Yet at the urging of the brothers, whom I had not the strength to resist, I corrected them as much as I thought they needed correcting, and I completed and published them, adding at the head a letter that I had written to the venerable Aurelius, bishop of the Church of Carthage, Letter 174. Aurelius, a long-time friend of Augustine and a person of great importance in the African church, was bishop of Carthage from the early 390s until his death in 430. in which, as in a kind of prologue, I set out both what had happened and what I had intended to do in my own design, and what I had done under the compelling love of the brothers. Fratrum caritate compellente: "out of a compelling love for the brothers." Fratrum is translated here as an objective genitive, but it could also be translated as a subjective genitive, in which case it could be rendered "as a result of the brothers' loving urging."

2. In the eleventh book of these works, when I was dealing with the visible body, I said: and so to love it is to become estranged. On the Trinity 11.5.9. This was said with reference to that love by which a thing is so loved that the one who loves it thinks himself blessed in enjoying it. For it is not to become estranged, but rather to praise the Creator, to love bodily form, so that anyone enjoying the Creator himself may be truly blessed.

Likewise, in the same book, where I said: nor do I remember a four-footed bird, because I have not seen one, but I picture such a thing very easily by adding to some winged form such as I have seen two other feet such as I have likewise seen, On the Trinity 11.10.17. in saying this I failed to recall the four-footed flying creatures that the law mentions. (See Lev 11:20–23) For it does not count among the feet the two hind legs by which locusts leap, which it calls clean and so distinguishes from those unclean flying creatures, such as beetles, that do not leap with such legs. Indeed all flying creatures of this kind are called four-footed in the law.

3. In the twelfth book, On the Trinity 12.10.15. the supposed exposition of the words of the Apostle, where he says: "every sin that a man commits is outside the body," does not satisfy me; nor do I think that what is said—but he who fornicates sins against his own body—is to be understood as if a person did this who does something in order to obtain what is perceived through the body, so as to set the goal of his good in these things. For this embraces far more sins than that fornication which is committed in unlawful intercourse, See Revisions 1.19.6; Homily 162. about which the Apostle clearly was speaking when he said this.

This work, apart from the letter that was afterward attached to its head, begins thus: whoever is going to read what we discuss concerning the Trinity.

To the most blessed lord, to be revered with the most sincere love, the holy brother and fellow priest Pope Aurelius, The title "pope" was given widely to the bishops of the more important sees. The bishop of Carthage was the permanent president of the African synod. Augustine sends greeting in the Lord.

I began as a young man, and have published as an old man, the books on the Trinity, who is the supreme and true God. For I had laid this work aside after I found out that it had been snatched or stolen from me before I had completed it and had polished it by revising it as my plan had been. For I had decided to publish them not one by one but all together, for the reason that the later books are linked to the earlier ones by the progress of the inquiry.

Since, then, through those men—who were able to reach some of these books before I wished them to—my plan could not be carried out, I had left the dictation interrupted, thinking to make this very complaint in some writings of mine, so that those who could might know that the same books had not been published by me but had been taken away before they seemed to me worthy of my publication.

But compelled by the most vehement demand of many brothers, and above all by your command, I took care, with the Lord's help, to bring so laborious a work to its end; and having corrected them not as I wished but as I was able, lest they should differ too greatly from those that had already gone out into men's hands by stealth, I have sent them to Your Reverence through our most dear son, my fellow deacon, Augustine, though a bishop, will usually address or refer to a presbyter as his fellow presbyter and a deacon as his fellow deacon, because his episcopal office was seen as including and sharing in their subordinate ministries. and have permitted them to be heard, copied, and read by anyone.

In these books, had my plan been able to be preserved, they would surely—though holding the same opinions—have been much clearer and plainer, so far as the difficulty of explaining such great matters and my own ability would allow. But there are some who have the first four, or rather even five, without their prefaces, and the twelfth without a considerable final portion; yet if this edition can become known to them, they will correct everything, if they wish and are able. I ask, indeed, that you order this letter to be placed separately, yet at the head of these same books. Pray for me.

1. Whoever is going to read what we discuss concerning the Trinity ought first to know that our pen is on guard against the slanders of those who, despising the beginning of faith, (See Sir 25:16) are deceived by an immature and perverse love of reason. Some of them try to transfer what they have observed of bodily things, whether learned through the bodily senses, Patrologia Latina (PL): noverunt, "what they know about." or perceived by the nature of human talent and the keenness of diligence or with the help of skill, to incorporeal and spiritual things, wishing to measure and form opinions about the latter from the former. There are others, again, who think about God, if they think anything at all, according to the nature or disposition of the human mind; and from this error, when they argue about God, they fix distorted and deceptive rules upon their discourse. (See Wis 14:21–30)

There is, again, another kind of men, those who strive indeed to transcend the whole of creation, which is certainly changeable, so as to lift up their attention to the unchangeable substance which is God; but weighed down by the burden of mortality, since they both want to seem to know what they do not know, and cannot know what they want to know, See Wis 9:13–16; Jerome, On Hezekiah 13.42; Letters 53.9.2; 57.12.4; Cicero, Academica 2.23.74. by too boldly asserting the presumptions of their own opinions, they block for themselves the very ways of understanding, choosing rather not to correct their perverse view than to change the one they have defended.

And this indeed is the disease common to all the three kinds I have set forth: See Augustine, On the Happy Life 1.2–4; Sir 25:3. namely, of those who think of God according to body; of those who do so according to the spiritual creation, such as the soul; and of those who think falsely of God according neither to body nor to the spiritual creation, (See Wis 14:30) the more remote from the truth in that what they think is found neither in body, nor in a made and created spirit, nor in the Creator himself. For whoever supposes God, for example, to be white or ruddy is deceived; yet these are nevertheless found in body. Again, whoever supposes God now to forget, now to remember, or anything of this kind, is no less in error; (See Gen 6:7; Exod 20:5; Rom 9:14–18; Sir 25:16; Eccl 1:15, 6:9) yet these are nevertheless found in the mind. But whoever thinks God to be of such power that he begot himself errs all the more, in that not only is God not so, but neither is the spiritual nor the bodily creation: for there is nothing whatever that begets itself so as to exist. See Augustine, The Immortality of the Soul 8.14.

2. Therefore, in order that the human mind might be purified of falsehoods of this kind, Holy Scripture, adapting itself to little ones, avoided the words of no kind of thing by which, as if step by step, our understanding might rise up, as though nourished, to divine and sublime things. For it used words taken from bodily things when it spoke of God; as when it says, under the shadow PL: in tegmine, "under cover." of your wings protect me (Ps 17:8 (16:8)). And from the spiritual creation it transferred many things, by which it might signify what was not so, but had to be spoken of as so; as it is, I am a jealous God (Exod 20:5); and, it repents me that I have made man (Gen 6:7).

But from things that altogether do not exist it drew no terms by which either to figure its expressions or to compact PL: spissaret, "pack." its riddles. Hence the more perniciously and the more emptily do those vanish away who are cut off from the truth by that third kind of error, suspecting that of God which can be found neither in him nor in any creature. (See Rom 1:19–21)

For from the things that are found in creation divine Scripture is wont to fashion, as it were, childlike delights, by which the gaze of the weak might be moved, according to its small measure, as though by steps, toward seeking higher things and abandoning lower ones. PL: affectus, "inclinations."

But the things that are said properly of God, and that are found in no creature, divine Scripture sets down rarely; as that which was said to Moses, I am who am; and, he who is has sent me to you (Exod 3:14). For since both body and mind are in some way said to be, unless it wished to be understood in a certain proper way, it surely would not say this.

And that which the Apostle says, who alone has immortality (1 Tim 6:16): since the soul too is said in a certain way to be immortal, and is so, he would not say alone has it, except that true immortality is unchangeableness, which no creature can have, since it belongs to the Creator alone. This is what James says: every good endowment and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no change, nor shadow of a moment (Jas 1:17). This too David: you will change them, and they will be changed; but you are the same (Ps 102:26–27 (101:27–28); see Heb 1:12).

3. Accordingly, it is difficult to behold and fully to know the substance of God, who makes changeable things without any change of himself, (See Gen 1:21) and who creates temporal things without any temporal movement of himself; and therefore a purification of our mind is necessary, by which that ineffable thing may ineffably be seen; (See Matt 5:8; Rom 12:2; Eph 4:23) and, not yet endowed with this, we are nourished by faith, and are led by certain more bearable paths, so that we may be made apt and fit to grasp it.

Hence the Apostle says that in Christ indeed are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge; yet he commended him to those already reborn by his grace, but still carnal and animal, like little ones in Christ, not from the divine power in which he is equal to the Father, but from the human weakness by which he was crucified. (See 1 Cor 1:13–23; John 3:3–5; 1 Pet 1:23; 2 Cor 13:4; Phil 2:6; Matt 28:5) For he says: for I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified. Then he goes on to say: and I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. And a little later he says to them: and I, brothers, could not speak to you as to spiritual men, but as to carnal men. As to little ones in Christ, I gave you milk to drink, not solid food; for you were not yet able to receive it; nor indeed are you able even now.

When this is said to certain people, they grow angry, and think it is said to them insultingly; and for the most part they prefer to believe that those from whom they hear this have nothing to say, rather than that they themselves cannot grasp what has been said. And sometimes we offer them a reason—not the one they ask for when they inquire about God, since neither are they able to take it in, nor are we perhaps able even to apprehend or set it forth—but one by which it may be shown to them how unfit and least suited they are to perceive what they demand. But because they do not hear what they want, they think either that we are acting craftily so as to hide our own ignorance, or maliciously, because we begrudge them the knowledge; and so they go away indignant and disturbed.

4. Therefore, with the help of the Lord our God, we will undertake to render, as far as we can, the very reason they demand: that the Trinity The word trinitas is more merely numerical in meaning than the English "Trinity," which has come almost to demand a capital T. But the Latin word means no more than "threeness," or more concretely, "threesome," "a three." is the one and only and true God, and how rightly the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are said, believed, and understood to be of one and the same substance or essence; (See Isa 7:9)

so that they may not be mocked, as it were, by our excuses, See Augustine, Against the Academics 3.12.27; The Sermon on the Mount 1.3; Revisions 1.1.9. but may experience in fact both that there is that supreme good which is discerned by the most purified minds, and that it cannot on that account be discerned and comprehended by them, because the human mind's vision, too weak, is not fixed upon so excellent a light unless it is nourished and invigorated by the righteousness of faith. (See 1 Tim 6:16)

But first it must be shown, on the authority of the Holy Scriptures, whether the faith is indeed so. Then, if God wills it and helps, we shall perhaps so serve these garrulous reasoners—more lofty than capacious, and therefore laboring under a more dangerous disease—that they may find something they cannot doubt, and on this account, in what they have been unable to find, may complain of their own minds rather than of the truth itself or of our discussions. (See Sir 25:12–23)

And so, if they have any love or fear toward God, let them return to the beginning and order of faith, now perceiving how healthfully the medicine of the faithful has been established in the holy Church, so that observed piety may heal the feeble mind for the perception of unchangeable truth, (See Sir 25:14–16) lest disordered rashness should cast it down into the opinion of harmful falsehood. (See Titus 1:1) It will not irk me, however, to inquire wherever I hesitate; nor will it shame me to learn wherever I err.

5. Accordingly, whoever reads this, where he is equally certain, let him go on with me; where he equally hesitates, let him inquire with me; where he recognizes his own error, let him return to me; where mine, let him call me back. Thus let us together enter the way of love, reaching out toward him of whom it is said, seek his face always. (See 1 Chr 16:11) And this pious and safe agreement I would enter, before the Lord our God, with all who read what I write, both in all my writings and especially in these where the unity of the Trinity—of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit—is sought; for nowhere is error more dangerous, nor is anything sought with more labor, nor is anything found with more fruit. (See Eccl 8:17)

Whoever, then, when he reads, says, "This is not well stated, because I do not understand it," censures my manner of speaking, not the faith; and perhaps it truly could have been said more plainly; yet no one among men has ever spoken in such a way as to be understood in all things by all. Let him, then, who is displeased by this in my discourse see whether he understands others who are versed in such matters and questions, when he does not understand me; and if it is so, let him put down my book, or even, if it seems good, throw it away, and rather spend his labor and time on those whom he does understand.

Yet it does not follow on that account that I ought to have kept silent, because I could not speak as readily and as lucidly as those whom he understands. For not all the things that are written by all come into the hands of all; and it may happen that some who are able to understand even these writings of ours do not find those plainer books, and at least fall upon these.

And therefore it is useful that many works be made by many writers in a different style, though not in a different faith, even on the same questions, so that the matter itself may reach the greatest number: some in this way, others in that. (See 1 Cor 7:7) But if the one who complains that he has not understood these things has never been able to understand anything carefully and acutely discussed about such matters, let him deal with himself by prayers and efforts so that he may make progress, not with me by complaints and reproaches so that I may keep silent.

But whoever, reading these things, says, "I do understand what has been said, but it is not stated truly," let him, if he pleases, assert his own opinion, and refute mine if he can. And if he does this with love and truth, and also takes care (if I remain in this life) to make it known to me, I shall reap the most abundant fruit of this labor of mine. And if he cannot do this for me, may he be willing and glad to do it for those for whom he can.

I, however, will meditate on the law of the Lord, if not day and night, at least in whatever little portions of time I can; and I bind my meditations to the pen, lest they flee away through forgetfulness; hoping in the mercy of God that he will make me persevere in all the true things that are certain to me; but if in anything I think otherwise, this too he himself will reveal to me, (Phil 3:15) whether through hidden inspirations and admonitions, or through his manifest utterances, or through the conversations of the brothers.

This I pray, and this my deposit and my desire I hold in his keeping, who is sufficiently able for me to guard what he has given, and to render what he has promised. (See John 17:12)

6. I think, indeed, that some of the slower will suppose, in certain passages of my books, that I meant what I did not mean, or did not mean what I meant. Who does not know that their error ought not to be charged to me, if, as though following me but not grasping me, they have strayed into some falsehood while I am forced to pick my way through certain dense and shadowy places—seeing that no one would rightly charge to the holy authorities of the divine Books themselves the many and varied errors of the heretics, when all of them try to defend their false and deceptive opinions out of these same Scriptures? (See Sir 25:2)

Plainly the law of Christ—that is, love (See John 13:34; 1 John 5:3; 1 Tim 1:5)—admonishes me and commands me with its most gentle authority that, when men think I meant something false in my books which I did not mean, and that very falsehood displeases one and pleases another, (See 1 Cor 10:33; Gal 1:10) I should prefer to be censured by one who reproves the falsehood than to be praised by one who praises it. For by the former, although I am not rightly censured, since I did not mean this, the error itself is nevertheless rightly blamed; but by the latter neither am I rightly praised by one who reckons that I meant what the truth blames, nor is the very opinion that the truth blames. Therefore let us set about the work undertaken in the name of the Lord.

7. All those I have been able to read who have written before me about the Trinity, who is God—Catholic expounders of the divine Books, old and new—have intended to teach, according to the Scriptures, this: that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, of one and the same substance, suggest the divine unity in an inseparable equality; and therefore there are not three gods, but one God; although the Father begot the Son, and therefore the Son is not he who is the Father; and the Son was begotten of the Father, and therefore the Father is not he who is the Son; and the Holy Spirit is neither Father nor Son, but only the Spirit of the Father and of the Son, himself also coequal with the Father and the Son, and belonging to the unity of the Trinity. (See Ps 2:7; 110:3 (109:3); Acts 13:33; Heb 1:5; 5:5)

Yet it was not the same Trinity that was born of the Virgin Mary, and crucified and buried under Pontius Pilate, and rose on the third day and ascended into heaven, (See Matt 10:20; Gal 4:6) but only the Son. Nor was it the same Trinity that descended in the form of a dove upon Jesus when he was baptized; (See Matt 3:16; Mark 1:9–10; Luke 3:21–22; John 1:32) or that, on the day of Pentecost after the Lord's ascension, when a sound was made from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and there were divided tongues as of fire, PL adds sedisse super unumquemque eorum, "settled on each of them," a gloss in one manuscript completing the text of Acts 2:3. but only the Holy Spirit. (See Acts 2:2–4) Nor was it the same Trinity that said from heaven, you are my Son, whether when he was baptized by John, or on the mountain when the three disciples were with him; or when the voice sounded, saying, and I have glorified it, and will glorify it again: but it was only the Father's voice made to the Son; although the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, just as they are inseparable, so they work inseparably. See 1 John 5:7; Augustine, The Predestination of the Saints 8.13. This is also my faith, since this is the Catholic faith.

8. But in this some are troubled, when they hear of God the Father, and God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, and yet that this Trinity is not three gods but one God; and they ask how they are to understand this; especially since it is said that the Trinity works inseparably in everything that God works, and yet that a certain voice of the Father sounded (See Matt 3:17; Mark 1:11; 9:6; Luke 3:22; John 1:32) which was not the voice of the Son; that it was only the Son who was born in the flesh, and suffered, and rose again, and ascended PL adds in caelum, "into heaven."; and that it was only the Holy Spirit who came in the form of a dove. (See Matt 3:16; Mark 1:10)

They want to understand how the Trinity made both that voice which was the Father's alone, and how the same Trinity created that flesh in which the Son alone was born of the Virgin, (See John 1:14; 1 John 4:2) and how that very Trinity wrought that form of a dove in which the Holy Spirit alone appeared. Otherwise the Trinity does not work inseparably, but the Father does some things, the Son others, the Holy Spirit others; or if they do some things together, others separately, then the Trinity is no longer inseparable.

It also troubles them how the Holy Spirit is in the Trinity, whom neither the Father nor the Son nor both begot, since he is the Spirit both of the Father and of the Son. Since, then, men inquire about these things, and they are wearisome to us, if our weakness has any taste of this from the gift of God, let us set it forth to them as we are able, and let us not journey with consuming envy.

If we say that we are not accustomed to think about such things, we lie; but if we confess that these things dwell in our thoughts, since we are carried away by the love of searching out the truth, they demand, by the right of love, that we tell them what we have been able to think out about this.

Not that I have already obtained, or am already perfect (See Phil 3:12) (for if Paul the apostle was not, how much more do I, lying far below his feet, not think myself to have grasped it?); (See Phil 3:13) but according to my small measure, if I forget what lies behind, and strain forward to what lies ahead, and according to my aim press on to the prize of the upward call, Augustine's text reads secundum intentionem, which is a literal but inaccurate rendering of the Greek kata skopon. The Vulgate translates correctly ad destinatum, "to the goal." it is desired of me that I disclose how much of that same road I have traveled, and where I have arrived from which the remaining course is left for me to the end—it being desired by those whom free love compels me to serve.

And it is fitting, and God will grant, that in ministering to them things for them to read, I myself may also make progress; and that, wishing to answer them as they ask, I myself may also find what I was seeking. (See Matt 7:7–8; Luke 11:9–10) Therefore I have undertaken these things, at the command and with the help of the Lord our God, not so much to discuss with authority what is known, as to come to know it by discussing it with piety.

9. Those who have said that our Lord Jesus Christ is not God, or is not true God, or is not one and the only God with the Father, or is not truly immortal because changeable, have been refuted by the most manifest and harmonious voice of the divine testimonies; whence come those words: in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. For it is manifest that we take the Word of God to be the only Son of God, of whom he says afterward, and the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, on account of the birth of his incarnation, which took place in time of the Virgin. But in this he declares that he is not only God, but also of the same substance as the Father, since, after he had said, and the Word was God, he says, this was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was nothing made. For he says all things only of those that were made, that is, of the whole creation. Whence it clearly appears that he himself was not made, through whom all things were made. And if he was not made, he is not a creature; but if he is not a creature, he is of the same substance as the Father. For every substance that is not God is a creature; and what is not a creature is God. And if the Son is not of the same substance as the Father, then he is a made substance; if he is a made substance, then all things were not made through him; but all things were made through him; therefore he is of one and the same substance as the Father. And so he is not only God, but also true God. The same John says this most plainly in his Epistle: we know that the Son of God has come, and has given us understanding, to know the true God, and to be in his true Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life.

10. Hence it is also consequently understood that the apostle Paul said, who alone has immortality, Augustine's discussion of this passage is a more or less direct refutation of the interpretation given by Tertullian (Against Praxeas 14 [PL 2:171A]) and Novatian (On the Trinity 18 [PL 3:946CD]). not of the Father alone, but of the one and only God, who is the Trinity itself. For eternal life itself is not mortal according to any changeableness; and on this account the Son of God, since he is eternal life, is himself also understood together with the Father, where it is said, who alone has immortality. For made partakers of that eternal life, we too are made immortal according to our small measure. But it is one thing, the eternal life of which we are made partakers; another thing, we who shall live forever by partaking of it.

For if he had said, which the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, the Father will manifest The PL, reading ostendet, follows the Vulgate and the Greek: "will manifest." in his own times, not even thus would it be right to understand the Son as separated from this.

For neither, because the Son himself, speaking elsewhere in the voice of Wisdom (for he is the Wisdom of God), says, I alone have gone round the circuit of heaven, did he separate the Father from himself; how much more, then, is it not necessary that what is said—who alone has immortality—be understood only of the Father apart from the Son, when it is said thus: that you keep, he says, the commandment unstained, free from reproach, In the Latin, the adjectives qualify "the commandment"; in the Greek, they can equally qualify "you," and are usually so translated. until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ; which the blessed and only Sovereign will manifest in his own times, the King of kings and Lord of lords; who alone has immortality, and dwells in unapproachable light; whom no man has seen, nor can see; to whom be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen. In which words neither the Father is named properly, nor the Son, nor the Holy Spirit; but the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, which is the one and only and true God, the Trinity itself.

11. Unless perhaps what follows will trouble this understanding, because he said, whom no man has seen, nor can see; since this too is taken to pertain to Christ according to his divinity, which the Jews did not see, though they saw and crucified the flesh. But the divinity can in no way be seen by human sight; rather it is seen with that sight by which those who already see are not men, but beyond men. Rightly, therefore, is the very God of the Trinity understood as the blessed and only Sovereign, manifesting the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ in his own times. For it is said, alone has immortality, just as it is said, who alone does wondrous things. Of whom I would like to know of whom they take this to be said. If of the Father only, then how is it true that the Son himself says, for whatever the Father does, these same things the Son also does likewise? Or is there anything among wonders more wonderful than to raise and bring the dead to life? But the same Son says, as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will. How, then, does the Father alone do wondrous things, when these words allow us to understand neither the Father only, nor the Son only, but assuredly the one true and only God, that is, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit?

12. Likewise, when the same Apostle says, for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through him. Who doubts that by all things he means those that were created, just as John says, all things were made through him? I ask, therefore, of whom he speaks in another place, for from him, and through him, and in him are all things; to him be glory forever and ever. Amen.

For if it is of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, so that single things are attributed to single persons—from him, from the Father; through him, through the Son; in him, in the Holy Spirit—it is manifest that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are one God, since he added in the singular, to him be glory forever and ever.

For where he began this sense, he did not say, O depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of the Father, or of the Son, or of the Holy Spirit; but, of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? Or who has first given to him, that he should be repaid? For from him, and through him, and in him are all things; to him be glory forever and ever. Amen.

But if they want this to be understood of the Father only, then how are all things through the Father, as is said here; and all things through the Son, as in the letter to the Corinthians where he says, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things; and as in the Gospel of John, all things were made through him? For if some things are through the Father, others through the Son, then all things are not through the Father, nor all things through the Son. But if all things are through the Father, and all things through the Son, then the same things are through the Father which are through the Son.

The Son, therefore, is equal to the Father, and the working of the Father and of the Son is inseparable. For if the Father even made the Son, whom the Son himself did not make, then all things were not made through the Son; but all things were made through the Son. He himself, therefore, was not made, so that he might make together with the Father all things that were made. And yet the Apostle did not keep silent even about the word itself, but said most plainly of all, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, Since Augustine does not think the meaning of this text needs to be discussed, it had presumably escaped his notice or slipped his mind that Novatian takes it to prove the Son's inequality (On the Trinity 22 [PL 3:958A]). here calling the Father properly God, as elsewhere, but the head of Christ is God.

13. Likewise, testimonies have been gathered concerning the Holy Spirit, which those who discussed these things before us used more abundantly, because he too is God and not a creature. For example, Ambrose, De Spiritu Sancto 3.19.18 (PL 16); John Damascene, Epistle 2 (PL 13:351B). And if not a creature, then not only God (for men too have been called gods), but also true God. Therefore he is wholly equal to the Father and the Son, and in the unity of the Trinity consubstantial and coeternal. But most of all it is clear enough that the Holy Spirit is not a creature in that place where we are commanded to serve not the creature but the Creator, not in the way in which we are commanded through love to serve one another, which in Greek is δουλεύειν, but in the way in which God alone is served, which in Greek is λατρεύειν. Hence those are called idolaters who render to images that service which is owed to God. For according to this service it was said, you shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve. (See Deut 6:13; 10:20; Matt 4:10; Luke 4:8)

For this too is found more distinctly in the Greek Scripture, for it has λατρεύσεις. Now if by such service we are forbidden to serve the creature, since it was said, you shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve—whence also the Apostle detests those who worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator—then the Holy Spirit is certainly not a creature, to whom such service is rendered by all the saints, the Apostle saying, for we are the circumcision, serving the Spirit of God, which in Greek is λατρεύοντες. For many Latin codices also have it thus: who serve the Spirit of God; but all the Greek ones, or nearly all. In some Latin copies, however, we find not we serve the Spirit of God, but in the spirit we serve God. This reading represents a Greek variant where "God" is in apposition to "Spirit," and both are in the dative, so that it should really mean "we who serve God the Spirit" and give even greater weight to Augustine's case.

But those who err in this, and decline to yield to the weightier authority, do they not also find that other passage varying in the codices: do you not know that your bodies are a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? But what is more insane and more sacrilegious than that anyone should dare to say that the members of Christ are the temple of a creature lesser, according to these people, "These people" refers to the Macedonians (that is, followers of Macedonius), whose error was condemned at the Council of Constantinople in 381. than Christ is? For in another place he says, your bodies are members of Christ. But if the things that are members of Christ are the temple of the Holy Spirit, then the Holy Spirit is not a creature, since to him to whom we render our body as a temple we must necessarily owe that service by which God alone is to be served, which in Greek is called λατρεία. Whence he consequently says, glorify God, therefore, in your body.

14. By these and similar testimonies of the divine Scriptures, which, as I said, our predecessors used more copiously when they overthrew such slanders or errors of the heretics, the unity and equality of the Trinity is suggested to our faith. But because many things are said in the holy Books on account of the incarnation of the Word of God—which took place for the restoring of our salvation, that the man Christ Jesus might be the mediator between God and men—in such a way as to signify, or even most plainly to show, that the Father is greater than the Son; men have erred who scrutinized or considered less diligently the whole series of the Scriptures, and have tried to transfer the things that were said of Christ Jesus according to the man to that substance of his which before the incarnation was everlasting, and is everlasting. And they indeed say that the Son is less than the Father is, because it is written, the Lord himself saying, the Father is greater than I. See Hilary, De Synodis 11. But the truth shows that according to this manner the Son is less even than himself. For how is he not made less even than himself, who emptied himself, taking the form of a servant?

For he did not so take the form of a servant as to 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 in both the form of a servant and the form of God he is the same only-begotten Son of God the Father, in the form of God equal to the Father, (See Phil 2:6) in the form of a servant the mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus (See 1 Tim 2:5)—who does not understand that in the form of God he is greater even than himself, but in the form of a servant he is less even than himself?

Not undeservedly, therefore, does Scripture say both: that the Son is equal to the Father, and that the Father is greater than the Son. For the one is understood on account of the form of God, the other on account of the form of a servant, without any confusion.

And this rule for resolving this question throughout all the sacred Scriptures is drawn from one little chapter of the Epistle of the apostle Paul, where this distinction is more plainly commended. For he says: who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped; but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness PL: in similitudinem, "into the likeness." of men, and found in fashion as a man. The Son of God, therefore, is equal to God the Father by nature, 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 he was even before he took this, he is equal to the Father. In the form of God, the Word through whom all things were made; but in the form of a servant, made of a woman, made under the law, that he might redeem those who were under the law. Accordingly, in the form of God he made man; in the form of a servant he was made man. For if the Father only, without the Son, had made man, it would not have been written, let us make man to our image and likeness. (See Wis 2:23; Sir 17) Therefore, because the form of God took the form of a servant, he is both God and man; but he is both God on account of the God who takes, and both man on account of the man who is taken. For by that assumption neither of the two was turned and changed into the other; neither was the divinity changed into the creature, so as to cease to be divinity; nor the creature into the divinity, so as to cease to be a creature. See Cicero, De Partitionibus Oratoriae 7.23; De Oratore 3.45.177.

15. But that which the Apostle says, when all things shall have been subjected to him, then the Son himself also will be subjected to him who subjected all things to him—either this was said lest anyone should think that the fashion of Christ, which was assumed from the human creature, will afterward be turned into the very divinity, or, that I may express it more surely, into the deity, Deitas, a theological neologism on the model of the Greek theotes, more precisely means "Godness," whereas divinitas often has a wider reference, and can mean "godlikeness." See The City of God 7.1; also below, 4.29. which is not a creature, but is the unity of the Trinity, an incorporeal and unchangeable nature, consubstantial with itself and coeternal.

Or if anyone contends, Something like this view, not so crudely put, can be found in Gregory of Nyssa's Adversus Apollinarem 53 (PG 45:1253B). as some have held, that it was said—and the Son himself will be subjected to him who subjected all things to him—in such a way as to believe that this very subjection will be a changing and turning of the creature into the very substance or essence of the Creator, that is, so that what had been the substance of the creature becomes the substance of the Creator; he certainly grants at least this, which admits of no doubt, that this had not yet been done when the Lord said, the Father is greater than I. For he said this not only before he had ascended into heaven, but even before he had suffered and risen from the dead.

But those who think that the human nature in him is changed and turned into the substance of the deity, and that it was thus said—then the Son himself also will be subjected to him who subjected all things to him—as if it were said, "then the Son of man too, the human nature assumed by the Word of God, will be changed into the nature of him who subjected all things to him"; they think this will happen when, after the day of judgment, he delivers the kingdom to God and the Father. And on this account, even according to this opinion, the Father is still greater than that form of a servant which was taken of the Virgin. (See Phil 2:7)

But if some affirm even this, that the man Christ Jesus has already That is, before the last day. Gregory of Nyssa, in the work referred to, finds it ridiculous to think of Christ being corporeally present in heaven. been changed into the substance of God, they certainly cannot deny that the nature of man still remained when, before the Passion, he said, for the Father is greater than I. Whence there is no hesitation that, according to this, it was said that the Father is greater than the form of a servant, to whom the Son is equal in the form of God.

Nor let anyone, when he hears what the Apostle says, but when he says that all things are subjected to him, it is manifest that he is excepted who subjected all things to him, (Commenting on Ps 8:8 (8:7)) so think it is to be understood of the Father, that the Father subjected all things to the Son in such a way that he should not think the Son himself subjected all things to himself. This the Apostle shows to the Philippians, saying: but our commonwealth is in heaven; whence also we await the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform the body of our lowliness, that it may be made conformed to the body of his glory, according to his working by which he is able even to subject all things to himself.

For the working of the Father and of the Son is inseparable. Otherwise not even the Father himself subjected all things to himself, but the Son subjected them to him who delivers the kingdom to him, and abolishes every rule and every authority and power.

For these things were said of the Son: when he delivers, he says, the kingdom to God and the Father, when he abolishes every rule and every authority and power. For he himself subjects who abolishes.

16. Nor let us think that Christ will deliver the kingdom to God and the Father in such a way as to take it from himself. For some empty talkers have believed this too. For when it is said, he delivers the kingdom to God and the Father, he himself is not separated; since together with the Father he is one God.

But the word that is placed there, "until," deceives those who are careless of the divine Scriptures and eager for contentions. For it follows thus, for he must reign until he puts all his enemies under his feet, as though, when he has put them there, he will not reign. Nor do they understand that it is said just as that is: his heart is steadfast; he will not be moved, until he looks down upon his enemies. For not when he has looked upon them will he then be moved.

What, then, is when he delivers the kingdom to God and the Father, as though God and the Father did not now have the kingdom? But because the mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, (Quoted in Rom 1:17 and Gal 3:11) in whom he now reigns over all the just who live by faith, is going to bring them to the sight—which the same Apostle calls the vision face to face (See 2 Cor 5:7)—it was said, when he delivers the kingdom to God and the Father, as if it were said, "When he has brought believers to the contemplation of God and the Father."

