St. Cyril on John 14:28

I post here the commentary of the blessed St. Cyril of Alexandria on John 14:28 where he plainly states that the Father was greater than the Son only because of the Son’s Incarnation and descent to the earth to humble himself by becoming a slave. The saint refutes those heretics who used this verse to prove that the Father is a greater divinity than the Son. All emphasis will be mine.

If ye loved Me, ye would have rejoiced, because I go unto the Father; for My Father is greater than I.

CHAPTER I. That in nothing is the Son inferior to God the Father, but rather equal to and like Him in nature. He turns the occasion of sorrow into a source of solace, and plainly rebukes them because they do not rather rejoice at what now gives them pain: and at the same time tries to teach them, that those who practise an unaffected and sincere love towards others, must not merely seek their own pleasure and advantage, but rather to benefit those they love, when an opportunity to do this gives them inducement. Therefore also Paul exhorts us in the words: Love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not its own. He speaks of some who seek not their own but others’ good. For true love shows itself in our not only providing for our own advantage but also considering our neighbour’s benefit. For our Saviour, in the words before us, persuades His disciples to lay this to heart. And, further, let us imprint the power of this thought in clearer characters on our hearts as on a tablet, and thereby attain unto the mystery of Christ. For a type taken from trifling things will oftentimes avail to enable us to arrive even at those things which we hold to admit of no comparison. It was pleasant then, for example, to the disciples of Paul that they should be always with him, but better for Paul to depart and be with Christ, as he has assured us by his own words. It was the duty then of those who chose to love him to be eager to fulfil their love towards him, and not to consider that only as endurable which was pleasant to themselves, but rather to reflect upon this, that his departure would be to the benefit of their master; for he was eager to be with Christ. You have the outline of the speculation so far as concerns Christ’s human nature. Let us therefore, illuminating as it were with varied tints our sketch of the power of the mystery of Christ, clearly show the absolute truth. For the Only-begotten, being in the form of God the Father, and in equality with the Spirit, counted it not a prize to be on an equality with God, and through His love towards us emptied Himself of His glory, taking the form of a servant, and underwent this that He might direct us all to perfect knowledge of virtue, so as to prepare us by the incomparable brightness of His miracles to behold the power, and glory, and exceeding might that is inherent in the Divine Nature. For so He might have induced those who have fallen into the depths of ignorance to recover knowledge once more, and no longer to worship the creature beyond the Creator, but to figure to themselves the One true and living God. And the Only-begotten has aided us in other ways by His incarnation, for He destroyed the power of death, and loosed the bonds of sin, and granted us to tread upon serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy. It was then, and with great reason, sweet and pleasant beyond all description to ourselves and the holy disciples, to have continual converse with Christ the Giver of such blessings to us, and to be ever present with Him and in His company.

But it was clearly not to His advantage, so long a time to choose to abide in the guise of humility, which He had taken for our advantage, through His love to us, as we just now said: rather was He bound, when His dispensation towards us had been already suitably accomplished, to ascend to His own glory, and, with the flesh that He had taken for our sake, to hasten back to equality with God the Father, which thinking it not robbery to do (for He might have had this honour in His own right), He descended to human humiliation. For while He was yet upon the earth, though He was truly God and Lord of all, He was thought no better than the rest of men, by those who knew not His glory. Nay, more, He was smitten, and spat upon, and crucified, and underwent the ridicule of the impious Jews, who dared to say, If Thou art the Son of God, come down now from the cross, and we will believe Thee. And when after He had fulfilled the mystery of our redemption, He ascended to God the Father in the heavens, when the time of His humiliation was already past, and the period of His voluntary degradation accomplished, He showed Himself very God to the powers above. For heaven did not deny the Lord of all when He ascended, but the charge was given to the sentinels at the gates above, that the Lord of Hosts was drawing nigh, although He was borne upward in the raiment of the flesh; and the Spirit was representing the opening of the gates, when He said: Lift up the gates ye rulers, and be lifted up ye everlasting doors, and the King of Glory shall come in. The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle, the Lord of Hosts, He is the King of Glory. For the manifold wisdom of God which He purposed in Christ was known unto the principalities and the powers, as Paul says. For when He ascended to the Father, although He may be thought greater than the Son in this respect, that He remained in His everlasting home, while the Son underwent voluntary humiliation, and descended in the form of a servant, and ascended up again to His own glory, and heard the words: Sit down on My right hand until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool. And it was to the intent that He might not seem too presumptuous, and that God the Father in the heavens had not of His own will made the Son sit on His right hand, the Father Himself is introduced saying this: Sit Thou on My right hand, the Psalmist says this. And no one with any sense will say that the Father has the second place of honour though He has the Son on His right hand, but will rather take what I have said into consideration. For it is not the Father, but rather the Son, on account of His voluntary degradation and suffering, Who must be conceived as sitting on the right hand, and having a place from which no inferiority could be inferred, as He might be numbered among inferior beings by those who cannot comprehend the mystery of His Incarnation. Therefore a place on the right hand of His Father, against Whom no such charge can be brought, is allotted to the Son that His equality may be maintained.

We have done well to introduce these explanations now, which have an intimate connexion with the present subject. Now taking up again and unfolding from the beginning the whole purpose of our disquisition, I proceed to say that continual converse with our Saviour Christ is sweet and acceptable and pleasant to us, although for our sake He has emptied Himself of His glory, as has been written, and taken the form of a servant and the dishonour of man’s nature. For what is man’s nature as compared with God! Nor was the Incarnation to the advantage of the Son, but to ascend to His Father profited Him more, and to recover His own glory and power and Divine honour in the sight of all, and no longer obscured. For He sat on the right hand by the will of His Father. For He loves Him as His own Offspring and the fruit of His Substance, and therefore He says, If ye loved Me, ye would have rejoiced because I go unto the Father: for the Father is greater than I. Surely it was a proof of His Father’s love towards Him that He did not sorrow over His seeming abandonment and the compulsory absence that He had taken on Himself, but rather took into consideration that He went to the glory befitting Him, and His due, and to His ancient honour, that is the Godhead manifest. Nay more, the Psalmist, though he speaks mysteries by the Spirit, says, Clap your hands, all ye people: then he explained the occasion of the festival, and introduced the Ascension of the Saviour into heaven, saying, God is gone up with a shout, the Lord with the sound of a trump: meaning by the shout and the trump the piercing and clear voice of the Spirit, when He bade the powers above open the gates, and named Him Lord of Hosts, as we said just now. On the same occasion moreover, we shall find the choir of the Saints rejoicing with great joy of heart. Then too he said in one place, The Lord reigneth, let the earth rejoice; and in another, The Lord reigneth: the Lord hath put on glorious apparel, the Lord hath put on and girded Himself with might. For He that was with us as a man before His resurrection from the dead, when He ascended to His Father in the heavens, then put on His own glorious apparel, and girded Himself with the might that was His from the beginning, for He sat and reigneth with the Father. Then it is right and meet that those who love Him should rejoice because He has gone to His Father in the heavens, to take upon Him His own glory, and to reign again with Him as at the beginning. And He says that He is greater, not because He sat down on the right hand as God, but as He was still with us, that is, in human shape. For as He still wore the guise of a servant, and the time had not yet come that He should be reinstated, He calls God the Father greater. Moreover, when He endured the precious cross for us, the Jews brought Him vinegar and gall when He was athirst, and when He drank, He said, It is finished. For already the time of His humiliation was fulfilled, and He was crucified as man. He had overcome the power of death, not as man but rather as God, I say by the working of His power and the glory and might of His conquest, not according to the flesh. The Father then is greater since the Son was still a servant and in the world, as He says that He is God of Himself, and adds this attribute to His human form. For if we believe that He degraded and humbled Himself, will it not be obvious to all that He descended from superiority to an inferiority, and rather from equality with the Father to the reverse. The Father underwent nothing of this, and He abode where He was at the beginning. He is greater therefore than He that chose inferiority by His own dispensation, and remained in such a state until He was restored to His ancient condition, I mean His own and natural glory in which He was at the beginning. We may rightly judge that His equality with the Father, which while He might have had it uninterruptedly He did not consider robbery to take for our sake, is His own and natural position.

And as we have spoken at length about the equality of the Son with God the Father in previous books, it may well be fitting to proceed to illustrate all things in order, leaving long discussions on the subject for the present. And since a certain dull-witted heretic, receiving from the Jews some marvellous knowledge of the holy writings, and attempting to explain the verse we have before us, has committed to writing intolerable blasphemies against the Only-begotten, I deemed it a mark of feebleness, and very unbecoming to myself, calmly to pass them by, and to dismiss in silence the awful madness of the man to whom I allude. I think then we ought to encounter him in argument, and show that his words are baseless and old wives’ fables, and wholly devoid of sense, and the quibbles of a perverted logic. And with reference to the same passage, I will read over to you what he has dared to write when giving the view he took of the text: “When He called His Father greater than Himself, He not only displayed His own humility but also refuted the heresy of those who maintain that His nature is twofold.” And having thus shattered the opinion of Sabellius, he makes a furious and vigorous onslaught, as he thinks, on those who put the Son on an equality with the Father in these words: “Some have reached such a pitch of madness that they cannot at all endure to say that the Father is superior to the divinity of the Only-begotten, but only that the Father seems to surpass Him when compared with Him in reference to the Incarnation, though they are not even able to look at them together in this aspect; and things different in kind can in no way be compared. For no one would ever say that man is wiser than a beast, or that a horse runs faster than a tortoise; but that one man has more reason than another, and that one horse has greater speed than another. Since then only things belonging to the same class are capable of comparison with each other, we must admit that the Father is greater even than the divinity of the Son. For those who fall into the contrary error of drawing a comparison with reference to the Incarnation, so far as in them lies, lessen the honour of the Father.” Such are his puerile babblings. And we must take care to show that he does not even know that he is inconsistent with himself. For he admits that the Son maintains becoming humility, when He says, The Father is greater than I; and I marvel that he did not also lay this to heart. For whatever was it which induced him to meddle with theology, although one would not make of no account the knowledge of the fitting time to speak or act if one were wise? What need was there then of such unseasonable discussion of the Divine Nature to His disciples in their agony, when He was about to depart from the world to God the Father? For what kind of consolation could this consideration bring to them? And why does not He merely rebuke them, saying, “If you loved Me, you would rejoice that I go to the Father, because the Father is greater than I?” Tell me then, did He think that this tended to solace the disciples, or to rid them of the sorrow they felt from their love of God, that He was going to the Father Who was greater than Himself? Although when Philip asked Him and said, Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us, then indeed, and very opportunely, as the occasion for theological teaching had arrived, He showed that the Father was in Him, and He Himself in the Father, and that He was in no way inferior to Him, but distinguished by His perfect equality, when He said: Have I been so long time with you, and dost thou not know Me, Philip? He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father. Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? I and the Father are one.

Then indeed, very opportunely, He unravels His discourse thereupon, and it is worthy of admiration. But here, how is the reference opportune? Or what construction would it admit of other than His desire to allay His disciples’ grief, and to furnish them, as it were, with a medicine of consolation bidding them rejoice because He “goes to the Father?” Is it not then obvious to any one, however dull-witted he may be, from the very state of the case, that since He was hastening to return to His own glory with the Father, He bade those who loved Him rejoice at this, devising this admirable means of consolation for them with the rest? But I will now pass this by, and will not lay much stress on their demented folly. But I say that we ought rather to go on to the following considerations. For He thought perhaps when comparing His Incarnate Nature with His Divine, they could not help making profit out of the inquiry, when we say that the Son was emptied of His glory when He became a Man. Is it not so? How could it be otherwise? But speaking of His Divine glory, in contrast with His place as a servant, and His position of subjection, we say that the Son was inferior to the Father, in so far as He was human; but that He was reinstated into His equality with the Father after His sojourn here, not endued with any new, or adventitious, or unaccustomed glory, but rather restored to that state in which He was at the beginning with the Father. And indeed, the inspired writer who initiates us into mysteries, I mean Paul, no longer attributing to Him the humiliation belonging to man’s estate after His resurrection from the dead and ascension into heaven, exhorts us saying: Even though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now we know Him so no more. And of himself again: Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, not from men, neither through man, but through Jesus Christ. And yet, why is it that when He says that on His second coming to us He will change the body of our humiliation, that it may be conformed to the body of His glory, he now denies it, saying: Not from men, neither through man, although destined to be an apostle by Jesus Christ? But how is it that he says he knew Him not in the flesh? Did he then, tell me, deny the Master that bought him? God forbid; for he is rightminded. For when the period of the actual humiliation or degradation of the Only-begotten had been accomplished, and come to an end, He makes haste to proclaim Himself and to gain recognition, not in the character which He presented when emptied of His glory, but of His natural attributes of God. For when it had once been known and admitted that He was human, He was bound to instruct believers in Him that He was also God by nature; and for this reason He chooses to speak of His divinity, rather than anything else.

And I marvel that the heretic of whom we are speaking does not blush when he says that “as only things which belong to the same class admit of comparison with each other, they must confess the Father is greater than the Divinity of the Son.” For he does not perceive, it seems, that he has armed his own argument against himself. For let him answer us this pertinent inquiry: From what starting point can comparisons of things of the same class best proceed? Can we reasonably start with what they are, according to the common definition of their nature, or with the qualities which belong to, or are deficient in each, or inhere or do not inhere in each? And I will give an example, and will select that which he gave to us by way of illustration. If any one choose to compare one man with another, looking to the one common definition of their essence, he would find no distinction; for there is no difference between man and man, so far as each is a thinking animal, mortal, and capable of sense and knowledge, as in all men there is one and the same definition of their essence. Nor does one horse differ from another in its essential character as a horse; but one man differs from another in some special sort of knowledge, as writing, and in divers other ways. This does not affect the essence, but clearly proceeds from quite another cause. So also one horse excels another in speed, or is smaller or larger than another; but you will find that superiority or inferiority in these respects lies outside the definition of their essence, otherwise things brought into mutual comparison could have no distinctions made between them. For if one man had a less or greater degree of the essential character of man, how could we conceive or speak of him at all? Then all things of the same type in their essential characters are uniform. But the difference lies in those attributes which either inhere in them, or which lie outside (viewing them in the light of accidents). Since then, according to his premise or statement, which I will proceed to deal with, only things of like nature admit of comparison at all appropriately, he must start by admitting that the Son is of the same class as the Father, that is, of the same Essence. For so you will have the same class in view; for he proved that man might be compared with man, and horse with horse. Then let him go on to tell us the reason why, when the Son is compared with God the Father as being of the same class He has any kind of inferiority to Him, and where we shall find it, when one and the same definition of their essence belongs to things of the same class? For in the case of the essence of a class, its definition is not perfect in some cases and imperfect in others, but is one and the same for all. But we may say that any accident may have a separate cause and accrue to a thing in a different manner. In order to make what I have said quite clear, I will set before you the illustration I gave at the outset.

No man differs from another in his essential character as man; but one man is pious and another wicked; and one is weak and maimed, while another is healthy and strong; and one is vile and another good. But when a man accurately investigates the reasons for these distinctions, he will not trace them to their common definition of the essence, but rather attributes the causes to diseases of mind or body. As then, there is one definition of Godhead for the Father and the Son both in conception and reality (otherwise one could not but go astray), for They are compared as belonging to the same class, and I will use his words for the purpose of the argument-—let these deluded men tell us what they think it was that paved the way for the inferiority of the Son to God the Father; was it disease, or indolence, and those things which are known to affect created beings’? Who would be so mad and such a slave of contradictions as even to lend an ear to such blasphemy? When then, being (as He is), of the same class as the living God, He Himself also is manifestly by nature God-—for He is brought into comparison with the Father: and nothing can hinder His having a like state with His Father-—how is He inferior? Since, then, this adversary of the truth has given in detail a mass of contradictions, with reference to the text, and has not hesitated to affirm that “the Father is greater than the Godhead of the Son,” let us then, after having made a brief defence of the Incarnation, and separated it in our demonstration from the consideration of the matter under discussion, compare the Divinity of the Son with that of the Father, according to Their definition; but let us previously inquire of him who dares to say this, whether he thinks that God, when He is God, is so by nature, or something else besides, but honoured with the appellation of Divinity, as there are many so that are called gods and lords in heaven, and many on earth. When then he asserts that the Son has been honoured by the bare appellation of Divinity, but that He is not by nature really that which He is said to be, we who are rightminded will encounter him, and openly exclaim, “My good Sir, if He is not really God, we shall worship the creature in preference to the Creator, and not only we who inhabit this earthly sphere, but also the multitude of holy angels; and we shall also accuse every Saint who has spoken of Him as the real and true God, and most of all we charge S. John, who said of Him: We know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know the true God, and we are in His true Son Jesus Christ: this is the true God, and eternal life.” But if, rejecting all inspired writings alike, he confess that He is really God, and be so minded and still suggest the doctrine that even so He falls below the Father’s dignity in some respect, has he not introduced to us a new God, wholly dissevered from His natural connexion with the Father, and conceived of as having a separate existence and not inhering in the substance of God the Father? But I think the matter is obvious to every one. For if nothing is conceived of as being greater or less than itself, but as greater than anything which is less, and less than anything which is greater, must he not perforce admit that there are two true and real Gods, so that one is thought the greater, and the other the less. So the faith of the Church is wholly destroyed and overturned by their doctrine, for we shall have not one God but two. Whose temples then are we according to the Scriptures? Surely His Who established His Spirit in our hearts.

When then we find in the Holy Writings the Spirit spoken of as not of the Father only but also of the Son, what are we to infer, and what view must we take? Which of the two reject and call the other God? If, however, we are to admit a duality of Gods, one less and the other greater, we shall say that both abide in our hearts by separate Spirits, and we shall be found temples of more than one God, and there are two Spirits dwelling in us, a greater and a less, corresponding to the nature of those who gave them. For who could tolerate such ravings, and who cannot see that their doctrine is absurd and ridiculous, after he has considered the view I have just set forth?

But, perhaps, if he is forced to admit that there is a duality of Gods by nature, one the greater and the other the less, he will proceed to that doctrine that is always recurring in his writings; I mean, he will say that the Son has a separate nature-—though He is not wholly devoid of the nature of a created being, yet neither does He wholly decline from the Divinity of God the Father. For those who do not scruple to say plainly that He is a creature take refuge in refinements of language, trying as it were to gloss over their profanity. When then we say that the Son has such a nature as not to be wholly God, nor yet to fall entirely into the category of creatures, but that He holds an intermediate place, so as to fall beneath the dignity of God the Father, and yet to exceed created beings in glory, we will say first of all, that there is no authority to induce us to lay down the doctrine they choose to propound. For either let them satisfy us from the holy and inspired writings, or confessing they have no voucher for their private opinion, blush for laying down definitions in matters of faith from their own private judgment. But since it occurred to them to say this in their rash folly, I will proceed to the view they have propounded, and I will say once more that if only things of the same class are properly capable of mutual comparison,-—and the Son has proved that He may properly be compared with God the Father in the plainest language, The Father is greater than I,-—must not then the Father be conceived of as having the same nature you attribute to the Son? What follows then? Your whole speculation is upset. For so long as you maintain that the Father is greater than the Son, but a created being is less according to you, the nature of the Only-begotten lies between the two. And when the nature of the Father is lessened to that of the Son, one of the extremes is left out, as there is no longer anything above and superior to the Son. And if, as he says, He is compared with the Father as being one of the same class, must not the definition of Their Essence be one and the same for both? And if you scruple to admit that the Son is of the same Essence with the Father, but rather put Him in a position of inferiority, and debase the glory of the Father to that of a being whom you reckon less than and inferior to Him, do you not see blasphemy springing up like a thorn? Does not then a root of bitterness springing up rankle in the heart of those thus minded? Why then do you leave the straight path of truth, and launch into such absurd discussions? Grant then to the Only-begotten in your thoughts an equality with God the Father. For thus there will be One God, worshipped and glorified in the holy and consubstantial Trinity, both by us and by the holy angels. (Cyril of Alexandria on John 14:28)

Augustine, Hypostatic Union & Christ as Lesser than Himself

The quotations from St. Augustine are taken from On the Trinity, Book 1. Augustine will cite texts such as 1 John 5:20, where Jesus is called the true God and eternal life, to prove that Christ is one divine Person who operates in/by/through two natures since he is the God-Man. He will explain that Jesus, by virtue of becoming Man, not only became lesser than the Father and the Spirit, but also became lesser than himself. St. Augustine employs Philippians 2:5-8 to show that there are things that apply to Jesus in regards to his being in the form of God, and others that relate to the form of a servant that he took upon. All emphasis will be mine.

Chapter 7.— In What Manner the Son is Less Than the Father, and Than Himself.

14. In these and like testimonies of the divine Scriptures, by free use of which, as I have said, our predecessors exploded such sophistries or errors of the heretics, the unity and equality of the Trinity are intimated to our faith. But because, on account of the incarnation of the Word of God for the working out of our salvation, that the man Christ Jesus might be the Mediator between God and men, many things are so said in the sacred books as to signify, or even most expressly declare, the Father to be greater than the Son; men have erred through a want of careful examination or consideration of the whole tenor of the Scriptures, and have endeavored to transfer those things which are said of Jesus Christ according to the flesh, to that substance of His which was eternal before the incarnation, and is eternal. They say, for instance, that the Son is less than the Father, because it is written that the Lord Himself said, My Father is greater than I. But the truth shows that after the same sense the Son is less also than Himself; for how was He not made less also than Himself, who emptied Himself, and took upon Him the form of a servant? For He did not so take the form of a servant as that He should lose the form of God, in which He was equal to the Father. If, then, the form of a servant was so taken that the form of God was not lost, since both in the form of a servant and in the form of God He Himself is the same only-begotten Son of God the Father, in the form of God equal to the Father, in the form of a servant the Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; is there any one who cannot perceive that He Himself in the form of God is also greater than Himself, but yet likewise in the form of a servant less than Himself? And not, therefore, without cause the Scripture says both the one and the other, both that the Son is equal to the Father, and that the Father is greater than the Son. For there is no confusion when the former is understood as on account of the form of God, and the latter as on account of the form of a servant. And, in truth, this rule for clearing the question through all the sacred Scriptures is set forth in one chapter of an epistle of the Apostle Paul, where this distinction is commended to us plainly enough. For he says, Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God; but emptied Himself, and took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: and was found in fashion as a man. The Son of God, then, is equal to God the Father in nature, but less in fashion. For in the form of a servant which He took He is less than the Father; but in the form of God, in which also He was before He took the form of a servant, He is equal to the Father. In the form of God He is the Word, by whom all things are made; but in the form of a servant He was made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law. In like manner, in the form of God He made man; in the form of a servantHe was made man. For if the Father alone had made man without the Son, it would not have been written, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. Therefore, because the form of God took the form of a servant, both is God and both is man; but both God, on account of God who takes; and both man, on account of man who is taken. For neither by that taking is the one of them turned and changed into the other: the Divinity is not changed into the creature, so as to cease to be Divinity; nor the creature into Divinity, so as to cease to be creature…

Chapter 11.— By What Rule in the Scriptures It is Understood that the Son is Now Equal and Now Less.

22. Wherefore, having mastered this rule for interpreting the Scriptures concerning the Son of God, that we are to distinguish in them what relates to the form of God, in which He is equal to the Father, and what to the form of a servant which He took, in which He is less than the Father; we shall not be disquieted by apparently contrary and mutually repugnant sayings of the sacred books. For both the Son and the Holy Spirit, according to the form of God, are equal to the Father, because neither of them is a creature, as we have already shown: but according to the form of a servant He is less than the Father, because He Himself has said, My Father is greater than I; and He is less than Himself, because it is said of Him, He emptied Himself; and He is less than the Holy Spirit, because He Himself says, Whosoever speaks a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him; but whosoever speaks against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven Him. And in the Spirit too He wrought miracles, saying: But if I with the Spirit of God cast out devils, no doubt the kingdom of God has come upon you. And in Isaiah He says — in the lesson which He Himself read in the synagogue, and showed without a scruple of doubt to be fulfilled concerning Himself —The Spirit of the Lord God, He says, is upon me: because He has anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives, etc.: for the doing of which things He therefore declares Himself to be sent, because the Spirit of God is upon Him. According to the form of God, all things were made by Him; according to the form of a servant, He was Himself made of a woman, made under the law. According to the form of God, He and the Father are one; according to the form of a servant, He came not to do His own will, but the will of Him that sent Him. According to the form of God, As the Father has life in Himself, so has He given to the Son to have life in Himself; according to the form of a servant, His soul is sorrowful even unto death; and, O my Father, He says, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me. According to the form of God, He is the True God, and eternal life; according to the form of a servant, He became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. — 23. According to the form of God, all things that the Father has are His, and All mine, He says, are Yours, and Yours are mine; according to the form of a servant, the doctrine is not His own, but His that sent Him.

Chapter 12.— In What Manner the Son is Said Not to Know the Day and the Hour Which the Father Knows. Some Things Said of Christ According to the Form of God, Other Things According to the Form of a Servant. In What Way It is of Christ to Give the Kingdom, in What Not of Christ. Christ Will Both Judge and Not Judge.

Again, Of that day and that hour knows no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven; neither the Son, but the Father. For He is ignorant of this, as making others ignorant; that is, in that He did not so know as at that time to show His disciples: as it was said to Abraham, Now I know that you fear God, that is, now I have caused you to know it; because he himself, being tried in that temptation, became known to himself. For He was certainly going to tell this same thing to His disciples at the fitting time; speaking of which yet future as if past, He says, Henceforth I call you not servants, but friends; for the servant knows not what his Lord does: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you; which He had not yet done, but spoke as though He had already done it, because He certainly would do it. For He says to the disciples themselves, I have yet many things to say unto you; but you cannot bear them now. Among which is to be understood also, Of the day and hour. For the apostle also says, I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified; because he was speaking to those who were not able to receive higher things concerning the Godhead of Christ. To whom also a little while after he says, I could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal. He was ignorant, therefore, among them of that which they were not able to know from him. And that only he said that he knew, which it was fitting that they should know from him. In short, he knew among the perfect what he knew not among babes; for he there says: We speak wisdom among them that are perfect. For a man is said not to know what he hides, after that kind of speech, after which a ditch is called blind which is hidden. For the Scriptures do not use any other kind of speech than may be found in use among men, because they speak to men.

24. According to the form of God, it is said Before all the hills He begot me, that is, before all the loftinesses of things created and, Before the dawn I begot You, that is, before all times and temporal things: but according to the form of a servant, it is said, The Lord created me in the beginning of His ways. Because, according to the form of God, He said, I am the truth; and according to the form of a servant, I am the way. For, because He Himself, being the first-begotten of the dead, made a passage to the kingdom of God to life eternal for His Church, to which He is so the Head as to make the body also immortal, therefore He was created in the beginning of the ways of God in His work. For, according to the form of God, He is the beginning, that also speaks unto us, in which beginning God created the heaven and the earth; but according to the form of a servant, He is a bridegroom coming out of His chamber. According to the form of God, He is the first-born of every creature, and He is before all things and by him all things consist; according to the form of a servant, He is the head of the body, the Church. According to the form of God, He is the Lord of glory. From which it is evident that He Himself glorifies His saints: for, Whom He did predestinate, them He also called; and whom He called, them He also justified; and whom He justified, them He also glorified. Of Him accordingly it is said, that He justifies the ungodly; of Him it is said, that He is just and a justifier. If, therefore, He has also glorified those whom He has justified, He who justifies, Himself also glorifies; who is, as I have said, the Lord of glory. Yet, according to the form of a servant, He replied to His disciples, when inquiring about their own glorification: To sit on my right hand and on my left is not mine to give, but [it shall be given to them] for whom it is prepared by my Father.

25. But that which is prepared by His Father is prepared also by the Son Himself, because He and the Father are one. For we have already shown, by many modes of speech in the divine Scriptures, that, in this Trinity, what is said of each is also said of all, on account of the indivisible working of the one and same substance. As He also says of the Holy Spirit, If I depart, I will send Him unto you. He did not say, We will send; but in such way as if the Son only should send Him, and not the Father; while yet He says in another place, These things have I spoken unto you, being yet present with you; but the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, He shall teach you all things. Here again it is so said as if the Son also would not send Him, but the Father only. As therefore in these texts, so also where He says, But for them for whom it is prepared by my Father, He meant it to be understood that He Himself, with the Father, prepares seats of glory for those for whom He will. But some one may say: There, when He spoke of the Holy Spirit, He so says that He Himself will send Him, as not to deny that the Father will send Him; and in the other place, He so says that the Father will send Him, as not to deny that He will do so Himself; but here He expressly says, It is not mine to give, and so goes on to say that these things are prepared by the Father. But this is the very thing which we have already laid down to be said according to the form of a servant: viz., that we are so to understand It is not mine to give, as if it were said, This is not in the power of man to give; that so He may be understood to give it through that wherein He is God equal to the Father. It is not mine, He says, to give; that is, I do not give these things by human power, but to those for whom it is prepared by my Father; but then take care you understand also, that if all things which the Father has are mine, then this certainly is mine also, and I with the Father have prepared these things.

