius denies that Christ existed before the
worlds, his adversaries prove to conviction that Christ’s
activity is from everlasting, and we are on their side in this
confutation of Sabellius, who
recognises true God, but not God the Son, in this activity. And
our two previous adversaries join forces to refute Hebion, the second
demonstrating the eternal existence of Christ, while the first proves
that His work is that of very God. Thus the heretics overthrow
one another, while the Church, as against Sabellius, against those who
call Christ a creature, against Hebion, bears witness that the Lord
Jesus Christ is very God of very God, born before the worlds and born
in after times as man.
27. No one can doubt that we have taken the course
of true reverence and of sound doctrine when, after proving from Law
and Prophets first that Christ is the Son of God, and next that He is
true God, and this without breach of the mysterious unity, we proceed
to support the Law and the Prophets by the evidence of the Gospels, and
prove from them also that He is the Son of God and Himself very
God. It is the easiest of tasks, after demonstrating His right to
the Name of Son, to shew that the Name truly describes His relation to
the Father; though indeed universal usage regards the granting of the
name of son as convincing evidence of sonship. But, to leave no
loophole for the trickery and deceit of these traducers of the true
birth of God the Only-begotten, we have used His true Godhead as
evidence of His true Sonship; to shew that He Who (as is confessed by
all) bears the Name of Son of God is actually God, we have adduced His
Name, His birth, His nature, His power, His assertions. We have
proved that His Name is an accurate description of Himself, that the
title of Son is an evidence of birth, that in His birth He retained His
Divine Nature, and with His nature His power, and that that power
manifested itself in conscious and deliberate self-revelation. I
have set down the Gospel proofs of each several point, shewing how His
self-revelation displays His power, how His power reveals His nature,
how His nature is His by birthright, and from His birth comes His title
to the name of Son. Thus every whisper of blasphemy is silenced,
for the Lord Jesus Christ Himself by the witness of His own mouth has
taught us that He is, as His Name, His birth, His nature, His power
declare, in the true sense of Deity, very God of very God.
28. While its two predecessors have been
devoted to the confirmation of the faith in Christ as Son of God and
true God, the eighth book is taken up with the proof of the unity of
God, shewing that this unity is consistent with the birth of the Son,
and that the birth involves no duality in the Godhead. First it
exposes the sophistry with which these heretics have attempted to
avoid, though they could not deny, the confession of the real existence
of God, Father and Son; it demolishes their helpless and absurd plea
that in such passages as, And the multitude of them that believed
were one soul and heart521
| 521 Acts iv. 32: in this and the following
passages unum is read. |
, and again,
He
that planteth and He that watereth are one522
,
and
Neither for these only do I pray, but for them also that shall
believe on Me through their word, that they may all be one, even as
Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be in
Us523
, a
unity of will and
mind, not of
Divinity, is expressed. From a consideration of the true sense of
these texts we shew that they involve the reality of the
Divine birth;
and then, displaying the whole series of our
Lord’s
self-revelations, we exhibit, in the
language of
Apostles and in the
very words of the
Holy Spirit, the whole and
perfect mystery of the
glory of
God as
Father and as Only-begotten Son. Because there is
a
Father we know that there is a Son; in that Son the
Father is
manifested to us, and hence our certainty that He is
born the
Only-begotten and that He is very
God.
29. In matters essential to salvation it is
not enough to advance the proofs which faith supplies and finds
sufficient. Arguments which we have not tested may delude us into
a misapprehension of the meaning of our own words, unless we take the
offensive by exposing the hollowness of the enemy’s proofs, and
so establish our own faith upon the demonstrated absurdity of
his. The ninth book, therefore, is employed in refuting the
arguments by which the heretics attempt to invalidate the birth of God
the Only-begotten;—heretics who ignore the mystery of the
revelation hidden from the beginning of the world, and forget that the
Gospel faith proclaims the union of God and man. For their denial
that our Lord Jesus Christ is God, like unto God and equal with God as
Son with Father, born of God and by right of His birth subsisting as
very Spirit, they are accustomed to appeal to such words of our Lord
as, Why callest thou Me good? None is good save One, even
God524
. They argue that by His
reproof of
the man who called Him good, and by His assertion of the
goodness of
God only, He excludes Himself from the
goodness of that
God Who alone
is good and from that true
Divinity which
belongs only to One.
With this text their blasphemous reasoning connects another,
And
this is life eternal that they should know Thee the only true God, and Him Whom
Thou didst send, Jesus Christ525
.