For he says thus: all things have been delivered to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father; and no one knows the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him. (See Luke 10:22) Then the Father will be revealed by the Son, when he abolishes every rule and every authority and power; (See Heb 1:14; 2:2) that is, so that the dispensation of likenesses through the angelic principalities and authorities and powers will no longer be necessary.

In whose person it is not inappropriately understood to be said to the bride in the Song of Songs: we will make you likenesses of gold with markings of silver, while the king is on his couch, that is, while Christ is in his secret place; for your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ your life appears, then you too will appear with him in glory. Before this comes to pass, we now see through a mirror in an enigma, that is, in likenesses; but then, face to face.

17. For this contemplation is promised to us as the end of all actions and the eternal perfection of joys. For we are children of God, and it has not yet appeared what we shall be; we know that, when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.

For what he said to his servant Moses, I am who am. And so PL omits itaque, "and so." you shall say to the children of Israel: he who is has sent me to you; this we shall contemplate when we shall live forever. For he says thus: and this is eternal life, that they may know you, the one true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.

This will come to pass when the Lord comes and illuminates the hidden things of darkness, when the darkness of this mortality and corruption shall have passed away. (See 1 John 2:8; Rom 8:21) Then will be our morning, of which it is said in the Psalm: in the morning I will stand before you, and I will contemplate. Of this contemplation I understand to be said, when he delivers the kingdom to God and the Father; that is, when he has brought the just—in whom, now living by faith, the mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, reigns—to the contemplation of God and the Father. If I am foolish here, let him who is wiser correct me; to me nothing else seems true.

For we shall seek nothing else when we have arrived at the contemplation of him, which now is not, as long as our joy is in hope. But hope that is seen is not hope; for who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience, while the king is on his couch. Then will be what is written: you will fill me with gladness with your countenance. In that gladness nothing more will be required; for there will be nothing more to require. For the Father will be shown to us, and it will suffice us. This Philip had well understood, so as to say, Lord, show us the Father, and it suffices us. But he had not yet understood that in that same way he could have said the same thing: "Lord, show us yourself, and it suffices us." For, that he might understand this, it was answered him by the Lord, have I been with you so long, and you have not known me? Philip, he who has seen me has seen the Father also. But because he wanted him to live by faith before he could see that, he went on and said: do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? For as long as we are in the body, we are away from the Lord. For we walk by faith, not by sight.

For contemplation is the reward of faith, for which reward hearts are cleansed through faith; as it is written, cleansing their hearts by faith. But that hearts are cleansed for that contemplation is proved especially by that sentence: blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. And because this is eternal life, God says in the Psalm: with length of days will I fill him, and I will show him my salvation. Whether, then, we hear, "show us the Son," or whether we hear, show us the Father, it amounts to the same; for neither can be shown without the other. For they are one, as he himself says: I and the Father are one. Finally, on account of this very inseparability, sometimes either the Father alone or the Son alone is sufficiently named as the one who will fill us with gladness with his countenance.

18. Nor is the Spirit of both separated from this—that is, the Spirit of the Father and of the Son. This Holy Spirit is properly called the Spirit of truth, whom this world cannot receive. For this is our full joy, than which there is nothing greater: to enjoy the Trinity, God, to whose image we were made. (See Gen 1:26; 9:6; Isa 47:8; Wis 2:23)

On this account he sometimes speaks of the Holy Spirit as if he alone sufficed for our blessedness; and he alone suffices for this reason, that he cannot be separated from the Father and the Son; just as the Father alone suffices, because he cannot be separated from the Son and the Holy Spirit; and the Son alone suffices for this reason, that he cannot be separated from the Father and the Holy Spirit.

For what does he mean when he says, if you love me, keep my commandments; and I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate, to be with you forever, the Spirit of truth, whom this world cannot receive—that is, the lovers of the world? For the animal man does not perceive the things that are of the Spirit of God.

But it can still seem to have been said—and I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate (See John 14:16)—as if the Son alone did not suffice. But in that place it is said of him as though he alone wholly sufficed: when that Spirit of truth comes, he will teach you all truth. Is the Son, then, separated from this, as though he himself does not teach all truth, or as though the Holy Spirit fulfills what the Son was less able to teach? Let them say, then, if they please, that the Holy Spirit, whom they are wont to call less than the Son, is greater than the Son.

Or is it because it was not said, "he alone," or, "no one but he, will teach you all truth," that they therefore allow it to be believed that the Son too teaches together with him? The Apostle, then, separated the Son from the knowing of those things that are of God, where he says: so also no one knows the things that are of God except the Spirit of God. So that now these perverse people can say from this that not even the Son knows the things that are of God except the Holy Spirit, as the greater the lesser; to whom the Son himself ascribed so much as to say, because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart. But I tell you the truth: it is expedient for you that I go; for if I do not go away, the advocate will not come to you.

But he said this, not on account of any inequality of the Word of God and the Holy Spirit, but as though the presence of the Son of man among them were an impediment to the coming of him who was not less, because he did not empty himself, taking the form of a servant, as the Son did.

It was necessary, therefore, that the form of a servant be taken from their eyes, since, gazing upon it, they thought Christ to be only what they saw. Hence too is that which he says, if you loved me, you would surely rejoice, because I go to the Father; for the Father is greater than I; that is, for this reason I must go to the Father, because, while you see me thus, from what you see you reckon that I am less than the Father, and so, occupied about the creature and the fashion I have assumed, you do not understand the equality I have with the Father.

Hence too is that other saying: do not touch me; for I have not yet ascended to the Father. For touch, as it were, makes an end of acquaintance. And therefore he did not want there to be in him the end of the heart's straining toward him, so that he might be thought to be only what was seen. But the ascension to the Father was to be seen as he is equal to the Father, so that there might be the end of the vision which suffices us.

Likewise, sometimes it is said of the Son alone that he himself suffices, and in his vision the whole reward of our love and desire is promised. For he says thus: he who has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father; and I will love him, and will show myself to him. Did he here, because he did not say, "I will show him the Father also," therefore separate the Father? But because it is true, I and the Father are one, when the Father is shown, the Son too is shown, who is in him; and when the Son is shown, the Father too is shown, who is in him.

As, therefore, when he says, and I will show myself to him, it is understood that he shows the Father also; so too in that which is said, when he delivers the kingdom to God and the Father, it is understood that he does not take it from himself. For when he brings believers to the contemplation of God and the Father, he assuredly brings them to his own contemplation, who said, and I will show myself to him. And therefore, consequently, when Judas had said to him, Lord, what has happened, that you are going to show yourself to us, and not to this world? Jesus answered and said to him: if anyone loves me, he will keep my word; and my Father will love him, and we will come to him, and will make our dwelling with him. Behold, he does not show only himself to the one by whom he is loved, since he comes to him together with the Father, and makes his dwelling with him.

19. Or will it perhaps be thought that, since the Father and the Son make their dwelling in the one who loves him, the Holy Spirit is excluded from this dwelling? What, then, is that which he says above of the Holy Spirit: whom this world cannot receive, because it does not see him; but you know him, because he abides with you, and is in you? He is not, therefore, separated from this dwelling, of whom it is said, he abides with you and is in you. Unless perhaps someone is so absurd as to think that, when the Father and the Son come to make their dwelling with the one who loves him, the Holy Spirit will depart thence, and as it were give place to the greater. But Scripture meets this carnal thought; for a little above it says, and I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate, to be with you forever. He will not, then, depart when the Father and the Son come, but will be in the same dwelling with them forever; for neither does he come without them, nor they without him. But on account of the suggestion of the Trinity, certain things are said with the single persons even named singly; PL adds separatim, "said separately about." yet they are not understood with the others separated, on account of the unity of the same Trinity and the one substance and deity of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

20. And so our Lord Jesus Christ will deliver the kingdom to God and the Father, without separating himself from it, nor the Holy Spirit, since PL: quando, "when he brings." he will bring believers to the contemplation of God, where is the end of all good actions, and everlasting rest, and the joy that will never be taken from us. For this he signifies in that which he says: I will see you again, and your heart will rejoice, and your joy no one will take from you.

A likeness of this joy was prefigured by Mary sitting at the Lord's feet, and intent upon his word; resting, that is, from all action, and intent upon the truth according to a certain manner of which this life is capable, by which, nevertheless, she might prefigure that which is to be forever. For while her sister Martha was busy in the action of necessity—good and useful, yet, when rest succeeds, destined to pass away—she herself rested in the word of the Lord.

And therefore the Lord, when Martha complained that her sister did not help her, answered: Mary has chosen the best part, which will not be taken from her. He did not call what Martha was doing a bad part, but this best part which will not be taken away. For that which is in the ministry of need will be taken away when the need itself has passed. For the reward of a good work that is to pass away is rest that will abide.

In that contemplation, therefore, God will be all in all, because nothing else will be required of him, but it will suffice to be illumined by him alone and to enjoy him alone. And therefore he in whom the Spirit makes intercession with unutterable groanings says, one thing I have asked of the Lord, this will I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, that I may contemplate the delight of the Lord.

For we shall contemplate God the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, when the mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, delivers the kingdom to God and the Father, (See 1 Cor 15:24) so that our mediator and priest, (See Rom 8:34; Heb 7:25; 8:6; 9:15; 12:24; Gal 3:20) the Son of God and Son of man, may no longer intercede for us; but he himself too, insofar as he is priest by the form of a servant assumed for our sake, may be subjected to him who subjected all things to him, and to whom he subjected all things;

so that, insofar as he is God, he may have us subjected together with himself, and, insofar as he is priest, he may be subjected with us to him. Wherefore, since the Son is both God and man, the man in the Son is a different substance rather than the Son in the Father; just as the flesh of my soul is a different substance with respect to my soul, though in one man, than the soul of another man is with respect to my soul.

21. When, therefore, he delivers the kingdom to God and the Father—that is, when he has brought believers and those who live by faith, for whom the mediator now intercedes, (See Heb 7:25) to the contemplation for the receiving of which we sigh and groan, and when the labor and the groaning have passed—he will no longer intercede for us, the kingdom having been delivered to God and the Father. Signifying this, he says, these things I have spoken to you in likenesses; the hour will come when I shall no longer speak to you in likenesses, but will tell you plainly of the Father; that is, there will no longer be likenesses, when the vision shall be face to face.

For this is what he says, but I will tell you plainly of the Father; as if he said, "I will show you the Father plainly." For he says I will tell, because he is his Word. For he goes on and says: in that day you will ask in my name, and I do not tell you that I will ask the Father; for the Father himself loves you, because you love me, PL: amastis, "you have loved." and have believed that I came forth from God. I came forth from the Father, and have come into this world; again I leave the world, and go to the Father.

What is I came forth from the Father, except, "not in that form in which I am equal to the Father, but otherwise, that is, in the assumed creature, I appeared less"? And what is I have come into this world, except, "the form of a servant, which I took in emptying myself, I showed even to the eyes of sinners who love this world"? And what is again I leave the world, except, "from the sight of the lovers of the world I take away what they saw"? And what is I go to the Father, except, "I teach that I am to be understood by my faithful as I am equal to the Father"?

Those who believe this will be held worthy to be brought from faith to sight, that is, to the vision itself, to which, in bringing them, he is said to deliver the kingdom to God and the Father. For his faithful, whom he redeemed by his blood, are called his kingdom, for whom he now intercedes; but then, making them cleave to him there where he is equal to the Father, he will no longer ask the Father for them. For the Father himself, he says, loves you.

For he asks in that by which he is less than the Father; but in that by which he is equal, he hears together with the Father. Whence he certainly does not separate himself from what he said, for the Father himself loves you; but he makes it understood according to the things I recalled above and sufficiently suggested—that very often each person in the Trinity is so named that the others too are understood there. So, then, it was said, for the Father himself loves you, that consequently the Son too and the Holy Spirit may be understood.

Not that he does not now love us, who did not spare his own Son, but delivered him up for us all; but God loves us such as we shall be, not such as we are. For such as he loves, he preserves forever; which will then be, when he delivers the kingdom to God and the Father, who now intercedes for us, so that he no longer asks the Father, because the Father himself loves us.

But by what merit, except that of faith, by which we believe before we see what is promised? For through this we shall arrive at sight, so that he may love us such as he loves us to be; not such as he hates because we are, and exhorts and grants that we may not always wish to be such.

22. Wherefore, this rule for understanding the Scriptures concerning the Son of God being known—so that we may distinguish what in them sounds according to the form of God, in which he is and PL omits est et, "in which he is equal to." is equal to the Father, and what according to the form of a servant which he took, and PL reads in qua instead of et: "which he took, in which he is less." is less than the Father—we shall not be disturbed, as though the sentences of the Holy Books were contrary to and at odds with one another.

For according to the form of God, both the Son and the Holy Spirit 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 said, the Father is greater than I; he is less than himself, because it was said of him, he emptied himself; (See Phil 2:7) he is less than the Holy Spirit, because he himself says: whoever speaks a blasphemy against the Son of man, it will be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him.

And in him he worked miracles, saying: if I by the Spirit of God cast out demons, then surely the kingdom of God has come upon you.

And in Isaiah he says—a reading which he himself recited in the synagogue, and showed to be fulfilled in himself without a scruple of doubt—the Spirit, he says, of the Lord is upon me; because of this he has anointed me, he has sent me to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives, and the rest; and he says that he was sent to do these things for this reason, because the Spirit of the Lord is upon him. (See Isa 48:16; John 3:17; 5:23; 7:16; 10:36; 16:28; Gal 4:4; Luke 4:18)

According to the form of God, all things were made through him; (See Phil 2:6–7) according to the form of a servant, he himself was 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 who sent him. According to the form of God, as the Father has life in himself, so he gave to the Son also to have life in himself; according to the form of a servant, his soul is sorrowful even unto death; and, Father, he says, if it can be, let PL adds a me, "from me." this cup pass. (See Matt 26:38–39; Mark 14:36; Luke 22:42) 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 death on a cross.

11. 23. According to the form of God, all that the Father has are his; and, all mine are yours, he says, and yours mine; according to the form of a servant, the teaching is not his own, but his who sent him.

12. 23. And: of the day and the hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but the Father. For he does not know this in such a way as makes others know—that is, he did not know it in such a way as then to tell the disciples. Just as it was said to Abraham, now I know that you fear God, that is, "now I have made you know it," since he too became known to himself, proved in that trial.

For he was certainly going to tell the disciples that too at an opportune time, of which, speaking of the future as though of the past, he says, I will no longer call you servants, but friends. For the servant does not know the will of his lord; but I have called you friends, because all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. This he had not yet done, but because he was certainly going to do it, he spoke as though he had already done it. For he says to them: I have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. Among which is understood also, of the day and the hour.

For the Apostle too says: for I decided to know nothing among you except Christ Jesus, and him crucified. For he was speaking to those who could not grasp the higher things concerning Christ's deity. To whom also a little later he says: I could not speak to you as to spiritual men, but as to carnal men. This, then, he did not know among them, because they could not know it through him. And this alone he said he knew, because they needed to know it through him.

Finally, he knew among the perfect what he did not know among the little ones; for there he says, we speak wisdom among the perfect. For by that manner of speaking a person is said not to know what he conceals, just as a ditch is called blind which is hidden. See Statius, Thebaid 12.234; Columella, De Re Rustica 2.2.9; Palladius, Opus Agriculturae 6.3.1. The Latin saying is fossa caeca, "a blind ditch." For the Scriptures speak by no manner of speech that is not found in human custom; since they certainly speak to men. (See 1 Cor 14:6)

12. 24. According to the form of God it was said, before all the hills he begot me, that is, before all the heights of creatures; and, before the morning star I begot you, that is, before all times and temporal things; but according to the form of a servant it was said, the Lord created me in the beginning of his ways.

For 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, the firstborn from the dead, made a road for his Church to the kingdom of God, to eternal life—to which he is the head, even unto the immortality of the body—therefore he was created in the beginning of God's ways for his works.

For according to the form of God, he is the beginning who also speaks to us; in which beginning God made heaven and earth; but according to the form of a servant, he is a bridegroom coming forth from his chamber.

According to the form of God, he is the firstborn of all creation, and he is before all, and all things hold together in him; 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. Whence it is manifest that he himself glorifies his saints. For those whom he predestined, them he also called; and those whom he called, them he also justified; and those whom he justified, them he also glorified. For of him it was said that he justifies the ungodly; of him it was said that he is just and the justifier. If, then, those whom he justified, them he also glorified, he who justifies himself also glorifies, who is, as I said, the Lord of glory. Yet according to the form of a servant, when the disciples were busy about his glorification, he answered: to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to give to you, but to those for whom it has been prepared by my Father.

12. 25. But what was prepared by his Father was also prepared by the Son himself, because he and the Father are one. For we have already shown that in this Trinity, by many modes of the divine expressions, what belongs to all is said even of single persons, on account of the inseparable working of one and the same substance. 1 John 5:7; 1 Cor 12:4–6; see Ambrose, De Fide 4.6.68; Augustine, The Predestination of the Saints 8.14; see also below, 1.18.

Just as he also says of the Holy Spirit, when I go, I will send him to you. He did not say, "we will send," but as though the Son alone were to send him, and not the Father; whereas in another place he says, these things I have spoken to you while abiding with you; but that advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will declare all things to you.

Here, again, it was said as though the Son too were not to send him, but only the Father. As, therefore, these sayings, so also that which he says, but to those for whom it has been prepared by my Father—he wished it to be understood that, together with the Father, he prepares the seats of glory for whom he would.

But someone says: "There, when he spoke of the Holy Spirit, he said that he would send him in such a way as not to deny that the Father would send him; and in another place he said the Father would, in such a way as not to deny that he himself would send him. But here he plainly says, it is not mine to give, and so going on, he said these things were prepared by the Father."

But this is what we laid down beforehand, that it was said according to the form of a servant; so that we should understand it is not mine to give as if it were said, "it is not in human power to give this"; so that through that by which God is equal to the Father, it may be understood that he gives this. 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 has been prepared by my Father; "but now do you understand that if all that the Father has are mine, this too is certainly mine, and I prepared these things together with the Father."

12. 26. For I also inquire how it was said, if anyone does not hear my words, I will not judge him. For perhaps he said here, I will not judge him, in the same way as there, it is not mine to give.

But what follows here? For I have not come, he says, to judge the world, but to save the world; then he adds and says, he who despises me and does not receive my words has one who judges him. (See Matt 20:23; John 12:47) Here we would now understand the Father, unless he added and said: the word that I have spoken, that will judge him on the last day. What then—will the Son not now judge, because he said, I will not judge him, nor the Father, but the word that the Son has spoken?

Nay, hear still what follows: for I, he says, have not spoken of myself, but the Father who sent me, he gave me a commandment what I should say, and what I should speak; and I know that his commandment is eternal life. What I speak, therefore, as the Father has told me, so I speak.

If, then, the Son does not judge, but the word that the Son has spoken; and the word that the Son has spoken judges for this reason, that the Son did not speak of himself, but the Father who sent him gave him a commandment what he should say and what he should speak; then the Father certainly judges, whose Word is that which the Son has spoken, and that very Word of the Father is the Son himself. For the commandment of the Father is not one thing and the Word of the Father another; for he called this both "word" and "commandment."

Let us see, then, whether perhaps what he says, I have not spoken of myself, he wished to be understood as, "I was not born of myself." For if he speaks the Word of the Father, he speaks himself, because he himself is the Word of the Father. For he often says, the Father has given to me, in which he wishes it to be understood that the Father begot him; not that he gave something to one as it were already existing and not having it; but that his very giving him to have was begetting him to exist.

For the Son of God is not, like a creature, one thing before the incarnation and before the assumed creature—the only-begotten through whom all things were made (See John 1:14–18; 3:16–18; 1 John 4:9)—and another thing that he has; but this very thing is what is that which he has. This is said more plainly in that place, if anyone is fit to grasp it, where he says: as the Father has life in himself, so he gave to the Son to have life in himself.

For he did not give to one already existing and not having life that he should have life in himself, since by the very fact that he is, he is life. This, then, is, he gave to the Son to have life in himself: he begot the Son to be unchangeable life, which is eternal life.

Since, then, the Son of God is the Word of God, and the Son of God is the true God and eternal life, as John says in his Epistle; here too what else do we recognize, when the Lord says, the Word that I have spoken, that will judge him on the last day; and says that the word itself is the Father's word and the commandment of the Father, and that very commandment is eternal life. And I know, he says, that his commandment is eternal life.

12. 27. I inquire, therefore, how we are to understand, I will not judge, but the word that I have spoken will judge, which from what follows appears to be said as if he said, "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 thus to be understood, "I will not judge, but I will judge"? How can this be true, except thus: "I," that is, "will not judge by human power, because I am the Son of man; but I will judge by the power of the Word, since I am the Son of God"?

Or if they seem contrary and at odds, "I will not judge, but I will judge," what shall we say there, where he says, my teaching is not mine? How is it mine, how is it not mine? For he did not say, "this teaching is not mine," but, my teaching is not mine; the same teaching that he called his, he called not his. How is this true, except that in one respect he called it his; in another, not his; according to the form of God, his; according to the form of a servant, not his? For when he says, it is not mine, but his who sent me, he makes us run back to the Word itself. For the teaching of the Father is the Word of the Father, who is the only Son.

What too does this mean, he who believes in me does not believe in me? How is it in him, how is it not in him? How can a thing so contrary and adverse to itself be understood—he who believes in me, he says, does not believe in me but in him who sent me—unless you understand it thus: "he who believes in me does not believe in this which he sees," lest our hope be in a creature; but in him who assumed the creature, in which he might appear to human eyes, and so might cleanse hearts through faith to contemplate him equal to the Father?

And therefore, referring the attention of believers to the Father, and saying, he does not believe in me, but in him who sent me, he certainly did not wish to be separated from the Father, that is, from him who sent him; but rather that he be believed in just as the Father is, to whom he is equal. This he plainly says in another place: believe in God, and believe in me; that is, as you believe in God, so also in me, because I and the Father are one God.

As, therefore, here he as it were took men's faith away from himself and transferred it to the Father, by saying, he does not believe in me, but in him who sent me—from whom, nevertheless, he certainly did not separate himself—so too that which he says, it is not mine to give, but to those for whom it has been prepared by my Father, I think it is clear in what respect each is to be taken. For such too is that, I will not judge; though he himself is to judge the living and the dead, but because it is not by human power, therefore, running back to the deity, he lifts up the hearts In the Latin, sursum erigit corda is an allusion to the sursum corda of the Mass. But for Augustine, like all the ancients, the heart is the organ and symbol of deliberate thought rather than of feeling, which was situated in the viscera. of men, for the lifting of which he descended.

13. 28. Unless, however, he who is the Son of God on account of the form of God in which he is were the same as the Son of man on account of the form of a servant which he took, the apostle Paul would not say of the rulers of this age: for if they had known, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory. For he was crucified from the form of a servant, and yet the Lord of glory was crucified. For such was that "assumption" which made God man, and man God. See Hilary, Ad Constantium, fragm. 6. Yet what is said on account of what, and what is said in what respect, the prudent and diligent and pious reader, with the Lord's help, understands.

For behold, we said See On the Trinity 1.24. that according to that which he is God, he glorifies his own, according to this very thing that he is Lord of glory; and yet the Lord of glory was crucified, because it is rightly said that even God was crucified, not from the power of the divinity, but from the weakness of the flesh; Here Augustine very accurately anticipates the definition of the Council of Ephesus, 431, which ratified the title of Mary as Theotokos, mother of God—mother of him who is God, in virtue however of his being man. just as we say that according to that which he is God he judges, that is, by divine power, not by human; and yet he himself, as man, is to judge, just as the Lord of glory was crucified.

For he plainly says, when the Son of man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then will be gathered before him all the nations; and the rest that is foretold of the future judgment in that place up to the final sentence. And the Jews, indeed, who persevering in malice are to be punished in that judgment, as is written elsewhere, will look on him whom they have pierced.

For since both the good and the wicked are to see the judge of the living and the dead, (See Acts 10:42; 2 Tim 4:1; 1 Pet 4:5) without doubt the wicked will not be able to see him except according to the form by which he is the Son of man; but yet in the splendor in which he will judge, not in the lowliness in which he was judged. Moreover, that form of God in which he is equal to the Father, without doubt the ungodly will not see. For they are not pure in heart: for blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

And that vision is face to face, (See Matt 6:1; 5:12; Luke 6:35) which is promised to the just as the highest reward; and it will come to pass when he delivers the kingdom to God and the Father; in which he wishes the vision of his own form too to be understood, the whole creation being subjected to God, including that very creation in which the Son of God was made the Son of man. For according to this, the Son himself too will then be subjected to him who subjected all things to him, that God may be all in all.

Otherwise, if the Son of God, as judge, in the form in which he is equal to the Father, will appear even to the ungodly when he is to judge, what is it that he promises as a great thing to the one who loves him, saying: and I will love him, and will show myself to him? Wherefore the Son of man is to judge, yet not by human power, but by that by which he is the Son of God; and again the Son of God is to judge, yet not appearing in that form in which he is God equal to the Father, but in that by which he is the Son of man.

13. 29. And so both can be said: both "the Son of man will judge," and "the Son of man will not judge"; for the Son of man will judge, so that what he says is true, when the Son of man comes, then will be gathered before him all the nations; and the Son of man will not judge, so that what he says is true, I will not judge; and, I do not seek my own glory; there is one who seeks it and judges. For according to the fact that in the judgment not the form of God, but the form of the Son of man will appear, not even the Father himself will judge. For according to this it was said, the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son. Whether this was said from that expression which we recalled above, where he says, so he gave to the Son to have life in himself, to signify that he thus begot the Son; or from that by which the Apostle speaks, saying, wherefore he raised him up, and gave him the name which is above every name.

For this was said of the Son of man, according to whom the Son of God was raised from the dead. For he who in the form of God is equal to the Father, from which he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, in that very form of a servant both acts, and suffers, and receives the things that the Apostle consequently weaves together: he humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even death on a cross; wherefore God also exalted him, and gave him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father.

Whether, then, it was said from that or from this expression, he gave all judgment to the Son, sufficiently appears from this: that if it were said according to that by which it was said, he gave to the Son to have life in himself, it certainly would not be said, the Father judges no one. For according to that by which the Father begot the Son equal, he judges with him. According to this, therefore, it was said, that in the judgment, not the form of God, but the form of the Son of man will appear.

Not that he who gave all judgment to the Son will not judge, since the Son says of him, there is one who seeks it and judges; but it was said thus, the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, as if it were said, "No one will see the Father in the judgment of the living and the dead, but all will see the Son"; for he is also the Son of man, that he may be seen even by the ungodly, when they too will look on him whom they have pierced.

13. 30. And lest we seem to conjecture rather than plainly to demonstrate this, let us bring forward a sure and manifest sentence of the same Lord, by which we may show that this was the very reason why he said, the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son: because the judge will appear in the form of the Son of man, which form is not the Father's but the Son's; nor that of the Son in which he is equal to the Father, but that in which he is less than the Father; so that in the judgment he may be conspicuous both to the good and to the wicked.

For a little later he says: amen I say to you, that he who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and will not come into judgment, but will pass from death to life. This eternal life is that vision which does not pertain to the wicked.

Then it follows: amen, amen I say to you, that the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. And this is proper to the pious, who so hear of his incarnation that they believe that he is the Son of God; that is, they so receive him as having been made for their sake less than the Father in the form of a servant, that they believe that he is equal to the Father in the form of God.

And therefore it follows, and commending this very thing he says: for as the Father has life in himself, so he gave to the Son also to have life in himself. Then he comes to the vision of his splendor in which he is to come to judgment, which vision will be common both to the ungodly and to the just. For it follows and he says: and he gave him power also to execute judgment, because he is the Son of man.

I think nothing is more manifest. For because he is the Son of God he is equal to the Father, he does not receive this power of executing judgment, but has it with the Father in secret; but he receives it so that the good and the wicked may see him judging, because he is the Son of man. For the vision of the Son of man will be granted even to the wicked; but the vision of the form of God only to the pure in heart, for they shall see God; that is, to the pious alone, to whose love he promises this very thing, that he will show himself to them.

And therefore see what follows: do not marvel at this, (See John 5:28) he says. What forbids us to marvel, except that at which everyone marvels who does not understand—so that he should say that the Father gave him power and to execute judgment, because he is the Son of man, when rather it would as it were be expected that he should say, because he is the Son of God?

But because the wicked cannot see the Son of God according to that by which he is equal to the Father in the form of God; and yet it is necessary that, as the judge of the living and the dead, when they are judged before him, both the just and the wicked see him. Do not, he says, marvel at this, for the hour is coming in which all who are in the tombs will hear his voice; and those who have done good will come forth to the resurrection of life; but those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment.

For this, then, it was necessary that he should receive that power, because he is the Son of man, so that all who rise might see him in the form in which he can be seen by all, but some to damnation, others to eternal life. (See Dan 12:2; Matt 25:46; John 5:29) But what is eternal life except that vision which is not granted to the ungodly? That they may know you, he says, the one true God, and him whom you have sent, Jesus Christ. How will they also know Jesus Christ himself, except as the one true God, who will show himself to them, not as he will show himself even to those to be punished in the form of the Son of man?

13. 31. According to that vision he is good, according to which vision God appears to the pure in heart; for, how good is the God of Israel to the upright in heart! But when the wicked see the judge, he will not seem good to them; for they will not rejoice in him with their heart, but then all the tribes of the earth will mourn for themselves, in the number, that is, of all the wicked and unbelievers. On account of this, to that man too who had called him a good teacher, when he asked of him counsel for attaining eternal life, he answered: why do you ask me about the good? No one is good but God alone. Although in another place the Lord himself calls even a man good: the good man, he says, out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things; and the evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil things.

But because that man was seeking eternal life, and eternal life is in that contemplation in which God is seen not unto punishment but unto everlasting joy; and he did not understand with whom he was speaking, since he reckoned him to be only the Son of man: why do you ask me, he says, about the good? That is, "this form which you see, why do you ask about the good, and call me, according to what you see, a good teacher? This is the form of the Son of man, this is the form that was assumed, this form will appear in the judgment, not only to the just but also to the ungodly; and the vision of this form will not be for good to those who act wickedly. But there is the vision of my form, in which, when I was in it, I did not count it robbery to be equal to God, but, that I might take this form, I emptied myself."

That one God, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, therefore, will not appear except unto the joy which will not be taken from the just; for which future joy he sighs who says, one thing I have asked of the Lord, this will I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, that I may contemplate the delight of the Lord; the one God, therefore, is himself the only good, in this respect, that no one sees him unto grief and mourning, but only unto salvation and true gladness. "If you understand me according to that form, I am good; but if according to this alone, why do you ask me about the good, if you will be among those who will look on him whom they have pierced; and that very vision will be an evil for them, because it will be penal."

That the Lord said, why do you ask me about the good? No one is good but God alone, from this consideration, is probable by the proofs I have recalled: namely, that that vision of God by which we shall contemplate the unchangeable substance of God, invisible to human eyes, which is promised to the saints alone, which the apostle Paul calls face to face; and of which the apostle John says, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is; and of which it is said, one thing I have asked of the Lord, that I may contemplate the delight of the Lord; and of which the Lord himself says, and I will love him, and will show myself to him; and for the sake of which alone we cleanse our hearts by faith, that we may be blessed pure in heart, for they shall see God; and whatever other things have been said of this vision, which anyone finds most abundantly scattered through all the Scriptures who bends the eye of love to seeking it; this alone is our supreme good, for the obtaining of which we are commanded to do whatever we rightly do.

But that vision of the Son of man which was foretold, when all the nations will be gathered before him, and they will say to him, Lord, when did we see you hungering and thirsting? and the rest, will be neither a good for the ungodly who will be sent into eternal fire, nor the supreme good for the just. For he still calls them to the kingdom, which has been prepared for them from the beginning of the world. For as he will say to those, go into eternal fire; so to these, come, blessed of my Father, possess the kingdom prepared for you. And as those will go into eternal burning, so the just into eternal life.

But what is eternal life, except, that they may know you, he says, the one true God, and him whom you have sent, Jesus Christ? But now in that splendor of which he says to the Father, which I had with you before the world was made. For then he will deliver the kingdom to God and the Father, that the good servant may enter into the joy of his lord, and may hide those whom God possesses in the hiding of his countenance from the disturbance of men—of those, that is, who will then be disturbed when they hear that sentence; at which evil hearing the just man will not fear, if only he is protected in the tabernacle, that is, in the right faith of the Catholic Church, from the contradiction of tongues, that is, from the slanders of heretics.