26. For I ask again, in what manner this is said, If any man hear not my words, I will not judge him? For perhaps He has said here, I will not judge him, in the same sense as there, It is not mine to give. But what follows here? I came not, He says, to judge the world, but to save the world; and then He adds, He that rejects me, and receives not my words, has one that judges him. Now here we should understand the Father, unless He had added, The word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day. Well, then, will neither the Son judge, because He says, I will not judge him, nor the Father, but the word which the Son has spoken? Nay, but hear what yet follows: For I, He says, have not spoken of myself; but the Father which sent me, He gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak; and I know that His commandment is life everlasting: whatsoever I speak therefore, even as the Father said to me, so I speak. If therefore the Son judges not, but the word which the Son has spoken; and the word which the Son has spoken therefore judges, because the Son has not spoken of Himself, but the Father who sent Him gave Him a commandment what He should say, and what He should speak: then the Father assuredly judges, whose word it is which the Son has spoken; and the same Son Himself is the very Word of the Father. For the commandment of the Father is not one thing, and the word of the Father another; for He has called it both a word and a commandment. Let us see, therefore, whether perchance, when He says, I have not spoken of myself, He meant to be understood thus — I am not born of myself. For if He speaks the word of the Father, then He speaks Himself, because He is Himself the Word of the Father. For ordinarily He says, The Father gave to me; by which He means it to be understood that the Father begot Him: not that He gave anything to Him, already existing and not possessing it; but that the very meaning of, To have given that He might have, is, To have begotten that He might be. For it is not, as with the creature so with the Son of God before the incarnation and before He took upon Him our flesh, the Only-begotten by whom all things were made; that He is one thing, and has another: but He is in such way as to be what He has. And this is said more plainly, if any one is fit to receive it, in that place where He says: For as the Father has life in Himself, so has He given to the Son to have life in Himself. For He did not give to Him, already existing and not having life, that He should have life in Himself; inasmuch as, in that He is, He is life. Therefore He gave to the Son to have life in Himself means, He begot the Son to be unchangeable life, which is life eternal. Since, therefore, the Word of God is the Son of God, and the Son of God is the true God and eternal life, as John says in his Epistle; so here, what else are we to acknowledge when the Lord says, The word which I have spoken, the same shall judge him at the last day, and calls that very word the word of the Father and the commandment of the Father, and that very commandment everlasting life? And I know, He says, that His commandment is life everlasting.

27. I ask, therefore, how we are to understand, I will not judge him; but the Word which I have spoken shall judge him: which appears from what follows to be so said, as if He would say, I will not judge; but the Word of the Father will judge. But the Word of the Father is the Son of God Himself. Is it to be so understood: I will not judge, but I will judge? How can this be true, unless in this way: viz., I will not judge by human power, because I am the Son of man; but I will judge by the power of the Word, because I am the Son of God? Or if it still seems contradictory and inconsistent to say, I will not judge, but I will judge; what shall we say of that place where He says, My doctrine is not mine? How mine, when not mine? For He did not say, This doctrine is not mine, but My doctrine is not mine: that which He called His own, the same He called not His own. How can this be true, unless He has called it His own in one relation; not His own, in another? According to the form of God, His own; according to the form of a servant, not His own. For when He says, It is not mine, but His that sent me, He makes us recur to the Word itself. For the doctrine of the Father is the Word of the Father, which is the Only Son. And what, too, does that mean, He that believes in me, believes not on me? How believe in Him, yet not believe in Him? How can so opposite and inconsistent a thing be understood — Whoever believes in me, He says, believes not on me, but on Him that sent me;— unless you so understand it, Whoever believes in me believes not on that which he sees, lest our hope should be in the creature; but on Him who took the creature, whereby He might appear to human eyes, and so might cleanse our hearts by faith, to contemplate Himself as equal to the Father? So that in turning the attention of believers to the Father, and saying, Believes not on me, but on Him that sent me, He certainly did not mean Himself to be separated from the Father, that is, from Him that sent Him; but that men might so believe in Himself, as they believe in the Father, to whom He is equal. And this He says in express terms in another place, You believe in God, believe also in me: that is, in the same way as you believe in God, so also believe in me; because I and the Father are One God. As therefore, here, He has as it were withdrawn the faith of men from Himself, and transferred it to the Father, by saying, Believes not on me, but on Him that sent me, from whom nevertheless He certainly did not separate Himself; so also, when He says, It is not mine to give, but [it shall be given to them] for whom it is prepared by my Father, it is I think plain in what relation both are to be taken. For that other also is of the same kind, I will not judge; whereas He Himself shall judge the quick and dead. But because He will not do so by human power, therefore, reverting to the Godhead, He raises the hearts of men upwards; which to lift up, He Himself came down.

JOHN OF DAMASCUS ON THE HOLY TRINITY AND HYPOSTATIC UNION

In this post I will be quoting snippets from John the Damascene’s monumental tome titled, Exposition of the Faith, in regards to his articulation of the Trinity, the Son’s eternal generation, and two natures of Christ.

As the readers will readily discern, John’s insights, depth of knowledge, and mastery of the Holy Scriptures are simply remarkable, showing that he indeed was a remarkable and Spirit-filled servant of Christ.

May he forever rest in the everlasting peace of our blessed God and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

All emphasis shall be mine

Chapter 8. Concerning the Holy Trinity.

We believe, then, in One God, one beginning , having no beginning, uncreate, unbegotten, imperishable and immortal, everlasting, infinite, uncircumscribed, boundless, of infinite power, simple, uncompound, incorporeal, without flux, passionless, unchangeable, unalterable, unseen, the fountain of goodness and justice, the light of the mind, inaccessible; a power known by no measure, measurable only by His own will alone (for all things that He wills He can), creator of all created things, seen or unseen, of all the maintainer and preserver, for all the provider, master and lord and king over all, with an endless and immortal kingdom: having no contrary, filling all, by nothing encompassed, but rather Himself the encompasser and maintainer and original possessor of the universe, occupying all essences intact and extending beyond all things, and being separate from all essence as being super-essential and above all things and absolute God, absolute goodness, and absolute fullness : determining all sovereignties and ranks, being placed above all sovereignty and rank, above essence and life and word and thought: being Himself very light and goodness and life and essence, inasmuch as He does not derive His being from another, that is to say, of those things that exist: but being Himself the fountain of being to all that is, of life to the living, of reason to those that have reason; to all the cause of all good: perceiving all things even before they have become: one essence, one divinity, one power, one will, one energy, one beginning, one authority, one dominion, one sovereignty, made known in three perfect subsistences and adored with one adoration, believed in and ministered to by all rational creation , united without confusion and divided without separation (which indeed transcends thought). (We believe) in Father and Son and Holy Spirit whereinto also we have been baptized. For so our Lord commanded the Apostles to baptize, saying, Baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit Matthew 18:19.

(We believe) in one Father, the beginning , and cause of all: begotten of no one: without cause or generation, alone subsisting: creator of all: but Father of one only by nature, His Only-begotten Son and our Lord and God and Saviour Jesus Christ, and Producer of the most Holy Spirit. And in one Son of God, the Only-begotten, our Lord, Jesus Christ: begotten of the Father, before all the ages: Light of Light, true God of true God: begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father, through Whom all things are made: and when we say He was before all the ages we show that His birth is without time or beginning: for the Son of God was not brought into being out of nothing , He that is the effulgence of the glory, the impress of the Father’s subsistence , the living wisdom and power 1 Corinthians 1:24, the Word possessing interior subsistence , the essential and perfect and living image Hebrews 1:3 of the unseen God. But always He was with the Father and in Him, everlastingly and without beginning begotten of Him. For there never was a time when the Father was and the Son was not, but always the Father and always the Son, Who was begotten of Him, existed together. For He could not have received the name Father apart from the Son: for if He were without the Son, He could not be the Father: and if He thereafter had the Son, thereafter He became the Father, not having been the Father prior to this, and He was changed from that which was not the Father and became the Father. This is the worst form of blasphemy. For we may not speak of God as destitute of natural generative power: and generative power means, the power of producing from one’s self, that is to say, from one’s own proper essence, that which is like in nature to one’s self.

In treating, then, of the generation of the Son, it is an act of impiety to say that time comes into play and that the existence of the Son is of later origin than the Father. For we hold that it is from Him, that is, from the Father’s nature, that the Son is generated. And unless we grant that the Son co-existed from the beginning with the Father, by Whom He was begotten, we introduce change into the Father’s subsistence, because, not being the Father, He subsequently became the Father. For the creation, even though it originated later, is nevertheless not derived from the essence of God, but is brought into existence out of nothing by His will and power, and change does not touch God’s nature. For generation means that the begetter produces out of his essence offspring similar in essence. But creation and making mean that the creator and maker produces from that which is external, and not out of his own essence, a creation of an absolutely dissimilar nature.

Wherefore in God, Who alone is passionless and unalterable, and immutable, and ever so continues, both begetting and creating are passionless. For being by nature passionless and not liable to flux, since He is simple and uncompound, He is not subject to passion or flux either in begetting or in creating, nor has He need of any co-operation. But generation in Him is without beginning and everlasting, being the work of nature and producing out of His own essence, that the Begetter may not undergo change, and that He may not be God first and God last, nor receive any accession: while creation in the case of God, being the work of will, is not co-eternal with God. For it is not natural that that which is brought into existence out of nothing should be co-eternal with what is without beginning and everlasting. There is this difference in fact between man’s making and God’s. Man can bring nothing into existence out of nothing, but all that he makes requires pre-existing matter for its basis, and he does not create it by will only, but thinks out first what it is to be and pictures it in his mind, and only then fashions it with his hands, undergoing labour and trouble, and often missing the mark and failing to produce to his satisfaction that after which he strives. But God, through the exercise of will alone, has brought all things into existence out of nothing. Now there is the same difference between God and man in begetting and generating. For in God, Who is without time and beginning, passionless, not liable to flux, incorporeal, alone and without end, generation is without time and beginning, passionless and not liable to flux, nor dependent on the union of two: nor has His own incomprehensible generation beginning or end. And it is without beginning because He is immutable: without flux because He is passionless and incorporeal: independent of the union of two again because He is incorporeal but also because He is the one and only God, and stands in need of no co-operation: and without end or cessation because He is without beginning, or time, or end, and ever continues the same. For that which has no beginning has no end: but that which through grace is endless is assuredly not without beginning, as, witness, the angels.

Accordingly the everlasting God generates His own Word which is perfect, without beginning and without end, that God, Whose nature and existence are above time, may not engender in time. But with man clearly it is otherwise, for generation is with him a matter of sex, and destruction and flux and increase and body clothe him round about, and he possesses a nature which is male or female. For the male requires the assistance of the female. But may He Who surpasses all, and transcends all thought and comprehension, be gracious to us.

The holy catholic and apostolic Church, then, teaches the existence at once of a Father: and of His Only-begotten Son, born of Him without time and flux and passion, in a manner incomprehensible and perceived by the God of the universe alone: just as we recognise the existence at once of fire and the light which proceeds from it: for there is not first fire and thereafter light, but they exist together. And just as light is ever the product of fire, and ever is in it and at no time is separate from it, so in like manner also the Son is begotten of the Father and is never in any way separate from Him, but ever is in Him. But whereas the light which is produced from fire without separation, and abides ever in it, has no proper subsistence of its own distinct from that of fire (for it is a natural quality of fire), the Only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father without separation and difference and ever abiding in Him, has a proper subsistence of its own distinct from that of the Father.

The terms, ‘Word’ and ‘effulgence,’ then, are used because He is begotten of the Father without the union of two, or passion, or time, or flux, or separation: and the terms ‘Son’ and ‘impress of the Father’s subsistence,’ because He is perfect and has subsistence and is in all respects similar to the Father, save that the Father is not begotten: and the term ‘Only-begotten’ because He alone was begotten alone of the Father alone. For no other generation is like to the generation of the Son of God, since no other is Son of God. For though the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father, yet this is not generative in character but processional. This is a different mode of existence, alike incomprehensible and unknown, just as is the generation of the Son. Wherefore all the qualities the Father has are the Son’s, save that the Father is unbegotten, and this exception involves no difference in essence nor dignity, but only a different mode of coming into existence. We have an analogy in Adam, who was not begotten (for God Himself moulded him), and Seth, who was begotten (for he is Adam’s son), and Eve, who proceeded out of Adam’s rib (for she was not begotten). These do not differ from each other in nature, for they are human beings: but they differ in the mode of coming into existence. For one must recognise that the word ἀγένητον with only one ‘ν ‘ signifies uncreate or not having been made, while ἀγέννητον written with double ‘ν ‘ means unbegotten. According to the first significance essence differs from essence: for one essence is uncreate, or ἀγένητον with one ‘ν,’ and another is create or γενητή. But in the second significance there is no difference between essence and essence. For the first subsistence of all kinds of living creatures is ἀγέννητος but not ἀγένητος. For they were created by the Creator, being brought into being by His Word, but they were not begotten, for there was no pre-existing form like themselves from which they might have been born.

So then in the first sense of the word the three absolutely divine subsistences of the Holy Godhead agree: for they exist as one in essence and uncreate. But with the second signification it is quite otherwise. For the Father alone is ingenerate , no other subsistence having given Him being. And the Son alone is generate, for He was begotten of the Father’s essence without beginning and without time. And only the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father’s essence, not having been generated but simply proceeding. John 15:26 For this is the doctrine of Holy Scripture. But the nature of the generation and the procession is quite beyond comprehension.

And this also it behooves us to know, that the names Fatherhood, Sonship and Procession, were not applied to the Holy Godhead by us: on the contrary, they were communicated to us by the Godhead, as the divine apostle says, Wherefore I bow the knee to the Father, from Whom is every family in heaven and on earth. But if we say that the Father is the origin of the Son and greater than the Son, we do not suggest any precedence in time or superiority in nature of the Father over the Son John 14:28 (for through His agency He made the ages ), or superiority in any other respect save causation. And we mean by this, that the Son is begotten of the Father and not the Father of the Son, and that the Father naturally is the cause of the Son: just as we say in the same way not that fire proceeds from light, but rather light from fire. So then, whenever we hear it said that the Father is the origin of the Son and greater than the Son, let us understand it to mean in respect of causation. And just as we do not say that fire is of one essence and light of another, so we cannot say that the Father is of one essence and the Son of another: but both are of one and the same essence. And just as we say that fire has brightness through the light proceeding from it, and do not consider the light of the fire as an instrument ministering to the fire, but rather as its natural force: so we say that the Father creates all that He creates through His Only-begotten Son, not as though the Son were a mere instrument serving the Father’s ends, but as His natural and subsistential force. And just as we say both that the fire shines and again that the light of the fire shines, So all things whatsoever the Father does, these also does the Son likewise. John 5:19 But whereas light possesses no proper subsistence of its own, distinct from that of the fire, the Son is a perfect subsistence, inseparable from the Father’s subsistence, as we have shown above. For it is quite impossible to find in creation an image that will illustrate in itself exactly in all details the nature of the Holy Trinity. For how could that which is create and compound, subject to flux and change, circumscribed, formed and corruptible, clearly show forth the super-essential divine essence, unaffected as it is in any of these ways? Now it is evident that all creation is liable to most of these affections, and all from its very nature is subject to corruption.

Likewise we believe also in one Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life: Who proceeds from the Father and rests in the Son: the object of equal adoration and glorification with the Father and Son, since He is co-essential and co-eternal: the Spirit of God, direct, authoritative , the fountain of wisdom, and life, and holiness: God existing and addressed along with Father and Son: uncreate, full, creative, all-ruling, all-effecting, all-powerful, of infinite power, Lord of all creation and not under any lord: deifying, not deified: filling, not filled: shared in, not sharing in: sanctifying, not sanctified: the intercessor, receiving the supplications of all: in all things like to the Father and Son: proceeding from the Father and communicated through the Son, and participated in by all creation, through Himself creating, and investing with essence and sanctifying, and maintaining the universe: having subsistence, existing in its own proper and peculiar subsistence, inseparable and indivisible from Father and Son, and possessing all the qualities that the Father and Son possess, save that of not being begotten or born. For the Father is without cause and unborn: for He is derived from nothing, but derives from Himself His being, nor does He derive a single quality from another. Rather He is Himself the beginning and cause of the existence of all things in a definite and natural manner. But the Son is derived from the Father after the manner of generation, and the Holy Spirit likewise is derived from the Father, yet not after the manner of generation, but after that of procession. And we have learned that there is a difference between generation and procession, but the nature of that difference we in no wise understand. Further, the generation of the Son from the Father and the procession of the Holy Spirit are simultaneous.

All then that the Son and the Spirit have is from the Father, even their very being: and unless the Father is, neither the Son nor the Spirit is. And unless the Father possesses a certain attribute, neither the Son nor the Spirit possesses it: and through the Father , that is, because of the Father’s existence, the Son and the Spirit exist, and through the Father, that is, because of the Father having the qualities, the Son and the Spirit have all their qualities, those of being unbegotten, and of birth and of procession being excepted. For in these hypostatic or personal properties alone do the three holy subsistences differ from each other, being indivisibly divided not by essence but by the distinguishing mark of their proper and peculiar subsistence.

Further we say that each of the three has a perfect subsistence, that we may understand not one compound perfect nature made up of three imperfect elements, but one simple essence, surpassing and preceding perfection, existing in three perfect subsistences. For all that is composed of imperfect elements must necessarily be compound. But from perfect subsistences no compound can arise. Wherefore we do not speak of the form as from subsistences, but as in subsistences. But we speak of those things as imperfect which do not preserve the form of that which is completed out of them. For stone and wood and iron are each perfect in its own nature, but with reference to the building that is completed out of them each is imperfect: for none of them is in itself a house.

The subsistences then we say are perfect, that we may not conceive of the divine nature as compound. For compoundness is the beginning of separation. And again we speak of the three subsistences as being in each other, that we may not introduce a crowd and multitude of Gods. Owing to the three subsistences, there is no compoundness or confusion: while, owing to their having the same essence and dwelling in one another, and being the same in will, and energy, and power, and authority, and movement, so to speak, we recognise the indivisibility and the unity of God. For verily there is one God, and His word and Spirit.

Marg. ms. Concerning the distinction of the three subsistences: and concerning the thing itself and our reason and thought in relation to it.

One ought, moreover, to recognise that it is one thing to look at a matter as it is, and another thing to look at it in the light of reason and thought. In the case of all created things, the distinction of the subsistences is observed in actual fact. For in actual fact Peter is seen to be separate from Paul. But the community and connection and unity are apprehended by reason and thought. For it is by the mind that we perceive that Peter and Paul are of the same nature and have one common nature. For both are living creatures, rational and mortal: and both are flesh, endowed with the spirit of reason and understanding. It is, then, by reason that this community of nature is observed. For here indeed the subsistences do not exist one within the other. But each privately and individually, that is to say, in itself, stands quite separate, having very many points that divide it from the other. For they are both separated in space and differ in time, and are divided in thought, and power, and shape, or form, and habit, and temperament and dignity, and pursuits, and all differentiating properties, but above all, in the fact that they do not dwell in one another but are separated. Hence it comes that we can speak of two, three, or many men.

And this may be perceived throughout the whole of creation, but in the case of the holy and superessential and incomprehensible Trinity, far removed from everything, it is quite the reverse. For there the community and unity are observed in fact, through the co-eternity of the subsistences, and through their having the same essence and energy and will and concord of mind, and then being identical in authority and power and goodness — I do not say similar BUT IDENTICAL — and then movement by one impulse. For there is one essence, one goodness, one power, one will, one energy, one authority, one and the same, I repeat, not three resembling each other. But the three subsistences have one and the same movement. For each one of them is related as closely to the other as to itself: that is to say that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are one in all respects, save those of not being begotten, of birth and of procession. But it is by thought that the difference is perceived. For we recognise one God: but only in the attributes of Fatherhood, Sonship, and Procession, both in respect of cause and effect and perfection of subsistence, that is, manner of existence, do we perceive difference. For with reference to the uncircumscribed Deity we cannot speak of separation in space, as we can in our own case. For the subsistences dwell in one another, in no wise confused but cleaving together, according to the word of the Lord, I am in the father, and the father in Me John 14:11: nor can one admit difference in will or judgment or energy or power or anything else whatsoever which may produce actual and absolute separation in our case. Wherefore we do not speak of three Gods, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, but rather of one God, the holy Trinity, the Son and Spirit being referred to one cause , and not compounded or coalesced according to the synæresis of Sabellius. For, as we said, they are made one not so as to commingle, but so as to cleave to each other, and they have their being in each other without any coalescence or commingling. Nor do the Son and the Spirit stand apart, nor are they sundered in essence according to the diæresis of Arias. For the Deity is undivided among things divided, to put it concisely: and it is just like three suns cleaving to each other without separation and giving out light mingled and conjoined into one. When, then, we turn our eyes to the Divinity, and the first cause and the sovereignty and the oneness and sameness, so to speak, of the movement and will of the Divinity, and the identity in essence and power and energy and lordship, what is seen by us is unity. But when we look to those things in which the Divinity is, or, to put it more accurately, which are the Divinity, and those things which are in it through the first cause without time or distinction in glory or separation, that is to say, the subsistences of the Son and the Spirit, it seems to us a Trinity that we adore.

The Father is one Father, and without beginning, that is, without cause: for He is not derived from anything. The Son is one Son, but not without beginning, that is, not without cause: for He is derived from the Father. BUT IF YOU ELIMINATE THE IDEA OF A BEGINNING FROM TIME, HE IS ALSO WITHOUT BEGINNING; FOR THE CREATOR OF TIMES CANNOT BE SUBJECT TO TIME. The Holy Spirit is one Spirit, going forth from the Father, not in the manner of Sonship but of procession; so that neither has the Father lost His property of being unbegotten because He has begotten, nor has the Son lost His property of being begotten because He was begotten of that which was unbegotten (for how could that be so?), nor does the Spirit change either into the Father or into the Son because He has proceeded and is God. For a property is quite constant. For how could a property persist if it were variable, moveable, and could change into something else? For if the Father is the Son, He is not strictly the Father: for there is strictly one Father. And if the Son is the Father, He is not strictly the Son: for there is strictly one Son and one Holy Spirit.

Further, it should be understood that we do not speak of the Father as derived from any one, but we speak of Him as the Father of the Son. And we do not speak of the Son as Cause or Father, but we speak of Him both as from the Father, and as the Son of the Father. And we speak likewise of the Holy Spirit as from the Father, and call Him the Spirit of the Father. And we do not speak of the Spirit as from the Son: but yet we call Him the Spirit of the Son. For if any one has not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His Romans 8:9, says the divine apostle. And we confess that He is manifested and imparted to us through the Son. For He breathed upon His Disciples, says he, and said, Receive the Holy Spirit. John 20:29 It is just the same as in the case of the sun from which come both the ray and the radiance (for the sun itself is the source of both the ray and the radiance), and it is through the ray that the radiance is imparted to us, and it is the radiance itself by which we are lightened and in which we participate. Further we do not speak of the Son of the Spirit, or of the Son as derived from the Spirit.

Chapter 12. Concerning the Same.

The following, then, are the mysteries which we have learned from the holy oracles, as the divine Dionysius the Areopagite said : that God is the cause and beginning of all: the essence of all that have essence: the life of the living: the reason of all rational beings: the intellect of all intelligent beings: the recalling and restoring of those who fall away from Him: the renovation and transformation of those that corrupt that which is natural: the holy foundation of those who are tossed in unholiness: the steadfastness of those who have stood firm: the way of those whose course is directed to Him and the hand stretched forth to guide them upwards. And I shall add He is also the Father of all His creatures (for God, Who brought us into being out of nothing, is in a stricter sense our Father than are our parents who have derived both being and begetting from Him ): the shepherd of those who follow and are tended by Him: the radiance of those who are enlightened: the initiation of the initiated: the deification of the deified: the peace of those at discord: the simplicity of those who love simplicity: the unity of those who worship unity: of all beginning the beginning, super-essential because above all beginning : and the good revelation of what is hidden, that is, of the knowledge of Him so far as that is lawful for and attainable by each.

Further and more accurately concerning divine names

The Deity being incomprehensible is also assuredly nameless. Therefore since we know not His essence, let us not seek for a name for His essence. For names are explanations of actual things. But God, Who is good and brought us out of nothing into being that we might share in His goodness, and Who gave us the faculty of knowledge, not only did not impart to us His essence, but did not even grant us the knowledge of His essence. For it is impossible for nature to understand fully the supernatural. Moreover, if knowledge is of things that are, how can there be knowledge of the super-essential? Through His unspeakable goodness, then, it pleased Him to be called by names that we could understand, that we might not be altogether cut off from the knowledge of Him but should have some notion of Him, however vague. Inasmuch, then, as He is incomprehensible, He is also unnameable. But inasmuch as He is the cause of all and contains in Himself the reasons and causes of all that is, He receives names drawn from all that is, even from opposites: for example, He is called light and darkness, water and fire: in order that we may know that these are not of His essence but that He is super-essential and unnameable: but inasmuch as He is the cause of all, He receives names from all His effects.

Wherefore, of the divine names, some have a negative signification, and indicate that He is super-essential: such are non-essential, timeless, without beginning, invisible: not that God is inferior to anything or lacking in anything (for all things are His and have become from Him and through Him and endure in Him Colossians 1:17), but that He is pre-eminently separated from all that is. For He is not one of the things that are, but over all things. Some again have an affirmative signification, as indicating that He is the cause of all things. For as the cause of all that is and of all essence, He is called both Ens and Essence. And as the cause of all reason and wisdom, of the rational and the wise, He is called both reason and rational, and wisdom and wise. Similarly He is spoken of as Intellect and Intellectual, Life and Living, Power and Powerful, and so on with all the rest. Or rather those names are most appropriate to Him which are derived from what is most precious and most akin to Himself. That which is immaterial is more precious and more akin to Himself than that which is material, and the pure than the impure, and the holy than the unholy: for they have greater part in Him. So then, sun and light will be more apt names for Him than darkness, and day than night, and life than death, and fire and spirit and water, as having life, than earth, and above all, goodness than wickedness: which is just to say, being more than not being. For goodness is existence and the cause of existence, but wickedness is the negation of goodness, that is, of existence.

These, then, are the affirmations and the negations, but the sweetest names are a combination of both: for example, the super-essential essence, the Godhead that is more than God, the beginning that is above beginning and such like. Further there are some affirmations about God which have in a pre-eminent degree the force of denial: for example, darkness: for this does not imply that God is darkness but that He is not light, but above light.

God then is called Mind and Reason and Spirit and Wisdom and Power, as the cause of these, and as immaterial, and maker of all, and omnipotent. And these names are common to the whole Godhead, whether affirmative or negative. And they are also used of each of the subsistences of the Holy Trinity in the very same and identical way and with their full significance. For when I think of one of the subsistences, I recognise it to be perfect God and perfect essence: but when I combine and reckon the three together, I know one perfect God. For the Godhead is not compound but in three perfect subsistences, one perfect indivisible and uncompound God. And when I think of the relation of the three subsistences to each other, I perceive that the Father is super-essential Sun, source of goodness, fathomless sea of essence, reason, wisdom, power, light, divinity: the generating and productive source of good hidden in it. He Himself then is mind, the depth of reason, begetter of the Word, and through the Word the Producer of the revealing Spirit. And to put it shortly, the Father has no reason, wisdom, power, will, save the Son Who is the only power of the Father, the immediate cause of the creation of the universe: as perfect subsistence begotten of perfect subsistence in a manner known to Himself, Who is and is named the Son. And the Holy Spirit is the power of the Father revealing the hidden mysteries of His Divinity, proceeding from the Father through the Son in a manner known to Himself, but different from that of generation. Wherefore the Holy Spirit is the perfecter of the creation of the universe. All the terms, then, that are appropriate to the Father, as cause, source, begetter, are to be ascribed to the Father alone: while those that are appropriate to the caused, begotten Son, Word, immediate power, will, wisdom, are to be ascribed to the Son: and those that are appropriate to the caused, processional, manifesting, perfecting power, are to be ascribed to the Holy Spirit. The Father is the source and cause of the Son and the Holy Spirit: Father of the Son alone and producer of the Holy Spirit. The Son is Son, Word, Wisdom, Power, Image, Effulgence, Impress of the Father and derived from the Father. But the Holy Spirit is not the Son of the Father but the Spirit of the Father as proceeding from the Father. For there is no impulse without Spirit. And we speak also of the Spirit of the Son, not as through proceeding from Him, but as proceeding through Him from the Father. For the Father alone is cause.

Chapter 13. Concerning the place of God: and that the Deity alone is uncircumscribed.

Bodily place is the limit of that which contains, by which that which is contained is contained: for example, the air contains but the body is contained. But it is not the whole of the containing air which is the place of the contained body, but the limit of the containing air, where it comes into contact with the contained body: and the reason is clearly because that which contains is not within that which it contains.

But there is also mental place where mind is active, and mental and incorporeal nature exists: where mind dwells and energises and is contained not in a bodily but in a mental fashion. For it is without form, and so cannot be contained as a body is. God, then, being immaterial and uncircumscribed, has not place. For He is His own place, filling all things and being above all things, and Himself maintaining all things. Yet we speak of God having place and the place of God where His energy becomes manifest. For He penetrates everything without mixing with it, and imparts to all His energy in proportion to the fitness and receptive power of each: and by this I mean, a purity both natural and voluntary. For the immaterial is purer than the material, and that which is virtuous than that which is linked with vice. Wherefore by the place of God is meant that which has a greater share in His energy and grace. For this reason the Heaven is His throne. For in it are the angels who do His will and are always glorifying Him. For this is His rest and the earth is His footstool. Isaiah 66:1 For in it He dwelt in the flesh among men. Baruch 3:38 And His sacred flesh has been named the foot of God. The Church, too, is spoken of as the place of God: for we have set this apart for the glorifying of God as a sort of consecrated place wherein we also hold converse with Him.