Here, they say, He confesses that the
Father is the only true
God, and
that He Himself is neither true nor
God, since this recognition of an
only true
God is limited to the Possessor of the attributes
assigned. And they profess to be quite clear about His meaning in
this passage, since He also says,
The Son can do nothing of Himself,
but what He hath seen the Father doing526
. The fact that He can only copy is
said to be evidence of the limitation of His
nature. There can be
no comparison between Omnipotence and One whose action is dependent
upon the previous activity of Another; reason itself draws an absolute
line between
power and the want of
power. That line is so clear
that He Himself has avowed concerning
God the
Father,
The Father is
greater than I527
. So frank a
confession silences all demur; it is blasphemy and madness to assign
the
dignity and
nature of
God to One who disclaims them. So
utterly devoid is He of the qualities of true
God that He actually
bears witness concerning Himself,
But of that day and hour knoweth
no one, neither the angels in heaven nor the Son, but God
only528
. A son who
knows not his
father’s
secret must, from his ignorance, be
alien
from the
father who knows; a
nature limited in
knowledge cannot partake
of that
majesty and might which alone is exempt from the tyranny of
ignorance.
30. We therefore expose the blasphemous
misunderstanding at which they have arrived by distortion and
perversion of the meaning of Christ’s words. We account for
those words by stating what manner of questions He was answering, at
what times He was speaking, what partial knowledge He was deigning to
impart; we make the circumstances explain the words, and do not force
the former into consistency with the latter. Thus each case of
variance, that for instance between The Father is greater than
I529
, and
I and the Father are
One530
, or between
None is good save One, even
God531
, and
He that hath seen Me hath seen the
Father also532
, or a difference
so wide as that between
Father, all things that are Mine are Thine,
and Thine are Mine533
, and
That they
may know Thee, the only true God534
, or between
I in the Father and the Father in Me535
,
and
But of the day and hour knoweth no one, neither the angels in
heaven nor the Son, but the Father only536
,
is explained by a discrimination between gradual revelation and full
expression of His
nature and
power. Both are utterances of the
same Speaker, and an exposition of the real force of each group will
shew that
Christ’s true
Godhead is no whit impaired because, to
form the
mystery of the
Gospel faith, the
birth and Name
537
| 537 Reading
nativitas et nomen. The clause above, which is bracketed
in Migne, appears to be a gloss. |
of
Christ were
revealed gradually, and
under conditions which He chose of occasion and time.
31. The purpose of the tenth book is one in
harmony with the faith. For since, in the folly which passes with
them for wisdom, the heretics have twisted some of the circumstances
and utterances of the Passion into an insolent contradiction of the
Divine nature and power of the Lord Jesus Christ, I am compelled to
prove that this is a blasphemous misinterpretation, and that these
things were put on record by the Lord Himself as evidences of His true
and absolute majesty. In their parody of the faith they deceive
themselves with words such as, My soul is sorrowful even unto
death538
. He, they
think, must be
far removed from the blissful and passionless
life of
God, over Whose
soul brooded this crushing
fear of an impending woe,
Who under the pressure of suffering even humbled Himself to
pray,
Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass away from
Me539
, and assuredly bore the
appearance of
fearing to
endure the
trials from which He
prayed for
release; Whose
whole
nature was so overwhelmed by
agony that in those moments on the
Cross He
cried,
My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken
Me540
? forced by the
bitterness of His
pain to
complain that He was forsaken: Who,
destitute of the
Father’s help, gave up the
ghost with the words,
Father, into
Thy hands I commend My Spirit541
. The
fear, they say, which beset Him at the moment of expiring made Him
entrust His Spirit to the care of
God the
Father: the very
hopelessness of His own condition forced Him to
commit His
Soul to the
keeping of Another.