But if there is another understanding of the words of the Lord by which he says, why do you ask me about the good? No one is good but God alone; (See Luke 18:19; Mark 10:18) provided, however, that it not be believed on this account that the substance of the Father is of greater goodness than that of the Son, according to which he is the Word through whom all things were made, and provided it does not recoil from sound doctrine, let us use it without anxiety—not one only, but as many as can be found. For heretics are convicted the more strongly, the more exits lie open for avoiding their snares.

But let us seek the things that are still to be considered now from another beginning.

1. 1. When men seek God, and bend their mind toward the understanding of the Trinity according to the capacity of human weakness, having experienced the laborious difficulties—whether in the very edge of the mind striving to behold the unapproachable light, or in the very manifold and many-sided speech of the Sacred Letters, where it seems to me that nothing happens but that Adam PL: animam, "the soul." is worn down, so that the glorified grace of Christ may shine clear PL: dulcescat, "let his grace soothe it."—when, all ambiguity discussed away, they have arrived at something certain, they ought most readily to pardon those who err in the investigation of so great a secret.

But there are two things that in the error of men are most difficult to tolerate: presumption, before the truth is clear; and, when it has already become clear, the defense of the presumed falsehood. (See Rom 1:18–25) From which two vices, exceedingly hostile to the finding of truth and to the handling of the divine and holy Books, if God, as I pray and hope, defends and fortifies me with the shield of his good will and the grace of his mercy, I shall not be slow to inquire into the substance of God, whether through his Scripture or through his creation.

Both of which are set before us to be beheld for this end: that he himself be sought, that he himself be loved, who both inspired the one and created the other. (See 2 Tim 3:16)

Nor will I be fearful in bringing forth my opinion, in which I would rather be inspected by the upright than fear to be bitten by the perverse. (See Sir 22:22–23; 34:16; Mic 3:5) For the most beautiful and most modest love gladly accepts the dove's eye; but the dog's tooth either the most cautious humility avoids, or the most solid truth blunts.

And I would rather be reproved by anyone than be praised either by one who errs or by one who flatters. For no reprover is to be feared by a lover of truth. For either an enemy will reprove, or a friend. If, then, an enemy insults, he must be borne; but if a friend errs, he must be taught; if he teaches, he must be heard. But a praiser who errs confirms the error, and one who flatters lures into error. See Cicero, De Re Publica 4, fragments 10 & 12; De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum 5.22.61; Augustine, The Lord's Sermon on the Mount 2.1.1. The just man, therefore, will correct me in mercy, and will reprove me; but let not the oil of the sinner anoint my head.

1. 2. Wherefore, although we hold most firmly, as a canonical rule disseminated through the Scriptures and demonstrated by the learned Catholic expounders of those same Scriptures, how the Son of God is to be understood as both equal to the Father according to the form of God in which he is, and less than the Father according to the form of a servant which he took; in which form he was found less not only than the Father, but even than the Holy Spirit, and not only this, but even than himself—not than himself who was, but than himself who is; because, having taken the form of a servant, he did not lose the form of God, as the testimonies of the Scriptures which we recalled in the previous book See On the Trinity 1.7.14; 1.8.15; Phil 2:6–7. have taught;

there are nevertheless certain things in the divine utterances so placed that it is ambiguous to which rule they are rather to be referred: whether to that by which we understand the Son to be less in the assumed creature, or to that by which we understand that the Son is not indeed less, but equal to the Father, yet that he is from him, God of God, light of light. For we say that the Son is God of God; but the Father, God only; not, "of God." Whence it is manifest that the Son has another from whom he is, and to whom he is Son; but the Father does not have a Son from whom he is, but only one to whom he is Father. For every son is from a father what he is, and is son to a father; but no father is from a son what he is, but is father to a son.

1. 3. Some things, therefore, are so placed in the Scriptures concerning the Father and the Son as to indicate the unity and equality of substance, as it is, I and the Father are one; and, though he was in the form of God, he did not count it robbery to be equal to God; and whatever things are such.

But some are so placed as to show the Son to be less on account of the form of a servant, that is, on account of the assumed creature of changeable and human substance, as is that which he says, for the Father is greater than I, and, the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son. For a little later he consequently says, and he gave him power also to execute judgment, because he is the Son of man.

But some, further, are so placed that the Son is then shown neither less nor equal, but only that he is from the Father is intimated, as is that, as the Father has life in himself, so he gave to the Son to have life in himself; and that, for the Son can do nothing of himself, except what he sees the Father doing. But if we take this to have been said because the Son is less in the form assumed from the creature, the consequence will be that the Father first walked upon the waters, or opened the eyes of some other man blind from birth with spittle and clay, and the rest that the Son, appearing in the flesh among men, did, (See Matt 14:25–26; Mark 6:48; John 9:6–7) so that he could do these things who said that the Son could not do anything of himself, except what he sees the Father doing: (See John 5:19) but who, even though delirious, would think so?

It remains, therefore, that these things were said for this reason: that the life of the Son is unchangeable, like the Father's, and yet is from the Father; and the working of the Father and of the Son is inseparable, but yet that the Son so works comes from him from whom he himself is, that is, from the Father; and the Son so sees the Father that, by the very fact by which he sees him, he is the Son. (See John 6:46)

For to be from the Father, that is, to be born of the Father, is for him no other thing than to see the Father; nor is it another thing to see him working than to work along with him; but therefore not of himself, because he is not from himself. And therefore the things that he sees the Father doing, these same things the Son also does likewise, because he is from the Father.

For neither does he do other things likewise, as a painter paints other panels in the way he saw others painted by another; nor the same things unlike, as the body forms the same letters that the mind thought; but whatever, he says, the Father does, these same things the Son also does likewise. And he said both, these same things, and, likewise; and on this account the working is inseparable and equal for the Father and the Son, but it is from the Father for the Son. Therefore the Son cannot do anything of himself, except what he sees the Father doing.

From this rule, therefore, by which the Scriptures so speak as to wish to show, not the one less than the other, but only (The Arians, chiefly, but also "economic" theologians like Tertullian and Novatian) who is from whom, some have conceived the sense as though the Son were said to be less.

But certain of our more unlearned brethren, and those least trained in these matters, while they try to take these things according to the form of a servant, (See Phil 2:7) and the right understanding does not follow them, are disturbed.

Lest this happen, this rule must be held, by which the Son is not less, but it is intimated that he is from the Father: by which words not his inequality, but his birth, is shown. See Hilary, On the Trinity 9.54–56.

2. 4. There are, then, certain things in the Holy Books, as I had begun to say, so placed that it is ambiguous to what they are to be referred: whether to that by which the Son is less on account of the assumed creature; or to that by which, though he is equal, yet it is indicated that he is from the Father. And it indeed seems to me that, if it is ambiguous in such a way that it cannot be explained and distinguished, it can be understood by either rule without danger, as is that which he says, my teaching is not mine, but his who sent me. For it can be taken from the form of a servant, as we have already treated in the previous book; and from the form of God, in which he is so equal to the Father that yet he is from the Father. See On the Trinity 1.27. For in the form of God, just as the Son is not one thing and his life another, but the Son is that very life; so the Son is not one thing and his teaching another, but the Son is that very teaching. (See John 5:26; 11:25; 14:6; 1 John 5:11–20) And on this account, as that which was said, he gave to the Son life, is understood as no other than, "he begot the Son who is life"; so too when it is said, "he gave to the Son teaching," it is rightly understood, "he begot the Son who is teaching"; so that what was said, my teaching is not mine, but his who sent me, may be understood as if it were said, "I am not from myself, but from him who sent me."

3. 5. For of the Holy Spirit too, of whom it was not said, he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, the Lord himself nevertheless says: but when that Spirit of truth comes, he will teach you all truth. For he will not speak of himself, but whatever he hears he will speak, and the things that are to come he will announce to you. He will glorify me; for he will receive of mine, and will announce it to you. After these words, unless he had immediately gone on to say, all things whatever the Father has are mine; therefore I said that he will receive of mine, and will announce it to you, it would perhaps be believed that the Holy Spirit was thus born of Christ, just as the Son of the Father.

For of himself he had said, my teaching is not mine, but his who sent me; but of the Holy Spirit, for he will not speak of himself, but whatever he hears he will speak; and, for he will receive of mine, and will announce it to you. But because he gave the reason why he said, he will receive of mine—for he says, all things whatever the Father has are mine; therefore I said that he will receive of mine—it remains that the Holy Spirit too is understood to have from the Father, just as the Son also.

How, except according to that which we said above: (Possibly referring to 1.18–19, but a different point was being made there) but when the Paraclete comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness of me? By proceeding, therefore, from the Father, he is said not to speak of himself; and just as it does not follow from this that the Son is less because he said, the Son cannot do anything of himself, except what he sees the Father doing (for he did not say this from the form of a servant, but from the form of God, as we have already shown; and these words do not indicate that he is less, but that he is from the Father); so it is not thereby brought about that the Holy Spirit is less because it was said of him, for he will not speak of himself, but whatever he hears, he will speak; for this was said according to that by which he proceeds from the Father.

But since both the Son is from the Father, and the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father, why they are not both called Sons, nor both begotten, but that one is the only-begotten Son, while this one, the Holy Spirit, is neither Son nor begotten—because if begotten, then certainly Son—we shall discuss in another place, if God grants it, and as far as he grants.

4. 6. But here let those wake up, if they can, who thought even this favored them, as though to demonstrate that the Father is greater than the Son, because the Son said, Father, glorify me. Behold, the Holy Spirit too glorifies him; is he then also greater than he? But further, if the Holy Spirit glorifies the Son for this reason, that he will receive of the Son's, and therefore receives of his because all that the Father has are his; it is manifest that when the Holy Spirit glorifies the Son, the Father glorifies the Son.

Whence it is recognized that all that the Father has are not only the Son's, but also the Holy Spirit's, because the Holy Spirit is able to glorify the Son, whom the Father glorifies. But if the one who glorifies is greater than the one whom he glorifies, let them allow those to be equal who glorify one another. But it is written that the Son too glorifies the Father: I have glorified you, he says, upon the earth. Of course, let them beware lest the Holy Spirit be thought greater than both, because he glorifies the Son whom the Father glorifies, The text indeed reads quem glorificat Pater, "whom the Father glorifies." The translator amends this to qui glorificat Patrem for the sense. while it is written that he himself is glorified neither by the Father nor by the Son. (See John 12:23; 17:5–24)

5. 7. But, convicted in these things, they turn to this, to say, "He who sends is greater than he who is sent"; accordingly the Father is greater than the Son, because the Son continually recalls that he was sent by the Father; he is greater than the Holy Spirit too, because Jesus said of him, whom the Father will send in my name. And the Holy Spirit is less than both; because both the Father sends him, as we have recalled, and the Son, when he says, but if I go away, I will send him to you.

In which question I first ask, from where and to where the Son was sent. I, he says, came forth from the Father, and have come into this world. To come forth from the Father, then, and to come into this world, this is to be sent. What then is it that the same Evangelist says of him, he was in this world, and the world was made through him, and the world did not know him? Then he adds, he came into his own. He was assuredly sent there, to where he came: but if he was sent into this world, because he came forth from the Father, and came into this world, and was in this world; he was therefore sent there where he was.

For that too which is written in the prophet, that God says, I fill heaven and earth; if it was said of the Son (for some This was almost the universal assumption from Justin right down to Augustine's own day. He himself had his doubts about it. want him to be understood as having spoken either to the Prophets or in the Prophets), to where was he sent, except there where he was? For he was everywhere who says, I fill heaven and earth.

But if it was said of the Father, where could he be without his Word and without his Wisdom, which reaches mightily from end to end, and orders all things sweetly? But neither could he be anywhere without his Spirit. And so if God is everywhere, his Spirit too is everywhere. Therefore the Holy Spirit too was sent there where he was.

For he too who finds no place to go from the face of God, and says, if I ascend into heaven, you are there; if I descend into hell, you are present, wishing God to be understood as present everywhere, first named his Spirit. For he says thus: where shall I go from your Spirit? And where shall I flee from your face?

5. 8. Wherefore, if both the Son and the Holy Spirit are sent there where they were, we must inquire how this sending is to be understood, whether of the Son or of the Holy Spirit. For the Father alone is nowhere read to have been sent. And of the Son the Apostle writes thus: but when the fullness of time came, God sent his Son, made of a woman, made under the Law, that he might redeem those who were under the Law. He sent, he says, his Son made of a woman. By which name what Catholic does not know that he wished to signify, not the privation of virginity, but the difference of sex, in the Hebrew manner of speaking? In ordinary Latin usage, mulier forms a pair by contrast with virgo, somewhat like English "wife" and "maid." Since, then, he says, God sent his Son made of a woman, he sufficiently shows that the Son was sent by that very thing by which he was made of a woman. In that, therefore, he was born of God, he was in this world; but in that he was born of Mary, he came sent into this world. (See John 3:6; 16:28; 1 John 5:4)

Accordingly, he could not be sent by the Father without the Holy Spirit; not only because the Father is understood, when he sent him—that is, made him of a woman—certainly not to have done so without his Spirit; but also because it is said most manifestly and most plainly in the Gospel to the Virgin Mary, when she asked of the angel, how shall this be? The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and Matthew says, she was found to be with child of the Holy Spirit. Although in the prophet Isaiah too, Christ himself is understood to speak of his future coming, and now the Lord has sent me, and his Spirit.

5. 9. Perhaps someone will press us to say that the Son was sent even by himself; because that conception and bringing forth by Mary is the working of the Trinity, by whose creating all things are created. "And how, then," he says, "did the Father send him, if he sent himself?" To whom I first answer, asking him to say, if he can, how the Father sanctified him, if he sanctified himself? For the same Lord says both: whom the Father, he says, sanctified and sent into this world, you say, "he blasphemes", PL: blasphemas, "you are blaspheming." because I said, I am the Son of God. But in another place he says: and for them I sanctify myself.

Likewise I ask how the Father delivered him up, if he delivered himself up? For the apostle Paul says both: who did not spare his own Son, he says, but delivered him up for us all. But elsewhere he says of the Savior himself: who loved me, and delivered himself up for me.

I believe he will answer, if he is rightly wise, that the will of the Father and of the Son is one, and the working inseparable. So, then, let him understand that incarnation and birth from the Virgin, in which the Son is understood to have been sent, to have been done inseparably by one and the same working of the Father and of the Son, certainly not with the Holy Spirit separated from it, of whom it is plainly said, she was found to be with child of the Holy Spirit.

For even if we inquire thus, what we say will perhaps appear more clearly: how did God send his Son? Did he command him to come, and he, obeying the one commanding, came; or did he ask him, or did he merely admonish him?

But whichever of these it be, it was certainly done by a word, and the Word of God is the Son of God himself. Wherefore, when the Father sent him by a word, it was done by the Father and his Word that he should be sent. Therefore the same Son was sent by the Father and the Son, because the Son himself is the Word of the Father.

For who would clothe himself in so sacrilegious an opinion as to think that a temporal word was made by the Father, so that the eternal Son might be sent and appear in the flesh in time? But certainly in the Word of God itself, which was in the beginning with God, and was God, (See John 1:1) that is, in the very Wisdom of God, the time at which it behooved her to appear in the flesh (See 1 Cor 1:24; 1 John 4:2; Rom 8:3) was without time. And so, since without any beginning of time the Word was in the beginning, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; without any time, the time at which the Word should become flesh, and dwell among us was in the Word itself.

When this fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, made of a woman, that is, made in time, so that the incarnate Word might appear to men; the time at which it should be done was, in the Word itself, without time. For the order of times is, in the eternal Wisdom of God, (See Sir 1:3; Eccl 3:1–8) without time.

Since, then, this was done by the Father and the Son, that the Son should appear in the flesh, he who appeared in that flesh is fittingly said to have been sent; but he who did not appear in it, to have sent. For the things that are done outwardly before bodily eyes arise from the inner apparatus of the spiritual nature, and on this account are fittingly said to be "sent." Moreover, that form of the man assumed is the person of the Son, not also of the Father.

Wherefore the invisible Father, together with the Son invisible along with him, by making the same Son visible, is said to have sent him; (See Heb 11:3; Isa 48:16; John 3:17; 5:23–24; 7:16; 10:36; 16:28) who, if he were made visible in such a way that he ceased to be invisible with the Father—that is, if the invisible substance of the Word were changed and, passing over, turned into a visible creature See Cicero, De Oratore 3.45.177; De Partitionibus Oratoriae 7.23.—the Son would be understood to have been sent by the Father in such a way that he would be found only sent, and not also sending together with the Father.

But since the form of a servant was so taken that the form of God remained unchangeable, it is manifest that what appeared in the Son was done by the Father and the Son not appearing—that is, that by the invisible Father, with the invisible Son, the same Son was sent visible. Why, then, does he say, and I did not come of myself? This was now said according to the form of a servant, according to which it was said, I judge no one.

5. 10. If, then, he is said to be sent insofar as he appeared outwardly in a corporeal creature, who inwardly in his spiritual nature is always hidden from mortal eyes, it is now easy to understand of the Holy Spirit also why he too is said to be sent. For a certain appearance of a creature was made in time, in which the Holy Spirit might be visibly shown, whether when he descended in a corporeal appearance like a dove upon the Lord himself, or when, ten days having passed after his ascension, on the day of Pentecost there suddenly came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and there appeared to them divided tongues as of fire, which also settled upon each one of them. This operation, visibly expressed and offered to mortal eyes, was called the sending of the Holy Spirit; not that his very substance should appear, by which he too is invisible and unchangeable, like the Father and the Son; but that, the hearts of men being moved by outward sights, they might be turned from the temporal manifestation of him who comes to the hidden eternity of him who is always present.

6. 11. But for this reason it is nowhere written that God the Father is greater than the Holy Spirit, or that the Holy Spirit is less than God the Father: because the creature in which the Holy Spirit appeared was not so assumed as the Son of man was assumed, in which form the person of the Word of God itself was presented; not that he should have the Word of God, like other holy wise men, but above his fellows; (See Heb 1:9) not, indeed, because he had more of the Word, so that he was wiser than the rest by a more excellent wisdom, but because he was the Word itself.

For the Word in the flesh is one thing, the Word flesh another; that is, the Word in a man is one thing, the Word a man another. For flesh was put for "man" in that which he says, the Word was made flesh; just as also that, and all flesh shall see PL adds pariter, "together." the salvation of God. For not without soul or without mind; but all flesh thus, as if it were said, "all men."

The creature in which the Holy Spirit appeared, therefore, was not so assumed as that flesh and that human form was assumed from the Virgin Mary. For the Spirit did not beatify the dove, or that wind, or that fire, and join it to himself and to his person in unity and condition forever; nor indeed is the nature of the Holy Spirit changeable and convertible, so that these things were not made out of a creature, but he himself was changeably turned into this and that, like water into ice. But these things appeared, as they ought fittingly to appear, the creature serving the Creator, and, at his nod (See Rom 1:25; Job 26:11)—of him who unchangeably remains in himself—changed and converted to signify and demonstrate him, as it behooved him to be signified and demonstrated to mortals. See Cicero, De Partitionibus Oratoriae 7.23; De Oratore 3.45.177.

Accordingly, although that dove was called the Spirit, and although, when it was said of that fire, there appeared to them, he says, divided tongues as of fire, which also settled upon each one of them, and they began to speak in tongues, as the Spirit gave them to utter, so that he might show the Spirit demonstrated through that fire, as through the dove; yet we cannot in this way say that the Holy Spirit is both God and a dove, or both God and fire, as we say that the Son is both God and man; nor as we say that the Son is the Lamb of God, not only with John the Baptist saying, Behold the Lamb of God, but also with John the Evangelist seeing the Lamb slain in the Apocalypse. (See Rev 5:6)

For that prophetic vision was not presented to bodily eyes through bodily forms, but in the spirit through spiritual images of bodies. But that dove and fire they saw with their eyes, (See Matt 3:16; Mark 1:10; Luke 3:22; John 1:32–33) whoever saw them. Although concerning the fire it can be disputed whether it was seen with the eyes or in the spirit, on account of the words being placed thus. For he does not say, "they saw divided tongues as of fire"; but, there appeared to them. Now we are not accustomed to say, it appeared to me, under the same meaning as we say, I saw. And in those spiritual sights of bodily images it is customary to say both, "it appeared to me," and, I saw: but in those that are demonstrated to the eyes through an expressed bodily appearance, it is not customary to say, "it appeared to me," but, I saw. Of that fire, therefore, there can be a question how it was seen; whether inwardly in the spirit as if outwardly, or truly outwardly before the eyes of the flesh. But of that dove which was said to have descended in a corporeal appearance, no one ever doubted that it was seen with the eyes.

Nor, as we say that the Son is a rock (for it is written, and the rock was Christ), can we in that way say that the Spirit is a dove or fire. For that rock already existed in creation, and by the mode of action was named with the name of Christ, whom it signified; just as that stone which Jacob set at his head, and even with an anointing, he took up to signify the Lord; (See Gen 28:18–22) just as Isaac was Christ, when he carried the wood for his own immolation. (See Gen 22:6) To these, already existing, a certain significative action was added; but they did not, like that dove and fire, suddenly come into being only to signify these things. These things seem to me rather like that flame which appeared in the bush to Moses, (See Exod 3:2) and that pillar which the people followed in the desert, (See Exod 13:21–22; 14:19–24; 16:10–12) and the lightnings and thunders that occurred when the Law was given on the mountain. (See Exod 19:16–19) For the bodily appearance of those things came into being for this, that it might signify something and pass away.

7. 12. On account, therefore, of these bodily forms, which came into being temporally to signify him and, as it behooved, to demonstrate him to human senses, the Holy Spirit too is said to be sent; yet he was not said to be less than the Father, as the Son was on account of the form of a servant; because that form of a servant clung to the unity of the person, but those bodily appearances appeared for a time to demonstrate what was needful, and afterward ceased to be.

Why, then, is the Father too not said to be sent through those bodily appearances—the fire of the bush, (See Exod 3:2) and the pillar of cloud (See Exod 13:21) or of fire, and the lightnings on the mountain, (See Exod 19:16) and any such things that appeared then, since we have learned, with Scripture as witness, that he spoke to the Fathers face to face—if he himself was demonstrated through those modes and forms of creation, bodily expressed and presented to human sight?

But if the Son was demonstrated through them, why is he said to be sent so long afterward, when he was made of a woman, as the Apostle says, but when the fullness of time came, God sent his Son made of a woman; since he was sent even before, when he appeared to the Fathers through those changeable forms of creation?

Or if he could not rightly be said to be sent except when the Word was made flesh; why is the Holy Spirit said to be sent, of whom no such incorporation was made?

But if through those visible things that are commended in the Law and the Prophets, neither the Father nor the Son, but the Holy Spirit was shown; why is even he now said to be sent, since he was sent by those modes even before?

7. 13. In the perplexity of this question, with the Lord's help, it must first be inquired whether it was the Father, or the Son, or the Holy Spirit; or sometimes the Father, sometimes the Son, sometimes the Holy Spirit; or without any distinction of persons, as the one and only God is spoken of, (See John 17:3) that is, the Trinity itself, that appeared to the Fathers through those forms of creation. Then, whichever of these is found or seen, whether the creature was formed for this work alone, in which God, as he then judged it behooved, might be shown to human sight; or whether the angels, who already existed, were so sent that they spoke in the person of God, assuming a bodily appearance from corporeal creation, for the use of their ministry, as each was needful; or whether they changed and turned their own body, to which they are not subjected but which they rule as subjected, into the appearances they wished, accommodated and fitted to their actions, See Cicero, De Oratore 3.45.177; De Partitionibus Oratoriae 7.23. according to the power attributed to them by the Creator. Finally, we shall see that which we had set out to inquire: whether the Son and the Holy Spirit were sent even before; and, if they were sent, what difference there is between that sending and the one we read of in the Gospel; (See Isa 48:16; Gal 4:4; John 10:36; 14:26; 15:26; 16:7) or whether none of them was sent except when either the Son was made of the Virgin Mary, or the Holy Spirit appeared in a visible form, whether in a dove or in tongues of fire. (See Acts 2:3)

8. 14. Let us, then, pass over those who, too carnally, thought the nature of the Word of God and the Wisdom, which remaining in herself renews all things, whom we call the only Son of God, to be not only changeable but even visible. For these brought a very gross heart (See Isa 6:9–10; Matt 13:15; Acts 28:26–27) to inquiring into divine things, more boldly than reverently. For the soul, since it is a spiritual substance, and since it too was made—nor could it be made by another except by him through whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made—although it is changeable, is nevertheless not visible; which they believed of the Word itself and the very Wisdom of God, through whom the soul was made; whereas she is not only invisible, which the soul also is, but also unchangeable, which the soul is not. For this very unchangeableness of hers was recalled in saying, remaining in herself she renews all things.

And these, indeed, trying as it were to prop up the ruin of their error with testimonies of the divine Scriptures, bring forward a sentence of the apostle Paul; and what was said of the one and only God, in whom the Trinity itself is understood, they take as said only of the Father, and not also of the Son and of the Holy Spirit: now to the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever; and that other passage, the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings, and Lord of lords; who alone has immortality, and dwells in unapproachable light; whom no man has seen, nor can see. How these are to be understood, I think we have already sufficiently discussed. See On the Trinity 1.10.11.

9. 15. But those who want these things to be taken not of the Son nor of the Holy Spirit, but only of the Father, say that the Son is visible, not through the flesh assumed from the Virgin, but even before, through himself. "For he himself," they say, "appeared to the eyes of the Fathers." To whom if you say, "how, then, is the Son visible through himself, so too mortal through himself, so that it may stand for you what you want to be understood only of the Father, that which was said, who alone has immortality?

For if the Son is mortal on account of the flesh assumed, allow that on account of this he is also visible": they answer that they do not call the Son mortal on account of this; but, just as he was visible before, so also mortal before.

For if they say that the Son is mortal on account of the flesh, then the Father without the Son no longer alone has immortality; because his Word too, through whom all things were made, has immortality. For he did not, because he assumed mortal flesh, therefore lose his immortality; since not even to the human soul could it happen that it should die with the body, the Lord himself saying, do not fear those who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul.

Or did the Holy Spirit too assume flesh? Concerning whom, certainly, they will without doubt be troubled, if the Son is mortal on account of the flesh, as to how they may take it that the Father alone, without the Son and without the Holy Spirit, has immortality; since the Holy Spirit did not assume flesh; who, if he does not have immortality, then the Son is not mortal on account of the flesh; but if the Holy Spirit has immortality, then it was not said of the Father alone, that PL: qui. The PL would read: "then the text 'who alone has immortality' is not said of the Father alone." he alone has immortality.

Wherefore they think they can prove the Son to be mortal through himself even before the incarnation, because changeableness itself is not inappropriately called mortality, according to which the soul too is said to die; not because it is changed and turned into a body or into some other substance, Cicero, De Oratore 3.45.177; De Partitionibus Oratoriae 7.23. but in its very own substance whatever now is in another mode than it was, according to that by which it ceased to be what it was, is found to be mortal.

"Since, then," they say, "before the Son of God was born of the Virgin Mary, he himself appeared to our Fathers, not in one and the same appearance, but in manifold forms, in one way and another, he is both visible through himself, because, the flesh not yet assumed, his substance was conspicuous to mortal eyes; and mortal, insofar as he is changeable. So too the Holy Spirit, who appeared at one time as a dove, at another as fire." (See Matt 3:16; Mark 1:10; Luke 3:22; John 1:32) "Whence," they say, "it suits not the Trinity, but singularly and properly the Father alone, that which was said, to the immortal, invisible, the only God; and, who alone has immortality, and dwells in unapproachable light; whom no man has seen, nor can see."

9. 16. Passing over, then, those who could not even know the invisible substance of the soul—whence it was far removed from them to know that the substance of the one and only God, that is, of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, remains not only invisible but also unchangeable, and on this account consists in true and sincere immortality;

let us, who say that God—neither the Father, nor the Son, nor the Holy Spirit—has never appeared to bodily eyes except through a corporeal creature subjected to his power, in Catholic peace and with peaceful zeal seek out, prepared to be corrected if we are reproved in a brotherly and right way; prepared even if we are bitten by an enemy who nevertheless speaks the truth;

whether God appeared indiscriminately to our Fathers before Christ came in the flesh, or some one person of the Trinity, or each singly as it were by turns.

10. 17. And first, in that which is written in Genesis, that God spoke with the man whom he had fashioned from the clay, (See Gen 3:8; 2:7; Tob 8:8) if, apart from the figurative signification—so that the truth of the deed may be held even to the letter—we treat these things, God seems then to have spoken with the man in the appearance of a man. Not indeed is this expressly placed in the book, but the circumstance of the reading echoes it, especially in that it is written that Adam heard the voice of God walking in paradise toward evening, and hid himself in the midst of the tree which was in paradise, and to God saying, Adam, where are you? answered, I heard your voice, and I hid myself from your face, because I am naked. For how such a walking and conversing of God could be understood to the letter, except in human appearance, I do not see. For it cannot be said that only a voice was made where God was said to have walked, or that he who was walking was not visible in the place, since Adam too says that he hid himself from the face of God. Who, then, was he? Whether the Father, or the Son, or the Holy Spirit? Or was God altogether, the Trinity itself indiscriminately, speaking to the man in the form of a man?

The very context of Scripture is nowhere felt to pass from person to person; but he seems to speak to the first man who said, let there be light, and, let there be a firmament, and the rest through those several days; whom we are accustomed to take as God the Father, saying that whatever he wished to make should be made. For he made all things through his Word, which Word we know, according to the right rule of faith, to be his only Son.

If, then, God the Father spoke to the first man, and he himself walked in paradise toward evening, and the sinner had hidden himself from his face in the midst of the tree of paradise; why should he not now be understood to have appeared to Abraham and to Moses, and to whom he would, as he would, through a changeable and visible creature subjected to himself, while he himself remains in himself and in his substance, by which he is unchangeable and invisible?

But it could be that Scripture passed secretly from person to person, and when it had narrated that the Father said, let there be light, and the rest that he is recalled to have made through the Word, it now indicated that the Son spoke to the first man—not explaining this openly, but intimating it to be understood by those who could.

10. 18. Whoever, then, has the strength by which he can penetrate this secret with the edge of his mind, so that it clearly appears to him either that the Father too can, or that only the Son and the Holy Spirit can, appear to human eyes through a visible creature, let him go on to scrutinize these things, if he can, and even to express them in words and treat of them; the matter, however, so far as concerns this testimony of Scripture, where God spoke with man, is, as I judge, hidden; because even whether Adam was accustomed to see God with bodily eyes does not evidently appear; especially since it is a great question of what kind the eyes were that were opened to them when they tasted the forbidden food; (See Gen 3:5–7) for these, before they tasted, were closed.

This much only I would not rashly say: if that Scripture intimates paradise to be a certain bodily place, that God could in no way walk there except in some bodily form. For it can be said that only voices were made which the man might hear, while he saw no form; nor, because it is written, Adam hid himself from the face of God, does it immediately follow that he was accustomed to see his face. For what if he himself indeed could not see, but feared to be seen by him whose voice he had heard, and whose presence as he walked he had felt? For Cain too said to God, I will hide myself from your face; nor are we therefore compelled to confess that he was accustomed to discern the face of God with bodily eyes, in any visible form, although he had heard the voice of one questioning him about his crime and speaking with him. (See Gen 4:9)

But of what kind of speech God then sounded to the outer ears of men, especially speaking to the first man, is both difficult to find out and not what we have undertaken in this discourse. Nevertheless, if only voices and sounds were made, by which a certain sensible presence of God was offered to those first men, why I should not understand the person of God the Father there, I do not know; since his person is shown both in that voice, when Jesus shining before the three disciples on the mountain (See Mark 9:1–2; Luke 9:28; Matt 17:1–5) appeared; and in that, when upon the baptized one a dove descended; (See Luke 3:22) and in that where he cried to the Father about his glorification, and it was answered him, and I have glorified it, and will glorify it again. (See John 12:28) Not that the voice could be made without the work of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (for the Trinity works inseparably); but because that voice was made which would show the person of the Father alone; just as the Trinity wrought that human form from the Virgin Mary, but it is the person of the Son alone; for the invisible Trinity wrought the visible person of the Son alone.