Likewise also the places in which His energy becomes manifest to us, whether through the flesh or apart from flesh, are spoken of as the places of God.

But it must be understood that the Deity is indivisible, being everywhere wholly in His entirety and not divided up part by part like that which has body, but wholly in everything and wholly above everything…

Marg. ms. From various sources concerning God and the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And concerning the Word and the Spirit.

The Deity, then, is quite unchangeable and invariable. For all things which are not in our hands He has predetermined by His foreknowledge, each in its own proper and peculiar time and place. And accordingly the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son. John 5:22 For clearly the Father and the Son and also the Holy Spirit judged as God. But the Son Himself WILL DESCEND IN THE BODY AS MAN,  and will sit on the throne of Glory (for descending and sitting require circumscribed body), and will judge all the world in justice.

All things are far apart from God, not in place but in nature. In our case, thoughtfulness, and wisdom, and counsel come to pass and go away as states of being. Not so in the case of God: for with Him there is no happening or ceasing to be: for He is invariable and unchangeable: and it would not be right to speak of contingency in connection with Him. For goodness is concomitant with essence. He who longs always after God, he sees Him: for God is in all things. Existing things are dependent on that which is, and nothing can be unless it is in that which is. God then is mingled with everything, maintaining their nature: and in His holy flesh the God-Word is made one in subsistence and is mixed with our nature, yet without confusion.

No one sees the Father, save the Son and the Spirit John 6:46.

The Son is the counsel and wisdom and power of the Father. For one may not speak of quality in connection with God, from fear of implying that He was a compound of essence and quality.

The Son is from the Father, and derives from Him all His properties: hence He cannot do ought of Himself. For He has not energy peculiar to Himself and distinct from the Father.

That God Who is invisible by nature is made visible by His energies, we perceive from the organisation and government of the world Wisdom 12:5 .

The Son is the Father’s image, and the Spirit the Son’s, through which Christ dwelling in man makes him after his own image.

The Holy Spirit is God, being between the unbegotten and the begotten, and united to the Father through the Son. We speak of the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ, the mind of Christ, the Spirit of the Lord, the very Lord, the Spirit of adoption, of truth, of liberty, of wisdom (for He is the creator of all these): filling all things with essence, maintaining all things, filling the universe with essence, while yet the universe is not the measure of His power.

God is everlasting and unchangeable essence, creator of all that is, adored with pious consideration.

God is also Father, being ever unbegotten, for He was born of no one, but has begotten His co-eternal Son: God is likewise Son, being always with the Father, born of the Father timelessly, everlastingly, without flux or passion, or separation from Him. God is also Holy Spirit, being sanctifying power, subsistential, proceeding from the Father without separation, and resting in the Son, identical in essence with Father and Son.

Word is that which is ever essentially present with the Father… God therefore is Word essential and enhypostatic… The Spirit has various meanings. There is the Holy Spirit: but the powers of the Holy Spirit are also spoken of as spirits: the good messenger is also spirit: the demon also is spirit: the soul too is spirit: and sometimes mind also is spoken of as spirit. Finally the wind is spirit and the air is spirit. (BOOK I)

Chapter 2. — Concerning the manner in which the Word was conceived, and concerning His divine incarnation.

The angel of the Lord was sent to the Holy Virgin, who was descended from David’s line. Luke 1:27 For it is evident that our Lord sprang out of Judah, of which tribe no one turned his attention to the altar Hebrews 7:14, as the divine apostle said: but about this we will speak more accurately later. And bearing glad tidings to her, he said, Hail thou highly favoured one, the Lord is with you. Luke 1:28 And she was troubled at his word, and the angel said to her, Fear not, Mary, for you have found favour with God, and shall bring forth a Son and shall call His name Jesus; for He shall save His people from their sins. Matthew 1:21 Hence it comes that Jesus has the interpretation Saviour. And when she asked in her perplexity, How can this be, seeing I know not a man Luke 1:34? The angel again answered her, The Holy Spirit shall come upon you, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow you. Therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of you shall be called the Son of God. Luke 1:35 And she said to him, Behold the handmaid of the Lord: be it unto me according to Your word.

So then, after the assent of the Holy Virgin, the Holy Spirit descended on her, according to the word of the Lord which the angel spoke, purifying her, and granting her power to receive the divinity of the Word, and likewise power to bring forth. And then was she overshadowed by the enhypostatic Wisdom and Power of the most high God, the Son of God Who is of like essence with the Father as of Divine seed, and from her holy and most pure blood He formed flesh animated with the spirit of reason and thought, the first-fruits of our compound nature: not by procreation but by creation through the Holy Spirit: not developing the fashion of the body by gradual additions but perfecting it at once, He Himself, the very Word of God, standing to the flesh in the relation of subsistence. For the divine Word was not made one with flesh that had an independent pre-existence, but taking up His abode in the womb of the Holy Virgin, He unreservedly in His own subsistence took upon Himself through the pure blood of the eternal Virgin a body of flesh animated with the spirit of reason and thought, thus assuming to Himself the first-fruits of man’s compound nature, Himself, the Word, having become a subsistence in the flesh. So that He is at once flesh, and at the same time flesh of God the Word, and likewise flesh animated, possessing both reason and thought. Wherefore we speak not of man as having become God, but of God as having become Man. For being by nature perfect God, He naturally became likewise perfect Man: and did not change His nature nor make the dispensation an empty show, but became, without confusion or change or division, one in subsistence with the flesh, which was conceived of the Holy Virgin, and animated with reason and thought, and had found existence in Him, while He did not change the nature of His divinity into the essence of flesh, nor the essence of flesh into the nature of His divinity, and did not make one compound nature out of His divine nature and the human nature He had assumed. (BOOK III)

Chapter 4. Why it was the Son of God, and not the Father or the Spirit, that became man: and what having became man He achieved.

The Father is Father and not Son: the Son is Son and not Father: the Holy Spirit is Spirit and not Father or Son. For the individuality is unchangeable. How, indeed, could individuality continue to exist at all if it were ever changing and altering? Wherefore the Son of God became Son of Man in order that His individuality might endure. For since He was the Son of God, He became Son of Man, being made flesh of the holy Virgin and not losing the individuality of Sonship.

Further, the Son of God became man, in order that He might again bestow on man that favour for the sake of which He created him. For He created him after His own image, endowed with intellect and free-will, and after His own likeness, that is to say, perfect in all virtue so far as it is possible for man’s nature to attain perfection. For the following properties are, so to speak, marks of the divine nature: viz. absence of care and distraction and guile, goodness, wisdom, justice, freedom from all vice. So then, after He had placed man in communion with Himself (for having made him for incorruption Wisdom 2:23, He led him up through communion with Himself to incorruption), and when moreover, through the transgression of the command we had confused and obliterated the marks of the divine image, and had become evil, we were stripped of our communion with God (for what communion has light with darkness 2 Corinthians 6:14?): and having been shut out from life we became subject to the corruption of death: yea, since He gave us to share in the better part, and we did not keep it secure, He shares in the inferior part, I mean our own nature, in order that through Himself and in Himself He might renew that which was made after His image and likeness, and might teach us, too, the conduct of a virtuous life, making through Himself the way there easy for us, and might by the communication of life deliver us from corruption, becoming Himself the firstfruits of our resurrection, and might renovate the useless and worn vessel calling us to the knowledge of God that He might redeem us from the tyranny of the devil, and might strengthen and teach us how to overthrow the tyrant through patience and humility.

The worship of demons then has ceased: creation has been sanctified by the divine blood: altars and temples of idols have been overthrown, the knowledge of God has been implanted in men’s minds, the co-essential Trinity, the uncreate divinity, one true God, Creator and Lord of allreceives men’s service: virtues are cultivated, the hope of resurrection has been granted through the resurrection of Christ, the demons shudder at those men who of old were under their subjection. And the marvel, indeed, is that all this has been successfully brought about through His cross and passion and death… These are the achievements of Christ’s presence: these are the tokens of His power. For it was not one people that He saved, as when through Moses He divided the sea and delivered Israel out of Egypt and the bondage of Pharaoh Exodus 14:16; nay, rather He rescued all mankind from the corruption of death and the bitter tyranny of sin: not leading them by force to virtue, not overwhelming them with earth or burning them with fire, or ordering the sinners to be stoned, but persuading men by gentleness and long-suffering to choose virtue and vie with one another, and find pleasure in the struggle to attain it… Hail! O Christ, the Word and Wisdom and Power of God, and God omnipotent!What can we helpless ones give You in return for all these good gifts? For all are Yours, and Thou ask naught from us save our salvation, You Who Yourself art the Giver of this, and yet art grateful to those who receive it, through Your unspeakable goodness. Thanks be to You Who gave us life, and granted us the grace of a happy life, and restored us to that, when we had gone astray, through Your unspeakable condescension.

Chapter 18. Regarding the things said concerning Christ.

The things said concerning Christ fall into four generic modes. For some fit Him even before the incarnation, others in the union, others after the union, and others after the resurrection. Also of those that refer to the period before the incarnation there are six modes: for some of them declare the union of nature and the identity in essence with the Father, as this, I and My Father are one John 10:30: also this, He that has seen Me has seen the Father: and this, Who being in the form of God Philippians 2:6, and so forth. Others declare the perfection of subsistence, as these, Son of God, and the Express Image of His person Hebrews 1:3, and Messenger of great counsel, Wonderful Counsellor Isaiah 9:6, and the like.

Again, others declare the indwelling of the subsistences in one another, as, I am in the Father and the Father in Me John 14:10; and the inseparable foundation, as, for instance, the Word, Wisdom, Power, Effulgence. For the word is inseparably established in the mind (and it is the essential mind that I mean), and so also is wisdom, and power in him that is powerful, and effulgence in the light, all springing forth from these.

And others make known the fact of His origin from the Father as cause, for instance My Father is greater than I. John 14:28 For from Him He derives both His being and all that He has: His being was by generative and not by creative means, as, I came forth from the Father and have come John 16:28, and I live by the Father. But all that He has is not His by free gift or by teaching, but in a causal sense, as, The Son can do nothing of Himself but what He sees the Father do. For if the Father is not, neither is the Son. For the Son is of the Father and in the Father and with the Father, and not after the Father. In like manner also what He does is of Him and with Him. For there is one and the same, not similar but the same, will and energy and power in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Moreover, other things are said as though the Father’s good-will was fulfilled through His energy, and not as through an instrument or a servant, but as through His essential and hypostatic Word and Wisdom and Power, because but one action is observed in Father and Son, as for example, All things were made by Him John 11:42, and He sent His Word and healed them, and That they may believe that You have sent Me John 17:2.

Some, again, have a prophetic sense, and of these some are in the future tense: for instance, He shall come openly , and this from Zechariah, Behold, your King comes unto you Zechariah 9:9, and this from Micah, Behold, the Lord comes out of His place and will come down and tread upon the high places of the earth. Micah 1:3 But others, though future, are put in the past tense, as, for instance, This is our God: Therefore He was seen upon the earth and dwelt among men Baruch 3:38, and The Lord created me in the beginning of His ways for His works Proverbs 8:22, and Wherefore God, your God, anointed you with the oil of gladness above your fellows, and such like.

The things said, then, that refer to the period before the union will be applicable to Him even after the union: but those that refer to the period after the union will not be applicable at all before the union, unless indeed in a prophetic sense, as we said. Those that refer to the time of the union have three modes. For when our discourse deals with the higher aspect, we speak of the deification of the flesh, and His assumption of the Word and exceeding exaltation, and so forth, making manifest the riches that are added to the flesh from the union and natural conjunction with the most high God the Word. And when our discourse deals with the lower aspect, we speak of the incarnation of God the Word, His becoming man, His emptying of Himself, His poverty, His humility. For these and such like are imposed upon the Word and God through His admixture with humanity. When again we keep both sides in view at the same time, we speak of union, community, anointing, natural conjunction, conformation and the like. The former two modes, then, have their reason in this third mode. For through the union it is made clear what either has obtained from the intimate junction with and permeation through the other. For through the union in subsistence the flesh is said to be deified and to become God and to be equally God with the Word; and God the Word is said to be made flesh, and to become man, and is called creature and last Isaiah 48:12: not in the sense that the two natures are converted into one compound nature (for it is not possible for the opposite natural qualities to exist at the same time in one nature), but in the sense that the two natures are united in subsistence and permeate one another without confusion or transmutation. The permeation moreover did not come of the flesh but of the divinity: for it is impossible that the flesh should permeate through the divinity: but the divine nature once permeating through the flesh gave also to the flesh the same ineffable power of permeation; and this indeed is what we call union.

Note, too, that in the case of the first and second modes of those that belong to the period of the union, reciprocation is observed. For when we speak about the flesh, we use the terms deification and assumption of the Word and exceeding exaltation and anointing. For these are derived from divinity, but are observed in connection with the flesh. And when we speak about the Word, we use the terms emptying, incarnation, becoming man, humility and the like: and these, as we said, are imposed on the Word and God through the flesh. For He endured these things in person of His own free-will.

Of the things that refer to the period after the union there are three modes. The first declares His divine nature, as, I am in the Father and the Father in Me John 14:1, and I and the Father are one: and all those things which are affirmed of Him before His assumption of humanity, these will be affirmed of Him even after His assumption of humanity, with this exception, that He did not assume the flesh and its natural properties.

The second declares His human nature, as, Now ye seek to kill Me, a man that has told you the truth, and Even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, and the like.

Further, of the statements made and written about Christ the Saviour after the manner of men, whether they deal with sayings or actions, there are six modes. For some of them were done or said naturally in accordance with the incarnation; for instance, His birth from a virgin, His growth and progress with age, His hunger, thirst, weariness, fear, sleep, piercing with nails, death and all such like natural and innocent passions. For in all these there is a mixture of the divine and human, although they are held to belong in reality to the body, the divine suffering none of these, but procuring through them our salvation.

Others are of the nature of ascription , as Christ’s question, Where have ye laid Lazarus John 11:34? His running to the fig-tree, His shrinking, that is, His drawing back, His praying, and His making as though He would have gone further Luke 24:28 For neither as God nor as man was He in need of these or similar things, but only because His form was that of a man as necessity and expediency demanded. For example, the praying was to show that He is not opposed to God, for He gives honour to the Father as the cause of Himself: and the question was not put in ignorance but to show that He is in truth man as well as God; and the drawing back is to teach us not to be impetuous nor to give ourselves up.

Others again are said in the manner of association and relation , as, My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me Matthew 27:46? and He has made Him to be sin for us, Who knew no sin 2 Corinthians 5:21 , and being made a curse for us Galatians 3:13; also, Then shall the Son also Himself be subject unto Him that put all things under Him 1 Corinthians 15:28 For neither as God nor as man was He ever forsaken by the Father, nor did He become sin or a curse, nor did He require to be made subject to the Father. For as God He is equal to the Father and not opposed to Him nor subjected to Him; and as God, He was never at any time disobedient to His Begetter to make it necessary for Him to make Him subject. Appropriating, then, our person and ranking Himself with us, He used these words. For we are bound in the fetters of sin and the curse as faithless and disobedient, and therefore forsaken.

Others are said by reason of distinction in thought. For if you divide in thought things that are inseparable in actual truth, to cut the flesh from the Word, the terms ‘servant’ and ‘ignorant‘ are used of Him, for indeed He was of a subject and ignorant nature, and except that it was united with God the Word, His flesh was servile and ignorant. But because of the union in subsistence with God the Word it was neither servile nor ignorant. In this way, too, He called the Father His God.

Others again are for the purpose of revealing Him to us and strengthening our faith, as, And now, O Father, glorify Thou Me with the glory which I had with You, before the world was. John 17:5 For He Himself was glorified and is glorified, but His glory was not manifested nor confirmed to us. Also that which the apostle said, Declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead. Romans 1:4 For by the miracles and the resurrection and the coming of the Holy Spirit it was manifested and confirmed to the world that He is the Son of God. And this too Luke 2:40, The Child grew in wisdom and grace.

Others again have reference to His appropriation of the personal life of the Jews, in numbering Himself among the Jews, as He says to the Samaritan woman, You worship ye know not what: we know what we worship, far salvation is of the Jews John 4:22.

The third mode is one which declares the one subsistence and brings out the dual nature: for instance, And I live by the Father: so he that eats Me, even he shall live by Me. And this: I go to My Father and you see Me no more. And this: They would not have crucified the Lord of Glory. 1 Corinthians 2:8 And this: And no man has ascended up to heaven but He that came down from heaven, even the Son of Man WHICH IS IN HEAVEN John 3:13, and such like.

Again of the affirmations that refer to the period after the resurrection some are suitable to God, as, Baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost Matthew 28:19, for here ‘Son’ is clearly used as God; also this, And lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world, and other similar ones. For He is with us as God. Others are suitable to man, as, They held Him by the feet, and There they will see Me, and so forth.

Further, of those referring to the period after the Resurrection that are suitable to man there are different modes. For some did actually take place, yet not according to nature, but according to dispensation, in order to confirm the fact that the very body, which suffered, rose again; such are the weals, the eating and the drinking after the resurrection. Others took place actually and naturally, as changing from place to place without trouble and passing in through closed gates. Others have the character of simulation, as, He made as though He would have gone further. Luke 24:28 Others are appropriate to the double nature, as, I ascend unto My Father and your Father, and My God and your God John 20:17, and The King of Glory shall come in, and He sat down on the right hand of the majesty on High. Hebrews 1:3 Finally others are to be understood as though He were ranking Himself with us, in the manner of separation in pure thought, as, My God and your God John 20:17.

Those then that are sublime must be assigned to the divine nature, which is superior to passion and body: and those that are humble must be ascribed to the human nature; and those that are common must be attributed to the compound, that is, the one Christ, Who is God and man. And it should be understood that both belong to one and the same Jesus Christ, our Lord. For if we know what is proper to each, and perceive that both are performed by one and the same, WE SHALL HAVE THE TRUE FAITH and shall not go astray. And from all these the difference between the united natures is recognised, and the fact that, as the most godly Cyril says, they are not identical in the natural quality of their divinity and humanity. But yet there is but one Son and Christ and Lord: and as He is one, He has also but one person, the unity in subsistence being in nowise broken up into parts by the recognition of the difference of the natures. (BOOK IV)

Irenaeus, Jesus & the Hour

Some anti-Trinitarians and/or subordinationists like to use St. Irenaeus’ statements in his refutation to the Gnostics where he states that not even the Son knew the hour to prove that this holy bishop did not affirm the Trinity. They argue that his words show that he was at the very least a subordinationist who did not hold to the full divinity of the Son, or his essential coequality with the Father.

 

However, when we read what Irenaeus wrote in context a whole different picture emerges:

 

4. For consider, all you who invent such opinions, since the Father Himself is alone called God, who has a real existence, but whom you style the Demiurge; since, moreover, the Scriptures acknowledge Him alone as God; and yet again, since the Lord confesses Him alone as His own Father, and knows no other, as I shall show from His very words, — when you style this very Being the fruit of defect, and the offspring of ignorance, and describe Him as being ignorant of those things which are above Him, with the various other allegations which you make regarding Him — consider the terrible blasphemy [you are thus guilty of] against Him who truly is God. You seem to affirm gravely and honestly enough that you believe in God; but then, as you are utterly unable to reveal any other God, you declare this very Being in whom you profess to believe, the fruit of defect and the offspring of ignorance. Now this blindness and foolish talking flow to you from the fact that you reserve nothing for God, but you wish to proclaim the nativity and production both of God Himself, of His Ennœa, of His Logos, and Life, and Christ; and you form the idea of these from no other than a mere human experience; not understanding, as I said before, that it is possible, in the case of man, who is a compound being, to speak in this way of the mind of man and the thought of man; and to say that thought (ennœa) springs from mind (sensus), intention (enthymesis) again from thought, and word (logos) from intention (but which logos? for there is among the Greeks one logos which is the principle that thinks, and another which is the instrument by means of which thought is expressed); and [to say] that a man sometimes is at rest and silent, while at other times he speaks and is active. But since God is all mind, all reason, all active spirit, all light, and always exists one and the same, as it is both beneficial for us to think of God, and as we learn regarding Him from the Scriptures, such feelings and divisions [of operation] cannot fittingly be ascribed to Him. For our tongue, as being carnal, is not sufficient to minister to the rapidity of the human mind, inasmuch as that is of a spiritual nature, for which reason our word is restrained within us, and is not at once expressed as it has been conceived by the mind, but is uttered by successive efforts, just as the tongue is able to serve it.

 

5. But God being all Mind, and all Logos, both speaks exactly what He thinks, and thinks exactly what He speaks. For His thought is Logos, and Logos is Mind, and Mind comprehending all things is the Father Himself. He, therefore, who speaks of the mind of God, and ascribes to it a special origin of its own, declares Him a compound Being, as if God were one thing, and the original Mind another. So, again, with respect to Logos, when one attributes to him the third place of production from the Father; on which supposition he is ignorant of His greatness; and thus Logos has been far separated from God. As for the prophet, he declares respecting Him, Who shall describe His generation? Isaiah 53:8 But you pretend to set forth His generation from the Father, and you transfer the production of the word of men which takes place by means of a tongue to the Word of God, and thus are righteously exposed by your own selves as knowing neither things human nor divine.

 

6. But, beyond reason inflated [with your own wisdom], you presumptuously maintain that you are acquainted with the unspeakable mysteries of God; while even the Lord, the very Son of God, allowed that the Father alone knows the very day and hour of judgment, when He plainly declares, But of that day and that hour knows no man, neither the Son, but the Father only. If, then, the Son was not ashamed to ascribe the knowledge of that day to the Father only, but declared what was true regarding the matter, neither let us be ashamed to reserve for God those greater questions which may occur to us. For no man is superior to his master. Matthew 10:24; Luke 11:40 If any one, therefore, says to us, How then was the Son produced by the Father? we reply to him, that no man understands that production, or generation, or calling, or revelation, or by whatever name one may describe His generation, which is in fact altogether indescribable. Neither Valentinus, nor Marcion, nor Saturninus, nor Basilides, nor angels, nor archangels, nor principalities, nor powers [possess this knowledge], but the Father only who begot, and the Son who was begotten. Since therefore His generation is unspeakable, those who strive to set forth generations and productions cannot be in their right mind, inasmuch as they undertake to describe things which are indescribable. For that a word is uttered at the bidding of thought and mind, all men indeed well understand. Those, therefore, who have excogitated [the theory of] emissions have not discovered anything great, or revealed any abstruse mystery, when they have simply transferred what all understand to the only-begotten Word of God; and while they style Him unspeakable and unnameable, they nevertheless set forth the production and formation of His first generation, as if they themselves had assisted at His birth, thus assimilating Him to the word of mankind formed by emissions.

 

7. But we shall not be wrong if we affirm the same thing also concerning the substance of matter, that God produced it. For we have learned from the Scriptures that God holds the supremacy over all things. But whence or in what way He produced it, neither has Scripture anywhere declared; nor does it become us to conjecture, so as, in accordance with our own opinions, to form endless conjectures concerning God, but we should leave such knowledge in the hands of God Himself. In like manner, also, we must leave the cause why, while all things were made by God, certain of His creatures sinned and revolted from a state of submission to God, and others, indeed the great majority, persevered, and do still persevere, in [willing] subjection to Him who formed them, and also of what nature those are who sinned, and of what nature those who persevere — [we must, I say, leave the cause of these things] to God and His Word, to whom alone He said, Sit at my right hand, until I make Your enemies Your footstool. But as for us, we still dwell upon the earth, and have not yet sat down upon His throne. For although the Spirit of the Saviour that is in Him searches all things, even the deep things of God, 1 Corinthians 2:10 yet as to us there are diversities of gifts, differences of administrations, and diversities of operations; and we, while upon the earth, as Paul also declares, know in part, and prophesy in part. 1 Corinthians 13:9 Since, therefore, we know but in part, we ought to leave all sorts of [difficult] questions in the hands of Him who in some measure, [and that only,] bestows grace on us. That eternal fire, [for instance,] is prepared for sinners, both the Lord has plainly declared, and the rest of the Scriptures demonstrate. And that God foreknew that this would happen, the Scriptures do in like manner demonstrate, since He prepared eternal fire from the beginning for those who were [afterwards] to transgress [His commandments]; but the cause itself of the nature of such transgressors neither has any Scripture informed us, nor has an apostle told us, nor has the Lord taught us. It becomes us, therefore, to leave the knowledge of this matter to God, even as the Lord does of the day and hour [of judgment], and not to rush to such an extreme of danger, that we will leave nothing in the hands of God, even though we have received only a measure of grace [from Him in this world]. But when we investigate points which are above us, and with respect to which we cannot reach satisfaction, [it is absurd ] that we should display such an extreme of presumption as to lay open God, and things which are not yet discovered, as if already we had found out, by the vain talk about emissions, God Himself, the Creator of all things, and to assert that He derived His substance from apostasy and ignorance, so as to frame an impious hypothesis in opposition to God.

 

8. Moreover, they possess no proof of their system, which has but recently been invented by them, sometimes resting upon certain numbers, sometimes on syllables, and sometimes, again, on names; and there are occasions, too, when, by means of those letters which are contained in letters, by parables not properly interpreted, or by certain [baseless] conjectures, they strive to establish that fabulous account which they have devised. For if any one should inquire the reason why the Father, who has fellowship with the Son in all things, has been declared by the Lord alone to know the hour and the day [of judgment], he will find at present no more suitable, or becoming, or safe reason than this (since, indeed, the Lord is the only true Master), that we may learn through Him that the Father is above all things. For the Father, says He, is greater than I. John 14:28 The Father, therefore, has been declared by our Lord to excel with respect to knowledge; for this reason, that we, too, as long as we are connected with the scheme of things in this world, should leave perfect knowledge, and such questions [as have been mentioned], to God, and should not by any chance, while we seek to investigate the sublime nature of the Father, fall into the danger of starting the question whether there is another God above God. (Adversus haereses, Book II, Chapter 28 Perfect knowledge cannot be attained in the present life: many questions must be submissively left in the hands of God)

 

In context, Irenaeus is using Jesus’ statements to expose the Gnostic heretics for thinking that they have some sort of supernatural knowledge to comprehend the unspeakable mysteries of God, when even the Son himself did not reveal things such as the day or hour to his followers.

 

The point that the saint is making is that if the Son humbled himself not to know the hour but deferred it to his Father, by virtue of the Father being greater than he was during his time on earth, then all the more so should believers leave such matters to God and not inquire into them.

 

That the blessed Irenaeus wasn’t addressing or even denying that the Son was still omniscient by virtue of being the Divine Logos is made clear by what he himself writes in this very same context.

 

Irenaeus expressly states that Jesus has fellowship with the Father in ALL, not some, things, which includes knowledge of God. He even says as much when he states that the Logos is God’s mind which comprehends all things, and then identifies Jesus as that Logos.

 

If we follow the logic (pun intended) of his statement then it is pretty clear that the holy martyr believed that the Lord Jesus comprehends everything, and is therefore omniscient:

 

1. God’s thought is his Logos (Word).

 

2. God’s Logos is God’s Mind, which comprehends all things.

 

3. Therefore, God’s Logos comprehends all things.

 

4. Jesus is that very Logos who became a human being.

 

5. Therefore, Jesus as the Divine Logos comprehends all things such as the day and hour of his return.

 

The interpretation offered here is confirmed by what this beloved saint wrote elsewhere in respect to Matthew 11:27/Luke 10:22:

 

1. For the Lord, revealing Himself to His disciples, that He Himself is the Word, who imparts knowledge of the Father, and reproving the Jews, who imagined that they, had [the knowledge of] God, while they nevertheless rejected His Word, through whom God is made known, declared, No man knows the Son, but the Father; neither knows any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whom the Son has willed to reveal [Him]. Matthew 11:27; Luke 10:22 Thus has Matthew set it down, and Luke in like manner, and Mark the very same; for John omits this passage. They, however, who would be wiser than the apostles, write [the verse] in the following manner: No man knew the Father, but the Son; nor the Son, but the Father, and he to whom the Son has willed to reveal [Him]; and they explain it as if the true God were known to none prior to our Lord’s advent; and that God who was announced by the prophets, they allege not to be the Father of Christ.

 

2. But if Christ did then [only] begin to have existence when He came [into the world] as man, and [if] the Father did remember [only] in the times of Tiberius Cæsar to provide for [the wants of] men, and His Word was shown to have not always coexisted with His creatures; [it may be remarked that] neither then was it necessary that another God should be proclaimed, but [rather] that the reasons for so great carelessness and neglect on His part should be made the subject of investigation. For it is fitting that no such question should arise, and gather such strength, that it would indeed both change God, and destroy our faith in that Creator who supports us by means of His creation. For as we do direct our faith towards the Son, so also should we possess a firm and immoveable love towards the Father. In his book against Marcion, Justin does well say: I would not have believed the Lord Himself, if He had announced any other than He who is our framer, maker, and nourisher. But because the only-begotten Son came to us from the one God, who both made this world and formed us, and contains and administers all things, summing up His own handiwork in Himself, my faith towards Him is steadfast, and my love to the Father immoveable, God bestowing both upon us.