32. Their folly being as great as their
blasphemy, they fail to mark that Christ’s words, spoken under
similar circumstances, are always consistent; they cleave to the letter
and ignore the purpose of His words. There is the widest
difference between My soul is sorrowful even unto death542
, and
Henceforth ye shall see the Son of
Man sitting at the right hand of power543
;
so also between
Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass away,
from Me544
, and
The cup
which the Father hath given Me, shall I not drink it545
? and further between
My God,
My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me546
? and
Verily I say unto thee, Today shalt thou be with Me in
Paradise547
, and between
Father, into Thy hands I commend My Spirit548
, and
Father, forgive them, for they
know not what they do549
; and their
narrow minds, unable to grasp the
Divine meaning, plunge into blasphemy
in the attempt at explanation. There is a broad distinction
between
anxiety and a
mind at ease, between
haste and the prayer for
delay, between words of
anguish and words of encouragement, between
despair for self and confident entreaty for others; and the
heretics
display their impiety by ignoring the assertions of
Deity and the
Divine nature of
Christ, which account for the one class of His words,
while they concentrate their attention upon the
deeds and words which
refer only to His ministry on
earth. I have therefore set out all
the
elements contained in the
mystery of the
Soul and Body of the
Lord
Jesus Christ; all have been sought out, none suppressed. Next,
casting the calm
light of reason upon the
question, I have referred
each of His sayings to the class to which its meaning attaches it, and
so have shewn that He had also a
confidence which never wavered, a will
which never faltered, an assurance which never
murmured, that, when He
commended His own
soul to the
Father, in this was involved a prayer for
the pardon of others
550
| 550 Reading non
desiderasse. |
. Thus a complete
presentment of the teaching of the
Gospel interprets and confirms all
(and not some only) of the words of
Christ.
33. And so—for not even the glory of
the Resurrection has opened the eyes of these lost men and kept them
within the manifest bounds of the faith—they have forged a weapon
for their blasphemy out of a pretended reverence, and even perverted
the revelation of a mystery into an insult to God. From the
words, I ascend unto My Father and your Father, to My God and your
God551
, they argue that since that
Father is ours as
much as His, and that
God also ours and His, His own confession that He
shares with us in that relation to the
Father and to
God excludes Him
from true
Divinity, and subordinates Him to
God the Creator Whose
creature and inferior He is, as we are, although He has received the
adoption of a Son. Nay more, we must not suppose that He
possesses any of the characters of the
Divine nature, since the
Apostle
says,
But when He saith, all things are put in subjection, this is
except Him Who did subject all things unto Him, for when all things
shall have been subjected unto Him, then shall also He Himself be
subjected to Him that did subject all things unto Him, that God may be
all in all552
. For, so they
say, subjection is evidence of want of
power in the subject and of its
possession by the sovereign. The eleventh book is employed in a
reverent discussion of this argument; it
proves from these very words
of the
Apostle not only that subjection is no evidence of want of
power
in
Christ but that it actually is a sign of His true
Divinity as
God
the Son; that the fact that His
Father and
God is also our
Father and
God is an infinite
advantage to us and no degradation to Him, since He
Who has been
born as Man and
suffered all the
afflictions of our
flesh
has gone up on high to our
God and
Father, to receive His
glory as Man
our Representative.
34. In this treatise we have followed the
course which we know is pursued in every branch of education.
First come easy lessons and a familiarity, slowly attained by practice,
with the groundwork of the subject; then the student may make proof, in
the business of life, of the training which he has received. Thus
the soldier, when he is perfect in his exercises, can go out to battle;
the advocate ventures into the conflicts of the courts when he is
versed in the pleadings of the school of rhetoric; the sailor who has
learned to navigate his ship in the land-locked harbour of his home may
be trusted amid the storms of open seas and distant climes. Such
has been our proceeding in this most serious and difficult science in
which the whole faith is taught. First came simple instruction
for the untaught believer in the birth, the name, the Divinity, the
true Divinity of Christ; since then we have quietly and steadily
advanced till our readers can demolish every plea of the heretics; and
now at last we have pitted them against the adversary in the present
great and glorious conflict. The mind of men is powerless with
the ordinary resources of unaided reason to grasp the idea of an
eternal birth, but they attain by study of things Divine to the
apprehension of mysteries which lie beyond the range of common
thought. They can explode that paradox concerning the Lord Jesus,
which derives all its strength and semblance of cogency from a purblind
pagan philosophy: the paradox which asserts, There was a time
when He was not, and He was not before He was born, and He was
made out of nothing; as though His birth were
proof that He had previously been non-existent and at a given moment
came into being, and God the Only-begotten could thus be subjected to
the conception of time, as if the faith itself [by conferring the title
of ‘Son’] and the very nature of birth proved that there
was a time when He was not. Accordingly they argue that He was
born out of nothing, on the ground that birth implies the grant of
being to that which previously had no being. We proclaim in
answer, on the evidence of Apostles and Evangelists, that the Father is
eternal and the Son eternal, and demonstrate that the Son is God of all
with an absolute, not a limited, pre-existence; that these bold
assaults of their blasphemous logic—He was born out of
nothing, and He was not before He was born—are
powerless against Him; that His eternity is consistent with sonship,
and His sonship with eternity; that there was in Him no unique
exemption from birth but a birth from everlasting, for, while birth
implies a Father, Divinity is inseparable from eternity.