Nor does anything forbid us to understand those voices made to Adam as not only made by the Trinity, but also to take them as demonstrating the person of the same Trinity. For there we are compelled to take it as the Father's alone, where it was said, this is my beloved Son. (See Mark 1:11; 9:6; Luke 3:22; 9:35) For Jesus can be neither believed nor understood to be also the son of the Holy Spirit, or even his own Son.

And where it sounded, and I have glorified it, and will glorify it again, we confess the person of the Father alone. For it is a response to that voice of the Lord by which he had said, Father, glorify your Son, which he could not say except to God the Father only, not also to the Holy Spirit, whose son he is not. PL: erat, "was." But here, where it is written, and the Lord God said to Adam, why the Trinity itself should not be understood, nothing can be said.

10. 19. Likewise also that which is written, and the Lord said to Abraham: "go out from your land, and from your kindred, and from your father's house", it is not open whether only a voice was made to the ears of Abraham, or whether something also appeared to his eyes. But a little later it is said somewhat more openly, and the Lord was seen by Abraham, and said to him: "to your seed I will give this land". But neither is it there expressed in what appearance the Lord was seen by him; or whether the Father, or the Son, or the Holy Spirit was seen by him.

Unless perhaps they think the Son was seen by Abraham for this reason, that it is not written, "God was seen by him"; but, the Lord was seen by him. For the Son seems properly to be called Lord, the Apostle saying, for although there are those who are called gods, whether in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many gods and many lords; yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through him.

But since God the Father too is found in many places called Lord, as is that, the Lord said to me: you are my Son, today I have begotten you; and that, the Lord said to my Lord: "sit at my right hand". (See Heb 1:13)

Since the Holy Spirit too is found called Lord, where the Apostle says, now the Lord is the Spirit; See John 4:24. It is clear that Augustine takes "Spirit" as subject and "Lord" as predicate, though he considers the opposite possibility in the next sentence. and lest anyone should think the Son signified, and therefore "Spirit" said on account of the incorporeal substance, he went on to add, but where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty; and that the Spirit of the Lord is the Holy Spirit, no one would doubt.

Neither here, then, does it evidently appear whether some one person of the Trinity, or God the Trinity himself, of which one God it was said, you shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve, was seen by Abraham. (The appearance to Abraham occurs in Gen 12:7 and Gen 18:1)

But under the oak of Mamre he saw three men, whom, when they had been invited and received in hospitality and were feasting, he served. Yet Scripture thus began to narrate that deed, that it does not say, "three men were seen by him"; but, the Lord was seen by him. And from there, consequently explaining how the Lord was seen by him, it wove in the narration about the three men, whom Abraham invites in the plural number, to receive in hospitality; and afterward addresses singularly as one; and as one promises him a son by Sarah, whom Scripture calls Lord, just as in the beginning of the same narration, the Lord, he says, was seen by Abraham. He invites them, then, and washes their feet, and escorts them as they depart, as though they were men; but he speaks as though with the Lord God, whether when a son is promised him, or when the impending destruction of Sodom is announced to him.

11. 20. This passage of Scripture demands no small nor passing consideration. For if one man had been seen, would not those who say that the Son was visible through his own substance even before he was born of the Virgin cry out that it was he himself? For "of the Father," they say, "it was said, to the invisible, the only God."

And yet I could still ask, how before he assumed flesh was he found in fashion as a man; since his feet were washed, and he feasted on human food? How could this be done, while he was still in the form of God, not counting it robbery to be equal to God? For had he already emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, made in the likeness of men, and found in fashion as a man? Since we know that he did this through the Virgin's childbearing? How, then, before he had done this, did he appear to Abraham as one man? Or was that form not true?

I could ask these things, if one man had appeared to Abraham, and he were believed to be the Son of God. But since three were seen, and none of them was said to be greater than the rest in form, or age, or power; why should we not here take the equality of the Trinity, visibly intimated through a visible creature, and in three persons one and the same substance?

11. 21. For lest anyone should think it thus intimated that one of the three was greater, and that he was to be understood as the Lord, the Son of God, but the other two as his angels—because, although three were seen, Abraham there speaks to one Lord—Holy Scripture, contradicting such future thoughts and opinions, did not fail to meet them, since a little later it says that two angels came to Lot, among whom that just man too, who deserved to be freed from the burning of Sodom, speaks to one Lord. (See Gen 19:29) For Scripture follows thus, saying: but the Lord went away after he ceased speaking to Abraham, and Abraham returned to his place.

12. 21. But the two angels came to Sodom in the evening. Here must be considered more attentively what I set out to show. Abraham was certainly speaking with three, and called him Lord in the singular. "Perhaps," someone says, "he recognized one of the three as the Lord; but the other two, as his angels." What, then, does it mean that Scripture consequently says, but the Lord went away after he ceased speaking to Abraham, and Abraham returned to his place; but the two angels came to Sodom in the evening? Or had perhaps that one departed, who was recognized as the Lord among the three, and sent the two angels who were with him to destroy Sodom? Let us, then, see what follows. There came, it says, two angels to Sodom in the evening. But Lot was sitting at the gate of Sodom. And when Lot had seen them, he rose to meet them, and bowed with his face to the ground, and said: "behold, my lords, turn aside into the house of your servant." Here it is manifest both that there were two angels, and that they were invited in the plural into hospitality, and honorably addressed as lords, although perhaps they were thought to be men.

12. 22. But again it troubles us, that unless they were recognized as angels of God, Lot would not have bowed with his face to the ground. Why, then, are both hospitality and food provided for them, as if they needed such human service?

But whatever lies hidden here, let us now pursue what we have undertaken. Two appear, both are called angels, they are invited in the plural, he speaks with them in the plural as with two, until they go out of Sodom.

Then Scripture follows and says: and it came to pass, after they had led them outside, they said: 'saving, save your soul; do not look back, nor stay in all this region; go to the mountain, and there you will be saved, lest perhaps you be caught.' But Lot said to them: 'I beg, Lord, since your servant has found mercy before you.' What is this, that he said to them, I beg, Lord, if he who was the Lord had already departed, and had sent the angels? Why is it said, I beg, Lord, and not, "I beg, lords"?

Or if he wished to address one of them, why does Scripture say, but Lot said to them: "I beg, Lord, since your servant has found mercy before you"? Or do we here too understand two persons in the plural number, but, when these same two are addressed as one, one Lord God of one substance? But which two persons do we here understand? Of the Father and the Son, or of the Father and the Holy Spirit, or of the Son and the Holy Spirit?

This last, which I said, is perhaps more fitting. For they said that they were sent, which we say of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. For nowhere in the Scriptures do we meet that the Father was sent.

13. 23. But when Moses was sent to lead the people of Israel out of Egypt, it is written that the Lord appeared to him thus: he was pasturing, it says, the sheep of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he drove the sheep into the desert and came to the mountain of God, Horeb. And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire from the bush. And he saw that the fire was burning in the bush, but the bush was not consumed. And Moses said: "I will go, and I will see this sight, which I have seen so great, that the bush is not consumed." When, then, the Lord saw that he came to see, the Lord called to him from the bush, saying: "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob."

And here he was first called the angel of the Lord, then God. Is the angel, then, the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? It can, then, rightly be understood as the Savior himself, of whom the Apostle says: whose are the Fathers, and of whom is Christ according to the flesh, who is over all, God blessed forever. He therefore who is over all, God blessed forever, is not absurdly understood here too to be himself the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.

But why was he first called the angel of the Lord, when he appeared from the bush in a flame of fire? Whether because he was one of the many angels, but by dispensation bore the person of his Lord; or whether something of creation was assumed, which might visibly appear for the present business, and from which voices might be sensibly uttered, by which the presence of the Lord, through a subjected creature, might be exhibited even to the bodily senses of man, as it behooved? For if he was one of the angels, who could easily affirm whether the person of the Son was imposed on him to announce, or of the Holy Spirit, or of God the Father, or of the Trinity itself altogether, which is the one and only God, so that he might say, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?

For we cannot say that the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, is the Son of God, and is not the Father. Or will anyone dare to deny that the Holy Spirit, or the Trinity itself, which we believe and understand to be one God, is the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? For he is not the God of those Fathers who is not God.

Moreover, if not only the Father is God, as all even the heretics concede; but also the Son, which, whether they will or not, they are compelled to confess, the Apostle saying, who is over all, God blessed forever; and the Holy Spirit, the same Apostle saying, glorify God, therefore, in your body; since above he had said, do you not know that your bodies are a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? And these three are one God, as Catholic soundness believes—it does not sufficiently appear which person in the Trinity, and whether any, or that of the Trinity itself, that angel bore, if he was one of the other angels.

But if for the use of the present matter a creature was assumed, which both appeared to human eyes and sounded to their ears, and was called the angel of the Lord, and Lord, and God; here God cannot be understood as the Father, but either the Son or the Holy Spirit. Although I do not recall the Holy Spirit anywhere called an angel, yet it can be understood from his work; for it was said of him, the things that are to come he will announce to you; and certainly "angel" in Greek is interpreted in Latin as "messenger." But of the Lord Jesus Christ we read most evidently in the Prophet, that he was called the angel of great counsel; though both the Holy Spirit and the Son of God are God and Lord of the angels.

14. 24. Likewise in the departure of the children of Israel from Egypt (See Ps 114:1 (113:1); Exod 3:10; 12:41) it is written: but God went before them, by day indeed in a pillar of cloud, and showed them the way; but by night in a pillar of fire; and the pillar of cloud did not fail by day, nor the pillar of fire by night, before the people. Who would here too doubt that through a subjected and corporeal creature, not through his own substance, God appeared to the eyes of mortals? But whether the Father, or the Son, or the Holy Spirit, or the Trinity itself, the one God, likewise does not appear. Nor is this distinguished there, as I judge, where it is written: and the majesty of the Lord appeared in the cloud, and the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: 'I have heard the murmuring of the children of Israel.'

15. 25. And now of the clouds, and voices, and lightnings, and trumpet, and smoke on Mount Sinai, when it was said: but Mount Sinai was all smoking, because God had descended upon it in fire, and the smoke went up as the smoke of a furnace; and all the people were exceedingly confounded in mind; and there came forth the sounds of the trumpet, growing very strong. Moses spoke, and God answered him with a voice.

And a little later, the Law having been given in the ten precepts, it is consequently said: and all the people saw the voices, and the lamps, and the sounds of the trumpet, and the smoking mountain.

And a little later: and all the people, it says, stood afar off; but Moses entered into the mist where God was, and the Lord said to Moses.

What shall I say of this, except that no one is so senseless as to believe that smoke, fire, clouds, and mist, and any such things, are the substance of the Word and Wisdom of God, which is Christ, or of the Holy Spirit? For of God the Father, not even the Arians ever dared to say this.

Therefore, the creature serving the Creator, (See Wis 16:24; Rom 1:25) all those things were made, and presented to human senses by a fitting dispensation. Unless perhaps, because it was said, but Moses entered into the mist where God was, carnal thought will reckon this: that the mist indeed was seen by the people, but that within the mist Moses saw with carnal eyes the Son of God, whom the delirious heretics want to have been seen in his own substance.

Let Moses indeed have seen him with carnal eyes—if with carnal eyes there can be seen, not now the Wisdom of God which is Christ, but even the wisdom of any man whatever and of whatever kind he be; or because it is written of the elders of Israel, that they saw the place where the God of Israel had stood, and that under his feet was as it were a work of sapphire stone, and as the appearance of the firmament of heaven, must we therefore believe that the Word and Wisdom of God stood through his own substance in the space of an earthly place—she who reaches mightily from end to end, and orders all things sweetly; and that the Word of God, through whom all things were made, is so changeable that now it contracts itself, now stretches out? May the Lord cleanse the hearts of his faithful from such thoughts.

But through a subjected creature, as we have often said, all these visible and sensible things are exhibited, to signify the invisible and intelligible God, not only the Father, but also the Son and the Holy Spirit, from whom are all things, through whom are all things, in whom are all things; (See Heb 2:10) although the invisible things of God, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood through the things that are made, his eternal power also and divinity.

15. 26. But as concerns what we have now undertaken, neither on Mount Sinai do I see how it appears, through all those things that were terribly shown to the senses of mortals, whether God the Trinity, or the Father, or the Son, or the Holy Spirit was speaking properly. Nevertheless, if it is permitted here, without the rashness of asserting, to conjecture modestly and hesitatingly, if one person of the Trinity can be understood, why do we not rather understand the Holy Spirit, since the Law itself which was given there is said to have been written on the stone tablets by the finger of God, (See Exod 20; 8:19; 24:12; 31:18) by which name we know the Holy Spirit to be signified in the Gospel. (See Luke 11:20; Matt 12:28)

And fifty days are counted from the slaying of the lamb and the celebration of the Passover up to the day on which these things began to be done on Mount Sinai; There is no biblical evidence for this reckoning; Exod 19:1 says "in the third month." Augustine is really relying on a liturgical tradition of later Judaism, which came to regard Pentecost, the Feast of Weeks, as commemorating the giving of the law. just as after the Lord's passion, from his resurrection fifty days are counted, and the Holy Spirit, promised by the Son of God, came. And in his very coming, which we read of in the Acts of the Apostles, fire appeared through the division of tongues, which also settled upon each one of them. This agrees with Exodus, where it is written, but Mount Sinai was all smoking, because God descended upon it in fire; and somewhat later, the appearance, it says, of the majesty of the Lord was as burning fire upon the top of the mountain before the children of Israel.

Or if these things were done for this reason, that neither the Father nor the Son could be presented there in that mode without the Holy Spirit, by which the Law itself had to be written; we know indeed that God appeared there, not through his own substance, which remains invisible and unchangeable, but through that appearance of a creature; but some one person of the Trinity, by a certain proper sign, so far as pertains to the capacity of my understanding, we do not see.

16. 27. There is also that by which very many are wont to be moved, because it is written, and the Lord spoke to Moses face to face, as one speaks to his friend, when a little later the same Moses says, if, then, I have found grace before you, show me yourself manifestly, that I may see you; that I may be one finding grace before you, and that I may know that this nation is your people; and a little later again Moses said to the Lord, "show me your majesty."

What is this, that in all the things that were done above, God was thought to be seen through his own substance—whence by wretched men the Son of God was believed visible, not through a creature, but through himself; and that, since Moses had entered into the mist, he was thought to have entered for this, that to the eyes of the people indeed a misty darkness might be shown, but that he within might hear the words of God as though contemplating his face; and how it was said, the Lord spoke to Moses face to face, as one speaks to his friend; and behold the same Moses says, if I have found grace in your sight, PL: ante te, "before you." show me yourself manifestly?

He certainly knew what he saw bodily, and was seeking the true vision of God spiritually. For that speech which was made in voices was so modified as though it were that of a friend speaking to a friend. But who sees God the Father with bodily eyes? And that which in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, through whom all things were made, who sees with bodily eyes? And the Spirit of Wisdom, who sees with bodily eyes?

But what is, show me yourself manifestly, that I may see you; except, "show me your substance"? But if Moses had not said this, the fools who think that through the things said or done above the substance of God was conspicuous to his eyes would somehow have to be borne; but since here it is most plainly demonstrated that this was not granted even to one desiring it, In The Literal Meaning of Genesis 12.27.55, Augustine reverses this opinion to the extent of saying that Moses was granted what he calls at the beginning of this paragraph "a true spiritual vision of God." who would dare to say that through similar forms, which had appeared visibly to this man too, not a creature serving God, but that very thing which God is, appeared to the eyes of any mortal?

16. 28. And that, indeed, which the Lord afterward says to Moses, "you cannot see my face, and live; for no man will see my face and live." And the Lord said: "behold, there is a place near me, and you will stand upon the rock, and as soon as my majesty passes by, I will set you in a cleft of the rock; and I will cover you with my hand over you, until I pass, and I will take away my hand, and then you will see my back parts; for my face will not appear to you."

17. 28. It is not incongruously wont to be understood as prefigured in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ, that his back parts are taken to be his flesh, in which he was born of the Virgin, and died, and rose again; whether his back parts (See Exod 33:23) were so called on account of the posteriority of mortality, or because he deigned to assume it near the end of the age, that is, later. But his face is that form of God, in which he did not count it robbery to be equal to God the Father, which assuredly no one can see and live; (See 1 Tim 6:16; Exod 33:20)

whether because, after this life, in which we are away from the Lord, and where the body which is corrupted weighs down the soul, we shall see face to face, as the Apostle says. For of this life it is said in the Psalms, truly every living man is altogether vanity; and again, for no living man will be justified before you. In which life also, according to John, it has not yet appeared what we shall be. But we know, he says, that when he appears, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is; which he certainly wished to be understood after this life, when we have paid the debt of death, and have received the promise of resurrection.

Or because even now, insofar as we spiritually understand the Wisdom of God through whom all things were made, (See 1 Cor 1:24, 21; Sir 1:3–4) to that extent we die to carnal affections, so that, reckoning this world dead to us, we ourselves too die to this world, and say what the Apostle says, the world is crucified to me, and I to the world.

For of this death he likewise said, but if you have died with Christ, why do you still, as though living, make decrees about this world While Greek and Vulgate read in mundo, Augustine reads de hoc mundo, "on this world," as one lives on capital or on rents.? Not undeservedly, then, will no one be able to see the face, that is, the very manifestation of the Wisdom of God, and live. (See 1 Tim 6:16; Exod 33:20)

For that is the form for the contemplating of which everyone sighs who strives to love God with his whole heart, and with his whole soul, and with his whole mind; (See Deut 6:5; 10:12; 11:13) for the contemplating of which he also builds up his neighbor as much as he can, who loves his neighbor too as himself; on which two precepts the whole Law hangs, and the prophets.

This is signified also in Moses himself. For when he had said, on account of the love of God by which he was especially aflame, if I have found grace in your sight, show me yourself manifestly, that I may be one finding grace before you; immediately, on account of the love of his neighbor too, he added and said, and that I may know that this nation is your people.

That, then, is the form which seizes every rational soul with desire of itself, the more ardent the purer it is, and the purer the more it rises again to spiritual things; but the more it rises again to spiritual things, the more it dies to carnal things. But while we are away from the Lord, and walk by faith, not by sight, we ought to see the back parts of Christ, that is, his flesh, through that very faith—that is, standing on the solid foundation of faith, which the rock signifies; and beholding it from such a most safe lookout, namely in the Catholic Church, of which it was said, and upon this rock I will build my Church. For we love the more surely than we desire to see the face of Christ, the more in his back parts (That is, his flesh) we recognize how much Christ first loved us. (See 1 John 4:10)

17. 29. But in that very flesh the faith of his resurrection makes us safe and justifies us. For if you believe, he says, in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved; and again, who was delivered up, he says, for our offenses, and rose again for our justification. And therefore the merit of our faith is the resurrection of the Lord's body. For that that flesh died on the cross of the passion, even his enemies believe, but that it rose again they do not believe. Which we, believing most firmly, behold as from the solidity of a rock; whence with sure hope we await the adoption, the redemption of our body; because we hope this in the members of Christ, which we ourselves are, which we know by the soundness of faith to be perfected in him as in our head. Hence he does not wish his back parts to be seen except when he has passed by, so that his resurrection may be believed. For "Pasch" is said to be a Hebrew word, which is interpreted "passage." Whence John the Evangelist too says, before the festal day of Pasch, Jesus knowing that his hour had come, that he should pass from this world to the Father.

17. 30. But those who believe this, and yet believe not in the Catholic Church, but in some schism or in a heresy, do not see the back parts of the Lord from the place that is near him. For what does the Lord mean when he says, behold, there is a place near me, and you will stand upon the rock?

What earthly place is near the Lord, except that that is near him which spiritually touches him? For what place is not near the Lord, who reaches from end to end mightily, and orders all things sweetly; and of whom it was said that heaven is his seat, and earth the footstool of his feet; and who said, what house will you build me? Or what place of my rest? Has not my hand made all these things?

But clearly the place near him in which one stands upon the rock is understood to be the Catholic Church itself, where he healthfully sees the Pasch of the Lord, that is, the passage of the Lord, and his back parts, that is, his body, who believes in his resurrection.

And you will stand, he says, upon the rock, as soon as my majesty passes by. For indeed, as soon as the majesty of the Lord passed by, in the glorification of the Lord by which, rising, he ascended to the Father, we were made solid upon the rock.

And Peter himself was then made solid, so that he might preach with confidence him whom, before he was made solid, he had three times through fear denied, (See Matt 26:70–74) being already indeed by predestination set in the cleft of the rock, but still with the Lord's hand placed over him lest he see. For he was to see his back parts, and that one had not yet passed by, namely from death to life; he had not yet been glorified by the resurrection.

17. 31. For that too which follows in Exodus, and he says, I will cover you with my hand over you, until I pass; and I will take away my hand, and then you will see my back parts; many Israelites, of whom Moses was then the figure, believed in him after the Lord's resurrection, as though now seeing his back parts, his hand removed from their eyes. Whence the evangelist too recalls such a prophecy of Isaiah: make gross the heart of this people, and stop their ears, and weigh down their eyes.

Finally, in the Psalm it is not absurdly understood to be said in their person, for day and night your hand was heavy upon me. By day perhaps, when he did manifest miracles, and was not recognized by them; but by night, when he died in the passion, when they thought more surely that, like any man whatever, he had been slain and extinguished.

But since, when he had passed by so that his back parts might be seen, the apostle Peter preaching to them that Christ had to suffer and rise again, (See Acts 17:3; John 20:9) they were pricked with the grief of repentance, so that there might come to pass in the baptized what is said at the head of that Psalm, blessed are those whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered.

Therefore, when it had been said, your hand was heavy upon me, as though the Lord were passing by, that he might now remove his hand, and his back parts might be seen, there follows the voice of one grieving and confessing, and from faith in the Lord's resurrection receiving the forgiveness of sins: I was turned, he says, in my distress, while the thorn was being fixed in me. I acknowledged my sin, and I did not cover my injustice. I said, "I will declare against myself my injustice to the Lord, and you forgave the impiety of my heart."

For we ought not The first sentence of the translation in this paragraph is the translator's own gloss "to bring out the run of Augustine's thought." to be wrapped in so great a cloud of the flesh as to think that the face of the Lord is indeed invisible, but his back visible; since in the form of a servant both appeared visibly; but in the form of God, far be it that any such thing be thought. Far be it that the Word of God and the Wisdom of God should have a face on one side, and a back on the other, like a human body, or be changed at all by any appearance or motion, whether in place or in time.

17. 32. Wherefore, if in those voices which were made in Exodus, and in all those bodily demonstrations, the Lord Jesus Christ was shown; or at one time Christ, as the consideration of this passage persuades; at another the Holy Spirit, as the things we said above admonish: this does not bring it about that God the Father never appeared to the Fathers in any such appearance. For many such sights were made in those times, without the Father, or the Son, or the Holy Spirit being evidently named and designated in them; but yet, with certain very probable significations existing as some indications, so that it is too rash to say that God the Father never appeared to the Fathers or the Prophets through any visible forms.

For this opinion those begot who could not understand, in the unity of the Trinity, what was said, now to the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God; and, whom no man has seen, nor can see. Which is understood, by sound faith, of that supreme and supremely divine and unchangeable substance, where both the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are the one and only God. But those visions were made through a changeable creature subjected to the unchangeable God, showing God not properly as he is, but significatively, as it behooved according to the causes of things and the times.

18. 33. Although I do not know how these people understand that to Daniel appeared the Ancient of days, from whom the Son of man—which he deigned to be for our sake—is understood to have received a kingdom: namely, from him who says to him in the Psalms, you are my Son, today I have begotten you; ask of me, and I will give you the nations as your inheritance; and who subjected all things under his feet.

If, then, both the Father giving the kingdom, and the Son receiving it, appeared to Daniel in a bodily appearance; how do these people say that the Father was never seen by the Prophets, and that therefore only he is to be understood as invisible whom no man has seen, nor can see?

For Daniel narrated thus: I beheld, he says, until thrones were set, and the Ancient of days was seated; and his garment was white as snow, and the hair of his head as clean wool; his throne was a flame of fire, its wheels burning fire, and a river of fire was drawn before his sight. And a thousand thousands served him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood by him. And the judgment was set, and the books were opened.

And a little later: I beheld, he says, in the vision of the night; and behold, with the clouds of heaven, one was coming as it were the Son of man, and he came even to the Ancient of days, and was presented to him. And to him was given the dominion and honor and kingdom; and all peoples, tribes, tongues will serve him. His power is an eternal power, which will not pass away, and his kingdom will not be corrupted.

Behold the Father giving, and the Son receiving, an everlasting kingdom, and both are before the prophesying one in a visible appearance. It is not, then, incongruously believed that God the Father too is wont to appear to mortals in that mode.

18. 34. Unless perhaps someone will say that the Father is not visible for this reason, that he appeared before the sight of one dreaming; but that the Son and the Holy Spirit are visible, because Moses saw all those things awake. As though Moses saw the Word and the Wisdom of God with carnal eyes, or as though the spirit, even the human one which gives life to this flesh, can be seen, or even the corporeal one which is called wind; (See John 6:64; 1 Cor 3:6; 1 Pet 3:18; Gen 2:7; Ezek 37:9) how much less that Spirit of God who surpasses the minds of all men and angels by the ineffable excellence of the divine substance.

Or would anyone be hurled into such an error as to dare to say that the Son and the Holy Spirit are visible even to waking men, but the Father only to those dreaming? How, then, do they take it of the Father alone, whom no man has seen, nor can see? Or, when men sleep, are they then not men?

Or he who can form a likeness of a body to signify himself through the visions of those dreaming, can he not form the corporeal creature itself to signify himself to the eyes of the waking? Whereas his very substance, by which he is what he is, can be shown by no likeness of a body to one sleeping, by no "corporeal appearance" to one waking; and that not only of the Father, but also of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

And certainly those who are moved by the sights of waking men, to believe that not the Father, but only the Son or the Holy Spirit appeared to the bodily sight of men—to pass over the great breadth of the holy pages, and their so manifold understanding, from which no one of sound head ought to affirm that the person of the Father was nowhere demonstrated through any bodily appearance to the eyes of the waking;

but to pass this over, as I said: what do they say of our father Abraham, to whom certainly, while he was awake and ministering, when Scripture had premised, saying, the Lord was seen by Abraham, not one or two, but three men appeared, of whom none was said to have stood out more loftily than the others, none to have shone more honorably, none to have acted more imperiously?

18. 35. Wherefore, since in that tripartite distribution of ours we set out first to inquire whether the Father, or the Son, or the Holy Spirit; or sometimes the Father, sometimes the Son, sometimes the Holy Spirit; or without any distinction of persons, as he is called the one and only God—that is, the Trinity itself—appeared to the Fathers through those forms of creation.

Having interrogated the passages of the holy Scriptures that we could, as far as seemed sufficient, (See Gen 3:8; 12:7; Exod 3:1–2; 13:21–22; 14:19–24; 16:10–12; 19:16–19; 20:18–22; 33:9–23; 34:5) nothing else, as I judge, does the modest and cautious consideration of the divine "mysteries" Sacramenta is the word Augustine uses here. He uses the word with a sense far wider than that to which it has since been restricted in Latin theology. It includes the sacraments of the Church, but over and above this it embraces all scriptural symbols, types, and figures. persuade, except that we should not rashly say which person of the Trinity appeared to any of the Fathers or Prophets in some body or likeness of a body, unless the connection of the reading sets around it some probable indications.

For the very nature, or substance, or essence, or by whatever other name that very thing which God is, whatever it is, is to be called, cannot be seen bodily; but through a subjected creature, it must be believed that not only the Son, or the Holy Spirit, but also the Father could give a signification of himself to mortal senses in a bodily appearance or likeness.

Since these things are so, Cicero, In Catilinam 1.5.10. lest the length of this second volume proceed too immoderately, let us see the things that remain in what follows.

1. 1. Let those who wish believe that I would rather labor by reading than by dictating things for others to read. But those who do not wish to believe this, and yet both can and will test it, let them furnish things by which my inquiries may be answered in reading, or the questions of others, which, for the sake of the person I bear in the service of Christ, and for the zeal with which I burn to have our faith fortified against the error of carnal and animal men, it is necessary for me to endure; (See 1 Cor 3:1–2; 2:14) and let them see how easily I would refrain from this labor, and with how great joy I could keep my pen at rest.

But if the things we read about these matters either have not been sufficiently published in the Latin tongue, or are not found, or at least can with difficulty be found by us; and if our command of the Greek language is not so great that we are found in any way fit for reading and understanding books on such matters—of which kind of literature I do not doubt that all the things we can usefully seek are contained in those few that have been translated for us;

but if I am unable to resist the brothers demanding, by the right by which I have been made their servant, that I serve their praiseworthy zeal in Christ especially with my tongue and pen—the team of two which love drives in me—and if I myself confess that I have learned by writing many things I did not know; this labor of mine ought not to seem superfluous to anyone lazy or very learned, since it is, in no small part, necessary to many who are diligent and many who are unlearned, among whom I too am.

From the things, therefore, that we have already read written by others about this matter, very much supported and helped, I have undertaken to seek—with him himself exhorting—the things that I think can be piously sought and discussed concerning the Trinity, the one supreme and supremely good God, and to discuss them with his help. See Cicero, De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum 3.1.2; Augustine, Against the Academics 3.12.27; The Lord's Sermon on the Mount 1.3.10; Revisions 1.1.9.

So that, if there are no other writings of this kind, there may be something for those to have and read who wish and are able; but if there already are, the more such things there can be, the more easily may some be found.

1. 2. Indeed, since in all my writings I desire not only a pious reader, but also a free corrector, much most of all in these, where the very greatness of the question—would that it could have as many discoverers as it has gainsayers! Nevertheless, just as I do not want my reader to be devoted to me, so I do not want my corrector to be devoted to himself. Let the former not love me more than the Catholic faith; let the latter not love himself more than the Catholic truth.

As I say to the former: "Do not be a slave to my writings as though to canonical Scriptures; but in the latter, when you have found even what you did not believe, believe it without hesitation; in the former, however, what you did not hold as certain, unless you have understood it as certain, do not firmly retain."

So I say to the latter: "Do not correct my writings from your own opinion or contention, but from divine reading or unshaken reason. If you grasp anything true in them, by existing it is not mine, but by understanding and loving it, let it be both yours and mine; but if you convict anything false, by erring it was mine, but now by guarding against it, let it be neither yours nor mine."

1. 3. Hence, then, let this third book take its beginning from where the second had arrived. For when it had come to this, that we wished to show that the Son is not less than the Father because the one sent and the other was sent, nor that the Holy Spirit is less than both because in the Gospel he is read to be sent both by the one and by the other; (See John 14:26; 15:26; 16:7) we undertook to inquire this: since the Son was sent there where he was, because he came into this world, and was in this world; since the Holy Spirit too was sent there where he himself also was, for the Spirit of the Lord has filled the world, and that which holds all things has knowledge of the voice; whether the Lord was sent for this reason, that he was born of the hidden in the flesh, and from the bosom of the Father to the eyes of men appeared, as it were going forth, in the form of a servant; (See Gal 4:4; 1 John 4:2; John 1:18; Phil 2:7) the Holy Spirit too for this reason, that he himself also was seen in a bodily appearance as a dove, (See Matt 3:16) and in divided tongues as of fire; (See Acts 2:3) so that for them to be sent was to proceed, from spiritual secrecy, to the sight of mortals in some bodily form; which, because the Father did not do it, he is said only to have sent, and not also to have been sent.

Then it was inquired why the Father too was not at some time said to be sent, if through those bodily appearances which appeared to the eyes of the ancients he himself was demonstrated.

But if the Son was then demonstrated, why was he said to be sent so long afterward, when the fullness of time came, that he should be born of a woman; since he was sent even before, when he appeared bodily in those forms.

Or if he could not rightly be said to be sent except when the Word was made flesh; why is the Holy Spirit read to be sent, whose incarnation of this kind was not made.

But if through those ancient demonstrations neither the Father nor the Son, but the Holy Spirit was shown; why was even he now said to be sent, since he was sent by those modes even before.

Then we subdivided, that these things might be treated most diligently, and made the question threefold, of which one part was explained in the second book; two remain, of which I shall set about discussing in turn. See On the Trinity 2.7.13; 18.35.

For it has already been inquired and treated that in those ancient bodily forms and sights, not the Father only, nor the Son only, nor the Holy Spirit only appeared, but either, indifferently, the Lord God who is understood as the Trinity itself, or any one person of the Trinity, which the text of the reading would signify by the surrounding indications.