 

3. For no one can know the Father, unless through the Word of God, that is, unless by the Son revealing [Him]; neither can he have knowledge of the Son, unless through the good pleasure of the Father. But the Son performs the good pleasure of the Father; for the Father sends, and the Son is sent, and comes. And His Word knows that His Father is, as far as regards us, invisible and infinite; and since He cannot be declared [by any one else], He does Himself declare Him to us; and, on the other hand, it is the Father ALONE who knows His own Word. And both these truths has our Lord declared. Wherefore the Son reveals the knowledge of the Father through His own manifestation. For the manifestation of the Son IS THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE FATHER; for ALL THINGS are manifested through the Word. In order, therefore, that we might know that the Son who came is He who imparts to those believing on Him a knowledge of the Father, He said to His disciples: No man knows the Son but the Father, nor the Father but the Son, and those to whomsoever the Son shall reveal Him; thus setting Himself forth and the Father as He [really] is, that we may not receive any other Father, except Him who is revealed by the Son.

 

4. But this [Father] is the Maker of heaven and earth, as is shown from His words; and not he, the false father, who has been invented by Marcion, or by Valentinus, or by Basilides, or by Carpocrates, or by Simon, or by the rest of the Gnostics, falsely so called. For none of these was the Son of God; but Christ Jesus our Lord [was], against whom they set their teaching in opposition, and have the daring to preach an unknown God. But they ought to hear [this] against themselves: How is it that He is unknown, who is known by them? For, whatever is known even by a few, is not unknown. But the Lord did not say that both the Father and the Son could not be known at all (in totum), for in that case His advent would have been superfluous. For why did He come hither? Was it that He should say to us, Never mind seeking after God; for He is unknown, and you shall not find Him; as also the disciples of Valentinus falsely declare that Christ said to their Æons? But this is indeed vain. For the Lord taught us that no man is capable of knowing God, UNLESS HE BE TAUGHT BY GOD; that is, THAT GOD CANNOT BE KNOWN WITHOUT GOD: but that this is the express will of the Father, that God should be known. For they shall know Him to whomsoever the Son has revealed Him.

 

5. And for this purpose did the Father reveal the Son, that through His instrumentality He might be manifested to all, and might receive those righteous ones who believe in Him into incorruption and everlasting enjoyment (now, to believe in Him is to do His will); but He shall righteously shut out into the darkness which they have chosen for themselves, those who do not believe, and who do consequently avoid His light. The Father therefore has revealed Himself to all, by making His Word visible to all; and, conversely, the Word has declared to all the Father and the Son, since He has become visible to all. And therefore the righteous judgment of God [shall fall] upon all who, like others, have seen, but have not, like others, believed.

 

6. For by means of the creation itself, the Word reveals God the Creator; and by means of the world [does He declare] the Lord the Maker of the world; and by means of the formation [of man] the Artificer who formed him; and by the Son that Father who begot the Son: and these things do indeed address all men in the same manner, but all do not in the same way believe them. But by the law and the prophets did the Word preach both Himself and the Father alike [to all]; and all the people heard Him alike, but all did not alike believe. And through the Word Himself who had been made visible and palpable, was the Father shown forth, although all did not equally believe in Him; but all saw the Father in the Son: for the Father is the invisible of the Son, but the Son the visible of the Father. And for this reason ALL SPOKE WITH CHRIST when He was present [upon earth], AND THEY NAMED HIM GOD. Yea, even the demons exclaimed, on beholding the Son: We know You who You are, the Holy One of God. Mark 1:24 And the devil looking at Him, and tempting Him, said: If You are the Son of God; Matthew 4:3; Luke 4:3 — all thus indeed seeing and speaking of the Son and the Father, but all not believing [in them].

 

7. For it was fitting that the truth should receive testimony from all, and should become [a means of] judgment for the salvation indeed of those who believe, but for the condemnation of those who believe not; that all should be fairly judged, and that the faith in the Father and Son should be approved by all, that is, that it should be established by all [as the one means of salvation], receiving testimony from all, both from those belonging to it, since they are its friends, and by those having no connection with it, though they are its enemies. For that evidence is true, and cannot be gainsaid, which elicits even from its adversaries striking testimonies in its behalf; they being convinced with respect to the matter in hand by their own plain contemplation of it, and bearing testimony to it, as well as declaring it. But after a while they break forth into enmity, and become accusers [of what they had approved], and are desirous that their own testimony should not be [regarded as] true. He, therefore, who was known, was not a different being from Him who declared No man knows the Father, but one and the same, the Father making all things subject to Him; while He received testimony from all that He was very man, and that He was very God, from the Father, from the Spirit, from angels, from the creation itself, from men, from apostate spirits and demons, from the enemy, and last of all, from death itself. But the Son, administering all things for the Father, works from the beginning even to the end, and without Him no man can attain the knowledge of God. For the Son IS the knowledge of the Father; but the knowledge of the Son is in the Father, and has been revealed through the Son; and this was the reason why the Lord declared: No man knows the Son, but the Father; nor the Father, save the Son, and those to whomsoever the Son shall reveal [Him]. For shall reveal was said not with reference to the future alone, as if then [only] the Word had begun to manifest the Father when He was born of Mary, but it applies indifferently throughout all time. For the Son, being present with His own handiwork from the beginning, reveals the Father to all; to whom He wills, and when He wills, and as the Father wills. Wherefore, then, in all things, and through all things, there is one God, the Father, and one Word, and one Son, and one Spirit, and one salvation to all who believe in Him. (Ibid., Book IV, Chapter 6 Explanation of the words of Christ, “No man knows the Father, but the Son,” etc.; which words the heretics misinterpret. proof that, by the Father revealing the Son, and by the Son being revealed, the Father was never unknown)

 

Irenaeus uses Matthew 11:27/Luke 10:22 to argue that the Son must have been the One who has been revealing God to mankind from the beginning of creation. The reason this must be the case is that the Son alone comprehends the Father in the same way that the Father alone comprehends the Son, which is why the Father has been sending the Son to manifest God’s knowledge to human beings.

 

Irenaeus intends to prove from this that it was the Word who spoke to/through the patriarchs and prophets of the Hebrew Bible, since they would not have known God apart from the revelation of the Son.

 

This is not the only place where the blessed saint says that it was Christ whom the OT saints saw appearing as YHWH their God, since they would not be able to intimately know God without him:

 

1. For in no other way could we have learned the things of God, unless our Master, existing as the Word, had become man. For no other being had the power of revealing to us the things of the Father, except His own proper Word. For what other person knew the mind of the Lord, or who else has become His counsellor? Romans 11:34 Again, we could have learned in no other way than by seeing our Teacher, and hearing His voice with our own ears, that, having become imitators of His works as well as doers of His words, we may have communion with Him, receiving increase from the perfect One, and from Him who IS PRIOR TO ALL CREATION. We — who were but lately created by the only best and good Being, by Him also who has the gift of immortality, having been formed after His likeness (predestinated, according to the prescience of the Father, that we, who had as yet no existence, might come into being), and made the first-fruits of creation — have received, in the times known beforehand, [the blessings of salvation] according to the ministration of the Word, who is perfect in all things, as the mighty Word, and very man, who, redeeming us by His own blood in a manner consonant to reason, gave Himself as a redemption for those who had been led into captivity. And since the apostasy tyrannized over us unjustly, and, though we were by nature the property of the omnipotent God, alienated us contrary to nature, rendering us its own disciples, the Word of God, powerful in all things, and not defective with regard to His own justice, did righteously turn against that apostasy, and redeem from it His own property, not by violent means, as the [apostasy] had obtained dominion over us at the beginning, when it insatiably snatched away what was not its own, but by means of persuasion, as became a God of counsel, who does not use violent means to obtain what He desires; so that neither should justice be infringed upon, nor the ancient handiwork of God go to destruction. Since the Lord thus has redeemed us through His own blood, giving His soul for our souls, and His flesh for our flesh, and has also poured out the Spirit of the Father for the union and communion of God and man, imparting indeed God to men by means of the Spirit, and, on the other hand, attaching man to God by His own incarnation, and bestowing upon us at His coming immortality durably and truly, by means of communion with God — all the doctrines of the heretics fall to ruin. (Ibid., Book V, Chapter 1 Christ alone is able to teach Divine things, and to redeem us: He, the same, took flesh of the Virgin Mary, not merely in appearance, but actually, by the operation of the Holy Spirit, in order to renovate us. strictures on the conceits of Valentinus and Ebion.)

 

And:

 

1. Therefore neither would the Lord, nor the Holy Spirit, nor the apostles, have ever named as God, definitely and absolutely, him who was not God, unless he were truly God; nor would they have named any one in his own person Lord, except God the Father ruling over all, and His Son who has received dominion from His Father over all creation, as this passage has it: The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand, until I make Your enemies Your footstool. Here the [Scripture] represents to us the Father addressing the Son; He who gave Him the inheritance of the heathen, and subjected to Him all His enemies. Since, therefore, the Father is truly Lord, and the Son truly Lord, the Holy Spirit has fitly designated them by the title of Lord. And again, referring to the destruction of the Sodomites, the Scripture says, Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrha fire and brimstone from the Lord out of heaven. Genesis 19:24 For it here points out that the Son, who had also been talking with Abraham, had received power to judge the Sodomites for their wickedness. And this [text following] does declare the same truth: Your throne, O God, is for ever and ever; the sceptre of Your kingdom is a right sceptre. You have loved righteousness, and hated iniquity: therefore God, Your God, has anointed You. For the Spirit designates both [of them] by the name, of God — both Him who is anointed as Son, and Him who does anoint, that is, the Father. And again: God stood in the congregation of the gods, He judges among the gods. He [here] refers to the Father and the Son, and those who have received the adoption; but these are the Church. For she is the synagogue of God, which God— that is, the Son Himself — has gathered by Himself. Of whom He again speaks: The God of gods, the Lord has spoken, and has called the earth. Who is meant by God? He of whom He has said, God shall come openly, our God, and shall not keep silence; that is, the Son, who came manifested to men who said, I have openly appeared to those who seek Me not. Isaiah 65:1 But of what gods [does he speak]? [Of those] to whom He says, I have said, You are gods, and all sons of the Most High. To those, no doubt, who have received the grace of the adoption, by which we cry, Abba Father. Romans 8:15

 

2. Wherefore, as I have already stated, no other is named as God, or is called Lord, except Him who is God and Lord of all, who also said to Moses, I am that I am. And thus shall you say to the children of Israel: He who is, has sent me unto you; Exodus 3:14 and His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who makes those that believe in His name the sons of God. And again, when the Son speaks to Moses, He says, I have come down to deliver this people. Exodus 3:8 For it is He who descended and ascended for the salvation of men. Therefore God has been declared through the Son, who is in the Father, and has the Father in Himself — He who is, the Father bearing witness to the Son, and the Son announcing the Father.— As also Esaias says, I too am witness, he declares, says the Lord God, and the Son whom I have chosen, that you may know, and believe, and understand that I am. Isaiah 43:10…

 

4. Wherefore I do also call upon you, Lord God of Abraham, and God of Isaac, and God of Jacob and Israel, who is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the God who, through the abundance of Your mercy, has had a favour towards us, that we should know You, who has made heaven and earth, who rule over all, who is the only and the true God, above whom there is none other God; grant, by our Lord Jesus Christ, the governing power of the Holy Spirit; give to every reader of this book to know You, that You are God alone, to be strengthened in You, and to avoid every heretical, and godless, and impious doctrine. (Ibid., Book III, Chapter 6 The Holy Ghost, throughout the Old Testament Scriptures, made mention of no other God or Lord, save him who is the true God; emphasis mine)

 

Irenaeus’ repeated emphasis of this fact was meant to refute the Gnostic heretics who were misusing Jesus’ statements in Matthew 11:27/Luke 10:22 to prove that the God of the Old Testament cannot be the same God revealed in Christ.

 

The aforementioned statements from this holy martyr indicate that Irenaeus was aware that the Son must be omniscient since this reciprocity of intimate knowledge between the Father and the Son demands it. After all, our Lord’s words that no one is able to know him except the Father, and none are capable of knowing the Father except he himself, imply that both the Father and he are incomprehensible and omniscient.

 

The point Christ is making is that only an omniscient and incomprehensible mind can comprehend the incomprehensible and omniscient God:

 

1. The Father and the Son cannot be known by creatures.

 

2. This is because both the Father and the Son are incomprehensible and immeasurable.

 

3. The Father and the Son are known only to and by each other.

 

4. This shows that the Son, like the Father, is omniscient and incomprehensible.

 

5. This is because only an infinite, immeasurable Being can know and only be known by another incomprehensible Being.

 

6. Yet there is only one such infinite, immeasurable, incomprehensible Being.

 

7. Therefore, both the Father and the Son must be this same divine Being, even though they are not the same identical Self or Person.

 

8. This demonstrates that both the Father and the Son possess the exact same omniscience and are, therefore, able of comprehending all things, even each other.

 

9. This explains the reason for the Father sending his omniscient and incomprehensible Son to reveal God’s nature to his creatures, since the Son alone is qualified to do so.

 

10. Moreover, a part of the Father’s knowledge is his awareness of the day and hour.

 

11. Since the Son comprehends all that the Father knows, in the same way that the Father comprehends him, this means that the Son must have knowledge of the day and hour.

 

This is precisely why Irenaeus plainly expressed that only God can reveal and teach about God to others. Note his words again:

 

“For the Lord taught us that no man is capable of knowing God, unless he be taught of God; that is, that God cannot be known without God: but that this is the express will of the Father, that God should be known. For they shall know Him to whomsoever the Son has revealed Him.”

 

And the fact that Irenaeus appeals to a verse where our Lord affirms that even on earth he possessed full comprehension of the Father to the same extent that the Father comprehends him, simply reinforces my case that the beloved bishop would have understand that Christ was still perfectly omniscient during his earthly sojourn.

 

As if this weren’t explicit enough to establish my case, notice what the blessed saint wrote elsewhere:

 

2. Since, then, the law originated with Moses, it terminated with John as a necessary consequence. Christ had come to fulfil it: wherefore the law and the prophets were with them until John. Luke 16:16 And therefore Jerusalem, taking its commencement from David, and fulfilling its own times, must have an end of legislation when the new covenant was revealed. For God does all things by measure and in order; nothing is unmeasured with Him, because nothing is out of order. Well spoke he, who said that the unmeasurable Father was Himself subjected to measure in the Son; for the Son is the measure of the Father, since He also comprehends Him. But that the administration of them (the Jews) was temporary, Esaias says: And the daughter of Zion shall be left as a cottage in a vineyard, and as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers. Isaiah 1:8 And when shall these things be left behind? Is it not when the fruit shall be taken away, and the leaves alone shall be left, which now have no power of producing fruit? (Ibid., Chapter 4 Answer to another objection, showing that the destruction of Jerusalem, which was the city of the great king, diminished nothing from the supreme majesty and power of God, for that this destruction was put in execution by the most wise counsel of the same God.)

 

Once again, the Son could only be the measure of the immeasurable Father and comprehend the incomprehensible God is if he himself is immeasurable and incomprehensible.

 

My analysis of St. Irenaeus’s words in the context in which he wrote provides no solace for those wishing to twist his statements in order to diminish the Deity of Christ.

 

This blessed saint and martyr of the Triune God did in fact believe, love and worship the Trinity. He was not an arian, semi-arian, unitarian, modalist heretic, etc., but was in fact a holy servant of the Triune God who lives. This is why he could write boldly that Jesus Christ is not God in a mere representational and/or function sense. Rather, the Son is truly Lord and God in his own right by virtue of being the uncreated Word of the Father who was begotten before the ages:

 

2. That John knew the one and the same Word of God, and that He was the only begotten, and that He became incarnate for our salvation, Jesus Christ our Lord, I have sufficiently proved from the word of John himself. And Matthew, too, recognising one and the same Jesus Christ, exhibiting his generation as a man from the Virgin, even as God did promise David that He would raise up from the fruit of his body an eternal King, having made the same promise to Abraham a long time previously, says: The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Matthew 1:1 Then, that he might free our mind from suspicion regarding Joseph, he says: But the birth of Christ was on this wise. When His mother was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost. Then, when Joseph had it in contemplation to put Mary away, since she proved with child, [Matthew tells us of] the angel of God standing by him, and saying: Fear not to take unto you Mary your wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. And she shall bring forth a son, and you shall call His name Jesus; for He shall save His people from their sins. Now this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet: Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bring forth a son, and they shall call His name Emmanuel, which is, God with us; clearly signifying that both the promise made to the fathers had been accomplished, that the Son of God was born of a virgin, and that He Himself was Christ the Saviour whom the prophets had foretold; not, as these men assert, that Jesus was He who was born of Mary, but that Christ was He who descended from above. Matthew might certainly have said, Now the birth of Jesus was on this wise; but the Holy Ghost, foreseeing the corrupters [of the truth], and guarding by anticipation against their deceit, says by Matthew, But the birth of Christ was on this wise; and that He is Emmanuel, lest perchance we might consider Him as a mere man: for not by the will of the flesh nor by the will of man, but by the will of God was the Word made flesh; and that we should not imagine that Jesus was one, and Christ another, but should know them to be one and the same.

 

3. Paul, when writing to the Romans, has explained this very point: Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, predestinated unto the Gospel of God, which He had promised by His prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning His Son, who was made to Him of the seed of David according to the flesh, who was predestinated the Son of God with power through the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead of our Lord Jesus Christ. Romans 1:1-4 And again, writing to the Romans about Israel, he says: Whose are the fathers, and from whom is Christ according to the flesh, who is God over all, blessed forever. Romans 9:5 And again, in his Epistle to the Galatians, he says: But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption; Galatians 4:4-5 plainly indicating one God, who did by the prophets make promise of the Son, and one Jesus Christ our Lord, who was of the seed of David according to His birth from Mary; and that Jesus Christ was appointed the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead, as being the first begotten in all the creation; Colossians 1:14-15 the Son of God being made the Son of man, that through Him we may receive the adoption, — humanity sustaining, and receiving, and embracing the Son of God. Wherefore Mark also says: The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God; as it is written in the prophets. Mark 1:1 Knowing one and the same Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was announced by the prophets, who from the fruit of David’s body was Emmanuel, the messenger of great counsel of the Father; through whom God caused the day-spring and the Just One to arise to the house of David, and raised up for him an horn of salvation, and established a testimony in Jacob; Luke 1:69 as David says when discoursing on the causes of His birth: And He appointed a law in Israel, that another generation might know [Him,] the children which should he born from these, and they arising shall themselves declare to their children, so that they might set their hope in God, and seek after His commandments. And again, the angel said, when bringing good tidings to Mary: He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest; and the Lord shall give unto Him the throne of His father David; Luke 1:32 acknowledging that He who is the Son of the Highest, the same is Himself also the Son of David. And David, knowing by the Spirit the dispensation of the advent of this Person, by which He is supreme over all the living and dead, confessed Him as Lord, sitting on the right hand of the Most High Father. (Ibid., Book III, Chapter 16 Proofs from the apostolic writings, that Jesus Christ was one and the same, the only begotten Son of God, perfect God and perfect man)

 

2. For this reason [it is, said], Who shall declare His generation? Isaiah 53:8 since He is a man, and who shall recognise Him? Jeremiah 17:9 But he to whom the Father which is in heaven has revealed Him, Matthew 16:16 knows Him, so that he understands that He who was not born either by the will of the flesh, or by the will of man, John 1:13 is the Son of man, this is Christ, the Son of the living God. For I have shown from the Scriptures, that no one of the sons of Adam is as to everything, and absolutely, called God, or named Lord. But that He is Himself in His own right, beyond all men who ever lived, God, and Lord, and King Eternal, and the Incarnate Word, proclaimed by all the prophets, the apostles, and by the Spirit Himself, may be seen by all who have attained to even a small portion of the truth. Now, the Scriptures would not have testified these things of Him, if, like others, He had been a mere man. But that He had, beyond all others, in Himself that pre-eminent birth which is from the Most High Father, and also experienced that pre-eminent generation which is from the Virgin, Isaiah 7:14 the divine Scriptures do in both respects testify of Him: also, that He was a man without comeliness, and liable to suffering; Isaiah 53:2 that He sat upon the foal of an ass; Zechariah 9:9 that He received for drink, vinegar and gall; that He was despised among the people, and humbled Himself even to death and that He is the holy Lord, the Wonderful, the Counsellor, the Beautiful in appearance, and the Mighty God, Isaiah 9:6 coming on the clouds as the Judge of all men; Daniel 7:13 — all these things did the Scriptures prophesy of Him. (Ibid., Chapter 19 Jesus Christ was not a mere man, begotten from Joseph in the ordinary course of nature, but was true God, begotten of the Father Most High, and true man, born of the Virgin)

Paul, Augustine & Jesus’ Knowledge of the Day & Hour

The quotations from St. Augustine are taken from On the Trinity, Book 1. The beloved saint will show that the words of our Lord Jesus in Mark 13:32 do not imply that the Son was ignorant of the Day or Hour, but that he chose to veil that knowledge for the express purpose of not making it known to his disciples. Augustine then quotes the Apostle Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 2:2 to explain that not knowing can and often does refer to not making something known to others. All emphasis will be mine.

Chapter 12.— In What Manner the Son is Said Not to Know the Day and the Hour Which the Father Knows. Some Things Said of Christ According to the Form of God, Other Things According to the Form of a Servant. In What Way It is of Christ to Give the Kingdom, in What Not of Christ. Christ Will Both Judge and Not Judge.

Again, Of that day and that hour knows no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven; neither the Son, but the Father. For He is ignorant of this, as making others ignorant; that is, in that He did not so know as at that time to show His disciples: as it was said to Abraham, Now I know that you fear God, that is, now I have caused you to know it; because he himself, being tried in that temptation, became known to himself. For He was certainly going to tell this same thing to His disciples at the fitting time; speaking of which yet future as if past, He says, Henceforth I call you not servants, but friends; for the servant knows not what his Lord does: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you; which He had not yet done, but spoke as though He had already done it, because He certainly would do it. For He says to the disciples themselves, I have yet many things to say unto you; but you cannot bear them now. Among which is to be understood also, Of the day and hour. For the apostle also says, I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified; because he was speaking to those who were not able to receive higher things concerning the Godhead of Christ. To whom also a little while after he says, I could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal. He was ignorant, therefore, among them of that which they were not able to know from him. And that only he said that he knew, which it was fitting that they should know from him. In short, he knew among the perfect what he knew not among babes; for he there says: We speak wisdom among them that are perfect. For a man is said not to know what he hides, after that kind of speech, after which a ditch is called blind which is hidden. For the Scriptures do not use any other kind of speech than may be found in use among men, because they speak to men.

Hilary: God is the Trinity Pt. 2

This post is a continuation of my previous one from blessed St. Hilary of Poitier’s work On the Trinity, Book VII: Hilary: God is the Trinity.

Here I provide more quotes from that same section showing how this holy saint confirmed that the phrase “one God” does not refer to or mean the Father, As the citations will prove, St. Hilary taught that the expression refers the whole Trinity, and not to any one single individual Person of the Godhead. All emphasis will be mine.

2.

We call to mind that in the preceding books the reader has been urged to study the whole of that blasphemous manifesto , and mark how it is animated throughout by the one aim of propagating the belief that our Lord Jesus Christ is neither God, nor Son of God. Its authors argue that He is permitted to use the names of God and of Son by virtue of a certain adoption, though neither Godhead nor Sonship be His by nature. They use the fact, true in itself, that God is immutable and incorporeal, as an argument against the birth of the Son from Him. They value the truth, that God the Father is One, only as a weapon against our faith in the Godhead of Christ; pleading that an incorporeal nature cannot be rationally conceived as generating another, and that our faith in One God is inconsistent with the confession of God from God. But our earlier books have already refuted and foiled this argument of theirs by an appeal to the Law and the Prophets. Our defense has followed, step by step, the course of their attack. We have set forth God from God, and at the same time confessed One true God; showing that this presentation of the faith neither falls short of the truth by ascribing singleness of Person to the One true God, nor adds to the faith by asserting the existence of a second Deity. For we confess neither an isolated God, nor yet two Gods. Thus, neither denying that God is One nor maintaining that He is alone, we hold the straight road of truth. Each Divine Person is in the Unity, YET NO PERSON IS THE ONE GOD. Next, our purpose being to demonstrate the irrefragable truth of this mystery by the evidence of the Evangelists and Apostles, our first duty has been to make our readers acquainted with the nature, truly subsisting and truly born, of the Son of God; to demonstrate that He has no origin external to God, and was not created out of nothing, but is the Son, born from God. This is a truth which the evidence adduced in the last book has placed beyond all doubt. The assertion that He bears the name of Son by virtue of adoption has been put to silence, and He stands forth as a true Son by a true birth. Our present task is to prove from the Gospels that, because He is true Son, He is true God also. For unless He be true Son He cannot be true God, nor true God unless He be true Son…

9.

Thus we have all these different assurances of the Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ:— His name, His birth, His nature, His power, His own assertion. As to the name, I conceive that no doubt is possible. It is written, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. John 1:1 What reason can there be for suspecting that He is not what His name indicates? And does not this name clearly describe His nature? If a statement be contradicted, it must be for some reason. What reason, I demand, is there in this instance for denying that He is God? The name is given Him, plainly and distinctly, and unqualified by any incongruous addition which might raise a doubt. The Word, we read, which was made flesh, was none other than God. Here is no loophole for any such conjecture as that He has received this name as a favour or taken it upon Himself, so possessing a titular Godhead which is not His by nature.

10.

Consider the other recorded instances in which this name was given by favour or assumed. To Moses it was said, I have made you a god to Pharaoh. Exodus 7:1 Does not this addition, to Pharaoh, account for the title? Did God impart to Moses the Divine nature? Did He not rather make Moses a god in the sight of Pharaoh, who was to be smitten with terror when Moses’ serpent swallowed the magic serpents and returned into a rod, when he drove back the venomous flies which he had called forth, when he stayed the hail by the same power wherewith he had summoned it, and made the locusts depart by the same might which had brought them; when in the wonders that he wrought the magicians saw the finger of God? That was the sense in which Moses was appointed to be god to Pharaoh; he was feared and entreated, he chastised and healed. It is one thing to be appointed a god; it is another thing to be God. He was made a god to Pharaoh; he had not that nature and that name wherein God consists. I call to mind another instance of the name being given as a title; that where it is written, I have said, You are gods. But this is obviously the granting of a favour. I have said proves that it is no definition, but only a description by One Who chooses to speak thus. A definition gives us knowledge of the object defined; a description depends on the arbitrary will of the speaker. When a speaker is manifestly conferring a title, that title has its origin only in the speaker’s words, not in the thing itself. The title is not the name which expresses its nature and kind.

11.

But in this case the Word in very truth is God; the essence of the Godhead exists in the Word, and that essence is expressed in the Word’s name. For the name Word is inherent in the Son of God as a consequence of His mysterious birth, as are also the names Wisdom and Power. These, together with the substance which is His by a true birth, were called into existence to be the Son of God ; yet, since they are the elements of God’s nature, they are still immanent in Him in undiminished extent, although they were born from Him to be His Son. For, as we have said so often, the mystery which we preach is that of a Son Who owes His existence not to division but to birth. He is not a segment cut off, and so incomplete, but an Offspring born, and therefore perfect; for birth involves no diminution of the Begetter, and has the possibility of perfection for the Begotten. And therefore the titles of those substantive properties are applied to God the Only-begotten, for when He came into existence by birth it was they which constituted His perfection; and this although they did not thereby desert the Father, in Whom, by the immutability of His nature, they are eternally present. For instance, the Word is God the Only-begotten,and yet the Unbegotten Father IS NEVER WITHOUT HIS WORD. Not that the nature of the Son is that of a sound which is uttered. He is God from God, subsisting through a true birth; God’s own Son, born from the Father, indistinguishable from Him in nature, and therefore inseparable. This is the lesson which His title of the Word is meant to teach us. And in the same way Christ is the Wisdom and the Power of God; not that He is, as He is often regarded , the inward activity of the Father’s might or thought, but that His nature, possessing through birth a true substantial existence, is indicated by these names of inward forces. For an object, which has by birth an existence of its own, cannot be regarded as a property; a property is necessarily inherent in some being and can have no independent existence. But it was to save us from concluding that the Son is alien from the Divine nature of His Father that He, the Only-begotten from the eternal God His Father, born as God into a substantial existence of His own, has had Himself revealed to us under these names of properties, of which the Father, out of Whom He came into existence, has suffered no diminution. Thus He, being God, is nothing else than God. For when I hear the words, And the Word was God, they do not merely tell me that the Son was called God; they reveal to my understanding that He is God. In those previous instances, where Moses was called god and others were styled gods, there was the mere addition of a name by way of title. Here a solid essential truth is stated; The Word was God. That was indicates no accidental title, but an eternal reality, a permanent element of His existence, an inherent character of His nature.

12.