35. Ignorance of prophetic diction and
unskilfulness in interpreting Scripture has led them into a perversion
of the point and meaning of the passage, The Lord created Me for a
beginning of His ways for His works553
. They labour to establish from it
that
Christ is
created, rather than
born, as
God, and hence partakes
the
nature of
created beings, though He
excel them in the manner of His
creation, and has no
glory of
Divine birth but only the powers of a
transcendent creature. We in reply, without importing any new
considerations or preconceived opinions, will make this very passage of
Wisdom554
| 554 Here, as often in early
writers, the Sapiential books are included under this name. |
display its own true meaning and
object. We will show that the fact that He was
created for the
beginning of the ways of
God and for His works, cannot be twisted into
evidence concerning the
Divine and
eternal birth, because
creation for
these purposes and
birth from
everlasting are two entirely different
things. Where
birth is meant, there
birth, and nothing but
birth,
is spoken of; where
creation is mentioned, the cause of that
creation
is first named. There is a
Wisdom born before all things, and
again there is a
wisdom created for particular purposes; the
Wisdom
which is from
everlasting is one, the
wisdom which has come into
existence during the lapse of time is another.
36. Having thus concluded that we must reject the
word ‘creation’ from our confession of faith in God the
Only-begotten, we proceed to lay down the teachings of reason and of
piety concerning the Holy Spirit, that the reader, whose convictions
have been established by patient and earnest study of the preceding
books, may be provided with a complete presentation of the faith.
This end will be attained when the blasphemies of heretical teaching on
this theme also have been swept away, and the mystery, pure and
undefiled, of the Trinity which regenerates us has been fixed in terms
of saving precision on the authority of Apostles and Evangelists.
Men will no longer dare, on the strength of mere human reasoning, to
rank among creatures that Divine Spirit, Whom we receive as the pledge
of immortality and source of fellowship with the sinless nature of
God.
37. I know, O Lord God Almighty, that I owe
Thee, as the chief duty of my life, the devotion of all my words and
thoughts to Thyself. The gift of speech which Thou hast bestowed
can bring me no higher reward than the opportunity of service in
preaching Thee and displaying Thee as Thou art, as Father and Father of
God the Only-begotten, to the world in its blindness and the heretic in
his rebellion. But this is the mere expression of my own desire;
I must pray also for the gift of Thy help and compassion, that the
breath of Thy Spirit may fill the sails of faith and confession which I
have spread, and a favouring wind be sent to forward me on my voyage of
instruction. We can trust the promise of Him Who said, Ask,
and it shall be given you, seek, and ye shall find, knock, and it shall
be opened unto you555
; and we in our want
shall
pray for the things we need. We shall bring an untiring
energy to the study of Thy
Prophets and
Apostles, and we shall knock
for
entrance at every
gate of hidden
knowledge, but it is Thine to
answer the prayer, to grant the thing we
seek, to open the
door on
which we beat. Our minds are
born with dull and clouded vision,
our
feeble intellect is penned within the barriers of an impassable
ignorance concerning things
Divine; but the study of Thy revelation
elevates our
soul to the comprehension of
sacred truth, and submission
to the
faith is the path to a certainty beyond the reach of unassisted
reason.
38. And therefore we look to Thy support for the
first trembling steps of this undertaking, to Thy aid that it may gain
strength and prosper. We look to Thee to give us the fellowship
of that Spirit Who guided the Prophets and the Apostles, that we may
take their words in the sense in which they spoke and assign its right
shade of meaning to every utterance. For we shall speak of things
which they preached in a mystery; of Thee, O God Eternal, Father of the
Eternal and Only-begotten God, Who alone art without birth, and of the
One Lord Jesus Christ, born of Thee from everlasting. We may not
sever Him from Thee, or make Him one of a plurality of Gods, on any
plea of difference of nature. We may not say that He is not
begotten of Thee, because Thou art One. We must not fail to
confess Him as true God, seeing that He is born of Thee, true God, His
Father. Grant us, therefore, precision of language, soundness of
argument, grace of style, loyalty to truth. Enable us to utter
the things that we believe, that so we may confess, as Prophets and
Apostles have taught us, Thee, One God our Father, and One Lord Jesus
Christ, and put to silence the gainsaying of heretics, proclaiming Thee
as God, yet not solitary, and Him as God, in no unreal
sense.
E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