1. 4. Now, then, let us first inquire into what follows. For in the second place in that distribution it was set down, whether for this work alone a creature was formed, in which God, as he then judged it behooved, might be shown to human sight; or whether angels, who already existed, were so sent that they spoke in the person of God, assuming a bodily appearance from corporeal creation for the use of their ministry; or whether they changed and turned their own body, to which they are not subjected but which they rule as subjected, See Cicero, De Oratore 3.45.177; De Partitionibus Oratoriae 7.23. into the appearances they wished, accommodated and fitted to their actions, according to the power attributed to them by the Creator. This part of the question having been treated through, as far as the Lord shall grant, it will finally have to be seen—that which we had set out to inquire—whether the Son and the Holy Spirit were sent even before; and if it is so, what difference there is between that sending and the one we read of in the Gospel; (See Isa 48:16; John 10:36; 14:26; 15:26; 16:7; Gal 4:4) or whether none of them was sent except when either the Son was made of the Virgin Mary, or the Holy Spirit appeared in a visible form, whether in a dove or in tongues of fire. (See Matt 3:16; Mark 1:10; Luke 3:22; John 1:32; Acts 2:3)

1. 5. But I confess that it exceeds the powers of my attention, whether the angels—the spiritual quality of their own body remaining, while they work more secretly through it—assume from the lower, more corpulent elements something which, fitted to themselves, they change and turn, as it were some garment, into whatever bodily appearances, even those true ones, just as true water was turned into true wine (See John 2:9) by the Lord; or whether they transform their own proper bodies into what they will, accommodated to what they do.

But whichever of these it be, it does not pertain to the present question. And although these things, since I am a man, I can grasp by no experiment, as can the angels who do these things, and know them better than I know—how far my body is changed at the disposition of my will, whether what I have experienced in myself, or what from others—yet which of these I should believe from the authorities of the divine Scriptures, there is now no need to say, lest I be compelled to prove it, and the discourse become longer about a matter which the present question does not need.

1. 6. This now must be seen: whether the angels were then producing both those appearances of bodies appearing to the eyes of men, and those voices sounding to their ears, when the sensible creature itself, serving the Creator at his nod, was turned for the time into the work that was needful, as it is written in the book of Wisdom: for the creature serving you its maker is stretched out for torment against the unjust, and becomes gentler for doing good to those who trust in you. On account of this, then too, transfiguring itself into all things, it served your all-nourishing grace, according to the will of those who desired you.

For the power of the will of God reaches, through the spiritual creature, even to the visible and sensible effects of the corporeal creature. For where does the Wisdom of God the omnipotent not work what it wills, (See 1 Cor 1:21–24; Sir 1:3–4) which reaches from end to end mightily, and orders all things sweetly?

2. 7. But there is another natural order in the conversion and changeableness of bodies, which, although it too serves at the nod of God, (See Job 26:11) has nevertheless, by the persistence of custom, lost its wonder; such as are the things that are changed, at very short or at least not long intervals of time, in sky, earth, and sea, whether by things being born, or perishing, or appearing at various times in various ways; but others, although coming from the same order, are nevertheless less usual on account of the longer intervals of time. Which, although many are astonished at them, have been grasped by the investigators of this age, and, by the progress of generations in which they are more often repeated and known by more people, are the less wondered at. Such are the eclipses of luminaries, and certain rarely occurring appearances of stars, and earthquakes, and monstrous births of living things, and whatever similar things, of which nothing happens except by the will of God, but to most people this does not appear.

And so it was permitted to the vanity of the philosophers to attribute these things even to other causes, either true but proximate, since they could not see at all the cause superior to all others, that is, the will of God; or false, and brought forth not even from the very investigation of corporeal things and motions, but from their own suspicion and error.

2. 8. I will say something, if I can, by way of example, by which these things may be more open. There is certainly in the human body a certain mass of flesh, and an appearance of form, and an order and distinction of members, and a tempering of health. This body the inbreathed soul rules, and the same soul is rational; and therefore, although changeable, it is yet such as can be a partaker of that unchangeable wisdom, so that there may be a partaking of it in the selfsame, as it is written in the Psalm of all the saints, of whom, as of living stones, that Jerusalem our mother eternal in heaven is built. (See 1 Pet 2:5; Eph 4:12) For it is sung thus: Jerusalem, which is built as a city, whose partaking is in the selfsame. For the selfsame in this place is understood to be that supreme and unchangeable Good which is God, and his wisdom and will. To whom it is sung in another place: you will change them, and they will be changed; but you are the same.

3. 8. Let us, then, set up in our mind such a wise man, whose rational soul is already a partaker of the unchangeable and eternal truth, which it consults about all its actions, This theme of participation by the rational soul in the eternal truth and goodness which is God will be developed at length in Book 8. and does nothing at all that it has not recognized in it to be done, so that, subject to it and obeying it, it may act rightly.

If this man, having consulted the supreme reason of divine justice, which he would hear in secret with the ear of his heart, and at its bidding, in some office of mercy wearied his body with labor and contracted an illness; and the physicians being consulted, by one it should be said that the cause of the disease was the dryness of the body, but by another the immoderation of humor; one of them would say the true cause, the other would err, yet both would pronounce about proximate causes, that is, bodily ones. But if the cause of that dryness were sought, and the voluntary labor were found; we would now have come to a higher cause, which would proceed from the soul to affect the body which it rules; but not even this would be the first.

For that, without doubt, was higher, in the unchangeable Wisdom itself, which the soul of the wise man, serving in love and ineffably obeying its bidding, had undertaken the voluntary labor. And so nothing but the will of God would most truly be found to be the first cause of that illness.

But now if, in that dutiful and pious labor, that wise man had employed servants laboring with him in the good work, yet not serving God with the same will, but desiring to attain the reward of their carnal desires, or avoiding carnal discomforts; and had employed also beasts of burden, if the management of accomplishing that work required this—which beasts would certainly be irrational living things, nor would they on that account move their members under the burdens because they thought anything of that good work, but by the natural appetite of their own pleasure and the avoidance of trouble; and finally, had employed also those very bodies lacking all sense, which were necessary to that work, namely grain, and wine, and oil, clothing, money, a book, and any such things. In all these bodies, certainly, engaged in that work, whether animate or inanimate, whatever should be moved, worn down, repaired, destroyed, reformed, changed, affected in one way and another by places and times; would there be any other cause of all these visible and changeable deeds, except that invisible and unchangeable will of God, using, through the just soul as the seat of Wisdom, all things—both evil and irrational souls, and finally bodies, whether those breathed into and animated, or those lacking all sense—when it first used that very good and holy soul itself, which it had subjected to itself for pious and religious obedience?

4. 9. What, then, we have set down by way of example concerning one wise man—though still wearing a mortal body, though seeing in part (See 2 Cor 5:6)—this it is permitted to think concerning some household, where there is a society of some such men, this concerning a city, or even concerning the whole world, if the headship and the rule of human affairs should be in the hands of the wise, who are holily and perfectly subject to God. See Chrysippus, Fragments 35; Cicero, De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum 2.12.37; De Officiis 1.43.153; 2.2.5; Tusculanae Disputationes 4.26.57. But because this is not yet (for it behooves us in this pilgrimage first to be exercised mortally, Mortaliter exerceri is a difficult phrase; perhaps he means that we need to be trained to accept our mortal condition in the spirit of the cross. and to be instructed through the strength of meekness and patience under scourges), let us think of that very "supernal" and heavenly country, from which we are on pilgrimage.

For there the will of God, who makes his angels spirits, and his ministers a flaming fire, presiding over the spirits joined in the highest peace and friendship, and fused into one will by a certain spiritual fire of love, as in a lofty and holy and secret seat, as in his own house and in his own temple, from there diffuses itself through all things by certain most ordered motions of the creature, first spiritual, then corporeal, and uses all things at the unchangeable disposition of its decree, whether incorporeal or corporeal things, whether rational or irrational spirits, whether good through his grace or evil through their own will.

But just as the grosser and lower bodies are ruled, in a certain order, through the subtler and more powerful; so all bodies are ruled through the spirit of life, and the spirit of irrational life through the spirit of rational life, and the spirit of rational life that is a deserter and a sinner through the spirit of rational life that is pious and just, and that through God himself, and so the whole creation through its Creator, from whom and through whom and in whom it was also founded and established; and on this account the will of God is the first and supreme cause of all bodily appearances and motions.

For nothing happens visibly and sensibly that is not either commanded or permitted from the inner, invisible, and intelligible court of the supreme Emperor, according to the ineffable justice of rewards and punishments, of favors and retributions, in that most ample and immense commonwealth, as it were, of the whole creation.

4. 10. If, then, the apostle Paul, although he still bore the burden of the body, which is corrupted and weighs down the soul, although he still saw in part and in an enigma, desiring to be dissolved and to be with Christ, and groaning within himself, awaiting the adoption, the redemption of his body, could nevertheless by signifying preach the Lord Jesus Christ (See 1 Cor 1:23)—in one way through his tongue, in another through a letter, in another through the sacrament of his body and blood;

for we call neither his tongue, nor the parchments, nor the ink, nor the signifying sounds uttered by the tongue, nor the signs of letters written on little skins, the body and blood of Christ; but only that which, taken from the fruits of the earth and consecrated by the mystical prayer, we duly receive for spiritual salvation in memory of the Lord's passion for us; (See Luke 22:19; 1 Cor 11:24–25) which, although it is brought by the hands of men to that visible appearance, is not sanctified so as to be so great a sacrament except by the Spirit of God working invisibly, since God works all these things that are done through bodily motions in that work, first moving the invisible things of the ministers, whether the souls of men, or the services of hidden spirits subjected to him;

what wonder is it if, even in the creation of heaven and earth, of sea and air, God does the sensible and visible things he wills, to signify and demonstrate himself in them, as he himself knows it behooves, not with his own substance appearing—by which he is, which is altogether unchangeable, and more sublime, inwardly and more secretly, than all the spirits he created?

5. 11. For by the divine power administering the whole spiritual and corporeal creation, on certain days of every year the waters of the sea are summoned and poured out over the face of the earth. But when this was done at the prayer of holy Elijah—because there had preceded so continuous and so long a clear sky that men were failing from hunger, nor had the air itself, at the hour at which that servant of God prayed, shown by any moist appearance the signs of rain soon to come—the divine power appeared in the so great and so swiftly following rains, by which that miracle was given and dispensed. (See 1 Kgs 18)

So God produces the customary lightnings and thunders. But because on Mount Sinai they were happening in an unusual mode, and those voices were uttered not with a confused noise, but it appeared by the most certain indications that certain signs were being given by them, they were miracles. (See Exod 19:16–19; 20:18)

Who draws the moisture through the root of the vine to the cluster, and makes wine, except God, who, with man planting and watering, gives the increase? But when, at the nod of the Lord, water was turned into wine with unusual swiftness, (See John 2:9) the divine power was declared even with the foolish confessing it.

Who clothes the shrubs with leaf and flower in the customary season, except God? But when the rod of the priest Aaron flowered, the divinity conversed in a certain way with doubting humanity. (See Num 17:8) And certainly for begetting and forming all woods and the flesh of all animals, the earthly matter is common; and who makes these, except him who said that this earth should bring forth, (See Gen 1:24) and in that same word of his rules and drives the things he created?

But when he turned that same matter from the rod of Moses into the flesh of a serpent, closely and swiftly, it was a miracle (See Exod 4:3)—of a changeable thing indeed, but yet an unusual change. But who animates each living thing being born, except him who animated that serpent for the hour, as was needful?

5. 11. And who restored their souls to the corpses, when the dead rose, (See 1 Kgs 17:17; 2 Kgs 4:8; 13:21; Ezek 37:1–10, and other passages) except him who animates the flesh in the wombs of mothers, so that they are born to die? But when those things happen in a kind of continuous flow, as of things slipping and flowing on, and passing from the hidden into the open, and from the open into the hidden by a customary route, they are called natural; but when, for the admonishing of men, they are pressed upon us by an unusual changeableness, they are named mighty deeds.

7. 12. Here I see what may occur to weak thought, namely why these miracles are done even by magic arts. For the magi of Pharaoh likewise made serpents, and other similar things. (See Exod 7:11 and following) But this is the more to be wondered at: how that power of the magi, which could make serpents, when it came to the tiniest flies, failed altogether. For gnats are very tiny little flies, by which, as the third plague, the proud people of the Egyptians was struck. (See Exod 8:18) There certainly the magi, failing, said: this is the finger of God. Whence it is given to understand that not even those transgressor angels and aerial powers—thrust down into this lowest darkness as into a prison of their own kind, from the habitation of that sublime ethereal purity, through whom the magic arts can do whatever they can—are able to do anything except by power given from above.

And it is given either to deceive the deceivers, as upon the Egyptians, and as it was given even upon the magi themselves, so that in the seduction of those spirits they might seem worthy of admiration to those by whom these things were done, but worthy of condemnation by the truth of God; or to admonish the faithful, lest they desire to do any such thing as a great matter, for which reason these things are also handed down to us by the authority of Scripture; or to exercise, prove, and manifest the patience of the just. For by no small power of visible miracles, Job lost all that he had, both his sons and the very health of his body.

8. 13. Nor on this account must it be thought that this matter of visible things serves these transgressor angels at their nod, but rather God, by whom this power is given, as far as, in his sublime and spiritual and unchangeable seat, he judges. For even to the condemned wicked in the mine, water and fire and earth serve, that they may make from them what they will, but as far as it is allowed.

Nor indeed are those evil angels to be called creators, because through them the magi, resisting the servant of God, made frogs and serpents; for they themselves did not create them. For of all things that are born corporeally and visibly, certain hidden seeds lie concealed in these corporeal elements of this world. For these are one thing—the things now conspicuous to our eyes from fruits and living things; but another thing those hidden seeds of these seeds, from which, at the Creator's command, the first water brought forth swimming and flying things, but the first earth the first germinations of its kind, and the first animals of its kind. (See Gen 1:20–25) For they were not then so brought forth into offspring of this kind that in those that were brought forth that power was consumed; but for the most part there are lacking the fitting occasions of the temperings, by which they may burst forth and accomplish their kinds.

For behold, the tiniest shoot is a seed; for, fittingly committed to the earth, it makes a tree. But the subtler seed of this shoot is some grain of the same kind, and this far visible to us. But now the seed even of this grain, although we cannot see it with our eyes, we can yet conjecture by reason; because, unless there were some such power in these elements, there would not for the most part be born from the earth things that had not been sown there; nor so many animals, with no commixture of males and females preceding, whether in earth or in water, which nevertheless grow and by coupling bring forth others, although they themselves arose with no parents coupling.

And certainly bees conceive the seeds of their young not by coupling, but gather them as it were scattered through the lands with their mouths. Virgil, Georgics 4.201–204. For the Creator of the invisible seeds is himself the Creator of all things, since whatever things, by being born, come forth to our eyes, take the first beginnings of their advance from hidden seeds, and take their increases of due magnitude and the distinctions of their forms from the original, as it were, rules.

As, therefore, we call neither parents the creators of men, nor farmers the creators of crops, although the power of God works inwardly to create these things, with their motions applied from outside; so it is not lawful to think not only the evil, but even the good angels creators, if, by the subtlety of their sense and body, they know the seeds of these things, more hidden to us, and scatter them latently through fitting temperings of the elements, and so furnish the occasions both of things to be generated and of increases to be accelerated.

But neither do the good do these things except as far as God commands, nor do the evil do them unjustly except as far as he justly permits. For the wicked have their unjust will by malice; but they receive power only justly, whether for their own punishment, or for that of others, either the punishment of the evil or the praise of the good.

8. 14. And so the apostle Paul, distinguishing God creating and forming inwardly from the works of the creature which are applied from outside, and taking a likeness from agriculture, says: I planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase. As, therefore, in our very life, none but God can form the mind by justifying it, but men too can preach the Gospel outwardly, not only the good through truth, but also the evil through opportunity; so God works inwardly the creation of visible things; but the outward operations, whether of the good or of the evil, whether of angels or of men, or even of whatever animals, according to his command and the distributions of powers and the appetites of advantages imparted by him, he applies to the nature of things in which he creates all things, just as agriculture to the earth. Wherefore I can no more say that the evil angels, invoked by magic arts, were the creators of frogs and serpents, (See Exod 7:11–12; 8:7) than I can say that evil men are the creators of the crop which I see to have sprung up through their work. (See Matt 13:25–26)

8. 15. Just as neither was Jacob the creator of the colors in the flocks, because he set before the mothers, as they drank at conception, variegated rods for them to gaze upon. But neither were the flocks themselves the creators of the variegation of their offspring, because there had clung to their soul a particolored image, impressed through the eyes from the gazing on the variegated rods, which could only affect, from the sympathy of the commixture, the body that was animated by the spirit so affected, whence the tender beginnings of the offspring were tinged, so far as color goes. (See Gen 30:37–41)

For that they should be thus affected from themselves—either the soul from the body, or the body from the soul—the congruences of reason PL: congruae rationes, "harmonious ideas." bring about, which live unchangeably in that supreme Wisdom of God, (See Sir 1:3; 1 Cor 1:3–24) which no spaces of places contain; and since she herself is unchangeable, she deserts none of the things that exist even changeably, because nothing of them was created except through her.

For that from the flocks not rods but flocks should be born, (See Gen 30:37–41) this the unchangeable and invisible reason of the Wisdom of God did, through whom all things were created; but that from the variegation of the rods the color of the conceived flocks should draw something, this the soul of the pregnant beast did, affected outwardly through the eyes, and inwardly drawing along with itself, according to its small measure, a "rule" of forming, which it received from the inmost power of its Creator.

But (This paragraph's translation has been provided by the Aquinas Institute) how great is the power of the soul to affect and change corporeal matter (though it cannot be called the creator of the body, since every cause of changeable and sensible substance, and every measure and number and weight of it, whence it comes about that it both exists and that its nature is so or so, exists from the intelligible and unchangeable life which is above all things, and reaches even to the lowest and earthly things), is a long discourse, and not now necessary. But I judged that Jacob's deed concerning the flocks should be recalled for this reason: that it might be understood that, if the man who set out those rods so cannot be called the creator of the colors in the lambs and kids; nor the souls of the mothers themselves, which, so far as nature allowed, sprinkled upon the seeds conceived in the flesh the image of variegation conceived through the eyes of the body; much less can the evil angels, through whom the magi of Pharaoh then did those things, be called the creators of frogs and serpents. (See Exod 7:1–12; 8:7)

9. 16. For it is one thing to found and administer the creature from the inmost and supreme hinge of causes—which he who does, is God the only Creator; but another to apply, according to the powers and faculties distributed by him, some operation from outside, so that at this time or that, in this way or that, what is created may come forth. For these things have, originally and primordially, all been already created in a certain texture of the elements, but they come forth as opportunities are received.

For just as mothers are pregnant with offspring, so the world itself is pregnant with the causes of things that are born; which are not created in it except by that supreme essence, where nothing arises or dies, nor begins to be, nor ceases. But to apply causes coming from outside—which, although they are not natural, are yet applied according to nature, so that the things that are contained, hidden in the secret bosom of nature, may burst forth and be created outwardly, in a certain way unfolding the measures and numbers and weights they received in secret from him who disposed all things in measure and number and weight—not only evil angels, but even evil men can, as I taught above by the example of agriculture. See On the Trinity 1.7; Matt 13:25–26.

9. 17. But lest, as it were, a different reasoning move anyone concerning animals, because they have a spirit of life with the sense of seeking what is according to nature and avoiding the contrary; this too may be seen, how many men know from what herbs, or flesh, or whatever juices or humors of any things—whether so placed, or so buried, or so crushed, or so mixed—what animals are wont to be born. Of which who would be so insane as to call himself the creator?

What wonder, then, if, just as any most worthless man can know from what this or that worms and flies are born, (See Exod 7:11–12; 8:7) so the evil angels, by the subtlety of their sense, know in the more hidden seeds of the elements from what frogs and serpents are born, and, by applying these through fixed and known opportunities of temperings with hidden motions, cause them to be created—they do not create them?

But men do not marvel at the things that are wont to be done by men. But if anyone perhaps marvels at the swiftnesses of increases, that those living things were made so quickly; let him attend to how these too are procured by men, according to the small measure of human faculty. For whence does it come that the same bodies grow worms more quickly in summer than in winter, more quickly in warmer than in colder places? But these things are applied by men with so much the more difficulty, as there are lacking the subtleties of the senses and the mobilities of bodies in their earthly and sluggish members. Whence for angels of whatever kind, by how much it is easier to draw the proximate causes from the elements, by so much the more wonderful do their swiftnesses in works of this kind appear.

9. 18. But there is no creator except him who principally forms these things. Nor can anyone do this, except him with whom are, in the first place, the measures, numbers, and weights of all things that are; and he is the one creator God, from whose ineffable might it comes about even that what these angels could do if they were permitted, they therefore cannot, because they are not permitted.

For no other reason occurs why those who made frogs and serpents could not make the tiniest flies, except that a greater dominion of God forbidding it was present through the Holy Spirit, which the magi themselves also confessed, saying: this is the finger of God.

But what they can do by nature, and cannot do because of prohibition, and what they are not permitted to do by the very condition of their nature, it is difficult for man to explore—nay, rather impossible, except through that gift of God (See Acts 8:20; John 4:10) which the Apostle recalls, saying, to another the discerning of spirits.

For we know that a man can walk, and cannot do even this if he is not permitted, but cannot fly even if he is permitted. So too those angels can do certain things if they are permitted by more powerful angels at God's command; but certain things they cannot do, not even if they are permitted by them; because he does not permit, from whom they have such a measure of their nature—who, even through his angels, for the most part does not permit those things which he granted them the power to do.

9. 19. Excepting, then, those things that happen corporeally in the order of the nature of things by the most customary running on of times—such as are the risings and settings of the stars, the births and deaths of animals, the innumerable diversities of seeds and germinations, mists and clouds, snows and rains, lightnings and thunders, thunderbolts and hails, winds and fires, cold and heat, and all such things; excepting also those that are rare in the same order, such as eclipses of the lights, and unusual appearances of the stars, and monsters, and earthquakes, and the like; excepting, then, all these, of which indeed the first and supreme cause is nothing but the will of God—whence in the Psalm too, when certain things of this kind had been recalled, fire, hail, snow, ice, the spirit of the tempest, lest anyone should believe them to be driven either by chance, or only by corporeal causes, or even by spiritual ones yet existing apart from the will of God, he immediately added, which do his word.

10. 19. But these things, as I had begun to say, being excepted, there are others which, although from the same corporeal matter, are nevertheless applied to our senses to announce something divinely, which are properly called miracles and signs; nor in all the things that are announced to us by the Lord God is the person of God himself taken up. But when it is taken up, it is sometimes demonstrated in an angel, sometimes in that appearance which is not what an angel is, although it is administered, disposed through an angel; again, when it is taken up in that appearance which is not what an angel is, sometimes the body already existed, and is assumed into some change to demonstrate this; sometimes it arises for this, and, the thing being accomplished, is again taken away.

Just as also, when men announce, sometimes they speak the words of God in their own person, as when it is premised, the Lord said; (See Isa 3:16) or, thus says the Lord; (See Jer 31:1–2) or some such thing; but sometimes, premising nothing of the kind, they take the very person of God upon themselves, as it is, I will give you understanding, and will establish you in the way by which you shall go. So not only in words, but also in deeds, the person of God to be signified is imposed upon the prophet, that he may bear it in the ministry of prophecy; as he bore his person who divided his garment into twelve parts, and of them gave ten to the servant of King Solomon, the future king of Israel; (See 1 Kgs 11:30) sometimes also a thing which was not what the prophet was, and already existed among earthly things, was assumed into a signification of this kind; as Jacob, waking from the dream he had seen, made of the stone which, sleeping, he had at his head; (See Gen 28:11–18) sometimes the same appearance is made for this, either to remain for a while, as could that bronze serpent lifted up in the desert, as can letters too; (See Num 21:9) or, the ministry being accomplished, to pass away, as the bread made for this is consumed in the receiving of the sacrament.

10. 20. But because these things are known to men, since they are done through men, they can be held in honor as religious acts, yet they cannot cause astonishment as marvels. And so the things that are done through angels, the more difficult and unfamiliar they are, the more wonderful they are to us; whereas to the angels themselves they are familiar and easy, like their own actions.

An angel speaks to a man in the person of God, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, though Scripture had said beforehand, an angel of the Lord appeared to him. A man too speaks in the person of God, PL: of the Lord. saying, Hear, O my people, and I will speak; O Israel, and I will testify to you; I am God, your God. A rod was taken up for a signification, and changed into a serpent by angelic power; (See Exod 4:3, 7:10) and although a man lacks that power, nonetheless a stone too was taken up by a man for some such signification. (See Gen 28:18) Between the deed of an angel and the deed of a man there is the greatest difference. The one is both to be wondered at and to be understood, but the other is only to be understood. What is understood from each is perhaps one and the same, but the things from which it is understood are different—as if the name of the Lord were written both in gold and in ink. The one is more precious, the other cheaper; yet what is signified by both is one and the same.

And although the serpent from Moses's rod signified the same thing as Jacob's stone, nonetheless Jacob's stone signified something better than the serpents of the magicians. (See Exod 4:3, 7:10; Gen 28:18)

For just as the anointing of the stone signified Christ in the flesh, in which he was anointed with the oil of gladness above his fellows, so Moses's rod turned into a serpent (See Exod 4:3) signified that same Christ made obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Hence he says, as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may not perish but have eternal life; just as those who looked upon that serpent lifted up in the wilderness did not perish from the serpents' bites. For our old man was nailed to the cross with him, that the body of sin might be done away with.

For by the serpent is understood death, which was brought about by the serpent in paradise, by that mode of expression which indicates the thing effected by means of what effects it. (See Gen 3:1–15) Therefore the rod into a serpent means Christ into death, and the serpent again into a rod means Christ into resurrection, the whole of him together with his body, which is the Church—which will come about at the end of time, signified by the serpent's tail, which Moses held so that it might return into a rod.

But the serpents of the magicians, like the dead of this world, will not be able to rise again in Christ unless, believing in Christ, they enter as though devoured into his body. (As Aaron’s serpent devoured those of the wizards: Exod 7:12) So Jacob's stone, as I have said, signified something better than the serpents of the magicians; (See Gen 28:18; Exod 7:11–12) and yet the deed of the magicians was far more wonderful. But these considerations do not prejudge the things to be understood, any more than if a man's name were written in gold and God's in ink.

10. 21. As for those clouds and fires, how did the angels make or take them up to signify what they were announcing—even if it was the Lord or the Holy Spirit who was shown in those corporeal forms—what man knows? Just as the "infants" The newly baptized were known as infantes; they were not instructed in the mystery of the Eucharist until after they had taken part in their first Mass during the Easter vigil. do not know what is placed upon the altar and consumed when the celebration of the rite of piety is completed, nor from what or in what way it is prepared, nor from what it is taken up for the use of religion.

And if they should never learn by experience, whether their own or others', and never see that form of things except amid the celebrations of the sacraments when it is offered and given, and should be told on the gravest authority whose body and blood it is, they will believe nothing other than that the Lord appeared in that very form to the eyes of mortals and that from his side, struck in such a way, that liquid actually flowed. (See John 19:34)

But it is altogether useful for me to remember my own limits and to warn my brothers that they too should remember theirs, lest human weakness advance further than is safe. For how the angels do these things, or rather how God does these things through his angels, (See Heb 2:2) and how much he wills to be done even through evil angels—whether by permitting, or commanding, or compelling, from the hidden seat of his most exalted rule—I am able neither to penetrate with the keenness of my eyes, nor to lay bare by confidence of reason, nor to grasp by any advance of the mind, so as to speak with such certainty about all that may be asked concerning these matters as I would if I were an angel, or a prophet, or an apostle.

For the thoughts of mortals are timid, and our foresight uncertain. For the body that is corruptible weighs down the soul, and the earthly dwelling presses down the mind that thinks on many things. And with difficulty do we estimate the things that are on earth, and the things that are within our sight we find with toil. But the things that are in the heavens, who has searched them out? PL: will search them out. But because it goes on to say, and who shall know your mind, unless you have given wisdom and sent your Holy Spirit from on high? The things that are in the heavens we do not indeed search out—the kind of thing that includes angelic bodies according to their proper dignity, and a certain corporeal activity belonging to them; yet according to the Spirit of God sent to us from on high and his grace imparted to our minds, I dare to say with confidence that neither God the Father, nor his Word, nor his Spirit—since God is one (See Mark 12:29; Gal 3:20)—in respect of that which he is, and which is one and the same, is in any way changeable, and therefore much less is visible. For there are some things which, though changeable, are nonetheless not visible—such as our thoughts, memories, and acts of will, and every incorporeal creation; but nothing is visible that is not changeable.

11. 21. Therefore the substance, or, if it is better so called, the essence of God, in which according to our small measure we understand from however small a portion the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, since it is in no way changeable, can in no way be visible in itself through itself.

11. 22. Accordingly, it is clear that all those things which appeared to the fathers, when God was presented to them according to his dispensation suited to the times, were done through a creation.

And even if it is hidden from us how he did these things through his angelic ministers, nonetheless that they were done through angels we say not on our own judgment, lest we should seem to anyone to be wise beyond what we ought to be wise; PL omits praeter quam oportet sapere, “than we ought to claim.” but we are wise unto soberness, as God has apportioned to us the measure of faith, and we believe, and therefore we speak.

For the authority of the divine Scriptures stands forth, from which our mind must not deviate, nor, abandoning the firm ground of the divine utterance, be cast headlong over the precipices of its own conjectures, where neither bodily sense governs nor the clear reason of truth shines out.

For it is written most plainly in the Letter to the Hebrews, when the dispensation of the New Testament was being distinguished from the dispensation of the Old Testament according to the fitness of the ages and times, that not only those visible things, but the very utterance itself, was made through angels. For it says thus: But to which of the angels did he ever say, 'Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet'? Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for the sake of those who are to obtain salvation as an inheritance?

Hence he shows that all those things were done not only through angels but also for our sake—that is, for the sake of the people of God, to whom is promised the inheritance of eternal life. (See 1 Pet 3:22) So too it is written to the Corinthians: all these things happened to them in figure; but they were written for our admonition, upon whom the end of the ages has come.

Then, because the utterance was made at that time through angels, but now through the Son, he goes on to demonstrate it openly and plainly: therefore, he says, we ought to give more abundant heed to the things we have heard, lest perhaps we drift away. For if the utterance spoken through angels was made firm, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense of reward, how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?

And as though you were asking which salvation, in order to show that he is now speaking of the New Testament—that is, of the utterance made not through angels but through the Lord—he says, which, having taken its beginning to be declared through the Lord, was confirmed unto us by those who heard him, while God bore witness with signs and wonders and various mighty works and distributions of the Holy Spirit according to his will.

11. 23. "But," someone says, "why then is it written, the Lord said to Moses, and not rather, the angel said to Moses?" Because when a herald announces the words of a judge, it is not recorded in the proceedings, "that herald said," but "that judge said." So too, when a holy prophet speaks, even if we say, "the prophet said," we wish nothing else to be understood than that "the Lord said it." And if we say, the Lord said, we do not remove the prophet, but we point out who spoke through him. And indeed that Scripture often makes plain that the angel is the Lord, when, as he speaks, it is repeatedly said, the Lord said, as we have already shown. See On the Trinity 2.23.

But on account of those who, when Scripture there names an angel, wish the Son of God himself in his own person to be understood—because on account of the announcement of the Father's will and his own he was called an angel by the prophet—on that account I wished to give clearer testimony from this letter, where it is not said "through an angel," but through angels.