And now let us see whether the confession of Thomas the Apostle, when he cried, My Lord and My God, corresponds with this assertion of the Evangelist. We see that he speaks of Him, Whom he confesses to be God, as My God. Now Thomas was undoubtedly familiar with those words of the Lord, Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is One. How then could the faith of an Apostle become so oblivious of that primary command as to confess Christ as God, when life is conditional upon the confession of the Divine unity? It was because, in the light of the Resurrection, the whole mystery of the faith had become visible to the Apostle. He had often heard such words as, I and the Father are One, and, All things that the Father has are Mine, and, I in the Father and the Father in Me ; and now he can confess that the name of God expresses the nature of Christ, without peril to the faith. Without breach of loyalty to the One God, the Father, his devotion could now regard the Son of God as God, since he believed that everything contained in the nature of the Son was truly of the same nature with the Father. No longer need he fear that such a confession as his was the proclamation of a second God, a treason against the unity of the Divine nature; for it was not a second God Whom that perfect birth of the Godhead had brought into being. Thus it was with full knowledge of the mystery of the Gospel that Thomas confessed his Lord and his God. It was not a title of honour; it was a confession of nature. He believed that Christ was God in substance and in power. And the Lord, in turn, shows that this act of worship was the expression not of mere reverence, but of faith, when He says, Because you have seen, you have believed; blessed are they which have not seen, and have believed. For Thomas had seen before he believed. But, you ask, What was it that Thomas believed? That, beyond a doubt, which is expressed in his words, My Lord and my God. No nature but that of God could have risen by its own might from death to life; and it is this fact, that Christ is God, which was confessed by Thomas with the confidence of an assured faith. Shall we, then, dream that His name of God is not a substantial reality, when that name has been proclaimed by a faith based upon certain evidence? Surely a Son devoted to His Father, One Who did not His own will but the will of Him that sent Him, Who sought not His own glory but the glory of Him from Whom He came, would have rejected the adoration involved in such a name as destructive of that unity of God which had been the burden of His teaching. Yet, in fact, He confirms this assertion of the mysterious truth, made by the believing Apostle; He accepts as His own the name which belongs to the nature of the Father. And He teaches that they are blessed who, though they have not seen Him rise from the dead, yet have believed, on the assurance of the Resurrection, that He is God.

13.

Thus the name which expresses His nature proves the truth of our confession of the faith. For the name, which indicates any single substance, points out also any other substance of the same kind; and, in this instance, there are not two substances but one substance, of the one kind. For the Son of God is God; this is the truth expressed in His name. The one name does not embrace two Gods; for the one name God is the name OF ONE INDIVISBLE NATURE. For since the Father is God and the Son is God, and that name WHICH IS PECULIAR TO THE DIVINE NATURE IS INHERENT IN EACH, therefore the Two are One. For the Son, though He subsists through a birth from the Divine nature, yet preserves the unity in His name; and this birth of the Son does not compel loyal believers to acknowledge two Gods, since our confession declares that Father and Son are One, both in nature and in name. Thus the Son of God has the Divine name as the result of His birth. Now the second step in our demonstration was to be that of showing that it is by virtue of His birth that He is God. I have still to bring forward the evidence of the Apostles that the Divine name is used of Him in an exact sense; but for the present I purpose to continue our enquiry into the language of the Gospels…

31.

We see how the living Son of the living Father, He Who is God from God, reveals the unity of the Divine nature, indissolubly One and the same, and the mystery of His birth in these words, I and the Father are One. Because the seeming arrogance of them engendered a prejudice against Him, He made it more clear that He had spoken in the conscious possession of Divinity by saying, You say that I have blasphemed because I said, I am the Son of God; thus showing that the oneness of His nature with that of God was due to birth from God. And then, to clench their faith in His birth by a positive assertion, and to guard them, at the same time, from imagining that the birth involves a difference of nature, He crowns His argument with the words, Believe the works, that the Father is in Me, and I in the Father. Does His birth, as here revealed, display His Divinity as not His by nature, as not His own by right? Each is in the Other; the birth of the Son is from the Father only; no alien or unlike nature has been raised to Godhead and subsists as God. God from God, eternally abiding, owes His Godhead to none other than God. Import, if you see your opportunity, two gods into the Church’s faith; separate Son from Father as far as you can, consistently with the birth which you admit; yet still the Father is in the Son, and the Son is in the Father, and this by no interchange of emanations but by the perfect birth of the living nature. Thus you cannot add together God the Father and God the Son, and count Them as two Gods, for They Two are One God. You cannot confuse Them together, for They Two are not One Person. And so the Apostolic faith rejects two gods; for it knows nothing of two Fathers or two Sons. In confessing the Father it confesses the Son; it believes in the Son in believing in the Father. For the name of Father involves that of Son, since without having a son none can be a father. Evidence of the existence of a son is proof that there has been a father, for a son cannot exist except from a father. When we confess that God is One WE DENY THAT HE IS SINGLE; for the Son is the complement of the Father, and to the Father the Son’s existence is due. But birth works no change in the Divine nature; both in Father and in Son that nature is true to its kind. And the right expression for us of this unity of nature is the confession that They, being Two by birth and generation, are One God, not one Person.

32.

We will leave it to him to preach two Gods, who can preach One God without confessing the unity; he shall proclaim that God is solitary, who can deny that there are two Persons, Each dwelling in the Other by the power of Their nature and the mystery of birth given and received. And that man may assign a different nature to Each of the Two, who is ignorant that the unity of Father and of Son is a revealed truth. Let the heretics blot out this record of the Son’s self-revelation I in the Father and the Father in Me; then, and not till then, shall they assert that there are two Gods, or one God in loneliness. There is no hint of more natures than one in what we are told of Their possession of the one Divine nature. The truth that God is from God does not multiply God by two; the birth destroys the supposition of a lonely God. And again, because They are interdependent They form an unity; and that They are interdependentis proved by Their being One from One. For the One, in begetting the One, conferred upon Him nothing that was not His own; and the One, in being begotten, received from the One only what belongs to one. Thus the apostolic faith, in proclaiming the Father, will proclaim Him as One God, and in confessing the Son will confess Him as One God; since one and the same Divine nature exists in Both, and because, the Father being God and the Son being God, and the one name of God expressing the nature of Both, THE TERM ‘ONE GOD?’ signifies the Two. God from God, or God in God, does not mean that there are two Gods, for God abides, One from One, eternally with the one Divine nature and the one Divine name; nor does God dwindle down to a single Person, for One and One can never be in solitude.

Hilary: God is the Trinity

Here I cite from St. Hilary of Poitier’s work On the Trinity, Book VII, where this holy saint affirms that the term God refers the divine Persons who share the same name and nature. All emphasis will be mine.

31. We see how the living Son of the living Father, He Who is God from God, reveals the unity of the Divine nature, indissolubly One and the same, and the mystery of His birth in these words, I and the Father are One.

Because the seeming arrogance of them engendered a prejudice against Him, He made it more clear that He had spoken in the conscious possession of Divinity by saying, You say that I have blasphemed because I said, I am the Son of God; thus showing that the oneness of His nature with that of God was due to birth from God.

And then, to clench their faith in His birth by a positive assertion, and to guard them, at the same time, from imagining that the birth involves a difference of nature, He crowns His argument with the words, Believe the works, that the Father is in Me, and I in the Father.

Does His birth, as here revealed, display His Divinity as not His by nature, as not His own by right? Each is in the Other; the birth of the Son is from the Father only; no alien or unlike nature has been raised to Godhead and subsists as God.

God from God, eternally abiding, owes His Godhead to none other than God. Import, if you see your opportunity, two gods into the Church’s faith; separate Son from Father as far as you can, consistently with the birth which you admit; yet still the Father is in the Son, and the Son is in the Father, and this by no interchange of emanations but by the perfect birth of the living nature.

Thus you cannot add together God the Father and God the Son, and count Them as two Gods, for They Two are One God. You cannot confuse Them together, for They Two are not One Person.

And so the Apostolic faith rejects two gods; for it knows nothing of two Fathers or two Sons. In confessing the Father it confesses the Son; it believes in the Son in believing in the Father.

For the name of Father involves that of Son, since without having a son none can be a father. Evidence of the existence of a son is proof that there has been a father, for a son cannot exist except from a father. When we confess that God is One WE DENY THAT HE IS SINGLE; for the Son is the complement of the Father, and to the Father the Son’s existence is due.

But birth works no change in the Divine nature; both in Father and in Son that nature is true to its kind. And the right expression for us of this unity of nature is the confession that They, being Two by birth and generation, are One God, not one Person.

32. We will leave it to him to preach two Gods, who can preach One God without confessing the unity; he shall proclaim that God is solitary, who can deny that there are two Persons, Each dwelling in the Other by the power of Their nature and the mystery of birth given and received.

And that man may assign a different nature to Each of the Two, who is ignorant that the unity of Father and of Son is a revealed truth.

Let the heretics blot out this record of the Son’s self-revelation I in the Father and the Father in Me; then, and not till then, shall they assert that there are two Gods, or one God in loneliness.

There is no hint of more natures than one in what we are told of Their possession of the one Divine nature. The truth that God is from God does not multiply God by two; the birth destroys the supposition of a lonely God.

And again, because They are interdependent They form an unity; and that They are interdependent is proved by Their being One from One.

For the One, in begetting the One, conferred upon Him nothing that was not His own; and the One, in being begotten, received from the One only what belongs to one.

Thus the apostolic faith, in proclaiming the Father, will proclaim Him as One God, and in confessing the Son will confess Him as One God; since one and the same Divine nature exists in Both, and because, the Father being God and the Son being God, and the one name of God expressing the nature of Both, the term ‘One God?’ signifies the Two. God from God, or God in God, does not mean that there are two Gods, for God abides, One from One, eternally with the one Divine nature and the one Divine name; nor does God dwindle down to a single Person, for One and One can never be in solitude.

32. We will leave it to him to preach two Gods, who can preach One God without confessing the unity; he shall proclaim that God is solitary, who can deny that there are two Persons, Each dwelling in the Other by the power of Their nature and the mystery of birth given and received.

And that man may assign a different nature to Each of the Two, who is ignorant that the unity of Father and of Son is a revealed truth.

Let the heretics blot out this record of the Son’s self-revelation I in the Father and the Father in Me; then, and not till then, shall they assert that there are two Gods, or one God in loneliness.

There is no hint of more natures than one in what we are told of Their possession of the one Divine nature. The truth that God is from God does not multiply God by two; the birth destroys the supposition of a lonely God.

And again, because They are interdependent They form an unity; and that They are interdependent is proved by Their being One from One.

For the One, in begetting the One, conferred upon Him nothing that was not His own; and the One, in being begotten, received from the One only what belongs to one.

Thus the apostolic faith, in proclaiming the Father, will proclaim Him as One God, and in confessing the Son will confess Him as One God; since one and the same Divine nature exists in Both, and because, the Father being God and the Son being God, and the one name of God expressing the nature of Both, the term ‘One God?’ signifies the Two. God from God, or God in God, does not mean that there are two Gods, for God abides, One from One, eternally with the one Divine nature and the one Divine name; nor does God dwindle down to a single Person, for One and One can never be in solitude.

HILARY’S TRINITARIAN BELIEFS

In this post I will be quoting from the works of another early church father, namely Hilary of Poitiers, in respect to his Trinitarian beliefs.

The citations will show that Hilary affirmed that the Son was timelessly begotten, and therefore not a creature, since the Son has been eternally God with the Father. The quotations will further prove that Hilary believed the Son to be subject or subordinate to the Father, yet not as a creature of God, but rather as the Father’s eternally begotten Son from whom he timelessly derives his divine essence and authority. All emphasis will be mine.

X. And if any one admits that God became Father of the Only-begotten Son at any point in time and not that the Only-begotten Son came into existence without passion beyond all times and beyond all human calculation: for contravening the teaching of the Gospel which scorned any interval of times between the being of the Father and the Son and faithfully has instructed us that In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God John 1:1, let him be anathema.

24. It is a pious saying that the Father is not limited by times: for the true meaning of the name of Father which He bore before time began surpasses comprehension. Although religion teaches us to ascribe to Him this name of Father through which comes the impassible origin of the Son, yet He is not bound in time, for the eternal and infinite God cannot be understood as having become a Father in time, and according to the teaching of the Gospel the Only-begotten God the Word is recognized even in the beginning rather to be with God than to be born.

XI. And if any one says that the Father is older in time than His Only-begotten Son, and that the Son is younger than the Father: let him be anathema.

25. The essential likeness conformed to the Father’s essence in kind is also taught to be identical in time: lest He who is the image of God, who is the Word, who is God with God in the beginning, who is like the Father, by the insertion of times between Himself and the Father should not have in Himself in perfection that which is both image, and Word, and God. For if He be proclaimed to be younger in time, He has lost the truth of the image and likeness: for that is no longer likeness which is found to be dissimilar in time. For that very fact that God is Father prevents there being any time in which He was not Father: consequently there can be no time in the Son’s existence in which He was not Son. Wherefore we must neither call the Father older than the Son nor the Son younger than the Father: for the true meaning of neither name can exist without the other…

A copy of the creed composed at Sirmium by the Easterns to oppose Photinus.

38. We believe in one God the Father Almighty, the Creator and Maker, from whom every fatherhood in heaven and in earth is named.

And in His only Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who was born of the Father before all ages, God of God, Light of Light, through whom all things were made in heaven and in earth, visible and invisible. Who is the Word and Wisdom and Might and Life and true Light: who in the last days for our sake took a body, And was born of the Holy Virgin, And was crucified, And was dead and buried: who also rose from the dead on the third day, And ascended into heaven, And sits on the right hand of the Father, And shall come at the end of the world to judge the quick and the dead; whose kingdom continues without end and remains for perpetual ages. For He shall be sitting at the right hand of the Father not only in this age, but also in the age to come.

And in the Holy Ghost, that is, the Paraclete, whom according to His promise He sent to the apostles after He ascended into heaven to teach them and to remind them of all things, through whom also are sanctified the souls of those who believe sincerely in Him.

I. But those who say that the Son is sprung from things non-existent, or from another substance and not from God, and that there was a time or age when He was not, the holy Catholic Church regards as aliens.

II. If any man says that the Father and the Son are two Gods: let him be anathema.

III. And if any man says that God is one, but does not confess that Christ, God the Son of God, ministered to the Father in the creation of all things: let him be anathema…

IX. If any man says that the man alone born of Mary is the Son: let him be anathema. We cannot declare that the Son of God is born of Mary without declaring Him to be both Man and God. But lest the declaration that He is both God and Man should give occasion to deceit, the Council immediately adds,

X. If any man though saying that God and Man was born of Mary, understands thereby the Unborn God: let him be anathema.

47. Thus is preserved both the name and power of the divine substance. For since he is anathema who says that the Son of God by Mary is man and not God; and he falls under the same condemnation who says that the Unborn God became man: God made Man is not denied to be God but denied to be the Unborn God, the Father being distinguished from the Son not under the head of nature or by diversity of substance, but only by such pre-eminence as His birthless nature gives.

XI. If any man hearing The Word was made Flesh thinks that the Word was transformed into Flesh, or says that He suffered change in taking Flesh: let him be anathema.

48. This preserves the dignity of the Godhead: so that in the fact that the Word was made Flesh, the Word, in becoming Flesh, has not lost through being Flesh what constituted the Word, nor has become transformed into Flesh, so as to cease to be the Word; but the Word was made Flesh in order that the Flesh might begin to be what the Word is. Else whence came to His Flesh miraculous power in working, glory on the Mount, knowledge of the thoughts of human hearts, calmness in His passion, life in His death? God knowing no change, when made Flesh lost nothing of the prerogatives of His substance.

XII. If any man hearing that the only Son of God was crucified, says that His divinity suffered corruption or pain or change or diminution or destruction: let him be anathema.

XIII. If any man says Let us make man Genesis 1:26 was not spoken by the Father to the Son, but by God to Himself: let him be anathema.

XIV. If any man says that the Son did not appear to Abraham , but the Unborn God, or a part of Him: let him be anathema.

XV. If any man says that the Son did not wrestle with Jacob as a man , but the Unborn God, or a part of Him: let him be anathema.

XVI. If any man does not understand The Lord rained from the Lord to be spoken of the Father and the Son, but says that the Father rained from Himself: let him be anathema. For the Lord the Son rained from the Lord the Father…

XVII. If any man says that the Lord and the Lord, the Father and the Son, are two Gods because of the aforesaid words: let him be anathema. For we do not make the Son the equal or peer of the Father, but understand the Son to be subject. For He did not come down to Sodom without the Father’s will, nor rain from Himself but from the Lord, to wit, by the Father’s authority; nor does He sit at the Father’s right hand by His own authority, but because He hears the Father saying, Sit on My right hand. 

51. The foregoing and the following statements utterly remove any ground for suspecting that this definition asserts a diversity of different deities in the Lord and the Lord. No comparison is made because it was seen to be impious to say that there are two Gods: not that they refrain from making the Son equal and peer of the Father in order to deny that He is God. For, since he is anathema who denies that Christ is God, it is not on that score that it is profane to speak of two equal Gods. God is One on account of the true character of His natural essence and because from the Unborn God the Father, who is the one God, the Only-begotten God the Son is born, and draws His divine Being only from God; and since the essence of Him who is begotten is exactly similar to the essence of Him who begot Him, there must be one name for the exactly similar nature. That the Son is not on a level with the Father and is not equal to Him is chiefly shown in the fact that He was subjected to Him to render obedience, in that the Lord rained from the Lord and that the Father did not, as Photinus and Sabellius say, rain from Himself, as the Lord from the Lord; in that He then sat down at the right hand of God when it was told Him to seat Himself; in that He is sent, in that He receives, in that He submits in all things to the will of Him who sent Him. But the subordination of filial love is not a diminution of essence, nor does pious duty cause a degeneration of nature, since in spite of the fact that both the Unborn Father is God and the Only-begotten Son of God is God, God is nevertheless One, and the subjection and dignity of the Son are both taught in that by being called Son He is made subject to that name which because it implies that God is His Father is yet a name which denotes His nature. Having a name which belongs to Him whose Son He is, He is subject to the Father both in service and name; yet in such a way that the subordination of His name bears witness to the true character of His natural and exactly similar essence.

XVIII. If any man says that the Father and the Son are one Person: let him be anathema…

XX. If any man deny that, as the Lord has taught us, the Paraclete is different from the Son; for He said, And the Further shall send you another Comforter, whom I shall ask: let him be anathema…

XXII. If any man says that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are three Gods: let him be anathema…

XXVII. Once more we strengthen the understanding of Christianity by saying, If any man denies that Christ who is God and Son of God, personally existed before time began and aided the Father in the perfecting of all things; but says that only from the time that He was born of Mary did He gain the name of Christ and Son and a beginning of His deity: let him be anathema. (On the Councils, or the Faith of the Easterns)

5. They think also that they have a compendious refutation of Prophets, Evangelists and Apostles alike, in their assertion that the Son was born within time. They pronounce us illogical for saying that the Son has existed from everlasting; and, since they reject the possibility of His eternity, they are forced to believe that He was born at a point in time. For if He has not always existed, there was a time when He was not; and if there be a time when He was not, time was anterior to Him. He who has not existed everlastingly began to exist within time, while He Who is free from the limits of time is necessarily eternal. The reason they give for their rejection of the eternity of the Son is that His everlasting existence contradicts the faith in His birth; as though by confessing that He has existed eternally, we made His birth impossible.

6. What foolish and godless fears! What impious anxiety on God’s behalf! The meaning which they profess to detect in the word homoousion, and in the assertion of the eternity of the Son, is detested, rejected, denounced by the Church. She confesses one God from Whom are all things; she confesses one Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom are all things; One from Whom, One through Whom; One the Source of all, One the Agent through Whom all were created. In the One from Whom are all things she recognises the Majesty which has no beginning, and in the One through Whom are all things she recognises a might coequal with His Source; for Both are jointly supreme in the work of creation and in rule over created things. In the Spirit she recognises God as Spirit, impassible and indivisible, for she has learned from the Lord that Spirit has neither flesh nor bones Luke 24:39; a warning to save her from supposing that God, being Spirit, could be burdened with bodily suffering and loss. She recognises one God, unborn from everlasting; she recognises also one Only-begotten Son of God. She confesses the Father eternal and without beginning; she confesses also that the Son’s beginning is from eternity. Not that He has no beginning, but that He is Son of the Father Who has none; not that He is self-originated, but that He is from Him Who is unbegotten from everlasting; born from eternity, receiving, that is, His birth from the eternity of the Father. Thus our faith is free from the guesswork of heretical perversity; it is expressed in fixed and published terms, though as yet no reasoned defense of our confession has been put forth. Still, lest any suspicion should linger around the sense in which the Fathers have used the word homoousion and round our confession of the eternity of the Son, I have set down the proofs whereby we may be assured that the Son abides ever in that substance wherein He was begotten from the Father, and that the birth of His Son has not diminished ought of that Substance wherein the Father was abiding; that holy men, inspired by the teaching of God, when they said that the Son is homoousios with the Father pointed to no such flaws or defects as I have mentioned. My purpose has been to counteract the impression that this ousia, this assertion that He is homoousios with the Father, is a negation of the nativity of the Only-begotten Son…

33. Continue your study of the witness borne by Moses; mark how diligently he seizes every opportunity of proclaiming the Lord and God. You take note of the passage, Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is One. Deuteronomy 6:4 Note also the words of that Divine song of his; See, See, that I am the Lord, and there is no God beside Me. While God has been the Speaker throughout the poem, he ends with, Rejoice, you heavens, together with Him and let all the sons of God praise Him. Rejoice, O you nations, with His people, and let all the Angels of God do Him honour. God is to be glorified by the Angels of God, and He says, For I am the Lord, and there is no God beside Me. For He is God the Only-begotten, and the title ‘Only-begotten’ excludes all partnership in that character, just as the title ‘Unoriginate’ denies that there is, in that regard, any who shares the character of the Unoriginate Father. The Son is One from One. There is none unoriginate except God the Unoriginate, and so likewise there is none only-begotten except God the Only-begotten. They stand Each single and alone, being respectively the One Unoriginate and the One Only-begotten. And so They Two are One God, for between the One, and the One Who is His offspring there lies no gulf of difference of nature in the eternal Godhead. Therefore He must be worshipped by the sons of God and glorified by the angels of God. Honour and reverence is demanded for God from the sons and from the angels of God. Notice Who it is that shall receive this honour, and by whom it is to be paid. It is God, and they are the sons and angels of God. And lest you should imagine that honour is not demanded for God Who shares our nature , but that Moses is thinking here of reverence due to God the Father — though, indeed, it is in the Son that the Father must be honoured — examine the words of the blessing bestowed by God upon Joseph, at the end of the same book. They are, And let the things that are well-pleasing to Him that appeared in the bush come upon the head and crown of Joseph. Deuteronomy 33:16 Thus God is to be worshipped by the sons of God; but God Who is Himself the Son of God. And God is to be reverenced by the angels of God; but God Who is Himself the Angel of God. For God appeared from the bush as the Angel of God, and the prayer for Joseph is that he may receive such blessings as He shall please. He is none the less God because He is the Angel of God; and none the less the Angel of God because He is God. A clear indication is given of the Divine Persons; the line is definitely drawn between the Unbegotten and the Begotten. A revelation of the mysteries of heaven is granted, and we are taught not to dream of God as dwelling in solitude, when angels and sons of God shall worship Him, Who is God’s Angel and His Son…

37. The fact is obvious from His own words. For He says to Hosea the prophet, I will no more have mercy upon the house of Israel, but will altogether be their enemy. But I will have mercy upon the children of Judah, and will save them in the Lord their God. Hosea 1:6-7 Here God the Father gives the name of God, without any ambiguity, to the Son, in Whom also He chose us before countless ages. Their God, He says, for while the Father, being Unoriginate, is independent of all, He has given us for an inheritance to His Son. In like manner we read, Ask of Me, and I will give You the Gentiles for Your inheritance. None can be God to Him from Whom are all things , for He is eternal and has no beginning; but the Son has God, from Whom He was born, for His Father. Yet to us the Father is God and the Son is God; the Father reveals to us that the Son is our God, and the Son teaches that the Father is God over us. The point for us to remember is that in this passage the Father gives to the Son the name of God, the title of His own unoriginate majesty. But I have commented sufficiently on these words of Hosea. (On the Trinity, Book IV)

11. We do not know Christ the God unless we know God the Begotten. But to be born God is to belong to the nature of God, for the name Begotten signifies indeed the manner of His origin, but does not make Him different in kind from the Begetter. And if so, the Begotten owes indeed to His Author the source of His being, but is not dispossessed of the nature of that Author, for the birth of God can arise but from one origin, and have but one nature. If its origin is not from God, it is not a birth; if it is anything but a birth, Christ is not God. But He is God of God, and therefore God the Father stands to God the Son as God of His birth and Father of His nature, for the birth of God is from God, and in the specific nature of God.

12. See in all that He said, how carefully the Lord tempers the pious acknowledgment of His debt, so that neither the confession of the birth could be held to reflect upon His divinity, nor His reverent obedience to infringe upon His sovereign nature. He does not withhold the homage due from Him as the Begotten, Who owed to His Author His very existence, but He manifests by His confident bearing the consciousness of participation in that nature, which belongs to Him by virtue of the origin whereby He was born as God. Take, for instance, the words, He that has seen Me, has seen the Father also John 14:9, and, The words that I say, I speak not from Myself. He does not speak from Himself: therefore He receives from His Author that which He says. But if any have seen Him, they have seen the Father also: they are conscious, by this evidence, given to show that God is in Him, that a nature, one in kind with that of God, was born from God to subsist as God. Take again the words, That which the Father has given unto Me, is greater than all , and, I and the Father are one. To say that the Father gave, is a confession that He received His origin: but the unity of Himself with the Father is a property of His nature derived from that origin. Take another instance, He has given all judgment unto the Son, that all may honour the Son even as they honour the Father. He acknowledges that the judgment is given to Him, and therefore He does not put His birth in the background: but He claims equal honour with the Father, and therefore He does not resign His nature. Yet another example, I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me , and, The Father is greater than I. The One is in the Other: recognise, then, the divinity of God, the Begotten of God: the Father is greater than He: perceive, then, His acknowledgment of the Father’s authority. In the same way He says, The Son can do nothing of Himself but what He has seen the Father doing: for whatever things He does, these the Son also does in like manner. He does nothing of Himself: that is, in accordance with His birth the Father prompts His actions: yet whatever things the Father does, these the Son also does in like manner; that is, He subsists as nothing less than God, and by the Father’s omnipotent nature residing in Him, can do all that God the Father does. All is uttered in agreement with His unity of Spirit with the Father, and the properties of that nature, which He possesses by virtue of His birth. That birth, which brought Him into being, constituted Him divine, and His being reveals the consciousness of that divine nature. God the Son confesses God His Father, because He was born of Him; but also, because He was born, He inherits the whole nature of God. (On the Trinity, Book XI)

Hilary: Trinity in the OT & Jesus as the Angel

In this somewhat lengthy post, I quote the words of another great saint, Hilary of Poitiers, from his writing On the Holy Trinity, Book IV.

 

This holy saint not only argued that Jesus is that very divine Angel that appeared throughout the OT, he also quoted texts such as Genesis 1, Psalms 45:6-7, Isaiah 45:11-14, Hosea 1:6-7, Romans 9:5, etc., to prove God’s Triunity and the essential Deity of the Lord Christ. To make his case for the distinction of divine Persons, Hilary argued from Genesis 1 that the God who commanded things to exist is the Father, and the God who is said to have then made them is the Son. In other words, the God who said is the Father, and the God who did the creating is the Son! Hilary cites Genesis 1:26 to further bolster his argument since there God speaks in the plural. Another interesting point about Hilary’s defense of the Trinity is that he quotes 2 Maccabees 7:28 to prove that the Trinity created all things from nothing. Hilary also condemns the use of imperfect, finite, fallible, sinful human reasoning to contradict or explain away what God has said of himself in the inspired Scriptures.

 

I now turn to Hilary’s masterful defense of the blessed and holy Trinity, and exegesis of the God-breathed Scriptures. All emphasis will be mine.

 

11. Now that we have exposed their plan of belittling the Son under cover of magnifying the Father, the next step is to listen to the exact terms in which they express their own belief concerning the Son. For, since we have to answer in succession each of their allegations and to display on the evidence of Holy Scripture the impiety of their doctrines, we must append, to what they say of the Father, the decisions which they have put on record concerning the Son, that by a comparison of their confession of the Father with their confession of the Son we may follow a uniform order in our solution of the questions as they arise. They state as their verdict that the Son is not derived from any pre-existent matter, for through Him all things were created, nor yet begotten from God, for nothing can be withdrawn from God; but that He was made out of what was nonexistent, that is, that He is a perfect creature of God, though different from His other creatures. They argue that He is a creature, because it is written, The Lord has created Me for a beginning of His ways Proverbs 8:22; that He is the perfect handiwork of God, though different from His other works, they prove, as to the first point, by what Paul writes to the Hebrews, Being made so much better than the angels, as He possesses a more excellent name than they Hebrews 1:4, and again, Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our confession, Jesus Christ, who is faithful to Him that made Him. For their depreciation of the might and majesty and Godhead of the Son they rely chiefly on His own words, The Father is greater than I. John 14:28 But they admit that He is not one of the common herd of creatures on the evidence of All things were made through Him. John 1:3 And so they sum up the whole of their blasphemous teaching in these words which follow:—

 

12. We confess One God, alone unmade, alone eternal, alone unoriginate, alone true, alone possessing immortality, alone good, alone mighty, Creator, Ordainer and Disposer of all things, unchangeable and unalterable, righteous and good, of the Law and the Prophets and the New Testament. We believe that this God gave birth to the Only-begotten Son before all worlds, through Whom He made the world and all things; that He gave birth to Him not in semblance, but in truth, following His own Will, so that He is unchangeable and unalterable, God’s perfect creature but not as one of His other creatures, His handiwork, but not as His other works; not, as Valentinus maintained, that the Son is a development of the Father; nor, as Manichæus has declared of the Son, a consubstantial part of the Father; nor, as Sabellius, who makes two out of one, Son and Father at once; nor, as Hieracas, a light from a light, or a lamp with two flames; nor as if He was previously in being and afterwards born or created afresh to be a Son, a notion often condemned by yourself, blessed Pope , publicly in the Church and in the assembly of the brethren. But, as we have affirmed, we believe that He was created by the will of God before times and worlds, and has His life and existence from the Father, Who gave Him to share His own glorious perfections. For, when the Father gave to Him the inheritance of all things, He did not thereby deprive Himself of attributes which are His without origination, He being the source of all things.

 

13. So there are three Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. God, for His part, is the cause of all things, utterly unoriginate and separate from all; while the Son, put forth by the Father outside time, and created and established before the worlds, did not exist before He was born, but, being born outside time before the worlds, came into being as the Only Son of the Only Father. For He is neither eternal, nor co-eternal, nor co-uncreate with the Father, nor has He an existence collateral with the Father, as some say, who postulate two unborn principles. But God is before all things, as being indivisible and the beginning of all. Wherefore He is before the Son also, as indeed we have learned from you in your public preaching. Inasmuch then as He has His being from God, and His glorious perfections, and His life, and is entrusted with all things, for this reason God is His source, and has rule over Him, as being His God, since He is before Him. As to such phrases as from Him, and from the womb, and I went out from the Father and have come, if they be understood to denote that the Father extends a part and, as it were, a development of that one substance, then the Father will be of a compound nature and divisible and changeable and corporeal, according to them; and thus, as far as their words go, the incorporeal God will be subjected to the properties of matter. 

 

14. Such is their error, such their pestilent teaching; to support it they borrow the words of Scripture, perverting its meaning and using the ignorance of men as their opportunity of gaining credence for their lies. Yet it is certainly by these same words of God that we must come to understand the things of God. For human feebleness cannot by any strength of its own attain to the knowledge of heavenly things; the faculties which deal with bodily matters can form no notion of the unseen world. Neither our created bodily substance, nor the reason given by God for the purposes of ordinary life, is capable of ascertaining and pronouncing upon the nature and work of God. Our wits cannot rise to the level of heavenly knowledge, our powers of perception lack the strength to apprehend that limitless might. We must believe God’s word concerning Himself, and humbly accept such insight as He vouchsafes to give. We must make our choice between rejecting His witness, as the heathen do, or else believing in Him as He is, and this in the only possible way, by thinking of Him in the aspect in which He presents Himself to us. Therefore let private judgment cease; let human reason refrain from passing barriers divinely set. In this spirit we eschew all blasphemous and reckless assertion concerning God, and cleave to the very letter of revelation. Each point in our enquiry shall be considered in the light of His instruction, Who is our theme; there shall be no stringing together of isolated phrases whose context is suppressed, to trick and misinform the unpractised listener. The meaning of words shall be ascertained by considering the circumstances under which they were spoken; words must be explained by circumstances not circumstances forced into conformity with words. We, at any rate, will treat our subject completely; we will state both the circumstances under which words were spoken, and the true purport of the words. Each point shall be considered in orderly sequence.

 

15. Their starting-point is this; We confess, they say, One only God, because Moses says, Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is One. Deuteronomy 6:4 But is this a truth which anyone has ever dared to doubt? Or was any believer ever known to confess otherwise than that there is One God from Whom are all things, One Majesty which has no birth, and that He is that unoriginated Power? Yet this fact of the Unity of God offers no chance for denying the Divinity of His Son. For Moses, or rather God through Moses, laid it down as His first commandment to that people, devoted both in Egypt and in the Desert to idols and the worship of imaginary gods, that they must believe in One God. There was truth and reason in the commandment, for God, from Whom are all things, is One. But let us see whether this Moses have not confessed that He, through Whom are all things, is also God. God is not robbed, He is still God, if His Son share the Godhead. For the case is that of God from God, of One from One, of God Who is One because God is from Him. And conversely the Son is not less God because God the Father is One, for He is the Only-begotten Son of God; not eternally unborn, so as to deprive the Father of His Oneness, nor yet different from God, for He is born from Him. We must not doubt that He is God by virtue of that birth from God which proves to us who believe that God is One; yet let us see whether Moses, who announced to Israel, The Lord your God is One, has also proclaimed the Godhead of the Son. To make good our confession of the Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ we must employ the evidence of that same witness on whom the heretics rely for the confession of One Only God, which they imagine to involve the denial of the Godhead of the Son.

 

16. Since, therefore, the words of the Apostle, One God the Father, from Whom are all things, and one Jesus Christ, our Lord, through Whom are all things 1 Corinthians 8:6, form an accurate and complete confession concerning God, let us see what Moses has to say of the beginning of the world. His words are, And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the water, and let it divide the water from the water. And it was so, and God made the firmament and God divided the water through the midst. Genesis 1:6-7 Here, then, you have the God from Whom, and the God through Whom. If you deny it, you must tell us through whom it was that God’s work in creation was done, or else point for your explanation to an obedience in things yet uncreated, which, when God said Let there be a firmament, impelled the firmament to establish itself. Such suggestions are inconsistent with the clear sense of Scripture. For all things, as the Prophet says 2 Maccabbees 7:28, were made out of nothing; it was no transformation of existing things, but the creation into a perfect form of the non-existent. Through whom? Hear the Evangelist: All things were made through Him. If you ask Who this is, the same Evangelist will tell you: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him. John 1:1-3 If you are minded to combat the view that it was the Father Who said, Let there be a firmament, the prophet will answer you: He spoke, and they were made; He commanded, and they were created. The recorded words, Let there be a firmament, reveal to us that the Father spoke. But in the words which follow, And it was so, in the statement that God did this thing, we must recognise the Person of the Agent. He spoke, and they were made; the Scripture does not say that He willed it, and did it. He commanded, and they were created; you observe that it does not say they came into existence, because it was His pleasure. In that case there would be no office for a Mediator between God and the world which was awaiting its creation. God, from Whom are all things, gives the order for creation which God, through Whom are all things, executes. Under one and the same Name we confess Him Who gave and Him Who fulfilled the command. If you dare to deny that God made is spoken of the Son, how do you explain All things were made through Him? Or the Apostle’s words, One Jesus Christ, our Lord, through Whom are all things? Or, He spoke, and they were made? If these inspired words succeed in convincing your stubborn mind, you will cease to regard that text, Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is One, as a refusal of Divinity to the Son of God, since at the very foundation of the world He Who spoke it proclaimed that His Son also is God. But let us see what increase of profit we may draw from this distinction of God Who commands and God Who executes. For though it is repugnant even to our natural reason to suppose that in the words, He commanded, and they were made, one single and isolated Person is intended, yet, for the avoidance of all doubts, we must expound the events which followed upon the creation of the world.

 

17. When the world was complete and its inhabitant was to be created, the words spoken concerning him were, Let Us make man after Our image and likeness. Genesis 1:26 I ask you, Do you suppose that God spoke those words to Himself? Is it not obvious that He was addressing not Himself, but Another? If you reply that He was alone, then out of His own mouth He confutes you, for He says, Let Us make man after Our image and likeness. God has spoken to us through the Lawgiver in the way which is intelligible to us; that is, He makes us acquainted with His action by means of language, the faculty with which He has been pleased to endow us. There is, indeed, an indication of the Son of God , through Whom all things were made, in the words, And God said, Let there be a firmament, and in, And God made the firmament, which follows: but lest we should think these words of God were wasted and meaningless, supposing that He issued to Himself the command of creation, and Himself obeyed it — for what notion could be further from the thought of a solitary God than that of giving a verbal order to Himself, when nothing was necessary except an exertion of His will?— He determined to give us a more perfect assurance that these words refer to Another beside Himself. When He said, Let Us make man after Our image and likeness, His indication of a Partner demolishes the theory of His isolation. For an isolated being cannot be partner to himself; and again, the words, Let Us make, are inconsistent with solitude, while Our cannot be used except to a companion. Both words, Us and Our are inconsistent with the notion of a solitary God speaking to Himself, and equally inconsistent with that of the address being made to a stranger who has nothing in common with the Speaker. If you interpret the passage to mean that He is isolated, I ask you whether you suppose that He was speaking with Himself? If you do not understand that He was speaking with Himself, how can you assume that He was isolated? If He were isolated, we should find Him described as isolated; if He had a companion, then as not isolated. I and Mine would describe the former state; the latter is indicated by Us and Our.

 

18. Thus, when we read, Let Us make man after Our image and likeness, these two words Us and Our reveal that there is neither one isolated God, nor yet one God in two dissimilar Persons; and our confession must be framed in harmony with the second as well as with the first truth. For the words our image— not our images— prove that there is one nature possessed by Both. But an argument from words is an insufficient proof, unless its result be confirmed by the evidence of facts; and accordingly it is written, And God made man; after the image of God made He him. Genesis 1:27 If the words He spoke, I ask, were the soliloquy of an isolated God, what meaning shall we assign to this last statement? For in it I see a triple allusion, to the Maker, to the being made, and to the image. The being made is man; God made him, and made him in the image of God. If Genesis were speaking of an isolated God, it would certainly have been And made him after His own image. But since the book was foreshowing the Mystery of the Gospel, it spoke not of two Gods, but of God and God, for it speaks of man made through God in the image of God. Thus we find that God wrought man after an image and likeness common to Himself and to God; that the mention of an Agent forbids us to assume that He was isolated; and that the work, done after an image and likeness which was that of Both, proves that there is no difference in kind between the Godhead of the One and of the Other.

 

19. It may seem waste of time to bring forward further arguments, for truths concerning God gain no strength by repetition; a single statement suffices to establish them. Yet it is well for us to know all that has been revealed upon the subject, for though we are not responsible for the words of Scripture, yet we shall have to render an account for the sense we have assigned to them. One of the many commandments which God gave to Noah is, Whoever sheds man’s blood, for his blood shall his life be shed, for after the image of God made I man. Here again is the distinction between likeness, creature, and Creator. God bears witness that He made man after the image of God. When He was about to make man, because He was speaking of Himself, yet not to Himself, God said, After our image; and again, after man was made, God made man after the image of God. It would have been no inaccuracy of language, had He said, addressing Himself, I have made man after My image, for He had shown that the Persons are one in nature by, Let us make man after Our image. But for the more perfect removal of all doubt as to whether God be, or be not, a solitary Being, when He made man He made him, we are told, After the image of God.

 

20. If you still wish to assert that God the Father in solitude said these words to Himself, I can go with you as far as to admit the possibility that He might in solitude have spoken to Himself as if He were conversing with a companion, and that it is credible that He wished the words I have made man after the image of God to be equivalent to I have made man after My own image. But your own confession of faith will refute you. For you have confessed that all things are from the Father, but all through the Son; and the words, Let Us make man, show that the Source from Whom are all things is He Who spoke thus, while God made him after the image of God clearly points to Him through Whom the work was done.

 

21. And furthermore, to make all self-deception unlawful, that Wisdom, which you have yourself confessed to be Christ, shall confront you with the words, When He was establishing the fountains under the heaven, when He was making strong the foundations of the earth, I was with Him, setting them in order. It was I, over Whom He rejoiced. Moreover, I was daily rejoicing in His sight, all the while that He was rejoicing in the world that He had made, and in the sons of men. Proverbs 8:28-31 Every difficulty is removed; error itself must recognise the truth. There is with God Wisdom, begotten before the worlds; and not only present with Him, but setting in order, for She was with Him, setting them in order. Mark this work of setting in order, or arranging. The Father, by His commands, is the Cause; the Son, by His execution of the things commanded, sets in order. The distinction between the Persons is marked by the work assigned to Each. When it says Let us make, creation is identified with the word of command; but when it is written, I was with Him, setting them in order, God reveals that He did not do the work in isolation. For He was rejoicing before Him, Who, He tells us, rejoiced in return; Moreover, I was daily rejoicing in His sight, all the while that He was rejoicing in the world that He had made, and in the sons of men. Wisdom has taught us the reason of Her joy. She rejoiced because of the joy of the Father, Who rejoices over the completion of the world and over the sons of men. For it is written, And God saw that they were good. She rejoices that God is well pleased with His work, which has been made through Her, at His command. She avows that Her joy results from the Father’s gladness over the finished world and over the sons of men; over the sons of men, because in the one man Adam the whole human race had begun its course. Thus in the creation of the world there is no mere soliloquy of an isolated Father; His Wisdom is His partner in the work, and rejoices with Him when their conjoint labour ends.

 

22. I am aware that the full explanation of these words involves the discussion of many and weighty problems. I do not shirk them, but postpone them for the present, reserving their consideration for later stages of the enquiry. For the present I devote myself to that article of the blasphemers‘ faith, or rather faithlessness, which asserts that Moses proclaims the solitude of God. We do not forget that the assertion is true in the sense that there is One God, from Whom are all things; but neither do we forget that this truth is no excuse for denying the Godhead of the Son, since Moses throughout the course of his writings clearly indicates the existence of God and God. We must examine how the history of God’s choice, and of the giving of the Law, proclaims God co-ordinate with God.

 

23. After God had often spoken with Abraham, Sarah was moved to wrath against Hagar, being jealous that she, the mistress, was barren, while her handmaid had conceived a son. Then, when Hagar had departed from her sight, the Spirit speaks thus concerning her, And the angel of the Lord said to Hagar, Return to your mistress, and submit yourself under her hands. And the angel of the Lord said to her, I will multiply your seed exceedingly, and it shall not be numbered for multitude, and again, And she called the Name of the Lord that spoke with her, You are God, Who hast seen me. It is the Angel of God Who speaks, and speaks of things far beyond the powers which a messenger, for that is the meaning of the word, could have. He says, I will multiply your seed exceedingly, and it shall not be numbered for multitude. The power of multiplying nations lies outside the ministry of an angel. Yet what says the Scripture of Him Who is called the Angel of God, yet speaks words which belong to God alone? And she called the Name of the Lord that spoke with her, You are God, Who hast seen me. First He is the Angel of God; then He is the Lord, for She called the Name of the Lord; then, thirdly, He is God, for You are God, Who hast seen me. He Who is called the Angel of God is also Lord and God. The Son of God is also, according to the prophet, the Angel of great counsel. To discriminate clearly between the Persons, He is called the Angel of God; He Who is God from God is also the Angel of God, but, that He may have the honour which is His due, He is entitled also Lord and God.

 

24. In this passage the one Deity is first the Angel of God, and then, successively, Lord and God. But to Abraham He is God only. For when the distinction of Persons had first been made, as a safeguard against the delusion that God is a solitary Being, then His true and unqualified name could safely be uttered. And so it is written. And God said to Abraham, Behold Sarah your wife shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac; and I will establish My covenant with him for an everlasting covenant, and with his seed after him. And as far Ishmael, behold. I have heard you and have blessed him, and will multiply him exceedingly; twelve nations shall he beget, and I will make him a great nation. Genesis 17:19-20 Is it possible to doubt that He Who was previously called the Angel of God is here, in the sequel, spoken of as God? In both instances He is speaking of Ishmael; in both it is the same Person Who shall multiply him. To save us from supposing that this was a different Speaker from Him who had addressed Hagar, the Divine words expressly attest the identity, saying, And I have blessed him, and will multiply him. The blessing is repeated from a former occasion, for Hagar had already been addressed; the multiplication is promised for a future day, for this is God’s first word to Abraham concerning Ishmael. Now it is God Who speaks to Abraham; to Hagar the Angel of God had spoken. Thus God and the Angel of God are One; He Who is the Angel of God is also God the Son of God. He is called the Angel because He is the Angel of great counsel; but afterwards He is spoken of as God, lest we should suppose that He Who is God is only an angel. Let us now repeat the facts in order. The Angel of the Lord spoke to Hagar; He spoke also to Abraham as God. One Speaker addressed both. The blessing was given to Ishmael, and the promise that he should grow into a great people.

 

25. In another instance the Scripture reveals through Abraham that it was God Who spoke. He receives the further promise of a son, Isaac. Afterwards there appear to him three men. Abraham, though he sees three, worships One, and acknowledges Him as Lord. Three were standing before him, Scripture says, but he knew well Which it was that he must worship and confess. There was nothing in outward appearance to distinguish them, but by the eye of faith, the vision of the soul, he knew his Lord. Then the Scripture goes on, And He said to him, I will certainly return unto you at this time hereafter, and Sarah your wife shall have a son Genesis 18:10; and afterwards the Lord said to Him, I will not conceal from Abraham My servant the things that I will do ; and again, Moreover the Lord said, The cry of Sodom and Gomorrha is filled up, and their sins are exceeding great. Then after long discourse, which for the sake of brevity shall be omitted, Abraham, distressed at the destruction which awaited the innocent as well as the guilty, said, In no wise will You, Who judges the earth, execute this judgment. And the Lord said, If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare all the place for their sakes. Afterwards, when the warning to Lot, Abraham’s brother, was ended, the Scripture says, And the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrha brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven ; and, after a while, And the Lord visited Sarah as He had said, and did unto Sarah as He had spoken, and Sarah conceived and bare Abraham a son in his old age, at the set time of which God had spoken to him. And afterwards, when the handmaid with her son had been driven from Abraham’s house, and was dreading lest her child should die in the wilderness for want of water, the same Scripture says And the Lord God heard the voice of the lad, where he was, and the Angel of God called to Hagar out of heaven, and said to her, What is it, Hagar? Fear not, for God has heard the voice of the lad from the place where he is. Arise, and take the lad and hold his hand, for I will make him a great nation.

 

26. What blind faithlessness it is, what dulness of an unbelieving heart, what headstrong impiety, to abide in ignorance of all this, or else to know and yet neglect it! Assuredly it is written for the very purpose that error or oblivion may not hinder the recognition of the truth. If, as we shall prove, it is impossible to escape knowledge of the facts, then it must be nothing less than blasphemy to deny them. This record begins with the speech of the Angel to Hagar, His promise to multiply Ishmael into a great nation and to give him a countless offspring. She listens, and by her confession reveals that He is Lord and God. The story begins with His appearance as the Angel of God; at its termination He stands confessed as God Himself. Thus He Who, while He executes the ministry of declaring the great counsel is God’s Angel, is Himself in name and nature God. The name corresponds to the nature; the nature is not falsified to make it conform to the name. Again, God speaks to Abraham of this same matter; he is told that Ishmael has already received a blessing, and shall be increased into a nation; I have blessed him, God says. This is no change from the Person indicated before; He shows that it was He Who had already given the blessing. The Scripture has obviously been consistent throughout in its progress from mystery to clear revelation; it began with the Angel of God, and proceeds to reveal that it was God Himself Who had spoken in this same matter.

 

27. The course of the Divine narrative is accompanied by a progressive development of doctrine. In the passage which we have discussed God speaks to Abraham, and promises that Sarah shall bear a son. Afterwards three men stand by him; he worships One and acknowledges Him as Lord. After this worship and acknowledgment by Abraham, the One promises that He will return hereafter at the same season, and that then Sarah shall have her son. This One again is seen by Abraham in the guise of a man, and salutes him with the same promise. The change is one of name only; Abraham’s acknowledgment in each case is the same. It was a Man whom he saw, yet Abraham worshipped Him as Lord; he beheld, no doubt, in a mystery the coming Incarnation. Faith so strong has not missed its recognition; the Lord says in the Gospel, Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day; and he saw it, and was glad. John 8:56 To continue the history; the Man Whom he saw promised that He would return at the same season. Mark the fulfilment of the promise, remembering meanwhile that it was a Man Who made it. What says the Scripture? And the Lord visited Sarah. So this Man is the Lord, fulfilling His own promise. What follows next? And God did unto Sarah as He had said. The narrative calls His words those of a Man, relates that Sarah was visited by the Lord, proclaims that the result was the work of God. You are sure that it was a Man who spoke, for Abraham not only heard, but saw Him. Can you be less certain that He was God, when the same Scripture, which had called Him Man, confesses Him God? For its words are, And Sarah conceived, and bare Abraham a son in his old age, and at the set time of which God had spoken to him. But it was the Man who had promised that He would come. Believe that He was nothing more than man; unless, in fact, He Who came was God and Lord. Connect the incidents. It was, confessedly, the Man who promised that He would come that Sarah might conceive and bear a son. And now accept instruction, and confess the faith; it was the Lord God Who came that she might conceive and bear. The Man made the promise in the power of God; by the same power God fulfilled the promise. Thus God reveals Himself both in word and deed. Next, two of the three men whom Abraham saw depart; He Who remains behind is Lord and God. And not only Lord and God, but also Judge, for Abraham stood before the Lord and said, In no wise shall Thou do this things, to slay the righteous with the wicked, for then the righteous shall be as the wicked. In no wise will You Who judges the whole earth, execute this judgment. Genesis 18:25 Thus by all his words Abraham instructs us in that faith, for which he was justified; he recognises the Lord from among the three, he worships Him only, and confesses that He is Lord and Judge.

 

28. Lest you fall into the error of supposing that this acknowledgment of the One was a payment of honor to all the three whom Abraham saw in company, mark the words of Lot when he saw the two who had departed; And when Lot saw them, he rose up to meet them, and he bowed himself with his face toward the ground; and he said, Behold, my lords, turn in to your servant’s house. Here the plural lords shows that this was nothing more than a vision of angels; in the other case the faithful patriarch pays the honour due to One only. Thus the sacred narrative makes it clear that two of the three were mere angels; it had previously proclaimed the One as Lord and God by the words, And the Lord said to Abraham, Wherefore did Sarah laugh, saying, Shall I then bear a child? But I am grown old. Is anything from God impossible? At this season I will return to you hereafter, and Sarah shall have a son. The Scripture is accurate and consistent; we detect no such confusion as the plural used of the One God and Lord, no Divine honours paid to the two angels. Lot, no doubt, calls them lords, while the Scripture calls them angels. The one is human reverence, the other literal truth.

 

29. And now there falls on Sodom and Gomorrha the vengeance of a righteous judgment. What can we learn from it for the purposes of our enquiry? The Lord rained brimstone and fire from the Lord. It is The Lord from the Lord; Scripture makes no distinction, by difference of name, between Their natures, but discriminates between Themselves. For we read in the Gospel, The Father judges no man, but has given all judgment to the Son. John 5:22 Thus what the Lord gave, the Lord had received from the Lord.

 

30. You have now had evidence of God the Judge as Lord and Lord; learn next that there is the same joint ownership of name in the case of God and God. Jacob, when he fled through fear of his brother, saw in his dream a ladder resting upon the earth and reaching to heaven, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon it, and the Lord resting above it, Who gave him all the blessings which He had bestowed upon Abraham and Isaac. At a later time God spoke to him thus: And God said to Jacob, Arise, go up to the place Bethel, and dwell there, and make there an altar unto God, that appeared unto you when you fled from the face of your brother. Genesis 35:1 God demands honour for God, and makes it clear that demand is on behalf of Another than Himself. He who appeared to you when you fled are His words: He guards carefully against any confusion of the Persons. It is God Who speaks, and God of Whom He speaks. Their majesty is asserted by the combination of Both under Their true Name of God, while the words plainly declare Their several existence.

 

31. Here again there occur to me considerations which must be taken into account in a complete treatment of the subject. But the order of defense must adapt itself to the order of attack, and I reserve these outstanding questions for discussion in the next book. For the present, in regard to God Who demanded honour for God, it will suffice for me to point out that He Who was the Angel of God, when He spoke with Hagar, was God and Lord when He spoke of the same matter with Abraham; that the Man Who spoke with Abraham was also God and Lord, while the two angels, who were seen with the Lord and whom He sent to Lot, are described by the prophet as angels, and nothing more. Nor was it to Abraham only that God appeared in human guise; He appeared as Man to Jacob also. And not only did He appear, but, so we are told, He wrestled; and not only did He wrestle, but He was vanquished by His adversary. Neither the time at my disposal, nor the subject, will allow me to discuss the typical meaning of this wrestling. It was certainly God Who wrestled, for Jacob prevailed against God, and Israel saw God.

 

32. And now let us enquire whether elsewhere than in the case of Hagar the Angel of God has been discovered to be God Himself. He has been so discovered, and found to be not only God, but the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob. For the Angel of the Lord appeared to Moses from the bush; and Whose voice, think you, are we to suppose was heard? The voice of Him Who was seen, or of Another? There is no room for deception; the words of Scripture are clear: And the Angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire from a bush, and again, The Lord called unto him from the bush, Moses, Moses, and he answered, What is it? And the Lord said, Draw not near hither, put off your shoes from off your feet, for the place whereon you stand is holy ground. And He said to him, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. He who appeared in the bush speaks from the bush; the place of the vision and of the voice is one; He Who speaks is none other than He Who was seen. He Who is the Angel of God when the eye beholds Him is the Lord when the ear hears Him, and the Lord Whose voice is heard is recognised as the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob. When He is styled the Angel of God, the fact is revealed that He is no self-contained and solitary Being: for He is the Angel of God. When He is designated Lord and God, He receives the full title which is due to His nature and His name. You have, then, in the Angel Who appeared from the bush, Him Who is Lord and God.

 

33. Continue your study of the witness borne by Moses; mark how diligently he seizes every opportunity of proclaiming the Lord and God. You take note of the passage, Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is One. Deuteronomy 6:4 Note also the words of that Divine song of his; See, See, that I am the Lord, and there is no God beside Me. While God has been the Speaker throughout the poem, he ends with, Rejoice, you heavens, together with Him and let all the sons of God praise Him. Rejoice, O you nations, with His people, and let all the Angels of God do Him honour. God is to be glorified by the Angels of God, and He says, For I am the Lord, and there is no God beside Me. For He is God the Only-begotten, and the title ‘Only-begotten’ excludes all partnership in that character, just as the title ‘Unoriginate’ denies that there is, in that regard, any who shares the character of the Unoriginate Father. The Son is One from One. There is none unoriginate except God the Unoriginate, and so likewise there is none only-begotten except God the Only-begotten. They stand Each single and alone, being respectively the One Unoriginate and the One Only-begotten. And so They Two are One God, for between the One, and the One Who is His offspring there lies no gulf of difference of nature in the eternal Godhead. Therefore He must be worshipped by the sons of God and glorified by the angels of God. Honour and reverence is demanded for God from the sons and from the angels of God. Notice Who it is that shall receive this honour, and by whom it is to be paid. It is God, and they are the sons and angels of God. And lest you should imagine that honour is not demanded for God Who shares our nature , but that Moses is thinking here of reverence due to God the Father — though, indeed, it is in the Son that the Father must be honoured — examine the words of the blessing bestowed by God upon Joseph, at the end of the same book. They are, And let the things that are well-pleasing to Him that appeared in the bush come upon the head and crown of Joseph. Deuteronomy 33:16 Thus God is to be worshipped by the sons of God; but God Who is Himself the Son of God. And God is to be reverenced by the angels of God; but God Who is Himself the Angel of God. For God appeared from the bush as the Angel of God, and the prayer for Joseph is that he may receive such blessings as He shall please. He is none the less God because He is the Angel of God; and none the less the Angel of God because He is God. A clear indication is given of the Divine Persons; the line is definitely drawn between the Unbegotten and the Begotten. A revelation of the mysteries of heaven is granted, and we are taught not to dream of God as dwelling in solitude, when angels and sons of God shall worship Him, Who is God’s Angel and His Son.

 

34. Let this be taken as our answer from the books of Moses, or rather as the answer of Moses himself. The heretics imagine that they can use his assertion of the Unity of God in disproof of the Divinity of God the Son; a blasphemy in defiance of the clear warning of their own witness, for whenever he confesses that God is One he never fails to teach the Son’s Divinity. Our next step must be to adduce the manifold utterance of the prophets concerning the same Son.

 

35. You know the words, Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is One; would that you knew them aright! As you interpret them, I seek in vain for their sense. It is said in the Psalms, God, Your God, has anointed You. Psalm 45:7 Impress upon the reader’s mind the distinction between the Anointer and the Anointed; discriminate between the You and the Your: make it clear to Whom and of Whom the words are spoken. For this definite confession is the conclusion of the preceding passage, which runs thus; Your throne, O God, is for ever and ever; the sceptre of Your kingdom is a right sceptre. You have loved righteousness and hated iniquity. And then he continues, Therefore God, Your God, has anointed You. Thus the God of the eternal kingdom, in reward for His love of righteousness and hatred of iniquity, is anointed by His God. Surely some broad difference is drawn, some gap too wide for our mental span, between these names? No; the distinction of Persons is indicated by You and Your, but nothing suggests a difference of nature. Your points to the Author, You to Him Who is the Author’s offspring. For He is God from God, as these same words of the prophet declare, God, Your God, has anointed You. And His own words bear witness that there is no God anterior to God the Un-originate; Be My witnesses, and I am witness, says the Lord God, and My Servant Whom I have chosen, that you may know and believe and understand that I am, and before Me there is no other God, nor shall be after Me. Isaiah 43:10 Thus the majesty of Him that has no beginning is declared, and the glory of Him that is from the Unoriginate is safeguarded; for God, Your God, has anointed You. That word Your declares His birth, yet does not contradict His nature; Your God means that the Son was born from Him to share the Godhead. But the fact that the Father is God is no obstacle to the Son’s being God also, for God, Your God, has anointed You. Mention is made both of Father and of Son; the one title of God conveys the assurance that in character and majesty They are One.