11. 24. For Stephen too, in the Acts of the Apostles, recounts these things in the same manner in which they were written in the ancient books: (See Gen 12:1; Exod 2:15, 3:1–6) Brethren and fathers, listen, he says: the God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia. But lest anyone should suppose that the God of glory then appeared, in respect of that which he is in himself, to the eyes of any mortal, in what follows he says that an angel appeared to Moses. Moses fled, he says, at this saying, and became a sojourner in the land of Midian, where he begot two sons. And when forty years were completed there, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in the desert of Mount Sinai in a flame of fire in a bush. And Moses, seeing it, marveled at the sight. And as he drew near to consider it, the voice of the Lord came, saying, 'I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.' And Moses, trembling, did not dare to look. And the Lord said to him, 'Loose the sandal from your feet,' (See Exod 2:15, 3:7) and so forth. Here certainly he says both "an angel" and "the Lord," and the same one "the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob," as it is written in Genesis. (See Gen 12:1)

11. 25. But perhaps someone will say that the Lord appeared to Moses through an angel, but to Abraham through himself? Yet let us not seek this from Stephen; let us question the very book from which Stephen recounted these things. For is it the case that, because it is written, and the Lord God said to Abraham, and a little later, and the Lord God appeared to Abraham, therefore these things were not done through angels? Since in another place it likewise says, and God appeared to him at the oak of Mamre, as he sat at the door of his tent at midday, and yet consistently adds, and lifting up his eyes he looked, and behold, three men stood near him—of whom we have already spoken. See On the Trinity 2.10. For how will those people be able—who either are unwilling to rise from the words to the understanding, or easily cast themselves headlong from the understanding back into the words—how will they be able to explain that God was seen in three men, unless they confess that these men, as the sequel also teaches, were angels? (See Gen 18:1–2; 19:1) Or will they dare to say, because it is not said "an angel spoke to him" or "appeared," that in Moses's case that vision and voice were made through an angel, since it is so written, but in Abraham's case, because no mention of an angel was made, God appeared and sounded forth through his own substance?

What of the fact that even in Abraham's case there was no silence about an angel? For it is read thus, when his son was commanded to be sacrificed: and it came to pass after these words that God tested Abraham, and said to him, 'Abraham, Abraham.' And he said, 'Here I am.' And he said to him, 'Take your beloved son, whom you love, Isaac, and go into the high land, and offer him there as a holocaust upon one of the mountains that I will tell you.' Here certainly God, not an angel, is mentioned. But a little later Scripture has it thus: and Abraham, stretching out his hand, took the sword to kill his son. And an angel of the Lord called him from heaven, and said to him, 'Abraham, Abraham.' And he said, 'Here I am.' And he said, 'Do not lay your hand upon the boy, nor do anything to him.'

What is to be answered to this? Will they say that God commanded Isaac to be killed, and an angel forbade it, (See Gen 22:2) and further that the father himself, against the precept of God who had commanded him to kill, obeyed the angel so as to spare him? This sense is to be laughed at and cast aside. But Scripture does not allow even this so gross and abject a sense any place, immediately adding: for now I know that you fear God, and have not spared your beloved son for my sake. What is, for my sake, but for the sake of him who had commanded that the boy be killed? Therefore the same one is God to Abraham who is the angel—or rather, is it God through an angel? Take what follows; here certainly the angel is now most plainly expressed. Yet notice what is woven in: Abraham, lifting up his eyes, looked, and behold, a ram was caught by its horns in a thicket; and Abraham went and took the ram and offered it as a holocaust in place of Isaac his son. And Abraham gave that place the name, 'The Lord saw,' so that they say today, 'On the mountain the Lord was seen.'

Just as a little before, what God said through an angel, for now I know that you fear God—not that God is then to be understood as having come to know, but as having brought it about that through God Abraham himself might come to know how great were the powers of his heart for obeying God even to the immolation of his only son; by that mode of expression in which the thing effected is signified by means of what effects it, as the cold is called sluggish because it makes men sluggish—so that he was said to have come to know because he had made Abraham himself come to know, from whom the firmness of his own faith might have been hidden, had it not been proved by such a trial. So here too Abraham gave that place the name, 'The Lord saw'; that is, that he caused himself to be seen. For he immediately goes on to say, so that they say today, 'On the mountain the Lord was seen.'

Behold, the same angel is called Lord; why, unless because the Lord was present through an angel? And now in what follows, the angel speaks altogether prophetically, and plainly discloses that God speaks through an angel. And, he says, the angel of the Lord called Abraham again from heaven, saying, 'By myself I have sworn, says the Lord, because you have done this thing, and have not spared your beloved son for my sake,' and so forth.

These words certainly—so that the one through whom the Lord speaks may say, thus says the Lord—the prophets too are accustomed to have. Or does the Son of God say of the Father, says the Lord, and is he himself that angel of the Father?

What then of those three men—do they not see how they are pressed, those men who appeared to Abraham when it had been foretold, the Lord appeared to him? Or, because they were called men, were they not angels? Let them read Daniel saying, behold, the man Gabriel.

11. 26. But why do we delay any longer to stop their mouths with another most evident and most weighty document, where neither angel in the singular, nor men in the plural, but plainly angels are spoken of, through whom not some utterance or other was made, but the Law itself is most plainly shown to have been given (See Gal 3:21; Acts 7:38)—the Law which certainly no believer doubts that God gave to Moses to subjugate the people of Israel, yet which was nonetheless given through angels?

Thus Stephen speaks: you stiff-necked people, he says, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit, as your fathers did. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? And they killed those who foretold the coming of the Just One, of whom you have now been the betrayers and murderers—you who received the Law by the edicts of angels, and have not kept it.

What is more evident than this? What is stronger by so great an authority? The Law was indeed given to that people by the edicts of angels; but through it the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ was being arranged and foretold; and he himself, as the Word of God, was in a wonderful and ineffable way present in the angels by whose edicts the Law was being given. (See 1 Cor 1:8; 1 Thess 3:13; Sir 1:5; Rev 19:13) Hence he says in the Gospel, if you believed Moses, you would believe me also; for he wrote of me.

Through angels, therefore, the Lord then spoke; through angels the Son of God, the Mediator of God and men, (See Heb 2:2; Matt 14:33, 16:16; Mark 1:1, 3:1–2; Luke 1:35, 4:41) who would come from the seed of Abraham, was arranging his own coming, so that he might find those by whom he would be received, confessing themselves guilty—those whom the unfulfilled Law had made transgressors.

Hence the Apostle also says to the Galatians, what then is the Law? It was set forth for the sake of transgression, until the seed should come to whom the promise was made, ordained through angels in the hand of a Mediator; that is, ordained through angels in his own hand. For he was born not by a created condition, but by power.

But that he calls not some one of the angels the Mediator, but the Lord Jesus Christ himself, insofar as he deigned to become man, you have in another place: one, he says, God, and one Mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus.

Hence that Passover in the slaying of the lamb; (See Exod 12:3) hence all those things which are prefigured in the Law concerning Christ to come in the flesh (See 1 John 4:2; Rom 8:3) and to suffer, but also to rise again—the Law which was given by the edicts of angels, (See Acts 7:53) among which angels were certainly the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit; and sometimes the Father, sometimes the Son, sometimes the Holy Spirit, and sometimes, without any distinction of person, God was prefigured through them, though appearing in visible and sensible forms—yet through his creation, not through his substance—to behold whom hearts are cleansed by all these things that are seen with the eyes and heard with the ears. (This idea will be elaborated in Book 13)

11. 27. But now enough, as I think, has been argued and demonstrated for our capacity of what we had undertaken to show in this book; See On the Trinity 4.21. and it has been established, both by the probability of reason, as far as man, or rather as far as I, was able, and by the firmness of authority, as far as the divine utterances lay open from the holy Scriptures, that for our ancient fathers, before the Incarnation of the Savior, when God was said to appear, those voices and corporeal forms were made through angels—whether the angels themselves spoke or did something in the person of God, as we have shown the prophets too are wont to do, or took up from a creation what they themselves were not, where God was figuratively shown to men; and Scripture teaches by many examples that the prophets did not omit this kind of signification either.

It remains, then, that we should see—now that the Lord has been born of the Virgin, and the Holy Spirit has descended in bodily form like a dove, (Matt 3:16; Mark 1:10; John 1:32) and the tongues of fire have been seen with a sound made from heaven on the day of Pentecost after the Lord's ascension (See Acts 2:1–4)—that it was not the Word of God himself, in respect of his substance by which he is equal and coeternal with the Father, nor the Spirit of the Father and the Son, in respect of his substance by which he too is equal and coeternal with both, but rather a creation, which could be formed and exist in those modes, that appeared to corporeal and mortal senses; and we should see what difference there is between those manifestations and these properties of the Son of God and of the Holy Spirit, though made through a visible creation—which we shall more suitably begin in another volume.

1. 1. The human race is wont to set great store by the knowledge of earthly and heavenly things. See Chrysippus, Fragments 35; Cicero, De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum 2.12.37; De Officiis 1.43.153; 2.2.5; Tusculanae Disputationes 4.26.57; 5.3.7; De Oratore 1.49.212. In which matter assuredly those are better who set knowing themselves above this knowledge; See Cicero, De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum 3.22.73; 5.16.44; Tusculanae Disputationes 1.22.52; De Legibus 1.22.58–23.61. and more praiseworthy is the mind to which even its own weakness is known, than the one which, with no regard for that, scrutinizes the courses of the stars—even though it will come to know them—or which already holds them known, while itself ignorant of the way by which it should enter (See Ps 32:8 (31:8)) upon its own salvation and stability.

But one who has now awakened toward God, roused by the warmth of the Holy Spirit, and in his love has become cheap in his own sight; who, wishing to enter to him yet unable, and with God shining upon him attends to himself, and finds himself, and recognizes that his own sickness cannot be reconciled to that purity; finds it sweet to weep, and to beseech him to have mercy again and again until he puts off all his misery, and to pray with confidence, having now received the free pledge of salvation through his only Savior and Enlightener of man;

such a man, thus needy PL: agentem, “acting.” and grieving, knowledge does not puff up, because love builds up; for he has set one knowledge above another—he has set knowing his own weakness above knowing the walls of the world Lucretius, De Rerum Natura 2.73., the foundations of the earth, and the heights of the heavens; and by adding this knowledge, he has added sorrow—the sorrow of his pilgrimage, from the longing for his homeland and for its founder, his blessed God. (See Heb 11:10–16)

Among this kind of men, in the family of your Christ, (See Ps 84:10 (83:11)) O Lord my God, if I groan among your poor, grant me from your bread to answer the men who do not hunger and thirst for righteousness, but are sated and abound. For their own phantasm has sated them, not your truth, which by rejecting it they recoil from, and fall into their own emptiness. I, for my part, perceive how many fictions the human heart brings forth. And what is my heart but a human heart?

But this I pray of the God of my heart, that I may belch forth none of those fictions into these writings as though it were solid truth, but that whatever can come through me into them may come from that source whence, although cast off from before his eyes and trying to return from far away, (A reference to the prodigal son) by the way which he has paved with the humanity of the divinity of his Only-begotten, the breath of his truth is sprinkled upon me. This breath, changeable though I am, I drink in just so far as I see nothing changeable in it—neither by places and times, as with bodies; nor by times alone and as it were by places, as with the thoughts of our spirits; Spirituum, “spirits,” is here a semi-technical term, meaning a kind of vaporous substance which fills the nervous system. nor by times alone and by no image of places, as with certain reasonings of our minds.

For the essence of God, by which he is, has nothing changeable, neither in eternity, nor in truth, nor in will; because there truth is eternal, love eternal; and there love is true, eternity true; and there eternity is dear, and truth dear. See Augustine, Confessions 7.10.16; The City of God 11.28.

1. 2. But since we have gone into exile from unchangeable joy, and yet have not been so cut off and broken away from it that we should not seek even in these changeable and temporal things eternity, truth, and blessedness (for we wish neither to die, nor to be deceived, nor to be troubled), there were sent to us divinely the visions suited to our pilgrimage (These are the various Old Testament manifestations which were discussed in books 2 and 3) by which we might be warned that what we seek is not here, but that we must return from this place to there—from which, did we not hang upon it, we would not seek these things here. (See Heb 11:13–15)

And first we had to be persuaded how much God loved us, lest out of despair we should not dare to be lifted up to him. (See John 3:16; 1 John 3:1; Jer 48:26) But it had to be shown what we were like when he loved us, lest, being proud as though over our own merits, we should recoil from him all the more and fail all the more in our own strength; and through this he dealt with us so that we might rather make progress through his strength, and so the power of love might be perfected in the weakness of humility.

This he signifies in the Psalm, where he says: setting apart a voluntary rain, O God, for your inheritance, and it was weakened; but you made it perfect. By a voluntary rain he wishes nothing else to be understood than grace, not rendered for merits but given freely, whence it is also named grace; for he gave it, not because we were worthy, but because he willed it. Recognizing this, we will not be trusting in ourselves; and this is to be weakened.

But he himself perfects us, who also said to the apostle Paul: my grace is sufficient for you; for power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore man had to be persuaded how much God loved us, and what we were like when he loved us: how much, that we might not despair; what we were like, that we might not be proud.

The Apostle explains this most necessary point thus: but God, he says, commends his love toward us, in that, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us; much more then, being now justified by his blood, shall we be saved from wrath through him. For if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. Likewise in another place: what then, he says, shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how has he not also with him given us all things? But what is announced to us as already done was shown to be future also to the righteous men of old, so that through the same faith they too, being humbled, might be made weak, and being made weak, might be made perfect.

1. 3. Since, therefore, there is one Word of God, through whom all things were made, which is unchangeable truth, where PL: ibi, “in it.” all things are principally and unchangeably together at once—not only those that now are in this whole creation, but also those that "have been" and those that "are to be." But there they have neither been nor are to be, but only are; and all things are life, and all things are one, and rather is it "one," and is one life. For all things were made through him in such a way that whatever was made in these things was life in him; and it was not made, because in the beginning the Word was not made, but the Word was, and the Word was The PL, along with several manuscripts, omit et Verbum erat—a simple case of haplography. with God, and the Word was God, and all things were made through him; nor would all things have been made through him, unless he himself were before all things and were not made.

But among the things that were made through him, even a body, which is not life, would not be made through him unless in him, before it was made, it were life. For what was made was already life in him, and not just any sort of life. For the soul too is the life of the body, but this also was made, because it is changeable; and through what was it made, except through the unchangeable Word of God? For all things were made through him, and without him was made nothing. What therefore was made was already life in him, and not just any sort of life, but the life was the light of men—the light, that is, of rational minds, by which men differ from beasts, and on that account are men. See Varro, Antiquitates, quoted in Augustine, The City of God 7.23. Not, then, corporeal light, which is the light of flesh, whether it shine from heaven or be kindled by earthly fires—and not only of human flesh, but also of the beasts' See Sallust, The War with Catiline 1.2. flesh, and down to the tiniest little worms; for all these see that light. But that life was the light of men, and not placed far from each one of us, for in it we live and move and have our being.

2. 4. But the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. Now the darkness is the foolish minds of men, blinded by depraved desire and unbelief.

That he might cure and heal these, the Word, through whom all things were made, was made flesh and dwelt among us. For our enlightenment is a participation in the Word, that is, in that life which is the light of men. But for this participation we were altogether unfit and insufficiently suited, because of the uncleanness of our sins. Therefore we had to be cleansed. Now there is one cleansing for the wicked and the proud: the blood of the Just One, and the humility of God; so that, to contemplate God, which by nature we are not, we might be cleansed through him who was made what by nature we are, and what by sin we are not. For by nature we are not God; by nature we are men, by sin we are not righteous. And so God, made a righteous man, interceded with God for sinful man. For a sinner is not in keeping with a righteous one, but a man is in keeping with a man. Joining to us, then, the likeness of his humanity, he took away the unlikeness of our iniquity, and made a partaker of our mortality, he made us partakers of his divinity. See 2 Pet 1:4; Augustine, Expositions of the Psalms 52.6. Rightly indeed the death of the sinner, coming from the necessity of condemnation, was loosed by the death of the Just One, coming from the will of mercy, while his single matches our double.

For this congruence, or fitting, or concord, or consonance, or whatever may be more suitably called the relation of one to two, has the greatest force in every joining—or, if it is better so called, in the fitting together See The City of God 22.24.4. of a creation. For I wished to call it this fitting together, as it now occurs to me, which the Greeks call ἁρμονία. The primary meaning of the Greek word is not musical, as with the English word “harmony”; rather, its primary meaning is a joint, fastener, or clamp—a carpenter’s or shipwright’s word. Nor is this now the place to show how much the consonance of the single to the double avails, which is found greatest in us, and is so naturally implanted in us (by whom, indeed, but by him who created us?) that even the untrained cannot fail to perceive it, whether singing themselves or hearing others. For through it the higher and lower notes are in concord, so that whoever sounds out of tune with it gravely offends, not knowledge, of which very many are without, but the very sense of our hearing. But to demonstrate this requires a long discourse; it can, however, be presented to the ears themselves by one who knows how, on a single regulated monochord.

3. 5. But what presses upon us at present, so far as God grants, is to set forth how the single of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ corresponds to our double, and in a certain way chimes with it unto salvation. We certainly—as no Christian doubts—are dead both in soul and in body: in soul because of sin, in body because of the punishment of sin, and through this also in body because of sin. (See Eph 2:1–5; 1 Pet 2:24) But each of these things of ours, that is, both soul and body, had need of healing and of resurrection, so that what had been changed for the worse might be renewed for the better.

Now the death of the soul is ungodliness, and the death of the body is corruptibility, through which there comes also the soul's departure from the body. For just as the soul dies when God forsakes it, so the body dies when the soul forsakes it. Whence the one becomes foolish, the other lifeless. The soul, then, is raised again through repentance, and in the body, still mortal, the renewal of life is begun by faith, by which one believes in him who justifies the ungodly, and it is increased and strengthened by good conduct from day to day, as more and more the inner man is renewed.

But the body, as the outer man, the longer this life lasts, is more and more corrupted, whether by age, or by disease, or by various afflictions, until it comes to that last one which by all is called death. But its resurrection is deferred to the end, when our justification too will be perfected in an ineffable way. (See Rom 4:25) For then we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. But now, as long as the body that is corruptible weighs down the soul, and: human life upon earth is wholly a trial, nor is any living man justified in his sight—in comparison with that righteousness by which we shall be made equal to the angels, and with that glory which shall be revealed in us.

But as for distinguishing the death of the soul from the death of the body, why should I recall further proofs, when the Lord, in a single sentence of the Gospel, has set both deaths so that anyone may easily discern them, where he says: let the dead bury their dead? For the dead body was to be buried; but its buriers, through the unbelief of ungodliness, PL: infidelitatis impietatem, “unbelieving godlessness.” he wished to be understood as dead in soul—the kind who are roused when it is said, rise, you who sleep, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall enlighten you. But the Apostle detests a certain kind of death, saying of the widow, but she who lives in pleasures is dead while living. Therefore the soul that is now godly, which had been ungodly, is said, because of the righteousness of faith, to have come back to life from death and to live.

But the body, as destined to die not only because of the soul's departure that is to come, but because of the great weakness of flesh and blood, is in a certain place in the Scriptures even called dead, when the Apostle says, the body indeed, he says, is dead because of sin, but the spirit is life because of righteousness. This life is brought about by faith, since the righteous lives by faith. (See Heb 2:4, 10:38; Gal 3:11) But what follows? And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Jesus Christ from the dead will give life also to your mortal bodies through his Spirit dwelling in you.

3. 6. For this twofold death of ours, then, our Savior laid out his single one, and to bring about both our raisings, he set before us in sacrament and example his single one. For he was neither a sinner nor ungodly, that he should have need to be renewed in the inner man as though dead in spirit, (See 2 Cor 4:16) and as though by repenting to be recalled to the life of righteousness; but clothed in mortal flesh, and dying in that alone, rising again in that alone, in that alone he chimed with us for both, since in it there was made the sacrament of the inner man and the example of the outer.

For to the sacrament of our inner man was given that cry which pertains to signifying the death of our soul, not only in the Psalm but also on the cross: my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? With this cry the Apostle agrees, saying, knowing that our old man was crucified together with him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we may no longer be slaves to sin. For by the crucifixion of the inner man are understood the pains of repentance, and a certain healthful torment of continence, by which death the death of ungodliness is destroyed, in which death God does not forsake us.

And therefore through such a cross the body of sin is done away with, so that we may no longer present our members as weapons of iniquity for sin. For the inner man too, if indeed he is renewed from day to day, is assuredly old before he is renewed. For within is done what the same Apostle says, put off the old man, and put on the new. Which he goes on to expound thus: wherefore, putting away falsehood, speak the truth. But where is falsehood put away, if not within, that he who speaks truth in his heart may dwell in God's holy mountain?

But the resurrection of the Lord's body is shown to pertain to the sacrament of our inner resurrection, where, after he had risen, he says to the woman, do not touch me, for I have not yet ascended to my Father. With this mystery the Apostle agrees, saying, but if you have risen with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God; mind the things that are above. For this is not to touch Christ until he has ascended to the Father: not to be wise about Christ in a carnal way. (See 2 Cor 1:12)

But now to the example of the death of our outer man (See 2 Cor 4:16) pertains the death of the Lord's flesh, because by such a passion he especially exhorted his servants not to fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. On account of which the Apostle says, that I may supply what is lacking of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh. And the resurrection of the Lord's body is found to pertain to the example of the resurrection of our outer man, because he says to the disciples, handle me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see that I have. And one of the disciples, even touching his scars, cried out, saying, my Lord and my God! And since the whole integrity of that flesh appeared, there was demonstrated in it what he had said in exhorting his own, a hair of your head shall not perish.

For why at first, do not touch me, for I have not yet ascended to my Father, and why, before he ascends to the Father, is he touched by the disciples, unless because there the sacrament of the inner man was being intimated, and here the example of the outer was being offered? Or is anyone perhaps so absurd and so averse from the truth as to dare to say that he was touched by men before he ascended, but by women after he had ascended? (See John 20:17–27) On account of this example of our future resurrection in the body, which went before in the Lord, the Apostle says, Christ the beginning, then those who are Christ's. For in that passage he was treating of the resurrection of the body, on account of which he also says, he will transfigure Several manuscripts here read transfigurabit, which the translation also follows. The PL has transfiguravit, “has transfigured.” But the whole sense of the passage shows that Augustine’s text of the epistle correctly rendered Paul’s future. The transcriptional error of writing -avit for -abit and vice versa is so common and so easy, that cases like this should be judged simply on the merits of the sense. the body of our humility, conformed to the body of his glory.

Therefore the one death of our Savior was for the salvation of our two deaths. And his one resurrection bestowed on us two resurrections, since his body, in each matter—that is, both in death and in resurrection—was ministered, by a certain medicinal fittingness, both to the sacrament of our inner man and to the example of the outer.

4. 7. Now this ratio of the single to the double arises indeed from the number three; for one to two is three. But all this that I have said reaches as far as six; for one and two and three make six. This number is called perfect for the reason that it is completed by its own parts; for it has three of them—a sixth, a third, a half—and no other part can be found in it that could be said to be a fraction of it. Its sixth, then, is one; its third, two; its half, three. But one and two and three add up to that same six. Its perfection holy Scripture commends to us, especially in this, that God in six days perfected his works, (See Gen 1:1–31; 2:1–2; Exod 20:11–31) and on the sixth day man was made to the image of God. (See Gen 9:6, 5:1; Wis 2:23; Sir 17:1) And in the sixth age of the human race, the Son of God came and was made the Son of man, that he might reform us to the image of God. (See Gen 1:27) For it is this age that is now in course, whether we distribute a thousand years to each age, or trace in the divine writings memorable and notable points of the times as it were as joints, so that the first age is found from Adam to Noah, then the second to Abraham, and thereafter, as the Evangelist Matthew distinguished, from Abraham to David, from David to the deportation to Babylon, (See Matt 1:17) and from there to the Virgin's childbearing. These three ages, joined to those two, make five. Accordingly the birth of the Lord began the sixth, which is now in course until the hidden end of time.

That this number six bears a certain figure of time, we recognize also in that division into three parts, by which we reckon one time before the Law, another under the Law, a third under grace. (See Rom 5:13, 6:14) In this time we receive the sacrament of renewal, so that at the end of time, renewed in every part even by the resurrection of the flesh, we may be healed of every weakness, not only of soul but also of body. (See Eph 4:23; 2 Cor 4:16) Hence is understood that woman, as a type of the Church, healed and set upright by the Lord, whom an infirmity had bent over while Satan bound her; (See Luke 13:11–16) for it is of such hidden enemies that the voice of the Psalm laments, they have bent down my soul. Now this woman had been eighteen years in her infirmity, which is three sixes. (See Luke 13:16) But the months of eighteen years are found in the number of the solid square of six, which is six times six, and this six times. For nearby, in the same place of the Gospel, is also that fig tree, whose wretched barrenness even a third year reproached. But intercession was made for it, that it be left that year, so that if it bore fruit, well; but if not, that it be cut down. (See Luke 13:6–9) For the three years too pertain to the same threefold division, The same as the woman’s eighteen years. Augustine’s number symbolism may leave the reader skeptical; but there can be little doubt that Luke thought these numbers significant. In the same chapter, he mentions the eighteen men on whom the tower fell, and the three measures of flour which the woman mixes with leaven. and the months of three years make the square of six, which is six times six.

4. 8. A single year too, if its twelve whole months be considered, which thirty days complete (for the ancients observed such a month, which the lunar circuit shows), is strong in the number six. For what six avails in the first rank of numbers, which consists of units up to ten, that sixty avails in the second rank, which consists of tens up to a hundred. The number of sixty days, then, is a sixth part of the year. Accordingly it is multiplied by the six of the first row, as it were the six of the second row, and there come six times sixty, three hundred and sixty days, which are twelve whole months.

But since, just as the circuit of the moon shows men the month, so the year is observed by the circuit of the sun, there remain five days and a quarter of a day for the sun to complete its course and conclude the year. For four quarters make one day, which must needs be intercalated when a four-year period has run out, which they call the bissextile, (In the Roman calendar, the VI Kal. Mar. (Feb. 24) was repeated in a leap year; hence the name “bissextile.”) lest the order of the seasons be disturbed. Even in those five days and a quarter themselves, if we consider them, the number six avails greatly. First, because, as it usually happens that the whole is reckoned from a part, they are now not five days but rather six, the quarter being taken for a day; next, because in those five days themselves there is a sixth part of a month, while the quarter itself has six hours. For a whole day, that is, with its night, is twenty-four hours, of which the fourth part, which is a quarter of a day, is found to be six hours. Thus in the course of a year the number six avails greatly.

5. 9. And not without reason is the number six itself, set for a year, understood in the building of the Lord's body, in figure of which he said that the temple destroyed by the Jews he would raise up in three days. For they said, this temple was built in forty-six years. And forty-six times six make two hundred and seventy-six. This number of days completes nine months and six days, which are reckoned as ten months for women giving birth—not because all come to the sixth day after the ninth month, but because the very perfecting of the Lord's body is found to have been brought to birth in just so many days, as the authority of the Church, receiving it handed down by our forefathers, keeps. For he is believed to have been conceived on the eighth day before the Kalends of April, on which he also suffered. Thus to the new tomb in which he was buried, where no one of the dead had been laid (See John 19:41; Luke 23:53)—neither before nor afterward—corresponds the Virgin's womb in which he was conceived, where no one of mortals was sown. (See Luke 1:31; Matt 1:21; Isa 7:14) But he is recorded to have been born on the eighth day before the Kalends of January. Reckoned, then, from that day to this, two hundred and seventy-six days are found, which contain the number six forty-six times. By which number of years the temple was built, because by that number of sixes the body of the Lord was perfected, which, destroyed by the suffering of death, he raised up in three days. For he said this of the temple of his body, as is declared by the most evident and most robust testimony of the Gospel, in which he says, as Jonah was in the belly of the whale three days and three nights, so shall the Son of man be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights.

6. 10. The translator has moved several sentences—the Matt 12:40 quotation about Jonah—from the end of the last paragraph to the beginning of this one to make logical sense of a scribal error. But that those three days themselves were not whole and complete, Scripture is witness. But the first day was reckoned whole from its last part, while the third day was reckoned from its first part, and it too whole; the one in the middle between them, however, that is, the second day, was absolutely whole with its twenty-four hours, twelve nocturnal and twelve diurnal.

For he was first crucified by the voices of the Jews at the third hour, when it was the sixth day of the week; (See Mark 15:25) then he was hung upon the cross itself at the sixth hour, and gave up his spirit at the ninth hour; (See Matt 27:46–50; Mark 15:34–37) but he was buried when it was already late, (See Mark 15:42–46) as the words of the Gospel have it, which is understood as at the end of the day.

Wherever, then, you may begin—even if another account can be given of how it is not against the Gospel of John, so that he be understood to have been hung on the wood at the third hour See John 19:14. The difficulty about reconciling the Gospel narratives of the Passion in this respect is as follows: Mark 15:25 says it was the third hour and they crucified him; at the sixth hour there was darkness over the whole earth till the ninth hour (Mark 15:33); at the ninth hour Jesus cried out . . . and shortly afterward breathed his last (Mark 15:34–37). Matthew and Luke agree. But in John 19:14, Jesus is still before Pilate at the sixth hour, and is crucified shortly afterward.—you do not include the whole first day. Therefore it will be reckoned whole from its last part, as the third from its first part. For the night up to the dawn, in which the Lord's resurrection was declared, pertains to the third day; because God, who said that light should shine out of darkness, that through the grace of the New Testament and a participation in Christ's resurrection we might hear, for you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord, intimates to us in a certain way that the day takes its beginning from night.

For just as the first days, on account of man's future fall, are reckoned from light to night, (See Gen 1:4–5) so these, on account of man's restoration, are reckoned from darkness to light. From the hour of his death, then, to the dawn of the resurrection there are forty hours, counting in that ninth hour itself. With which number agrees also his life upon earth after the resurrection, in forty days. And this number is most frequent in the Scriptures for intimating the mystery of perfection in the four-part world. For ten has a certain perfection, and multiplied four times it makes forty.

But from the evening of the burial to the dawn of the resurrection there are thirty-six hours, which is the square of six. And it is referred to that ratio of the single to the double, where there is the greatest consonance of "fitting together." For twelve agrees with twenty-four as the single with the double, and they make thirty-six—a whole night with a whole day and a whole night; nor is this without that sacrament which I mentioned above. On the Trinity 4.4–6. In this last application of the proportion, the two nights and a day in which our Lord’s body lay in the tomb represent the proportion of his body (one night) to our body and spirit (one night and one day) as model for the one and type or sacrament for the other. For not absurdly do we compare the spirit to day, but the body to night. For the Lord's body in death and resurrection bore both a figure of our spirit and an example of our body. So in this way too that ratio of the single to the double appears in the thirty-six hours, when twelve are compared with twenty-four.

And of these numbers, indeed, why they are set in the holy Scriptures, one person may trace out some causes, another others—causes either to be preferred to those I have given, or equally probable, or even more probable than these. Yet that they are set in the Scriptures in vain, and that there are no mystical causes why these numbers are recorded there, no one so foolish and inept would contend. But the causes I have given I have gathered either from the authority of the Church handed down by our forefathers, or from the testimony of the divine Scriptures, or from the rationale of the numbers and likenesses. Against reason let no sober person think, against the Scriptures let no Christian, against the Church let no peaceable person.

7. 11. This sacrament, this sacrifice, this priest, this God, before he came as one sent, made of a woman—all the things that appeared in a sacred and mystical way to our fathers through angelic miracles, or that were done through them, As, for example, Jacob anointing the stone at Bethel, or Abraham being ready to sacrifice Isaac at God’s command. were likenesses of him, so that every creature in a certain way spoke by its deeds of the one who was to come, in whom would be the salvation of all who were to be restored from death.

For because, recoiling and sounding out of tune through the iniquity of ungodliness, we had flowed away from the one true and most high God, and had vanished away into many things, torn asunder through many things and clinging to many things, it was fitting, by the nod and command of the merciful God, that the very many things should cry aloud the one who was to come, and that the one who was cried aloud by the many should come, and that the many should testify that the one had come, and that, unburdened of the many, we should come to the one;

and that we, dead in soul through many sins, and destined to die in flesh because of sin, might love the one who without sin died in the flesh for us, and, believing in him raised again, and rising again with him in spirit through faith, might be justified in the one righteous one, (See Col 2:12) made one; and might not despair of rising again in the flesh itself, (See 1 Cor 12:12) since we behold many members have gone before us as one head, in whom, now cleansed through faith, and then restored whole through sight, (See Acts 15:9; 2 Cor 5:7) and reconciled to God through the Mediator, we may cleave to the One, (See Gal 3:20) enjoy the One, remain One.

8. 12. Thus the Son of God himself, the Word of God, and the same one the Mediator of God and men, the Son of man, equal to the Father (See 1 Tim 2:5) through the unity of divinity, and our partner through the assumption of humanity, interceding with the Father for us through that by which he was man, yet not keeping silent about the fact that as God he was one with the Father, speaks among other things thus: but I pray not for these, he says, only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they all may be one, as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they too may be one in us; that the world may believe that you sent me. And the glory which you gave me I have given them, that they may be one, as we also are one.