 

36. But lest these words, For I am, and before Me there is no other God, nor shall be after Me, be made a handle for blasphemous presumption, as proving that the Son is not God, since after the God, Whom no God precedes, there follows no other God, the purpose of the passage must be considered. God is His own best interpreter, but His chosen Servant joins with Him to assure us that there is no God before Him, nor shall be after Him. His own witness concerning Himself is, indeed, sufficient, but He has added the witness of the Servant Whom He has chosen. Thus we have the united testimony of the Two, that there is no God before Him; we accept the truth, because all things are from Him. We have Their witness also that there shall be no God after Him; but They do not deny that God has been born from Him in the past. Already there was the Servant speaking thus, and bearing witness to the Father; the Servant born in that tribe from which God’s elect was to spring. He sets forth also the same truth in the Gospels: Behold, My Servant Whom I have chosen, My Beloved in Whom My soul is well pleased. Matthew 12:18 This is the sense, then, in which God says, There is no other God before Me, nor shall be after Me. He reveals the infinity of His eternal and unchanging majesty by this assertion that there is no God before or after Himself. But He gives His Servant a share both in the bearing of witness and in the possession of the Name of God.

 

37. The fact is obvious from His own words. For He says to Hosea the prophet, I will no more have mercy upon the house of Israel, but will altogether be their enemy. But I will have mercy upon the children of Judah, and will save them in the Lord their God. Hosea 1:6-7 Here God the Father gives the name of God, without any ambiguity, to the Son, in Whom also He chose us before countless ages. Their God, He says, for while the Father, being Unoriginate, is independent of all, He has given us for an inheritance to His Son. In like manner we read, Ask of Me, and I will give You the Gentiles for Your inheritance. None can be God to Him from Whom are all things , for He is eternal and has no beginning; but the Son has God, from Whom He was born, for His Father. Yet to us the Father is God and the Son is God; the Father reveals to us that the Son is our God, and the Son teaches that the Father is God over us. The point for us to remember is that in this passage the Father gives to the Son the name of God, the title of His own unoriginate majesty. But I have commented sufficiently on these words of Hosea.

 

38. Again, how clear is the declaration made by God the Father through Isaiah concerning our Lord! He says, For thus says the Lord, the holy God of Israel, Who made the things to come, Ask me concerning your sons and your daughters, and concerning the works of My hands command ye Me. I have made the earth and man upon it, I have commanded all the stars, I have raised up a King with righteousness, and all His ways are straight. He shall build My city, and shall turn back the captivity of My people, not for price nor reward, says the Lord of Sabaoth. Egypt shall labour, and the merchandise of the Ethiopians and Sabeans. Men of stature shall come over unto You and shall be Your servants, and shall follow after You, bound in chains, and shall worship You and make supplication unto You, for God is in You and there is no God beside You. For You are God, and we knew it not, O God of Israel, the Saviour. All that resist Him shall be ashamed and confounded, and shall walk in confusion. Isaiah 45:11-16 

 

Is any opening left for gainsaying, or excuse for ignorance? If blasphemy continue, is it not in brazen defiance that it survives? God from Whom are all things, Who made all by His command, asserts that He is the Author of the universe, for, unless He had spoken, nothing had been created. He asserts that He has raised up a righteous King, who builds for Himself, that is, for God, a city, and turns back the captivity of His people, for no gift nor reward, for freely are we all saved. Next, He tells how after the labours of Egypt, and after the traffic of Ethiopians and Sabeans, men of stature shall come over to Him. How shall we understand these labours in Egypt, this traffic of Ethiopians and Sabeans? Let us call to mind how the Magi of the East worshipped and paid tribute to the Lord; let us estimate the weariness of that long pilgrimage to Bethlehem of Judah. In the toilsome journey of the Magian princes we see the labours of Egypt to which the prophet alludes. For when the Magi executed, in their spurious, material way, the duty ordained for them by the power of God, the whole heathen world was offering in their person the deepest reverence of which its worship was capable. And these same Magi presented gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh from the merchandise of the Ethiopians and Sabeans; a thing foretold by another prophet, who has said, The Ethiopians shall fall down before His face, and His enemies shall lick the dust. The Kings of Tharsis shall offer presents, the Kings of the Arabians and Sabeans shall bring gifts, and there shall be given to Him of the gold of Arabia. The Magi and their offerings stand for the labour of Egypt and for the merchandise of Ethiopians and Sabeans; the adoring Magi represent the heathen world, and offer the choicest gifts of the Gentiles to the Lord Whom they adore.

 

39. As for the men of stature who shall come over to Him and follow Him in chains, there is no doubt who they are. Turn to the Gospels; Peter, when he is to follow his Lord, is girded up. Read the Apostles: Paul, the servant of Christ, boasts of his bonds. Let us see whether this ‘prisoner of Jesus Christ‘ conforms in his teaching to the prophecies uttered by God concerning God His Son. God had said, They shall make supplication, for God is in You. Now mark and digest these words of the Apostle:— God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself. 2 Corinthians 5:19 And then the prophecy continues, And there is no God beside You. The Apostle promptly matches this with For there is one Jesus Christ our Lord, through Whom are all things. 1 Corinthians 8:6 Obviously there can be none other but He, for He is One. The third prophetic statement is, You are God and we knew it not. But Paul, once the persecutor of the Church, says, Whose are the fathers, from Whom is Christ, Who is God over all. Romans 9:5 Such is to be the message of these men in chains; men of stature, indeed, they will be, and shall sit on twelve thrones to judge the tribes of Israel, and shall follow their Lord, witnesses to Him in teaching and in martyrdom.

 

40. Thus God is in God, and it is God in Whom God dwells. But how is There is no God beside You true, if God be within Him? Heretic! In support of your confession of a solitary Father you employ the words, There is no God beside Me; what sense can you assign to the solemn declaration of God the Father, There is no God beside You, if your explanation of There is no God beside Me be a denial of the Godhead of the Son? To whom, in that case, can God have said, There is no God beside You? You cannot suggest that this solitary Being said it to Himself. It was to the King Whom He summoned that the Lord said, by the mouth of the men of stature who worshipped and made supplication, For God is in You. The facts are inconsistent with solitude. In You implies that there was One present within range, if I may say so, of the Speaker’s voice. The complete sentence, God is in You, reveals not only God present, but also God abiding in Him Who is present. The words distinguish the Indweller from Him in Whom He dwells, but it is a distinction of Person only, not of character. God is in Him, and He, in Whom God is, is God. The residence of God cannot be within a nature strange and alien to His own. He abides in One Who is His own, born from Himself. God is in God, because God is from God. For You are God, and we knew it not, O God of Israel, the Saviour.

 

41. My next book is devoted to the refutation of your denial that God is in God; for the prophet continues, All that resist Him shall be ashamed and confounded and shall walk in confusion. This is God’s sentence, passed upon your unbelief. You set yourself in opposition to Christ, and it is on His account that the Father’s voice is raised in solemn reproof; for He, Whose Godhead you deny, is God. And you deny it under cloak of reverence for God, because He says, There is no other God beside Me. Submit to shame and confusion; the Unoriginate God has no need of the dignity you offer; He has never asked for this majesty of isolation which you attribute to Him. He repudiates your officious interpretation which would twist His words, There is no other God beside Me, into a denial of the Godhead of the Son Whom He begot from Himself. To frustrate your purpose of demolishing the Divinity of the Son by assigning the Godhead in some special sense to Himself, He rounds off the glories of the Only-begotten by the attribution of absolute Divinity: — And there is no God beside You. Why make distinctions between exact equivalents? Why separate what is perfectly matched? It is the peculiar characteristic of the Son of God that there is no God beside Him; the peculiar characteristic of God the Father that there is no God apart from Him. Use His words concerning Himself; confess Him in His own terms, and entreat Him as King; For God is in You, and there is no God beside You. For You are God, and we knew it not, O God of Israel, the Saviour. A confession couched in words so reverent is free from the taint of presumption: its terms can excite no repugnance. Above all, we must remember that to refuse it means shame and ignominy. Brood in thought over these words of God; employ them in your confession of Him, and so escape the threatened shame. For if you deny the Divinity of the Son of God, you will not be augmenting the glory of God by adoring Him in lonely majesty; you will be slighting the Father by refusing to reverence the Son. In faith and veneration confess of the Unoriginate God that there is no God beside Him; claim for God the Only-begotten that apart from Him there is no God.

 

42. As you have listened already to Moses and Isaiah, so listen now to Jeremiah inculcating the same truth as they:— This is our God, and there shall be none other likened unto Him, Who has found out all the way of knowledge, and has given it unto Jacob His servant and to Israel His beloved. Afterward did He show Himself upon earth and dwelt among men. For previously he had said, And He is Man, and Who shall know Him? Thus you have God seen on earth and dwelling among men. Now I ask you what sense you would assign to No one has seen God at any time, save the Only-begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father John 1:18, when Jeremiah proclaims God seen on earth and dwelling among men? The Father confessedly cannot be seen except by the Son; Who then is This who was seen and dwelt among men? He must be our God, for He is God visible in human form, Whom men can handle. And take to heart the prophet’s words, There shall be none other likened to Him. If you ask how this can be, listen to the remainder of the sentence, lest you be tempted to deny to the Father His share of the confession. Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is One. The whole passage is, There shall be none likened unto Him, Who has found out all the way of knowledge, and has given it unto Jacob His servant and to Israel His beloved. Afterward did He show Himself upon earth and dwelt among men. For there is one Mediator between God and Men, Who is both God and Man; Mediator both in giving of the Law and in taking of our body. Therefore none other can be likened unto Him, for He is One, born from God into God, and He it was through Whom all things were created in heaven and earth, through Whom times and worlds were made. Everything, in fine, that exists owes its existence to His action. He it is that instructs Abraham, that speaks with Moses, that testifies to Israel, that abides in the prophets, that was born through the Virgin from the Holy Ghost, that nails to the cross of His passion the powers that are our foes, that slays death in hell, that strengthens the assurance of our hope by His Resurrection, that destroys the corruption of human flesh by the glory of His Body. Therefore none shall be likened unto Him. For these are the peculiar powers of God the Only-begotten; He alone was born from God, the blissful Possessor of such great prerogatives. No second god can be likened unto Him, for He is God from God, not born from any alien being. There is nothing new or strange or modern created in Him. When Israel hears that its God is one, and that no second god is likened, that men may deem him God, to God Who is God’s Son, the revelation means that God the Father and God the Son are One altogether, not by confusion of Person but by unity of substance. For the prophet forbids us, because God the Son is God, to liken Him to some second deity.

Ambrosiaster: Trinity, Jesus the Great Angel & Hypostatic Union

The excerpts cited here are all taken from Ambrosiaster’s Commentary on the Pauline Epistles: Romans, Translated with Notes, by Theodore S. de Bruyn, with an Introduction by Theodore S. de Bruyn, Stephen A. Cooper, & David G. Hunter. It was published by SBL Press in 2017. All emphasis will be mine.

 

5.1. The Context

 

The Commentary presents itself as transmitting what Paul, the “teacher of the gentiles” (1 Tim 2:7),1 taught about God, Christ, the gospel, faith, salvation, and the Christian way of life. Nonetheless, Ambrosiaster also interprets the topics of the apostle’s discussion in light of the doctrinal and ecclesiastical developments in the three centuries that separated Paul from our anonymous commentator. Of particular import were the Trinitarian debates about the status of Christ in the period between the Council of Nicaea (325) and that of Constantinople in 381, which reauthorized the Nicene Creed in slightly modified form.2 In the meantime a dispute about Christology broke out because of a suggestion proffered by Apollinaris of Laodicea (a supporter of the Nicene Creed) to account for the God-human union in the incarnation.3 His “extreme version of the Word-flesh Christology” supposed the Logos to have taken the place of a human mind in Jesus, a view that became controversial after the Council of Alexandria in 362 and was officially condemned at Constantinople.4 An additional point of dispute was the status of the Holy Spirit. This issue rose to prominence in the late 350s, when Athanasius in his four letters to Serapion denounced any who regarded the Spirit as a creature.5 Opposition to such “Pneumatomachians” (later called “Macedonians”6) became “a new norm of orthodoxy” after the Synod of Alexandria in 362.7 The Roman church’s awareness of the various debates was keen in the late 370s (or early 380s), as is evident from a missive of Damasus to Eastern bishops.8

 

As a Roman presbyter, Ambrosiaster probably would have been familiar with these developments through documents connected to the Roman church in the years leading up to its engagement in the Council of Antioch of 379. These discussions prepared the ground for the Council of Constantinople. We are informed about this by synodal letters from Rome dating from the mid-370s, which make up a dossier called the Exemplum synodi. The documents of this collection—known as Confidimus, Ea gratia, Illut sane, and Non nobis9—all combat doctrinal deviations related to the Trinitarian controversy, in particular to erroneous views of the Holy Spirit. The second of these Roman letters, Ea gratia, states that “we confess even that the Holy Spirit, being uncreated, is of one majesty, of one ousia, of one power with God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.” An even clearer anticipation of Constantinople occurs in the opening salvo of Ea gratia: “We all say with one voice that the Trinity is of one power [unius virtutis], one majesty, one divinity, one ousia, such that it is an indivisible power [inseparabilem potestatem]—but we do assert there are three persons.”10 A slightly later text of the Roman church, the Tome of Damasus (Tomus Damasi),11 documents the Roman council of 382, which sought to implement the decisions of the council at Constantinople.12 Both the creed of Constantinople and its affirmation at the Roman council framed themselves as reaffirmations of the Nicene Creed (hence the Tome of Damasus opens with a Latin translation of the Nicene Creed). The Tome denounces both older heresies as well as the more recent error, namely, those who “dare to say with sacrilegious mouth that the Holy Spirit was made through the Son.”13 Further anathemas excoriate other failures to recognize or properly articulate the full divinity of the Spirit. In language similar to that of Ea gratia, the Tome emphasizes the necessity of maintaining the distinctions of one and three: “anyone who will not say that there is one divinity, majesty, power, and dominion of the Father, Son, and Spirit … is a heretic.… If anyone will have said there are not three true persons of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit … he is a heretic.”14 (Pp. lxxvii-lxxix)

 

5.2. The Mystery of the One God and the Mystery of the Trinity

 

Using a metaphor drawn from imperial Rome, Ambrosiaster saw the promotion of monotheism as part of Christ’s mission:22 “Just as an emperor asserts power over his kingdom through his soldiers, so too does the savior through us his servants defend the profession and practice of the one God” (In 2 Cor. 10:4). Unlike the philosophical elucidation of the nature of God in the opening treatise of Ambrosiaster’s Quaestiones (a work titled “What Is God?”; Quaest. 1 [CSEL 50:13–17]),23 his exegesis of the epistles makes only occasional use of the commonplaces of philosophical theology, which had long been melded with the God of the Bible by both Jews and Christians. The Commentary betrays an author disinclined to discuss the divine reality abstractly but ready to show how God is knowable in human experience even apart from Scripture or revelation. “The rigors of bodily existence” in the world of transient things, which are all in themselves “futile,” can lead to understanding of “the mystery of the creator,” in whose light the goodness of created things can be rightly used (In Rom. 8:20 [§1a]). Ambrosiaster explicitly grounds the authority of Scripture in its character as witness to the revelation of the mystery: “The scriptures are holy because they condemn faults and because in them is contained the mystery of the one God and the incarnation of the Son of God for the salvation of humankind, attested by miraculous signs” (In Rom. 1:2 [§3]). Paul’s role in transmitting the mystery that has been revealed makes him “singular” (singularis) among the apostles and therefore “dubbed a chosen vessel (Acts 9:15) by divine judgment” (In 1 Cor. 2:10 [§1]).

 

The existence of God had always been an object of possible human knowledge through the evidence of creation, the natural law, and then the books of Moses.24 As the growth of sin rendered humankind under collective condemnation, the inadequacy of these provisions became evident. From all eternity God had a more effective intervention in mind. The statement in Titus that “the saving grace of our God has shone upon all” elicits a telling comment: “The truth of the one God has been revealed in Christ, so that in a godly profession we may proclaim the creator in the unity of the Trinity” (In Titus 2:11 [§1]). Likewise Ambrosiaster refers to “the mystery of the one God … in Christ” (In Eph. 3:10 [§1]). Paul was sent to teach the gentiles this mystery “with a dual focus”: to teach that Christ “is always in God” and that through him God made salvation available to gentiles “without circumcision and other commands of the law.”25

 

Ambrosiaster speaks more generally of “the mystery of the Trinity” in pointing out how Paul’s doxological greeting of Romans includes all three divine persons, even when the text does not do so explicitly. “In saying Son of God, he meant of God the Father, and with the addition of the Spirit of sanctification he displayed the mystery of the Trinity” (In Rom. 1:4 [§1]). The gospel is thus the revealing of “the mystery of God,” which is Christ (In Rom. 1:1 [§5a]). The appropriate response to this revelation, as Ambrosiaster observes, is faith, which “removes the cloud of error and bestows perfect knowledge of God in the mystery of the Trinity, which had not been known by the ages” (In Rom. 2:28 [§2]). When the error of “the supposition of many gods” has been removed through the revelation of the divinity of Christ, humanity will be able to “adore the one God in Trinity” (In 2 Cor. 5:17). This revelation of Christ, Ambrosiaster is careful to specify, brings about a renewed proclamation of “the creator in the unity of the Trinity” (In Titus 2:11 [§1]).

 

More explicit traces of the fourth-century doctrinal controversies are the unmarked phrases from the Nicene Creed found throughout the Commentary. Ambrosiaster explains how Christ was “born, not made” (non factus sed natus est) (In Rom. 8:29 [§3]); he states that Christ is “God from God” (In Rom. 14:11).26 The latter creedal phrase recurs in revised comments (In Eph. 1:17 [§2]).27 Ambrosiaster also employs a number of formulations to express the ὁμοούσιον, which was translated variously in Latin. Marius Victorinus had suggested consubstantialis or eiusdem substantiae;28 and the Tome of Damasus renders the term with unius substantiae.29 Explaining how all things are “from him (i.e., God) and through him and in him” (Rom 11:36), Ambrosiaster invokes the controversial phrase: “Because they are from him, they began to exist through his Son, who is in truth of the same substance [qui eiusdem utique substantiae est] and whose work is the Father’s work” (In Rom. 11:36 [§1]). He uses substantia as the functional equivalent to οὐσία to signal the common nature of the persons, as he states, “the Father and Son are one power and one divinity and substance” (In 2 Thess. 2:16–17).

 

Paul’s references to the Father and the Son are the most frequent occasions for Ambrosiaster’s Trinitarian elucidations. At the opening thanksgiving in 2 Cor 1:3 (“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ”), he remarks on the apostle’s manner of writing: “In every letter he always transmits the order of the mystery as he comes to speak about God the Father, about his gift, and about his son, the Lord Jesus Christ.… Just as two things are mentioned, two would also be understood to exist, such that each would be considered a subsistent reality [subsistens], although they exist as a single substance.” Parallel to the efforts of Greek theologians, Ambrosiaster sought coherent language to distinguish the individual reality of the persons through the term subsistens (= ὑπόστασις, in the later technical sense)30 from that which is one (the divine substantia or οὐσία). Discussing the “one God” and “one mediator” of 1 Tim 2, he distinguishes the person while referring to the divine substance as a single nature: “Father and Son are one not in respect of their person but in respect of their indistinguishable nature [sed indifferenti natura]” (In 1 Tim. 2:5 [§1]). Likewise his comments on 2 Cor 5:18b–21 (“It is God who through Christ reconciled us to himself etc.”) draw on both substance and relation language for the Trinity:

 

Because their substance is one [una substantia], the Father is understood to be in the Son. For where there is no differentiating factor [nulla est differentia], there exists unity. And that is why they are mutually related [ac per hoc invicem sunt], since there is one image and one likeness of them, such that one who sees the Son would be said to have seen the Father, just as the Lord himself states: One who has seen me has also seen the Father (John 14:9). (In 2 Cor. 5:18–21 [§2])

 

A similar discussion of the Father-Son relation recurs in Ambrosiaster’s comments on Col 1, which also incorporate language of seeing from the Fourth Gospel. Apropos of the statement that Christ is “the image of the invisible God,” he clarifies that the “seeing” by which one sees the Father through the Son is not “with their fleshly eyes” but “by their understanding [intellectu] of his divine works” (In Col. 1:15 [§3]). The coordination of Pauline and Johannine utterances in a number of such doctrinally oriented passages is a significant element of Ambrosiaster’s attempt to create a solid scriptural foundation for pro-Nicene theology. The Commentary, however, does not replicate the thoroughness of Ambrosiaster’s Quaestiones in treating these issues.31

 

Ambrosiaster emphasizes the Holy Spirit as a fully divine member of the Trinity at numerous passages, although the Commentary’s latest recension (recensio γ) contains many more such references than the earlier version(s). As noted above, Ambrosiaster’s comments on 1 Thess 3:9–10 (§2) in recensio α make no mention of the Holy Spirit, but the later recension shows an expansion on these remarks with an additional comment on the Trinity aimed at clarifying the equal rank of the Spirit.32 In this comment Ambrosiaster is most explicit about the need for appropriate Trinitarian distinctions:

 

There is one way to discuss the nature of the Father and the Son, and there is another way to discuss the persons. The Father is Unbegotten, but the Son is Begotten. In respect to the persons, there is distinction, although the unity of nature is undivided. For the unity exists not in person, but in substance. But the Holy Spirit is not considered as inferior because he is ranked third.

 

Although it has become clear to Ambrosiaster that language about the nature of God is different from that required for discussions of the persons, he struggles to articulate abstractly what in the persons—that is, in the distinct persona of each—is the basis of their differentiation. At Eph 2:3 he gives some thought to the problem as it emerges in his reflections about “God” as a name or term (nomen): “Nonetheless, there is this distinction between the Father and the Son: that the Father receives this name from no-one; the Son, however, receives all things from the Father through his being begotten [per generationem], so that the Son differs in nothing from the Father in terms of power, substance, and name.” Following a path laid down in Latin theology by Tertullian,33 Ambrosiaster locates the distinction between Father and Son in the divine begetting, which is what ensures the Son’s full inheritance of all that God is and does. Ambrosiaster has not achieved the clarity of the Cappadocian solution—where the terms indicating what is particular (ἰδίωμα) to the persons do not designate substance but signify the nature of the relation (σχέσις) between the persons34—to the point of articulating the Spirit’s peculiar mode of relationship to the other person as that of “processing.” Rather, his account of the Holy Spirit simply insists on the fully divine nature of the Spirit, as in his comment on 2 Cor 5:4, where he states that the Holy Spirit “in substance is Christ.”35

 

In line with his arguments grounded in the Fourth Gospel, which present the common action of Father and Son as proof of their unity, Ambrosiaster asserts the same as regards the Holy Spirit. The Spirit’s activity is evidence that the Father is “in the Holy Spirt” (In Rom. 11:36 [§2]). The Holy Spirit, moreover, is the Spirit of both Father and Son36—the idea of the filioque is foreign to him, as Langen noted37—and this too is an argument for their identity of substance and nature. His comments at Eph 3:17 (“for Christ to dwell in your hearts through faith”) effectively synthesize Pauline and Johannine passages to promulgate a scriptural basis for recent pro-Nicene positions articulating the distinction between the personae of the Trinity and the divine natura (πρόσωπον and φύσις, in contemporary Greek theology):

 

We should have no doubt that Christ dwells in us, through the Spirit, obviously. For the Spirit is another Advocate (John 14:26), between whom and Christ there is a difference of persons, not of nature, because the Spirit receives what is of Christ (see John 16:14) and is sent forth from God.38 Those realities whose unity belongs to their nature are mutually related to each other.39 That is the sense of the Lord’s saying: All that the Father has is mine, and what is mine is of the Father (John 16:15). (In Eph. 3:17 [§§2–3])

 

While Ambrosiaster does not cite in the Commentary any Johannine passages mentioning the Paraclete, that title features in his explication of the closing doxology in Romans. Although it was only at the time of Christ that “the mystery … hidden in God was proclaimed,” believers must understand that “both the Word and the Paraclete are with him from eternity” (In Rom. 16:25–27 [§1]). (Pp. lxxxi-lxxxvi)

 

30. For the conscious shift made by Greek theologians away from the usage of hypostasis as synonymous with ousia, see Khaled Anatolios, “Discourse on the Trinity,” in Constantine to c. 600, ed. Augustine Casiday and Frederick W. Norris, vol. 2 of The Cambridge History of Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 439–41. (P. lxxxiii)

 

31. See particularly the treatise Quaest. 122, “De principio,” where he engages with the creedal phrase deus de deo in light of the first two verses of the Johannine Prologue and a number of Pauline passages (1 Cor 1:24 and Col 1:15–16). “The gospels of the apostles John and Paul agree,” he states, “for they are saying the same things: that the Son God was begotten before any creation in order to create the spiritual powers and the world and the things that are visible in it” (CSEL 50:369). (P. lxxxiv)

 

5.3. The Mystery of Christ

 

Many passages of the Commentary contain formulations relating to the debates about the person of Christ in the period leading up to the Council of Constantinople in 381.40 Martini has maintained that Ambrosiaster (at In Rom. 1:3 and In Phil. 2:10) anticipates the centerpiece of the creed of Chalcedon (451)—the doctrine of hypostatic union—even if Ambrosiaster has not quite formulated its “two natures” stipulation.41 Concerns about Christ needing to have a full human nature had already been part of the front against Apollinaris’s truncation of Jesus’s humanity. Yet Ambrosiaster retained some exegetical independence of this context. As Desmond Foley, author of the fullest study in English on Ambrosiaster’s Christology, has observed, the anonymous commentator “believes in the unity of Christ and in his divinity and humanity, but he does not seem to feel the need to involve himself in the terminology being worked out by his contemporaries to deal with the problem.”42

 

Ambrosiaster’s defense of Christ as fully human and fully divine appears first in the commentary on Romans, in his remarks on Paul’s opening declaration about himself as a “slave of Jesus Christ” (Rom 1:1). The question concerns what is signified by the names “Jesus” and “Christ,” and why they appear sometimes together and sometimes apart. In Paul’s epistolary greeting, the apostle “referred to both names of Jesus Christ in order to indicate the person of both God and the human being, since the Lord is present in both.” According to Ambrosiaster, this greeting in the twofold name “Jesus Christ,” on the one hand, excludes the Christology of Marcion (which denied the reality of Christ’s body), and on the other, confounds “the Jews” and Photinus,43 who deny his divine nature. But what if the double name is lacking in a mention of Christ? Ambrosiaster formulates a rule that allows context to determine each case: “Whenever scripture says either Jesus or Christ, it sometimes means the person of God, sometimes the person of the human being” (In Rom. 1:1 [§§2–3]).

 

Other Pauline references to the double name “Jesus Christ” find similar explanation. Ambrosiaster comments on the statement in Rom 1:3 that Christ was “from the seed of David according to the flesh” so as to elaborate the explanation offered at Rom 1:1 and also to correlate the epistolary text with the incarnational elements of the Johannine prologue:

 

He says that he who was Son of God according to the Holy Spirit—that is, according to God, because God is spirit (see John 4:24) and is undoubtedly holy—was made Son of God according to the flesh from Mary, as in the verse: And the Word was made flesh (John 1:14). As a result, there is now one Son of both God and a human being, Christ Jesus, so that just as he is true God, so also was he a true human being. He will not, however, be a true human being unless he is made of flesh and soul, so as to be complete. (In Rom. 1:3 [§2])44

 

Here is a clear rejection of anything resembling the “Word-flesh” Christology of Apollinaris. Christ possessed a complete human nature, although Ambrosiaster carefully insists elsewhere that his being “true God” and “true human being” does not detract from the unity of the person Jesus. Thus, he states that “since the Son of God is the same one [idem] as the Son of Man and is said to be both Jesus and Christ, he is called by two names so that he would be signified to be both man and God” (In 2 Tim. 4: 22). Other passages similarly emphasize the unity of the person of Jesus.45

 

The question of Christ’s birth from Mary, however, is only one facet of the “mystery concerning Christ”—a mystery on account of the fact that “what became incarnate had been hidden from the ages in God” (In 1 Cor. 2:1–2 [§§1–2]). Elsewhere in the Commentary Ambrosiaster also refers to the incarnation as a “mystery” (In 2 Cor. 11:26 [§1]).46 The Christ-hymn of Phil 2:5–11, a passage of the greatest interest among patristic exegetes,47 elicits from Ambrosiaster extensive discussion of many questions surrounding this mystery. His remarks on this pericope involve greater digression than usual from the strict analysis of the text, whether for the sake of pro-Nicene pleas for the full divinity of Christ or to treat issues pertaining more specifically to the relation between the human and divine natures in Christ.48 Here we attend briefly to the some of the latter.