9. 12. He did not say, "I and they are one," although, in respect of the fact that he is the head of the Church and the Church his body, (See Eph 5:23; Col 1:18) he could have said, "I and they," not "one thing," but "one person," because the head and the body are one Christ. (See 1 Tim 2:5; 1 Cor 8:6, 12:20) But showing his divinity consubstantial with the Father (on account of which he also says in another place, I and the Father are one), in its own kind, that is, in the consubstantial parity of the same nature, he wishes his own to be one, but in himself; because in themselves they could not be one, sundered from one another through diverse wills PL: voluptates, “pleasures.” and desires and the uncleanness of sins; whence they are cleansed through the Mediator, that they may be one in him; not only through the same nature by which all from mortal men are made equal to the angels, (See Luke 20:36; Matt 22:30; Mark 12:25) but also through the same will, conspiring most harmoniously toward the same blessedness, fused as it were into one spirit by the fire of love. See On the Trinity 3.9.

For to this avails what he says, that they may be one, as we also are one: that just as the Father and the Son are one not only by equality of substance but also by will, so these too, between whom and God the Son is Mediator, may be one not only through the fact that they are of the same nature, but also through the same fellowship of love. Then that he himself is the Mediator through whom we are reconciled to God, he indicates thus: I, he says, in them, and you in me, that they may be perfected into one.

10. 13. This is true peace, and a firm connection with our Creator for us, purified and reconciled through the Mediator of life, just as, stained and estranged, we had withdrawn from him through the mediator of death. For just as the proud devil led proud man down to death, so the humble Christ led obedient man back to life. Because, just as that one, being exalted, fell and cast down the one who consented to him, so this one, being humbled, rose and raised up the one who believed. (See Gen 3:1; Wis 2:24; Heb 2:14)

For because the devil had not reached where he himself had led man (for he bore the death of the spirit in ungodliness, but had not undergone the death of the flesh, since he had not taken on any garment of flesh), he seemed to man a great prince among the legions of demons, through whom he wields his kingdom of deceptions. Thus, puffing man up the more through the smoke of self-exaltation—more eager for power than for righteousness—either through false philosophy, or ensnaring him through sacrilegious rites, in which there are also magical deceptions, casting headlong the more curious and proud souls, deceived and deluded, he holds him subject; (The Latin syntax here is problematic)

promising even a purification of the soul through what they call τελεταί, A technical term for mystic rites, particularly for the rites of initiation into the mysteries of Isis, for example, or Mithras, which were still very much in vogue. In The City of God 10.9.2, he describes the teletai as “theurgic (magical) consecrations.” by transfiguring himself into an angel of light through a manifold contrivance in lying signs and wonders.

11. 14. For it is easy for the most wicked spirits to do, through their airy bodies, many things that souls weighed down by earthly bodies marvel at, even souls of better disposition. (See Wis 9:15; 2 Cor 5:4) For if those very earthly bodies, modified by certain arts and exercises, exhibit to men in theatrical spectacles such marvels that those who have never seen such things scarcely believe them when told, what great matter is it for the devil and his angels, out of the corporeal elements through their airy bodies, to do things that the flesh marvels at, or even, by hidden inspirations, to contrive phantasms of images for deluding human senses, by which he may deceive men waking or sleeping, or drive the frenzied to and fro?

But just as it can happen that a man better in life and conduct watches most wicked men walking on a rope, or doing many incredible things by manifold movements of their bodies, and in no way desires to do such things, nor on that account thinks them to be preferred to himself, so the faithful and godly soul, even if it sees, and even if, on account of the frailty of the flesh, it shudders at the miracles of demons, will not on that account either grieve that it cannot do such things, or judge them to be better on this account. Especially since it is in the fellowship of the saints, who through the power of God, to whom all things are subject, have done things in no way deceptive and far greater—whether men or good angels. (See 1 Cor 15:27–28)

12. 15. By no means, therefore, are souls purified and reconciled to God through sacrilegious likenesses and ungodly curiosities and magical consecrations; for the false mediator does not carry one across to the higher things, but rather, besieging, blocks the way through the affections, which he inspires the more malignant the prouder his fellowship is. These cannot nourish the wings of the virtues for flying up, but rather heap up the weights of the vices for sinking down, the more heavily as the soul, doomed to fall, seems to itself to be borne up the more loftily.

Accordingly, just as the Magi did when divinely warned—whom a star led to adore the humility of the Lord—so we too ought to return to our homeland not by the way we came, but by another way, which the humble King taught, and which the proud king, the adversary of the humble King, cannot besiege. For to us also, that we may adore the humble Christ, the heavens have declared the glory of God, when their sound went out into all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world.

There was a way for us to death through sin in Adam; for through one man sin entered into the world, and through sin death, and so it passed to all men, in whom all sinned. The mediator of this way was the devil, the persuader to sin and the one who casts headlong into death; (See Gen 3:1; Wis 2:24; Heb 2:14) for he too, to work our twofold death, brought his single one. For through ungodliness he died in spirit, though he certainly did not die in flesh; but to us he both persuaded ungodliness, and through this brought it about that we should deserve to come to the death of the flesh. The one, then, we sought through his wicked persuasion; the other followed us through just condemnation.

For this reason indeed it is written, God did not make death; because he was not himself the cause of death, yet through his retribution a most just death was inflicted on the sinner. Just as a judge inflicts punishment on a guilty man, yet the cause of the punishment is not the justice of the judge, but the desert of the crime. Where, then, the mediator of death sent us across, and where he himself did not come—that is, to the death of the flesh—there the Lord our God inserted for us the medicine of amendment, which that one did not deserve, by a hidden and exceedingly secret ordering of divine and lofty justice.

So that, just as through one man came death, so through one man might come the resurrection of the dead—because men shunned more what they could not escape, the death of the flesh, than the death of the spirit; that is, more the punishment than the desert of punishment (for not to sin is either not cared for, or little cared for, but not to die, though it cannot be obtained, is vehemently striven after)—the Mediator of life, showing how little death is to be feared, which through the human condition can now no longer be evaded, but rather ungodliness, which through faith can be guarded against, met us at the end to which we came, but not by the way we came. For we came to death through sin, he through righteousness; and therefore, since our death is the punishment of sin, his death was made a sacrifice for sin. (See Rom 5:12, 5:18, 5:21; Heb 10:12)

13. 16. Wherefore, since the spirit is set above the body, and the death of the spirit is to be forsaken by God, but the death of the body is to be forsaken by the spirit, and this is the punishment in the death of the body, that the spirit, because it willingly forsook God, forsakes the body unwillingly; so that, when the spirit has forsaken God because it willed it, it forsakes the body even though it would not; and does not forsake it when it would, unless it has brought upon itself some force by which the body itself is destroyed—the spirit of the Mediator demonstrated how no punishment of sin reached him even to the death of the flesh, because he did not forsake it unwillingly, but because he willed it, when he willed it, in the way he willed it.

Indeed, compounded into unity with the Word of God, The word commixtus, “compounded,” would be ruled out by Chalcedon. But Augustine certainly was no monophysite. he says of this, I have power to lay down my soul, and I have power to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of myself, and I take it up again. And at this above all those who were present marveled, as the Gospel tells, when, after that cry in which he uttered the figure of our sin, he straightway gave up his spirit. (See Matt 27:50; Mark 15:37; Luke 23:46) For those hung upon the wood were tormented by a long death. Whence the legs of the thieves were broken, that they might now die and be taken down from the wood before the Sabbath. But he, because he was found already dead, was a marvel. (See John 19:30–33) This too we read that Pilate marveled at, when the body of the Lord was asked of him for burial. (See Mark 15:43; Matt 27:58; Luke 23:52; John 19:38)

13. 17. That deceiver, then, who was man's mediator to death, and falsely sets himself against him for life under the name of purification through sacrilegious rites and sacrifices, by which the proud are seduced—because he could have neither a participation in our death nor a resurrection of his own—was able indeed to bring his single death against our double; but a single resurrection, in which there would be both a sacrament of our renewal and an example of that awakening which is to be at the end, this assuredly he could not. He, accordingly, who, living in spirit, raised up his own dead flesh, the true Mediator of life, cast that one, dead in spirit and the mediator of death, out from the spirits of those who believe in him, so that he might not reign within, but might assail from without, yet not overcome.

To whom he also offered himself to be tempted, that he might be Mediator for overcoming his temptations too, not only by help but also by example. But that one, when at first, striving to creep in through all the approaches to the interior, he was driven out, after the baptism, in the desert, when every alluring temptation had been completed—because, dead in spirit, he did not invade the living spirit (See Luke 4:1–13)—greedy in whatever way for human death, turned himself to bring about the death he could, and was permitted into that mortal which the living Mediator had taken from us. And where he could do something, there he was utterly vanquished on every side; and from where he received outwardly the power of killing the Lord's flesh, thence his inner power, by which he held us, was slain. (See 2 Tim 2:26)

For it came about that the bonds of the many sins of many men in their many deaths were loosed through the one death of the one whom no sin had gone before. (See 1 Pet 2:22; 2 Cor 5:21) Which death the Lord on this account paid for us, though not owed, so that the death owed by us might not harm us. For he was not stripped of his flesh by the right of anyone's power, but he stripped himself. Augustine, or his version of the text, treats the first word of this verse (in Greek, apekdusamenos) as reflexive, not as active with “principalities and powers” as its object, as do the Vulgate and all modern versions. For he who could not die if he would not, beyond doubt died because he willed it; and therefore he made an example of the principalities and powers, confidently triumphing over them in himself.

For by his death, the one most true sacrifice offered for us, he purified, abolished, extinguished whatever faults there were on account of which the principalities and powers by right held us fast to pay the penalties; and by his resurrection he called us, predestined to a new life, and those whom he called he justified, and those whom he justified he glorified. (See Rom 8:30)

Thus the devil lost, in the very death of the flesh, the man whom, seduced through consent, he possessed as though by full right—he who, himself hedged about by no corruption of flesh and blood, lorded it through this frailty of the mortal body over one exceedingly needy and weak, the prouder for being as it were richer and stronger, over one as it were ragged and wretched. For where he drove on the falling sinner whom he did not follow, thither he followed and compelled the descending Redeemer.

Thus in the fellowship of death the Son of God deigned to become our friend, where the enemy, by not arriving, thought himself better and greater than we. For our Redeemer says: greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his soul for his friends. Wherefore the devil believed himself superior even to the Lord himself, insofar as the Lord yielded to him in his sufferings; for of him too was understood what is read in the Psalm, you made him a little less than the angels: so that, while the wicked one acted against us as though by equal right, the innocent one, being slain, might overcome him by a most equitable right, and so might lead captive the captivity made on account of sin, and free us from the captivity that was just on account of sin, by his just blood unjustly shed blotting out the bond of death, and redeeming sinners to be justified.

13. 18. Here too the devil still deludes his own, to whom, as if to be purified—but rather to be entangled and submerged—the false mediator sets himself in opposition through his rites, in that he most easily persuades the proud to mock and despise the death of Christ, from which the more estranged he himself is, the more he is believed by them to be holy and divine. Yet very few have remained with him, since the nations now acknowledge and with godly humility drink their price, and in confidence in it forsake their enemy and run together to their Redeemer.

For the devil does not know how the most exalted wisdom of God uses him, both lying in wait and raging, for the salvation of his faithful, reaching mightily from the higher end, which is the beginning of spiritual creation, to the lower end, which is the death of the body, and ordering all things sweetly. For it attains everywhere because of its purity, and nothing defiled enters into it. But for the devil, estranged from the death of the flesh, on which account he walks exceedingly proud, a death of another kind is prepared in the eternal fire of Tartarus, by which spirits can be tormented not only with earthly but also with airy bodies.

But proud men, to whom Christ has become cheap because he died—where he bought us at so great a price (See 1 Cor 6:20)—both render that death back, along with men, to the wretched condition of a nature that is drawn from the first sin, and will be cast headlong into that condition together with him. Him they have preferred to Christ for this reason, that he cast them down into this state, into which he himself, through his distant nature, did not fall, and into which Christ, on their account, through his immense mercy, descended; and yet they do not hesitate to believe that they are better than the demons, and they do not cease to assail and detest with every curse those whom they certainly know to be estranged from the suffering of this death—on account of which they despise Christ.

Nor are they willing to consider in this way how it could come about that the Word of God, remaining in itself and in no part changeable through itself, could nonetheless, through the assumption of a lower nature, suffer something lower, which an unclean demon, because it does not have an earthly body, cannot suffer. Thus, although they themselves are better than the demons, yet because they bear flesh, they can die in the way that demons, because they do not bear it, certainly cannot die.

And although they presume much upon the deaths of their sacrifices, which they do not perceive that they are immolating to deceitful and proud spirits—or if they now do perceive it, they suppose that the friendship of the treacherous and envious profits them something, whose intention has no business but the hindering of our return. This is Augustine’s hostile interpretation of the more sophisticated pagan religiosity of his day, an equivalent of modern theosophy. It was sometimes called “theurgy,” which literally means “working the gods.” He describes it in detail in The City of God 8, quoting Apuleius and Hermes Trismegistus.

14. 19. They do not understand that not even those most proud spirits themselves could have rejoiced in the honors of sacrifices, unless a true sacrifice were owed to the one true God, for whom they wish to be worshiped. Nor can it be duly offered except through a holy and righteous priest; nor unless what is offered be accepted from those for whom it is offered, and that without fault, so that it can be offered for the cleansing of the faulty. This certainly all desire who wish a sacrifice to be offered to God for themselves.

Who, then, is so righteous and holy a priest as the only Son of God, who had no need to purify his own sins by sacrifice (See Heb 7:27)—neither original ones nor those that are added from human life? And what could be taken from men so fittingly to be offered for them as human flesh? And what is so apt for this immolation as mortal flesh? And what so clean for the cleansing of the faults of mortals as flesh, born in a virgin's womb and from a virgin's womb without any contagion of carnal desire? And what could be so gratefully offered and accepted as the flesh of our sacrifice, made the body of our priest? So that—since four things are considered in every sacrifice: to whom it is offered, by whom it is offered, what is offered, for whom it is offered—the same one and true Mediator, reconciling us to God through a sacrifice of peace, (See Gal 3:20; 1 Tim 2:5) might remain one with him to whom he was offering, might make one in himself those for whom he was offering, might himself be one who was offering and what he was offering.

15. 20. But there are some who think that they can be purified by their own power to contemplate God and to cleave to God, whom pride itself most stains. For there is no vice that is more resisted by the divine Law, and against which that most proud spirit—the mediator to the depths, the blocker to the heights—receives a greater right of lording it: unless either, secretly lying in wait, he be evaded by another way, or, through the "failing people," which is interpreted Amalek, openly raging and denying passage by fighting against the way to the land of promise, he be overcome through the cross of the Lord, which was prefigured by the outstretched hands of Moses. (See Exod 17:8–16)

For these promise themselves a purification by their own power because some of them have been able to send the edge of their mind beyond every creature, and to touch, in however small a part, the light of unchangeable truth; at which they deride the fact that many Christians, living for the time being by faith alone, have not yet been able to do so. (See Hab 2:4; Rom 1:17; Gal 3:11; Heb 10:38; 2 Cor 5:7) But what does it profit one who is proud, and on this account ashamed to mount the wood, to gaze from afar upon the homeland across the sea? See Augustine, The City of God 9.17; 10.29; Against the Academics 3.19.42; On the Happy Life 1.2; Homilies on the Gospel of John 2.2; Plotinus, Ennead 1.6; Ambrose, On Isaac and the Soul 8.78. Or what does it harm the humble man not to see it across so great an interval, when he comes to it on that wood by which the other disdains to be carried?

16. 21. These also reprehend us for believing the resurrection of the flesh, and wish themselves rather to be believed even about these matters; as though, because they were able to understand the most lofty and unchangeable substance through the things that were made, they were on that account to be consulted about the turning of changeable things, or about the interwoven order of the ages. For because they argue most truly, and persuade by most certain proofs, that all temporal things come to be by eternal reasons, were they on that account able to perceive in those very reasons, or to gather from them, how many kinds of animals there are, what the seeds of each are at their beginnings, what their measure in growth, what numbers run through conceptions, through births, through ages, through deaths, what motions there are in seeking the things that are according to nature and fleeing their contraries? Did they not seek out all these things, not through that unchangeable wisdom, but through the history of places and times, and believe them as experienced and recorded by others?

So much the less is it to be wondered at that they were in no way able to trace out the series of the more extended ages, and a certain goal of this course by which, as by a river, the human race runs down, and then the turning of each to its own due end.

For these things neither could the historians write—things far in the future and experienced and narrated by no one—nor did these philosophers, better than the rest, contemplate such things by understanding in those highest and eternal reasons; otherwise they would not inquire into past things of the same kind which the historians were able to, but would rather also foreknow future things; and those who could do this were called by them seers, by ours prophets. Although the name of prophets too is not altogether foreign to their writings.

17. 22. But it makes a great difference whether future things are conjectured from experience of past ones—as physicians, by foreseeing many things, have even committed to writing what they themselves had noted from experience; as, in short, farmers or even sailors foretell many things (for such things, if they happen at long intervals of time, are thought to be divinations);

or whether things now to come have gone before, and, seen from afar as coming, are announced according to the keen sense of those who see—which, when the airy powers do it, they are believed to divine; as if someone from a mountaintop should see someone coming from afar, and announce it beforehand to those dwelling nearby on the plain;

or whether they are foretold by the holy angels, to whom God indicates them through his Word and Wisdom, where both future and past things stand—whether they be foretold to certain men, or, heard from the angels, be in turn passed on to other men;

or whether the minds of certain men themselves are so far raised up by the Holy Spirit that they behold, not through angels but through themselves, the standing causes of future things in the very highest citadel of things. For the airy powers also hear these things, whether the angels announce them, or men; and they hear only so much as he judges to be needful, to whom all things are subject.

Many things too are foretold by a certain instinct and impulse of spirit by those who do not know: as Caiaphas did not know what he said, but, being high priest, he prophesied.

17. 23. Therefore about the successions of the ages and about the resurrection of the dead we ought not to consult even those philosophers who understood, so far as they were able, the eternity of the Creator in whom we live, move, and have our being, because, knowing God through the things that were made, they did not glorify him as God, nor give thanks, but, saying that they were wise, they were made fools.

And since they were not fit to fix the edge of their mind so steadily upon the eternity of the spiritual and unchangeable nature as to see, in the very wisdom of the Creator and Ruler of the universe, the volumes of the ages, which were already there and always were, but here were future so as not yet to be; and as to see there the conversions to the better, not only of souls but also of human bodies, even to the perfection of their proper measure;

since, then, they were in no way fit to see these things there, they were not even held worthy that these things should be announced to them through the holy angels—whether outwardly through the senses of the body, or by inner revelations expressed in the spirit; as these things were demonstrated to our fathers, endowed with true piety, who, foretelling them, by making good faith—through present signs or through near things, which came to pass just as they had foretold—deserved to have authority for being believed about things far in the future, even to the end of the age.

But the proud and deceitful airy powers, even if they are found to have said through their seers certain things about the fellowship and city of the saints and about the true Mediator, heard from the holy prophets or angels, did this in order that, through these alien truths, they might lead astray, if they could, even the faithful of God to their own falsehoods. (See Matt 24:24) But God, through those who did not know, brought it about that the truth should resound on every side, for the help of the faithful, for the testimony against the ungodly.

18. 24. Since, therefore, we were not fit to lay hold of eternal things, and the filth of sins weighed us down—filth contracted by the love of temporal things, and as it were naturally ingrained from the propagation of mortality—we had to be purified. But we could not be purified, so as to be attuned to eternal things, except through temporal things, by which, attuned to them, we were already held. For health differs greatly from disease; but the intermediate cure, unless it accords with the disease, does not lead to health. Useless temporal things deceive the sick; useful temporal things take up those to be healed, and carry across to eternal things those who are healed.

But the rational mind, just as, when purified, it owes contemplation to eternal things, so, when to be purified, it owes faith to temporal things. One even of those who once among the Greeks were held to be wise said: as much as eternity avails for that which has arisen, so much does truth avail for faith. Plato, Timaeus 29c; cf. Cicero, Timaeus 3.8; Augustine, Agreement of the Evangelists 1.35.53. And assuredly it is a true saying. For what we call temporal, he called that which has arisen. Of which kind we too are, not only according to the body, but also according to the changeableness of the mind. For that is not properly called eternal which is in some part changed. In so far, then, as we are changeable, in so far do we stand apart from eternity.

But eternal life is promised us through truth, from whose clarity our faith again stands as far apart as mortality from eternity. Now, therefore, we apply faith to things done in time for our sake, and through it we are cleansed; (See Acts 15:9, a key text for Augustine’s conception of faith and its function) so that when we come to sight, just as truth succeeds to faith, so eternity may succeed to mortality. Wherefore, since our faith will become truth when we have come to that which is promised to us who believe—and eternal life is promised to us; and the Truth said, not that which will come to be as our faith is future, but which always is Truth, because there is eternity—the Truth, then, said, but this is eternal life, that they may know you the one true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent; when our faith, by seeing, becomes truth, then eternity will hold our mortality changed. (See 1 Cor 13:12; John 8:32)

Until this comes about, and that it may come about, since we accommodate the faith of believing to things that have arisen, just as in eternal things we hope for the truth of contemplation, lest the faith of mortal life should sound out of tune with the truth of eternal life, the very Truth, coeternal with the Father, arose from the earth, when the Son of God came so as to become the son of man, and himself took up into himself our faith, by which he might lead us to his truth—he who so took up our mortality that he did not lose his eternity. For as much as eternity avails for that which has arisen, so much does truth avail for faith. Plato, Timaeus 29c.

Thus, then, we had to be purified in such a way that he should become for us "one who has arisen" who yet remained eternal, lest there be for us one in faith and another in truth. Nor could we pass from that by which we have arisen to eternal things, unless, the eternal one being joined to us through our arising, we were carried across to his eternity.

Now, therefore, our faith has in a certain way followed thither, whither he ascended in whom we have believed: "arisen," dead, raised again, taken up. Of these four, the two former we knew in ourselves; for we know that men both arise and die: but the two remaining, that is, to be raised again and to be taken up, we justly hope will be in us, because we have believed they were done in him. And so, in him, because that which had arisen also passed over to eternity, our own will pass over too, when faith has reached truth.

For to those now believing, that they might remain in the word of faith, and from there be led to truth, and through this to eternity, and be freed from death, he speaks thus: if you remain in my word, you are truly my disciples. See John 8:31. PL: eritis, “will be.” And as though they were asking, "with what fruit?" he goes on to say: and you shall know the truth. And again, as though they were saying, "what does truth profit mortals?" and the truth, he says, shall set you free. From what, if not from death, from corruption, from changeableness? For truth remains immortal, incorrupt, unchangeable. But true immortality, true incorruptibility, true unchangeableness, this is eternity itself. (See Ps 117:2 (116:2))

19. 25. Behold that for which the Son of God was sent; nay rather, behold what it is for the Son of God to have been sent. Whatever things, for the producing of the faith by which we might be cleansed to contemplate the truth, were done in time among things "arisen"—brought forth from eternity and referred back to eternity—were either testimonies of this mission, or the very mission of the Son of God.

But some testimonies foretold that he would come, some bore witness that he had come. For it was fitting that he through whom every creature was made, made a creature, should have every creature as witness. For unless the one were proclaimed by the sending of many, the one would not be held fast by the dismissing of many. The Latin here is very obscure. The Spanish BAC translation renders the apodosis, “many would not have been set free, one remaining bound,” thus interpreting the second unus of the devil. In view of the way Augustine has throughout been identifying the “One” with the Word, the translator finds this quite unacceptable and takes the second unus to have the same reference as the first unus. Multis dimissis, however, could also mean, and probably does carry the overtone of meaning, “many sins having been forgiven.” But the translator prefers to interpret it as primarily signifying our liberation from enslavement to “the many.” And unless the testimonies were such that to the little they would seem great, it would not be believed that the great one, sent little to the little, might make them great.

For incomparably greater works of the Son of God are heaven and earth and all things that are in them, made, since all things were made through him, than the signs and wonders that burst forth in testimony of him. But yet men, that they might, being little, believe these great things to have been made through him, trembled at those little things as though they were great.

19. 26. When, therefore, the fullness of time came, God sent his Son, made of a woman, made under the Law; so far little, that he was made; sent, therefore, in that he was made. If, then, the greater sends the lesser, we too confess that he was made lesser, and lesser in so far as he was made, and made in so far as he was sent. For he sent his Son made of a woman, through whom nonetheless, because all things were made, not only before he was sent as made, but before all things were, we confess the same one equal to the sender, whom we call lesser as sent.

How, then, before that fullness of time in which he had to be sent, before he was sent, could he be seen by the fathers, when certain angelic visions were shown to them, (See Acts 7:38; Exod 20) when not even, now sent, was he seen as he is equal to the Father?

For why does he say to Philip, by whom certainly, as by the rest, and by the very men by whom he was crucified, he was seen in the flesh, so long a time I am with you, and you have not known me? Philip, he who has seen me has seen the Father also—unless because he was seen, and was not seen? He was seen as he had been made, sent; he was not seen as all things were made through him.

Or why does he also say that, he who has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me; and he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him—when he was manifest before the eyes of men—unless because he was holding out to our faith the flesh, which the Word had become in the fullness of time, (See Gal 4:4) to be taken up, (See John 1:14) but was keeping the Word himself, through whom all things were made, to be contemplated in eternity by the mind purified through faith?

20. 27. But if the Son is said to be sent by the Father for this reason, that the one is the Father, the other the Son, it in no way hinders us from believing that the Son is equal to the Father and consubstantial and coeternal, and yet that the Son was sent by the Father. Not because the one is greater, the other lesser, but because the one is Father, the other Son; the one Begetter, the other Begotten; the one he from whom is he who is sent, the other he who is from him who sends. For the Son is from the Father, not the Father from the Son.

According to this it can now be understood that the Son is said to be sent not only because the Word was made flesh, but because he was sent that the Word might be made flesh, and through his bodily presence might work the things that are written; that is, that not only is the man understood to be sent, which the Word became, but also the Word sent that he might become man: because he was not sent according to an unequal power or substance, or anything in him that is not equal to the Father, but according to that by which the Son is from the Father, not the Father from the Son.

For the Son is the Word of the Father, who is also called his Wisdom. What wonder, then, if he is sent, not because he is unequal to the Father, but because he is a certain pure emanation of the glory of almighty God? But there what emanates and that from which it emanates is of one and the same substance. For it does not emanate as water from a hole in the earth or a rock, but as light from light.

For what was said, for it is the brightness of eternal light—what else was said than, It is the light of eternal light? For the brightness of light, what is it but light? And therefore coeternal with the light of which it is the light. But he preferred to say, the brightness of light, rather than "Light of light," lest this that emanates be thought darker than that from which it emanates. For when one hears that this is its brightness, it is easier that through this one believe that to shine, than that this one shine less.

But because there was no need to take care lest that light which begot this one be thought lesser (for this no heretic ever dared to say, nor is it to be believed that anyone will dare), Scripture met that thought by which this light that emanates might seem darker than that from which it emanates: which suspicion it removed when it said, it is the brightness of that, that is, of eternal light; and so it showed it to be equal. For if this is lesser, it is the darkness of that, not the brightness of that. But if it is greater, it does not emanate from that: for it would not surpass that from which it was begotten. Because, then, it emanates from that, it is not greater than that; but because it is not the darkness of that, but the brightness of that, it is not lesser; it is therefore equal.

Nor ought this to disturb us, that it was called a certain pure emanation of the glory of almighty God: as though it were not itself almighty, but the emanation of the Almighty. For soon it is said of it, and being one, it can do all things. But who is almighty except him who can do all things? From him, therefore, it is sent, from whom it emanates. For thus it is sought from him by the one who loved it and desired it. Send it forth, he says, from your holy heavens, and send it from the seat of your greatness, that it may be with me and labor with me—that is, "let it teach me to labor, lest I labor." It is a better pun in Latin than in English, but even in English one uses the word “labor” to mean “have difficulty” as in labored jokes or cars laboring as they go uphill. For its labors are virtues. But it is sent in one way that it may be with man, in another it was sent that it may itself be man. For it transfers itself into holy souls, and makes them friends of God and prophets, just as it also fills the holy angels, and works through them all things suited to such ministries. But when the fullness of time came, it was sent, not to fill angels, nor to be an angel, except insofar as it announced the counsel of the Father, (See Isa 9:6) which was also its own; nor to be with men or in men, for this it had been even before in the fathers and prophets; but that the Word itself might become flesh, that is, might become man: in whom, this future sacrament being revealed, there should be salvation even of those wise and holy ones who, before he himself was born of the Virgin, were born of women; and in whom, this being done and proclaimed, there is salvation of all who believe, hope, and love. For this is the great sacrament of piety, which was manifested in the flesh, justified in the spirit, appeared to angels, preached among the nations, believed in the world, taken up in glory.

20. 28. By him, therefore, the Word of God is sent, whose Word it is; by him it is sent from whom it is born: he who begot sends, that which is begotten is sent. And it is sent to each one when it is known and perceived by anyone, as far as it can be known and perceived according to the capacity of the rational soul, whether making progress toward God or perfected in God. Not, then, by the very fact that he was born of the Father is the Son said to be sent; but either by the fact that the Word made flesh appeared to this world—whence he says, I came forth from the Father, and came into this world—or by the fact that he is perceived in time by anyone's mind, as it was said, send it, that it may be with me and labor with me. That, then, which is born from eternity is eternal: The PL omits the preposition in, giving the sense: “what is born from eternity is eternal.” for it is the brightness of eternal light. But that which is sent in time is known by someone.

But when the Son of God was manifested in the flesh, he was sent into this world, in the fullness of time, made of a woman. For because in the wisdom of God the world could not know God through wisdom, since the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it, it pleased God through the foolishness of preaching to save those who believe, that the Word might become flesh and dwell among us. But when, in time, he is perceived by the mind of someone making progress, he is indeed said to be sent, but not into this world: for he does not appear sensibly, that is, he is not present to the bodily senses. For we too, according as we grasp something eternal with the mind, as far as we can, are not in this world; and the spirits of all the righteous, even those still living in this flesh, insofar as they are wise about divine things, are not in this world.

But the Father, when he is known in time by anyone, is not said to be sent: for he has no one from whom he is, or from whom he proceeds. For Wisdom says, I came forth from the mouth of the Most High; and of the Holy Spirit it is said, he proceeds from the Father: but the Father from no one.

20. 29. As, therefore, the Father begot, the Son was begotten, so the Father sent, the Son was sent. But just as he who begot and he who was begotten, so also he who sent and he who was sent are one, because the Father and the Son are one. (See John 10:30) So too the Holy Spirit is one with them, because these three are one. The famous Johannine comma, thought to be an interpolation into the text that may have occurred not long before Augustine’s time. For just as, for the Son, to have been born is to be from the Father, so, for the Son, to be sent is to be known to be from him. And just as, for the Holy Spirit, to be the gift of God is to proceed from the Father, so to be sent is to be known to proceed from him. Nor can we say that the Holy Spirit does not also proceed from the Son: for not in vain is the same Spirit called the Spirit both of the Father and of the Son. (See Matt 10:20; Gal 4:6)

Nor do I see what else he meant to signify, when, breathing into the face of the disciples, he said: receive the Holy Spirit. For that corporeal breath, proceeding from the body with the sense of bodily touching, was not the substance of the Holy Spirit; but a demonstration, through a fitting signification, that the Holy Spirit proceeds not only from the Father but also from the Son. For who would be so very mad as to say that the Spirit whom he gave by breathing was one, and the one whom he sent after his ascension another? For the Spirit of God is one, the Spirit of the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit, who works all things in all. But that he was given twice was certainly a dispensation of signification, of which in its own place, so far as the Lord shall grant, we shall treat.

What, then, the Lord says, whom I will send to you from the Father, shows the Spirit to be of both the Father and the Son. For also, when he had said, whom the Father will send, he added, in my name; yet he did not say, "whom the Father will send from me," as he said, whom I will send to you from the Father—evidently showing that the Father is the principle of the whole divinity, or, if it is better so called, the deity. He, then, who proceeds from the Father and the Son is referred to him from whom the Son was born.