 

Ambrosiaster’s concern for correct christological teaching is evident in his worry about the potential of some parts of the passage to be misinterpreted, particularly Phil 2:7, with its ambiguous phrasing: “But he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, made in human likeness and found in the human condition.” The expressions “likeness” and “like a human being” could suggest the incarnate Christ did not possess a full human nature. Clearing up this potentially troublesome language requires the right understanding of the opening of the passage. What does it mean that Jesus “was in the form of God” (Phil 2:6)?

 

The Son of God born as a man was in the form of God in this way: although he appeared a human being, he was doing the works of a god. One thought to be only a human being seemed to be a god in the things he did. His works indicated his form.…What is the form of God, except a concrete instance of God’s appearance in raising the dead, giving hearing to the deaf, cleansing lepers, and the rest? Why then is he said to have been made like a human being, if he was just human all along? And what is the reason he was discovered to be human in condition, if he were not also God? (In Phil. 2:7–8 [§§4–5])

 

Only of one who was so clearly like a god in power does it make sense to speak of as being “made like” a human being. Here Ambrosiaster notably has rejected the dominant patristic exegesis that “taking the form of a slave” meant the assumption of human nature by the preexistent Logos. Ambrosiaster and Pelagius were exceptional in arguing that it is precisely the incarnate Christ who was “in the form of God” (Ambrosiaster, In Phil. 2:7–8 [§2]; Pelagius, In Phil. 2:5–8).49 

 

Ambrosiaster’s way of warding off potential christological errors lurking beneath the words “in the likeness” is also idiosyncratic:

 

Paul speaks of him as being like a human being to make this point: that he was also God. He is saying that Christ was a god who was made like human beings in respect of weakness. He expresses this in what follows, saying: He humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. From here one may deduce the sense of his being discovered to be human in condition. Withholding his power so that it would not be apparent in him, the one who knows no death was killed and seemed like a human being. (In Phil. 2:6–7 [§6])

 

Just as “in the form of God” means one who appeared divine in his works, so too his being found “human in condition” signifies Jesus’s apparent subjection to mortality. While Christ was truly human, his death for Ambrosiaster was something he willingly embraced, not a fate he was compelled to share with all humanity. As Foley has noted, the identity of the preexistent Christ with the incarnate one is the central feature of Ambrosiaster’s interpretation of the Christ-hymn, for it means that Christ “can act in both capacities, consecutively, as man and as God.”50 It is in this dual capacity that Christ can save, that is, impart the immortality his own human nature received in virtue of his divinity. It is in this regard, according to Ambrosiaster, that “the whole mystery … of God’s revelation [omne mysterium sacramenti dei] lies in Christ. For he is the one in relation to whom all creatures will perish unless they have placed hope in him” (In Col. 2:1–3 [§2]). (Pp. lxxxvii-xc)

 

49. Henry, “Kenose,” 124. Pelagius thinks the dominant interpretation is insufficiently anti-Arian; the self-emptying refers not to his divine nature but to his services rendered, such as foot washing. Martini cites Hilary, Trin. 10.22, as an exegete whom Ambrosiaster may have had in mind (Ambrosiaster: De auctore, 115 n. 3). See also Marius Victorinus on this verse, who suggested a number of interpretive options (CSEL 83.2:188–89). (P. xc)

 

1:1 Paul, a slave of Jesus Christ. (1) He calls himself Paul—that is, “changed”—after having been called Saul.1 Because Saul means “turmoil” or “tribulation,” he calls himself Paul—that is, “tranquil”—after he came to faith in Christ, since our faith is peace now.2 Although initially he inflicted trials upon the servants of God out of zeal for the law,3 subsequently he himself suffered trials on account of the hope that earlier he had denied out of love for Judaism. (2) Moreover, by declaring himself to be a slave of Jesus Christ, he shows himself to have been freed from the law. He referred to both names of Jesus Christ in order to indicate the person of both God and the human being,4 since the Lord is present in both, as the apostle Peter also attests when he says, He is the Lord of all (Acts 10:36). Since, then, he is Lord, he is also God, as David says, The Lord himself is God (Ps 99:3 LXX = Ps 100:3 ET). The heresies deny this. (3) Thus, to Marcion it seems right out of aversion for the law to deny Christ and his body, and to profess Jesus.5 But to the Jews and to Photinus it seems right out of zeal for the law6 to deny that Jesus is God.7 For whenever scripture says either Jesus or Christ, it sometimes means the person of God, sometimes the person of the human being,8 as in the gospel, among other passages:9 And one Lord Jesus through whom are all things (1 Cor 8:6),10 which assuredly refers to the Son of God, in that he is God. Also in the gospel:11 For Jesus increased in age and wisdom (Luke 2:52), which certainly befits a human being.

 

Called an apostle. (4) Because he acknowledged the Lord and confesses him, having become a capable servant, he indicates that he was promoted when he says called an apostle, that is, sent by the Lord to do his work. By this he shows that one who serves Christ, not the law, has merit before God.12 For the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath (Matt 12:8). (Pp. 7-8)

 

Who was made for him from the seed of David according to the flesh. (2) He says that he who was Son of God according to the Holy Spirit—that is, according to God, because God is spirit (see John 4:24) and is undoubtedly holy21—was made Son of God according to the flesh from Mary,22 as in the verse: And the Word was made flesh (John 1:14). As a result, there is now one Son of both God and a human being, Christ Jesus,23 so that just as he is true God, so also was he a true human being. He will not, however, be a true human being unless he is made of flesh and soul, so as to be complete.24 When God wanted him who was Son of God from eternity but was not known by creation to be revealed for the salvation of humankind, he made him visible and corporeal,25 because he also wanted him to be recognized in power, so that by his passion he might wash people from sins,26 death having been vanquished in the flesh. (3) He was made from the seed of David in order that, just he was born of God as king before the ages, so too he would derive his origins according to the flesh from a king. He was made by the work of the Holy Spirit from a virgin—in other words, born27—so that, by virtue of the veneration reserved for him on account of this, he might be acknowledged to be more than a human being. For he departed from the human law of birth, as had been foretold by the prophet Isaiah: Behold a virgin will conceive in the womb and so on (Isa 7:14), so that when this novel and remarkable event was observed, one might discern that a certain providence of God regarding the visitation of the human race was unfolding.

 

1:4 Who was predestined Son of God in power according to the Spirit of sanctification by the resurrection of the dead of Jesus Christ our Lord.28 (1) In saying Son of God, he meant of God the Father, and with the addition of the Spirit of sanctification he displayed the mystery of the Trinity. Thus, he who was incarnate, who hid what he was, was predestined according to the Spirit of sanctification to be revealed in power as the Son of God when he rose from the dead, as is written in Ps 84: Truth has sprung from the ground (Ps 84:12 LXX). (2) All uncertainty and doubt about his resurrection were crushed and suppressed, since even the centurion, seeing the mighty acts, confesses him to be the son of God while he was still on the cross (Matt 27:21–54). For even the disciples had doubts in the face of his death; Cleopas and Ammaus,29 among others, said: We supposed that he was the one who was beginning to set Israel free (Luke 24:21). In fact, the Lord himself says: When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he (John 8:28). Again: When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all things to me (John 12:32), that is, then I will be recognized to be Lord of all. (3) Moreover, the apostle did not simply say by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, but added of the dead, because the resurrection of Christ gives rise to the general resurrection.30 In fact, in Christ one sees this great power and victory: that when he was dead he worked the same power that he had worked when he was alive.31 From this feat it is clear that he made a fool of death in order to redeem us.32 This is why the apostle calls him our Lord. (Pp. 10-12)

 

24. This sentence is found only in recensio γ. It is directed against Apollinaris, who held that in Jesus the divine Word or Logos displaced the human soul or mind. See de Bruyn, “Ambrosiaster’s Revisions,” 60–61. (P. 11)

 

1:25 They exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. (1) They exchanged the truth of God for a lie when they gave the name of God who is the true God to those who are false gods.135 For, divesting stones and wood and various metals of what they are, they attribute to them something they are not. Consequently, when a stone is called God, the truth of God is a lie.136 When this happens, it defames the God who is true, so that, because false and true are contemplated by a common name, the true God is likewise believed to be false. This is to change what is true into what is false. (2) For a thing is no longer called stone or wood, but God. This is to serve the creature rather than the creator.137 They do not, in fact, deny God; rather, they serve the creature.138 They have applied the honor of God to these things so that it seems right that they worship them. Consequently, the worship of these things is an injustice to God. They increase their punishment because, while they know God, they dishonor him, who is blessed forever. Amen, that is, truly. (3) To God indeed, he says, be blessing forever, because God endures, whereas ungodliness renders honor to idols139 for a time. For that reason it is not true honor; in God, however, truth abides. Elsewhere he applies this benediction to the Son of God, saying, among other things: And from them comes Christ according to the flesh, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen (Rom 9:5). Either each of the passages refers to Christ,140 or he said the same thing about the Son as he did about the Father.141 (Pp. 29-30)

 

141. I.e., Rom 1:25 applies to God the Father, and Rom 9:5 applies to God the Son. In recensio γ this sentence is attested only by MSS Amiens 87 and St. Gall 101, in a second hand. (P. 30)

 

8:3 For—what was impossible for the law inasmuch as it was weakened by the flesh—God, sending his Son in the likeness of the flesh of sin, for a sin condemned sin in the flesh. (1) The apostle says this to reassure the baptized that they12 have been set free from sin. For what was impossible, he says, for the law. For whom was it impossible? Clearly, it was impossible for us to fulfill the commandment of the law because we had been subjected to sin. For this reason God sent his Son in the likeness of the flesh of sin. The likeness of the flesh consists in this: although his flesh is the same as ours, it nevertheless was not formed in the womb and born in the same way our flesh is. It was sanctified in the womb and born without sin, and besides, he did not sin in it.13 (2)14 A virgin womb was chosen for the Lord’s birth so that the Lord’s flesh might be distinct from ours as regards sanctity. It is similar in condition, but not in the quality of sinful substance. The apostle therefore spoke of similarity, because from the same substance of the flesh the Lord did not have the same birth, since the body of the Lord was not subjected to sin. (3)15 For the Lord’s flesh was purified by the Holy Spirit so that it was born in the kind of body that Adam had before sin, except that only the sentence handed down to Adam remained. Therefore, when Christ had been sent, God for a sin condemned sin, that is, condemned sin through its own sin. For when Christ was crucified by sin, who is Satan, sin sinned in the flesh of the body of the Savior.16 Once this happened, God condemned sin in the flesh, where undoubtedly sin sinned, as the apostle also says in another letter: triumphing over them in him (Col 2:15), that is, in Christ. (3a)17 Now, it is also customary to state the reason for which a condemned individual has been condemned; one replies, for example, “for murder.” Accordingly, sin too was condemned in the flesh, that is, in the sin which it committed in the flesh. (4) So, having been found guilty through this sin, Satan lost the right to detain souls, so that he does not dare to hold in the second death those who have now been signed with the sign of the cross, by which18 he was vanquished. The apostle discusses this, therefore, to reassure us.

 

15. In section 3 recensio α has “But the flesh of the Savior was purified from sin through the Holy Spirit. Therefore, when Christ had been sent, for a sin he condemned sin. The apostle says this because sin was condemned through its own sin. How? When Christ was crucified by sin, sin sinned in the flesh of the body of the Savior. Through this sin he condemned sin in the flesh. It was condemned in the place where it sinned. As the apostle also says elsewhere: triumphing over them in himself.” (Pp. 145-146)

 

8:27 And he who searches hearts knows what the Spirit desires, because it intercedes for the saints according to God. (1) It is obvious that to God, for whom nothing is unspoken or unseen, the prayer of every spirit is known,115 and even more so the prayer of the Holy Spirit, (1a) who is without doubt of the same substance, and who speaks not by the movement of air nor as the angels nor as any other creatures, but as befits his divinity.116 (2) The Spirit therefore speaks with God, though to us he seems to be silent, because he sees though he is not seen117 and asks for those things that he knows are pleasing to God and good for us. This same Spirit rightly interposes himself for us118 when he knows that we ask for things that are wrong out of ignorance, not out of arrogance. (Pp. 161-162)

 

To be conformed to the image of his Son. (2) The apostle says this because they are predestined for a future age precisely so that they may become like the Son of God, as he noted above (see Rom 8:14–17).

 

In order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. (3) Firstborn is the right word, because he124 was born, not made, before all of creation. God has deigned to adopt human beings as his children in accordance with the model of the Son. He is the firstborn in the regeneration of the Spirit;125 he is the firstborn of the dead, with which he is unacquainted by nature; and he is the firstborn to ascend into heaven once death was conquered.126 So, our brother is said to be firstborn in all things because he deigned to be born a human being. Nevertheless, he is the Lord, because he is our God, as the prophet Jeremiah says: He is our God (Bar 3:36).127

 

127. Recensio α does not have “Jeremiah.” Ambrosiaster also cites Bar 3:36 as a testimony that Christ is God at In 2 Cor. 6:16–18 (§1) and in a tract against the Arians, Quaest. 97.7 (CSEL 50.176–77). The verse is cited under the heading “Christ is God” by Cyprian, Test. 2.6 (CCSL 3:35), who, too, attributes the book to Jeremiah. The attribution was traditional. (P. 163)

 

8:34 Who will be there to condemn? Is it Christ who died, yes, who also arose and is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us? (1) The apostle refutes the claim that God brings a charge against us, since God justifies us.136 He adds, moreover, that Christ cannot condemn us, because he loves us with such feeling that he died for us and, rising from the dead, always acts on our behalf before the Father. His requests cannot be spurned because he is at the right hand of God, that is, in a place of honor because he is God. Thus, confident in God the Father and in Christ his Son who will come to judge, we rejoice in their surety. (2) This is why it is said to the apostle Peter: Behold, Satan has demanded that he might sift you like wheat. But I have pleaded for you that your faith might not fail (Luke 22:31–32). In this way, then, the Savior intercedes for us. For, knowing the might137 and the profound malevolence of our enemy once he has mobilized against us, the Savior intercedes for us—provided that we do not consent to the enemy—so that he dare not do us any sort of violence and his arrogance is kept in check. Although the Son himself accomplishes everything and is equal to God the Father, the Son nevertheless is said to intercede so that, given that God is said to be one, the Father or the Son may not be thought to be singular or a union:138 the scriptures speak in this manner to distinguish between the persons,139 to present the Son as someone who is not different from the Father140 and at the same time to give precedence to the Father because he is the Father and because all things are from him (see 1 Cor 8:6).141

 

138. The problem Ambrosiaster tackles here is the subordination implicit in the act of interceding. In the course of the fourth century it had become unacceptable among pro-Nicene theologians to speak of Father and Son as either singular entities (singularis) or a single entity (unio). In Hilary of Poitier’s anti-Arian work On the Trinity—which Ambrosiaster knew; see Alexander Souter, The Earliest Latin Commentaries on the Epistles of St. Paul (Oxford: Clarendon, 1927), 66—the term unio refers to the notion of a personal identity of Father and Son, attributed to Sabellius (Hilary of Poitiers, Trin. 6.11, 7.5 [CCSL 62:207–8]), and the term singularis refers to the notion of a single, solitary God, articulated in different ways by both Sabellius and Arius (Hilary of Poitiers, Trin. 7.5, 7.8 [CCSL 62:264–65, 267–68], and continuing against Arius throughout book 7); see R. P. C. Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God: The Arian Controversy 318–381 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988), 479–80. In their own opposition to Sabellius, Arians in the West insisted that Father and Son were each singular (singularis) and incomparable (incomparabilis) at the level of nature; see Manlio Simonetti, “Arianesimo latino,” StMed 8 (1967): 704–5. While the act of interceding would preclude thinking of Father and Son as a single entity, it implies that the Son is subordinate to the Father, as Arians in the West observed, citing Rom 8:34; see Simonetti, “Arianesimo latino,” 722 n. 206. Ambrosiaster argues that the Scriptures speak in this way to distinguish the Father from the Son while at the same time maintaining their common substance; see n. 140 below. Thus, although the Son is equal to the Father and capable of accomplishing everything, he is nevertheless said to intercede for the believer. See In Rom. 8:39 (§3) and 16:25–27 (§1).

 

139. On the use of the term “person” (persona) to distinguish between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, see the introduction §5.2.

 

140. The word Ambrosiaster uses here, dispar, also appears in a tract he wrote against the Arians. To support his point that the Son’s generation from the Father entails that they have one substance, Ambrosiaster twice observes “that what is born is not different [dispar] from what gives birth” (Quaest. 97.5 and 8 [CSEL 50:175, 178]). Because Christ as the Son is not different in nature from the Father, he is on par with and equal to the Father (Quaest. 97.11 [CSEL 50:179]). (Pp. 165-166)

 

Nor life, nor an angel, nor a miracle, 8:39 nor height, nor depth, nor things present, nor things to come,147 nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (1) All these are things which are inflicted by the devil in order to capture us. The apostle mentions them in order to protect us, so that if they arrive we may fight back against them, armed with faith and trusting in the hope and help of Christ. What then? If death should be inflicted, is it not the greatest gain to find an occasion to be taken more quickly into the promised kingdom? Even if we were to be promised a present life loaded with honor, it should not avert us from the hope and benefits of Christ, whom we know will benefit us not only in the future but also in the present. Indeed, even if an angel reveals himself to us in order to seduce us, fitted out with the stratagems of his father the devil, he ought not to prevail against us, since we know that nothing should take precedence over Christ, the angel of great counsel (see Isa 9:5 LXX and Isa 9:6 VL).148 (2) If a miracle were to be performed by someone, as is said to have been performed by Simon the magician, who is said to have flown up into the air,149 so that he became a scandal to the people of Christ, it should not diminish our faith, since we know that the Savior, when he was taken up in an attendant cloud, ascended above all the heavens (see Acts 1:9). If the devil reveals himself to us in the heights— about which the same apostle says:150 Are you unaware of the heights of Satan? (see Rev 2:24)—it should not draw us away from our devotion for the Lord Jesus, whom we know to have descended from heaven in order to unite things earthly with things spiritual. (3) If by means of a vision by which he intends to lead us astray, the devil shows us the depths—a wonder to be gazed upon with dread—so that we, terrified, perhaps may surrender to him, even so it would not be worth us breaking our trust in Christ, whom we know to have descended to the depths of the earth for our sake and, after he conquered death, to have set the human race free. If the devil promises us things to come, as he promised Eve (see Gen 3:4–5), we will not give him our approbation, since he has separated himself from Christ, whom we believe and know to be God in power and nature.151 If by the skill and artifice of his cunning the devil creates another creature for a moment, as did Jannes and Jambres before Pharaoh (see 2 Tim 3:8; Exod 7:11–12), it makes no sense that he thereby draw us away from God the true creator,152 whom we know to have fashioned the creation through Christ his Son, who has existed for ever. (4) To some interpreters it seems that another creature referred to the idols.153 But this is not correct, since it ought to mean something that Satan appears to fashion in the form of an amazing but misleading ruse. Now, who among the faithful is misled toward things he abandoned once his mistake had been exposed? But the devil plans and fashions these things to mislead even the elect (see Matt 24:24). There is nothing, therefore, that can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus. God showed his love for us in Christ when he gave him up for us. (Pp. 167-169)

 

148. Recensio α does not have “the angel of great counsel.” The phrase comes from the VL of Isa 9:6 used in Rome and elsewhere in Italy and Europe. See Roger Gryson, ed., Esaias, VLB 12 (Freiburg: Herder, 1987–1993), 293. (P. 168)

 

And the glory and the establishment of the law and the worship and the promises; 9:5 to them belong the fathers and from them is Christ according to the flesh, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen.4 (1) The apostle enumerates so many things commending the excellence and the greatness of the Jewish people, as well as the promises, in order to instill sorrow in everyone for them. By not accepting the Savior, they lost the prerogative of the fathers and the value of the promise; they became worse than the gentiles, whom previously they had abominated because they were without God. It is, indeed, a heavier misfortune to have lost standing than not to have had it.5 (2) In the course of discussing this, the apostle says concerning the Savior: who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen. When no mention is made of the Father’s name and the discussion is about Christ, one cannot claim that God is not the subject of discussion. If scripture is speaking about God the Father and adds a reference to the Son, it often calls the Father God and the Son Lord because of the confession of a single God. If someone, then, does not think that the statement who is God refers to Christ, let him propose the person to whom he believes it refers; there is no mention of God the Father in this passage.6 (3) Moreover, what is so surprising about the fact that in this passage the apostle described Christ in plain language as God over all? In other letters he confirmed this understanding of Christ in so many words, when he said: so that at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, in heaven, on earth, and under the earth (Phil 2:10). These are all things over which Christ is God. Nothing is left out of this list to suggest that Christ is not God over everything. Moreover, the knee of all creation can bow only before God. Finally, because the apostle John unwittingly wanted to worship an angel,7 he heard the angel say: You must not do that! I am a fellow servant with you. Worship God (Rev 19:10). (4) The Lord8 would certainly not have allowed himself to be worshiped unless he was God. If not, one would have to say that Christ assumed the position of God unlawfully and sinned, which cannot be the case, since when he rebukes the devil, he himself indicates that one should worship the Lord, God of all things,9 and serve him alone (see Matt 4:10). Therefore, it is not prejudicial to God the Father when Christ is worshiped as God, because, even though it is said that one should serve God alone, God is served in Christ as well. For elsewhere the apostle says: One who serves Christ in these things, pleases God (Rom 14:18). What, then, remains to be said, but that the Father is believed to be God and the Son is believed to be God and nevertheless both are believed to be one God?10 For whether one worships the Father or the Son, one is said to worship one God, and to serve the Father or the Son is to exhibit the service of one God. There therefore is no distinction between them,11 because one who worships the Son worships the Father as well,12 and one who serves the Father serves the Son. (4a)13 To point out that the profession of Christ’s deity is not a matter of flattery, he ended with Amen, that is, truly, so that he might show that Christ is in truth God over all, blessed for ever. (Pp. 172-173)

 

6. In his tract against Photinus, who denied the preexistence of Christ, Ambrosiaster replies to an imaginary interlocutor who proposes that Rom 9:5 “perhaps refers to the person of the Father” (Quaest. 91.8 [CSEL 50:157]: sed forte ad patris personam pertinere dicatur). There, as well as here, it appears that Ambrosiaster is responding to an interpretation voiced in his own day. His own position is traditional; Rom 9:5 is cited by several writers known to Ambrosiaster as proof that Christ is God. See Cyprian, Test. 2.6 (CCSL 3.1:37); Novatian, Trin. 13.6, 30.18 (CCSL 4:33, 74); Marius Victorinus, Ar. 1.18 (CSEL 83.1:80). (P. 172)

 

10:13 For “everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved” (Joel 2:32). This is stated in Micah.25 God himself, who was beheld by Moses, says: My name is the Lord (see Exod 6:2–3). He is the Son of God, said to be both an angel and God so that he is not taken to be him from who are all things, but rather to be him through whom are all things (see 1 Cor 8:6). Thus, he is said to be God because the Father and the Son are one, while he is said to be an angel because he was sent by the Father as a messenger of the promised salvation.26 Furthermore, he is said to be sent so that he is not believed to be the Father himself, but the one who is begotten of the Father. So it is that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved. Moses also spoke with this understanding: Everyone who will not heed the prophet will be cut off from the people (see Deut 18:19). If he is the Lord of all (see Rom 10:12), he is the one who is called upon by his servants, and since this is the case, the apostle has added:

 

10:14 How then are they to call upon one in whom they have not believed?27 (1) Evidently the Jews do not believe that he whom the apostle called the Lord is the Christ. It thus follows, as the apostle said above, that it is necessary to believe first, so that the one may have confidence in making a request. (Pp. 197-198)

 

25. Recensio α does not have this remark. Paul is in fact quoting Joel 2:32. It has been suggested that Ambrosiaster may have been thinking of Mic 6:9. Alessandra Pollastri, Commento all Lettera ai Romani, CTePa 43 (Rome: Città Nuova Editrice, 1984), 237 n. 13, observes that Cyprian’s version of Mic 6:9 in Test. 3.20 (CSEL 3.1:137) comes close to the sense of Rom 10:13: “The voice of the Lord will be called upon in the city, and he will save those who fear his name” (vox domini in civitate invocabitur, et timentes nomen eius salvabit).

 

26. Ambrosiaster identifies the angel of the Lord in the theophanies in the Old Testament, including God’s appearance to Moses, with the second person of the Trinity; see Ambrosiaster’s comment on 1 Thess 4:18 (§§2–3). The identification was traditional; see, e.g., Cyprian, Test. 2.5 (CSEL 3.1:33–34). Its significance for a pro-Nicene understanding of the Trinity was explicated in the fourth century by, among others, Hilary of Poitiers, Trin. 4.23–24 (CCSL 62:125–27). For more complete discussion, see Joseph Barbel, Christos Angelos: Die Anschauung von Christus als Bote und Engel in der gelehrten und volkstümlichen Literatur des christlichen Altertums, zugleich ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Ursprungs und der Fortdauer des Arianismus, Theophaneia 3 (Bonn: Hanstein, 1941), 145–62. (P. 197)

 

14:9 For to this end Christ lived and died and was raised,26 so that he might be lord of both the living and the dead. (1) The creation was made by Christ the Lord, but when it was estranged from its author through sin, it was taken captive. So that he would not lose his handiwork, God the Father showed the creation what to do to escape the grasp of the pirates by sending his Son from heaven to earth. For this reason the Son allowed himself even to be killed by enemies, so that when he descended to the underworld he might render sin culpable, since he had been killed even though he was innocent. He did this to release those who were held in the underworld.27 (2) Therefore, because he showed the way of salvation to the living and gave himself up for them, and also freed the dead from the underworld, he is lord of the living as well as the dead. He has recreated them again from people who were lost into slaves for himself.

 

14:10 So why do you pass judgment on your brother for not eating?28 Or why do you despise your brother for eating? For we all will stand before the judgment seat of Christ.29 The apostle teaches that there is no need to pass judgment on this point,30 since it is not discussed in the law, especially while we await God the judge.

 

14:11 For it is written, “As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow and every tongue confess God” (Isa 45:23). This is written in Isaiah, that every tongue will confess God in the faith of Christ. Now, since he was killed, has risen, and will be judge, he rightly says, As I live, says the Lord. Not only I live, but also I will come to judge, and the enemies will acknowledge me and will bend the knee, acknowledging me to be God from God.31 (Pp. 245-246)

 

31. In recensio γ this sentence is attested only by MS Paris lat. 1759. The concluding phrase echoes the second article of the Nicene Creed, which declares that the Son is God from God. (P. 246)

 

14:18 One who serves Christ in this pleases God and is approved by people. Since Christ has redeemed us, the apostle says: One who serves Christ in this—that is, so as not to offend anyone—submits as is fitting to the redeemer and pleases God. Why? Because God sent Christ to redeem the human race,44 as the Lord himself says: One who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him (John 5:23). Therefore, one who pleases God is approved by people. In what way? Because he has received a gift by which he may appear worthy before God. (P. 248)

 

15:33 May the God of peace be with you all. Amen.70 The God of peace is Christ, who says: My peace I give to you, my peace I leave you (John 14:27). The apostle desires that Christ be with them, knowing that the Lord has said: And behold, I am with you all the days until the end of the age (Matt 28:20). Therefore, he wants them to behave in such a way that the Lord Jesus Christ would be with them. Having cut off all human strife arising from error, Christ has shown and provided what is true, so that they may remain at peace in that truth. (Pp. 263-264)

 

16:2543 Now to him who is able to establish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Christ Jesus, according to the revelation of the mystery which was kept secret from time eternal, 16:26 but now is disclosed through the prophetic writings by the command of the eternal God for the obedience of faith among all the gentiles, 16:27 known to the only wise God through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever.44 Amen. (1) The apostle glorifies God the Father from whom are all things (1 Cor 8:6) so that he may deign to complete what was begun with the Romans—since he is able to do so—by confirming their souls in the faith for the advancement of the gospel and the revelation of the secret hidden for ages (see Eph 3:9), but revealed through Christ or in Christ. The mystery that always was hidden in God was proclaimed in the time of Christ, since God is not solitary,45 but both the Word and the Paraclete are with him from eternity. (2) God has decreed that in this truth all creation would be saved by way of knowledge. The truth of this mystery, known to the only wise God, had in fact been indicated by the prophets in certain manner of speaking; he wanted the gentiles to share in this grace, something that the human race was unaware of. He alone is wise because all wisdom comes from him, as Solomon says: All wisdom comes from the Lord God and with him has it always been (Sir 1:1). (3) This wisdom is Christ, because Christ is from him and was always with him; through Christ be glory to him forever and ever. Amen. Nothing, therefore, is complete without Christ, because through him are all things (1 Cor 8:6); because when he is acknowledged, praise is given to God the Father through him; because God the Father is known through Christ, in whom he caused believers to be saved, as though through his wisdom. Therefore, glory be to the Father through the Son—that is, glory be to both of them in the Holy Spirit, because each dwells in one single glory.

 

16:28 The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.46 The apostle puts Christ at the end, through whom we were made and by whose grace we have been remade once more, so that he may be firmly impressed on our minds. For if we remember his benefits, he will always watch over us, as he said: Behold, I am with you all the days until the end of the age. Amen (Matt 28:20). (Pp. 273-274)