And what the Evangelist says, the Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified—how is it understood, except that that certain giving or sending of the Holy Spirit was to be after the glorification of Christ, such as had never been before? For it was not that there had been none before, but that there had not been such a one. For if the Holy Spirit was not given before, by whom, when filled, did the prophets speak?

Since Scripture says openly, and shows in many places, that they spoke by the Holy Spirit: since also of John the Baptist it was said, he shall be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother's womb; and Zechariah his father is found filled with the Holy Spirit, that he might say such things of him; and Mary by the Holy Spirit, (See Luke 1:67) that she might proclaim such things of the Lord whom she bore in her womb; (See Luke 1:41–79) Simeon and Anna by the Holy Spirit, that they might recognize the greatness of the infant Christ: (See Luke 2:25–38)

how, then, was the Spirit not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified, except that that giving, or bestowal, or sending of the Holy Spirit was to have a certain property of its own in his very coming, such as had never been before? For nowhere do we read that men spoke in tongues they did not know when the Holy Spirit came upon them, as happened then, when it was fitting that his coming be demonstrated by sensible signs, that it might be shown that the whole world and all the nations, set in their various tongues, would believe in Christ through the gift of the Holy Spirit; that there might be fulfilled what is sung in the Psalm, there are no utterances nor words whose voices are not heard; their sound went out into all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world.

20. 30. Man, therefore, was coupled to the Word of God into a unity of person, and in a certain way compounded with him, when, the fullness of time coming, the Son of God was sent into this world, made of a woman, that he might be also the Son of man on account of the sons of men. (See John 3:17, 16:28; Matt 14:33, 16:16; Mark 1:1, 3:12; Luke 1:35, 4:41) This person the angelic nature could before figure, so as to foretell it; not appropriate to itself, so as to be it.

21. 30. But as for the sensible demonstration of the Holy Spirit, whether through the form of a dove (See Matt 3:16) or through the fiery tongues, (See Acts 2:3) when a subject and serving creature (See Wis 16:24) showed by temporal motions and forms his substance, coeternal with the Father and the Son and equally unchangeable—since to the unity of his person, as the flesh which the Word became, it was not coupled—I do not dare to say that nothing such had been done before. But plainly I would say with confidence that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, of one and the same substance, the creator God, the almighty Trinity, work inseparably; but that thus they cannot be inseparably demonstrated through a creature far unequal and especially corporeal; just as, through our voices, which certainly sound corporeally, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit cannot be named except by their own and proper intervals of time, distinguished by a fixed separation, which the syllables of each one's name occupy. For in their substance by which they are, the three are one, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, by no temporal motion above every creature, the selfsame without any intervals of times or places, and at once one and the same from eternity to eternity, as eternity itself, which is not without truth and love: but in my voices the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are separated, nor could they be said at once, and in visible letters they held separately their spaces of place. And just as, when I name my memory and understanding and will, the single names are indeed referred to single things, yet each was made by all three; for there is none of these three names which my memory and understanding and will did not together work: so the Trinity together worked the voice of the Father, and the flesh of the Son, and the dove of the Holy Spirit, although these single things are referred to the single persons. By which likeness it is somehow recognized that the Trinity, inseparable in itself, is separably demonstrated through the form of a visible creature, and that the inseparable working of the Trinity is also in single things which are said to pertain properly to demonstrating either the Father, or the Son, or the Holy Spirit.

21. 31. If, then, it is asked of me how the voices or sensible forms and appearances were made before the incarnation of the Word of God, which prefigured this that was to come: I answer that God worked them through angels; which I have also shown sufficiently, as I think, by the testimonies of the holy Scriptures. See On the Trinity 2.7.12–13; 10.19–21. But if it is asked how the incarnation itself was made: I say that the Word of God itself was made flesh, that is, was made man, This is a caution against the heresy of Apollinaris, who maintained that the Word took the place of a human soul in Christ. yet not converted and changed into that which it was made; See Cicero, De Partitionibus Oratoriae 7.23; De Oratore 3.45.177. made so, indeed, that there be there not only the Word of God and the flesh of man, but also the rational soul of man, and this whole be called both God on account of God and man on account of man. But if this is hard to understand, let the mind be purified by faith, more and more abstaining from sins, and working well, and praying with the groaning of holy desires, that, making progress through divine help, it may both understand and love.

But if it is asked, after the incarnation of the Word, how the voice of the Father was made, or the corporeal form by which the Holy Spirit was demonstrated: that these were made through a creature I do not doubt; but whether through one only corporeal and sensible, or with a spirit also rational or intellectual applied (for some have been pleased so to call what the Greeks call νοερός)—not indeed to the unity of person (for who would say this, that whatever it is of creature through which the voice of the Father sounded is so God the Father, or whatever it is of creature in which through the form of a dove (See Matt 3:16) or through the fiery tongues (See Acts 2:3) the Holy Spirit was demonstrated is so the Holy Spirit, as the Son of God is that man who was made of the Virgin?), but only to the ministry of carrying through the signification, as God judged it should be—or whether something else is to be understood, is difficult to find, and to affirm rashly is not expedient. Yet how these things could have been done without a rational or intellectual creature, I do not see. Nor is this yet the place to explain why I think so, so far as the Lord shall give strength. For first the arguments of the heretics must be discussed and refuted, which they bring forth not from the divine books but from their own reasonings, by which they think they vehemently compel that the testimonies of the Scriptures which are about the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit must be understood as they themselves wish. (Augustine here refers to the Arians, to whom he will turn his attention in the next three books)

21. 32. But now it has been sufficiently demonstrated, as I think, that the Son is not lesser because he was sent by the Father, nor the Holy Spirit lesser because both the Father and the Son sent him.

For whether on account of the visible creature, or rather on account of the commendation of the principle, these things are understood to be set in the Scriptures not on account of inequality or disparity or unlikeness of substance: because, even if God the Father had willed to appear visibly through a subject creature, it would yet be most absurd to say that he was sent by the Son whom he begot, or by the Holy Spirit who proceeds from him. (See John 5:26)

Let this, then, be the limit of this volume: hereafter, in the rest, with the Lord helping, we shall see what those most cunning arguments of the heretics are, and how they are refuted.

1. 1. Beginning now from here to say the things that cannot in every way be said as they are thought, whether by some man or at least by us—although our very thought, when we think of God the Trinity, feels itself far unequal to him of whom it thinks, nor grasps him as he is, but, as it is written, even by such great ones as the apostle Paul was here, he is seen through a glass in a riddle—first I pray of the Lord our God himself, of whom we ought always to think, and of whom we cannot worthily think, to whom in praising him blessing is to be rendered at all times, (See Ps 34:1 (33:2)) and for declaring whom no utterance is fitting, both help to understand and explain the things I intend, and pardon if anywhere I give offense. For I am mindful not only of my will but also of my weakness. Of these too who will read these things I ask, that they pardon where they perceive that I wished rather than was able to say what they themselves either understand better, or, on account of the difficulty of my speech, do not understand; just as I pardon them, where, on account of their slowness, they cannot understand.

1. 2. But we more easily pardon one another, if we know, or at least by believing hold firm, that the things that are said of the unchangeable and invisible and supremely living and self-sufficient nature are not to be measured by the habit of visible and changeable and mortal or needy things. But although even in those things that lie near our bodily senses, or that we ourselves are in the inner man, we labor and are not equal to comprehending them by knowledge, yet not impudently does faithful piety burn toward those divine and ineffable things that are above—not the piety that the arrogance of its own powers puffs up, but the piety that the grace of the Creator and Savior himself inflames.

For by what understanding does man grasp God, who does not yet grasp his own understanding by which he wishes to grasp him? But if he now grasps this, let him diligently attend that there is nothing in his nature better than it, and let him see whether there he sees any lineaments of forms, brightnesses of colors, spacious magnitude, distance of parts, extension of mass, any motions through intervals of places, or anything of the sort. Certainly we find none of these things in that than which we find nothing better in our nature, that is, in our understanding, by which we grasp wisdom as far as we are capable.

What, then, we do not find in what is better in us, we ought not to seek in him who is far better than what is better in us: so that we may understand God, if we can, as far as we can, good without quality, great without quantity, creator without need, presiding without position, containing all things without habit, wholly everywhere without place, See Augustine, Confessions 1.3.3; On Free Choice of the Will 14.37.38; The Catholic Way of Life 1.11.19; Homilies on the Gospel of John 1.8.30–33; Answer to the Letter of Mani Known as “The Foundation” 15.20; Ambrose, De Fide 1.16.106; Jerome, Ephesians 1.2.13–14; Plotinus, Ennead 6.4; Origen, De Principiis 4.3.30; Basil, De Spiritu Sancto 9.22; Spiritus 2; John Chrysostom, On the Incomprehensible Nature of God 1.3; In Psalmis 138.2; Hilary, On the Trinity 2.6; In Psalmis 118.8; 129.3; 144.21. sempiternal without time, making changeable things without any change of himself, and suffering nothing. Whoever thinks of God thus, even if he cannot yet in every way find what he is, yet piously takes care, as far as he can, to think nothing of him that he is not. (See Sir 43:34–37)

2. 3. Yet without doubt he is substance, or, if it is better so called, essence, which the Greeks call οὐσία. For just as from "to be wise" is named "wisdom," and from "to know" is named "knowledge," so from "to be" is named "essence." See Augustine, The City of God 12.2; Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria 2.14.2; Seneca, Epistle 58.6; Tertullian, Apology 21; Against Praxeas 2.26. And who more truly is than he who said to his servant Moses, I am who am; and, you shall say to the children of Israel: 'He who is has sent me to you'? But other things that are called essences or substances admit of accidents, by which in them there comes about a change, whether great or of whatever degree: but to God nothing of the sort can happen; and therefore he alone is the unchangeable substance or essence, who is God, to whom certainly being itself, from which "essence" is named, most of all and most truly belongs. For what is changed does not keep its very being; and what can be changed, even if it is not changed, can be such that what it had been is not: and through this that alone which not only is not changed, but also can in no way be changed, occurs without scruple as what may most truly be said to be.

3. 4. Wherefore, that we may now begin to answer the adversaries of our faith even about those things which are neither said as they are thought, nor thought as they are: among the many things that the Arians are wont to argue against the Catholic faith, they seem to set before themselves this as their most cunning contrivance, when they say: "Whatever is said or understood of God is said not according to accident, but according to substance. Wherefore, to be unbegotten is for the Father according to substance, and to be begotten is for the Son according to substance. But to be unbegotten and to be begotten are different: therefore the substance of the Father and of the Son is different." See Pope Alexander I of Alexandria, Letter to Alexander of Constantinople, PL 18:547–572; Ambrose, De Incarnatione 8.79; De Fide 4.8.81.

To whom we answer: "If whatever is said of God is said according to substance, then what was said, I and the Father are one, was said according to substance." There is, therefore, one substance of the Father and the Son. Or if this was not said according to substance, then something is said of God not according to substance; and therefore we are no longer compelled to understand unbegotten and begotten according to substance. Likewise it was said of the Son, he did not think it robbery to be equal to God: we ask, equal according to what? For if he is not said to be equal according to substance, they admit that something is said of God not according to substance; let them admit, then, that unbegotten and begotten are said not according to substance. But if they do not admit this, because they wish all things to be said of God according to substance, then according to substance the Son is equal to the Father.

4. 5. But "accident" is not usually said except of what can be lost by some change of the thing to which it happens. For although certain accidents are called inseparable, which in Greek are called αχώριστα—as the black color of a raven's feather—yet it loses it, not indeed while it is a feather, but because it is not always a feather. Wherefore the matter itself is changeable, and from the fact that it ceases to be that animal or that feather, and that whole body is changed and turned into earth, Cicero, De Oratore 3.45.177; De Partitionibus Oratoriae 7.23. it certainly loses that color too. Although even an accident that is called separable is lost not by separation but by change; as the blackness of human hair, since, while the hair remains, it can grow white, is called a separable accident: but to those who look carefully it sufficiently appears that nothing as it were migrates from the head by separation while it grows gray, so that the blackness departs from there, whiteness succeeding, and goes somewhere, but that that quality of color is there turned and changed.

Nothing, then, is accidental in God, because nothing is changeable or able to be lost. But if it pleases anyone to call that too an accident which, although it is not lost, is yet diminished or increased—as is the life of the soul: for as long as the soul is, so long it lives, and because it is always a soul, it always lives; but because it lives more when it is wise, and less when it is foolish, here too some change comes about, not so that life is wanting, as wisdom is wanting to the foolish, but so that it is less—nothing of the sort comes about in God, because he remains altogether unchangeable.

5. 6. Wherefore nothing is said of him according to accident, because nothing happens to him; nor yet is everything that is said said according to substance. For in created and changeable things, what is not said according to substance, it remains, is said according to accident. For all things happen to them that can either be lost or diminished, both magnitudes and qualities; and what is said in relation to something, as friendships, kinships, services, likenesses, equalities, and any such things; and position and habit, and places and times, and acts and passions. See Aristotle, Categories 4.1b25; 2a3.

But in God nothing indeed is said according to accident, because nothing in him is changeable; nor yet is everything that is said said according to substance. For something is said in relation to something, See Aristotle, Categories 7.6a36; 8b24; Pseudo-Augustine, Aristotle’s Ten Categories 11. as the Father in relation to the Son, and the Son in relation to the Father, which is not an accident: because both that one is always Father, and that one always Son; and not "always" as though from the time the Son was born the Father does not cease to be Father (because the Son never ceases to be Son), but because the Son was always born, and never began to be Son. For if he had at some time begun to be, or at some time ceased to be Son, it would be said according to accident.

But if what is called Father were said in relation to himself, not to the Son, and what is called Son were said in relation to himself, not to the Father, then both that one Father and that one Son would be said according to substance. But because the Father is not called Father except from the fact that he has a Son, and the Son is not so called except from the fact that he has a Father, these things are not said according to substance: because neither of them is said this in relation to himself, but in relation to one another and to each other; nor according to accident, because both what is called Father and what is called Son is eternal and unchangeable for them.

Wherefore, although to be Father and to be Son are different, yet the substance is not different: because these are said not according to substance, but according to relation; which relation, however, is not an accident, because it is not changeable.

6. 7. But if they think this argument is to be resisted thus, that the Father indeed is said in relation to the Son, and the Son in relation to the Father, but unbegotten and begotten are said in relation to themselves, not to each other: for to say "unbegotten" is not the same as to say "Father"; because even if he had not begotten a Son, nothing would prevent him from being called unbegotten; and if anyone begets a son, he himself is not on that account unbegotten, because men who are begotten of other men themselves also beget others; they say, therefore, "Father is said in relation to the Son, and Son in relation to the Father, but unbegotten is said in relation to himself, and begotten in relation to himself:

and therefore, if whatever is said in relation to himself is said according to substance, but to be unbegotten and to be begotten are different, then the substance is different."

If they say this, they do not understand that about "unbegotten" they indeed say something that must be treated more carefully, because no one is a father because he is unbegotten, nor unbegotten because he is a father, and therefore "unbegotten" is thought to be said not in relation to something but in relation to himself: but "begotten," by a strange blindness, they do not notice cannot be said except in relation to something.

For it is for this reason that he is a son, that he is begotten, and because he is a son he is certainly begotten. But as "son" is referred to "father," so "begotten" to "begetter"; and as father to son, so begetter to begotten. And therefore there is one notion by which "begetter" is understood, another by which "unbegotten." For although both are said of God the Father, that one is said in relation to the begotten, that is, to the Son; which not even they deny; but this that is called "unbegotten" they maintain is said in relation to himself. They say, therefore: "if something is said of the Father in relation to himself which cannot be said of the Son in relation to himself, and whatever is said in relation to himself is said according to substance, and 'unbegotten' is said in relation to himself, which cannot be said of the Son; then 'unbegotten' is said according to substance, which, because it cannot be said of the Son, the Son is not of the same substance." See Basil, Against Eunomius 4.2.2.

To which cunning it is answered thus, so that they themselves are compelled to say according to what the Son is equal to the Father: whether according to that which is said in relation to himself, or according to that which is said in relation to the Father. For not according to that which is said in relation to the Father, since the son is said in relation to the father, but that one is not a son, but a father. For father and son are not said in relation to themselves in the way that friends or neighbors are. For relatively a friend is said in relation to a friend; and if they love each other equally, the same friendship is in each; and relatively a neighbor is said in relation to a neighbor; and because they are equally neighbors to each other (for as much as this one is neighbor to that, so much is that one neighbor to this), the same neighborhood is in each. But because the Son is said relatively not in relation to a Son, but to the Father, it is not according to that which is said in relation to the Father that the Son is equal to the Father.

It remains that he is equal according to that which is said in relation to himself. But whatever is said in relation to himself is said according to substance: it remains, then, that he is equal according to substance. The substance of both is therefore the same. But when the Father is called unbegotten, it is said not what he is, but what he is not. And when a relative is denied, it is not denied according to substance, because the relative itself is not said according to substance.

7. 8. This must be made plain by examples. And first it must be seen that this is signified when "begotten" is said, which is signified when "son" is said. For he is a son because he is begotten; and because he is a son, he is certainly begotten. What, then, is called "unbegotten" shows this, that he is not a son: but "begotten" and "unbegotten" are conveniently said; "son," however, is said in Latin, but the custom of speech does not admit that "non-son" be said.

Yet nothing is taken from the understanding if "not son" be said, just as, if "not begotten" be said for what is called "unbegotten," nothing else is said. For thus both "neighbor" and "friend" are said relatively, yet "non-neighbor" cannot be said in the way that "enemy" is said. The Latin instances are rather different than the English; Augustine remarks that while you can say inimicus to correspond with amicus, you cannot say invicinus to correspond with vicinus.

Wherefore in things it is not to be considered what the usage of our speech either permits or does not permit to be said, but what understanding of the things themselves shines forth.

Let us, then, no longer say "unbegotten," although it can be said in Latin; but for it let us say "not begotten," which is equivalent. Do we then say anything other than "not son"? Now this negative particle does not bring it about that what without it is said relatively is, when it is prefixed, said substantially; but only that is denied which without it was affirmed, as in the other predicaments. For instance, when we say, "he is a man," we designate substance. He, then, who says, "he is not a man," does not enunciate another kind of predicament, but only denies that one. As, then, according to substance I affirm, "he is a man," so according to substance I deny, when I say, "he is not a man." And when it is asked how large he is, and I say, "he is four feet," that is, of four feet, I affirm according to quality; he who says, "he is not four feet," denies according to quantity. "He is white," I affirm according to quality; "he is not white," I deny according to quality. "He is a relative," I affirm according to relation; "he is not a relative," I deny according to relation. According to position I affirm, when I say, "he is lying down"; according to position I deny, when I say, "he is not lying down." According to habit I affirm, when I say, "he is armed"; according to habit I deny, when I say, "he is not armed." But it amounts to the same thing if I say, "he is unarmed." According to time I affirm, when I say, "he is of yesterday"; according to time I deny, when I say, "he is not of yesterday." And when I say, "he is at Rome," I affirm according to place; and according to place I deny, when I say, "he is not at Rome." According to that which is to act I affirm, when I say, "he strikes"; but if I say, "he does not strike," according to that which is to act I deny, so as to show that he does not do this. And when I say, "he is beaten," I affirm according to the predicament that is called to be acted upon; and according to it I deny, when I say, "he is not beaten." And there is altogether no kind of predicament according to which we wish to affirm something, but that we are convicted of denying according to that same predicament, if we wish to prefix the negative particle. See Aristotle, Categories 4.1b25; 2a3.

Since these things are so, Cicero, In Catilinam 1.5.10. if I affirmed substantially by saying "son," I would deny substantially by saying "not son." But because I affirm relatively when I say, "he is a son"—for I refer it to a father—I deny relatively if I say, "he is not a son"; for I refer the same negation to a parent, wishing to show that there is no parent of his. But if what is called "son" is equivalent to what is called "begotten," as we have said before, then what is called "not begotten" is equivalent to what is called "not son." But we deny relatively when we say, "not son"; relatively, therefore, we deny when we say, "not begotten." And what is unbegotten but not begotten? We do not, then, depart from the relative predicament when "unbegotten" is said. For just as "begotten" is said not in relation to itself, but that he is from a begetter, so when "unbegotten" is said, it is said not in relation to itself, but it is shown that he is not from a begetter. Yet within the same predicament, which is called relative, both significations are turned: but what is pronounced relatively does not indicate substance: thus, although begotten and unbegotten are different, it does not indicate a different substance: because, as son is referred to father and not-son to not-father, so begotten must be referred to begetter, and not-begotten to not-begetter.

8. 9. Wherefore let us hold this especially, that whatever that most excellent and divine sublimity is said in relation to itself is said substantially; but what in relation to something See Aristotle, Categories 6.6a36; 8b24; Pseudo-Augustine, Aristotle’s Ten Categories 11. is said not substantially but relatively; and that there is such force in "the same substance" in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, that whatever is said of the single ones in relation to themselves is taken not plurally in the sum, but singularly.

For just as the Father is God, and the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God—which no one doubts is said according to substance—yet we do not say three gods, but one God, that very most excellent Trinity.

So the Father is great, the Son great, and the Holy Spirit great: yet not three great ones, but one great one. For it is written not of the Father alone, as they perversely think, but of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, you alone are God, the great one.

And the Father is good, the Son good, and the Holy Spirit good; and not three good ones, but one good, of whom it was said, no one is good but the one God. For the Lord Jesus, lest, by the one who had said good Teacher, as though addressing him as a man, he should be understood only according to man, therefore did not say, "no one is good but the Father alone"; but, no one is good but the one God. For in the name of "Father" the Father is pronounced by himself alone: but in "God," both he and the Son and the Holy Spirit, because the Trinity is one God.

But position, and habit, and places, and times are said of God not properly but by transference and through likenesses. For he is said to sit upon the cherubim, (See 1 Kgs 4:4; 2 Kgs 19:15; 1 Chr 13:6; Isa 37:16; Dan 3:55; Ps 99:1 (98:1)) which is said according to position; and clothed with the deep as with a garment, which according to habit; and your years shall not fail, (See Heb 1:12) which according to time; and if I ascend into heaven, you are there, which according to place.

But as for what pertains to acting, perhaps it may be said most truly of God alone: for God alone acts and is not himself made, nor is acted upon, as far as pertains to his substance by which he is God. And so the Father is almighty, the Son almighty, the Holy Spirit almighty: yet not three almighty ones, but one Almighty, from whom are all things, through whom are all things, in whom are all things; to him be glory. (See 1 Cor 8:6)

Whatever, then, God is said in relation to himself, and is said of the single persons three times, PL: singulariter, “singly.” that is, of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and at once of the Trinity itself, is said not plurally but singularly. For since for God to be is not one thing and to be great another, but this same thing is for him to be that it is to be great: therefore, just as we do not say three essences, so we do not say three magnitudes, but one essence and one magnitude. "Essence" I say, which in Greek is called οὐσία, which more usually we call substance.

8. 10. They indeed also say υπόστασις; but I do not know what difference they wish there to be between οὐσία and υπόστασις: so that very many of ours who treat these things in Greek speech have been accustomed to say μία οὐσία, τρεῖς ὑποστάσεις, which is in Latin one essence, three substances. The words are etymologically identical, sub and hypo meaning “under,” -stance and -stasis coming from verbs meaning “stand.”

9. 10. But because our custom of speaking has now prevailed, that the same is understood when we say "essence" which is understood when we say "substance," we do not dare to say one essence, three substances; but one essence, or substance, and three persons; as many Latins, treating these things and worthy of authority, have said, when they could find no other more apt way by which to enunciate in words what without words they understood. For in truth, since the Father is not the Son, and the Son is not the Father, and the Holy Spirit, he who is also called the gift of God, is neither Father nor Son, they are certainly three. And therefore it was said in the plural, I and the Father are one. For he did not say, "is one," as the Sabellians say; See Eusebius of Vercelli, On the Trinity 4.34–37. but, "we are one." Yet when it is asked "what three," human speech labors in great poverty. Still it has been said, "three persons," not that it might be said, but lest it be passed over in silence.

10. 11. As, therefore, we do not say three essences, so we do not say three magnitudes, nor three great ones. For in things that are great by participation in magnitude, for which to be is one thing and to be great another—as a great house, and a great mountain, and a great mind—in these things, then, magnitude is one thing, and what is great from that magnitude is another, and a great house is by no means the same as magnitude. But that is true magnitude by which not only is the house great that is great, and by which the mountain is great that is great, but also by which whatever else is called great is great: so that magnitude itself is one thing, and the things that are called great from it are another. Which magnitude is certainly primarily great, and far more excellently than the things that are great by participation in it. But God, because he is great not by that magnitude which is not what he himself is, so that God should be as it were a participant in it when he is great (otherwise that will be a greater magnitude than God, but there is nothing greater than God), is therefore great by that magnitude by which he himself is that same magnitude. And therefore, just as we do not say three essences, so neither three magnitudes: for this is for God to be, which is to be great. For the same reason we do not say three great ones, but one great one: because God is great not by participation in magnitude, but he is great by himself, who is great; because he himself is his own magnitude. Let this be said also of the goodness, and of the eternity, and of the omnipotence of God, and of absolutely all the predicaments that can be pronounced of God, that what is said in relation to himself is said not by transference and through likeness, but properly: if, however, anything can be said of him properly by the mouth of man.

11. 12. But that the single ones are properly said in the same Trinity, are said in no way in relation to themselves, but in relation to one another, or to the creature; and therefore it is manifest that they are said relatively, not substantially. For just as the Trinity is called one God, great, good, eternal, almighty, and the same can be called his own deity, his own magnitude, his own goodness, his own eternity, his own omnipotence: so the Trinity cannot be called Father, except perhaps by transference in relation to the creature, on account of the adoption of sons. (See Gal 4:5) For what is written, hear, O Israel: the Lord your God, the Lord is one, is certainly not to be understood with the Son excepted, or the Holy Spirit excepted, whom, our one Lord God, we rightly call also our Father, (See Matt 6:9) regenerating us through his grace.

But the Trinity can in no way be called Son. (See 1 Pet 1:3) The Holy Spirit, however, according to what is written, for God is Spirit, can indeed be said universally, because the Father is spirit and the Son is spirit, and the Father is holy and the Son is holy. And so the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, since they are one God, and certainly God is holy, and God is Spirit, the Trinity can be called both Spirit and Holy. See Ambrose, De Spiritu Sancto 3.18; De Fide 2.12. But yet that Holy Spirit who is understood not as the Trinity but as in the Trinity, in that he is properly called Holy Spirit, is said relatively, since he is referred both to the Father and to the Son, because the Holy Spirit is the Spirit both of the Father and of the Son. (See Matt 10:20; Gal 4:6)

But the relation itself does not appear in this name; but it appears when he is called the gift of God: for he is the gift of the Father and the Son, because he both proceeds from the Father, as the Lord says, and what the Apostle says, he who does not have the Spirit of Christ is none of his, he certainly says of the Holy Spirit himself. "Gift," then, "of a giver," and "giver of a gift," when we say it, we say each relatively in relation to the other.

Therefore the Holy Spirit is a certain ineffable communion of the Father and the Son; and therefore perhaps he is so called because the same appellation can fit the Father and the Son. For he himself is properly called what they are called in common: because the Father is spirit and the Son is spirit, and the Father is holy and the Son is holy. That, then, by a name which fits both, the communion of both might be signified, the gift of both is called Holy Spirit. And this Trinity is one God, alone, good, great, eternal, almighty; himself his own unity, deity, magnitude, goodness, eternity, omnipotence.

12. 13. Nor ought it to disturb us, since we have said that the Holy Spirit is said relatively (not the Trinity itself, but he who is in the Trinity), that there does not seem to correspond to him in turn the word of the one to whom he is referred. For not as we say servant of a master and master of a servant, son of a father and father of a son, since these are said relatively, can we say so here too. For we say the Spirit of the Father, (See Matt 10:20) but we do not in turn say the Father of the Spirit, lest the Holy Spirit be understood as his son. Likewise we say the Holy Spirit of the Son, (See Gal 4:6) but we do not say the Son of the Holy Spirit, lest the Holy Spirit be understood as his father. For in many relatives this happens, that no word is found by which the things referred to one another correspond to each other in turn.

For what is so manifestly said relatively as "pledge"? For it is referred to that of which it is a pledge, and a pledge is always a pledge of some thing. When, then, we say the pledge of the Father and the Son, (See 2 Cor 1:22, 5:5; Eph 1:14) can we in turn say the Father of the pledge or the Son of the pledge? But when we say the gift of the Father and the Son, we cannot indeed say the Father of the gift, or the Son of the gift; but, that these may correspond to each other in turn, we say the gift of the giver, and the giver of the gift: because here a usual word could be found, there it could not.

13. 14. The Father, then, is said relatively, and the same is said relatively principle, and perhaps anything else: but Father is said in relation to the Son, while principle in relation to all things that are from him. Likewise the Son is said relatively, and is said relatively both Word and Image; and in all these words he is referred to the Father: but none of these is the Father said.

And the Son is said principle: for when it was said to him, who are you? he answered, the principle, who also speak to you. But is he the principle of the Father? For he wished to show himself the creator when he said that he was the principle; just as the Father too is the principle of the creature, in that from him are all things. For "creator" too is said relatively in relation to the creature, as "master" in relation to a servant. And therefore, when we say both that the Father is principle (See Rev 1:8, 21:6) and that the Son is principle, (See John 8:25) we do not say two principles of the creature; because both the Father and the Son together are one principle in relation to the creature, as one Creator, (See Sir 1:8) as one God.

But if whatever remains in itself and begets something or works it is a principle to the thing it begets, or to the thing it works, we cannot deny that the Holy Spirit too is rightly called principle; because we do not separate him from the appellation of Creator. And it is written of him that he works, (See 1 Cor 12:11) and certainly, remaining in himself, he works; for he is not changed and turned into any of the things he works. Cicero, De Oratore 3.45.177. And see what he works: but to each one, he says, is given the manifestation of the Spirit for profit. To one indeed is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom; to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit; to another faith in the same Spirit; to another the gift of healings in the one Spirit; to another the working of mighty deeds; to another prophecy; to another the discerning of spirits; to another kinds of tongues. But all these one and the same Spirit works, distributing to each his own as he wills—certainly as God. For who can work such great things but God? But it is the same God who works all things in all. For if we are questioned singly about the Holy Spirit, we answer most truly that he is God; and together with the Father and the Son he is one God. See John 4:26; Tomus Damasi, anath. 24–25. God, then, is said one principle in relation to the creature, not two or three principles.

14. 15. But in relation to one another in the Trinity, if the begetter is principle to that which it begets, the Father is principle to the Son, because he begot him. But whether the Father is also principle to the Holy Spirit, since it is said, he proceeds from the Father, is no small question. Because if it is so, he will be principle not only to the thing he begets or makes, but also to the thing he gives.

Here too there shines out, as it can, that which is wont to disturb many, why the Holy Spirit is not also a Son, since he too comes forth from the Father, as is read in the Gospel. (See John 15:26) For he comes forth, not as one born, but as one given; and therefore he is not called Son, because he neither was born as the Only-begotten, nor was made so as to be born into adoption through the grace of God, as we are. (See Gal 4:5; Eph 1:5; Rom 8:15–23; John 1:12) For what was born of the Father is referred to the Father alone when he is called Son, and therefore he is the Son of the Father, not also ours: (See John 7:39; Rom 5:5) but what was given is referred both to him who gave and to those to whom he gave; and so the Holy Spirit is called not only of the Father and the Son who gave, but also ours who received: as it is said, the Lord's salvation, (See Ps 3:8 (3:9)) who gives salvation, and the same is also our salvation, (See Rom 13:11) who have received it.

The Spirit, then, is both of God who gave, and ours who received. Not that spirit of ours by which we are, because that is the spirit of man which is in him: but in another way this one is ours, in the way that we also say, give us our bread. Although that spirit too which is called man's we certainly received. For what have you, he says, that you did not receive?

But it is one thing that we received in order to be, another that we received in order to be holy. Whence it is written also of John, that he would come in the spirit and power of Elijah: the spirit of Elijah was so called, namely the Holy Spirit whom Elijah received. This is to be understood also of Moses, when the Lord says to him, I will take of your spirit, and will give to them: that is, "I will give them of the Holy Spirit, whom I have already given to you."

If, then, even what is given has as its principle the one by whom it is given, because it received from nowhere else that which proceeds from him, This clause could also be rendered, rather less probably, “because the recipient did not receive what proceeds from him from anywhere else.” it must be confessed that the Father and the Son are the principle of the Holy Spirit, not two principles: but as the Father and the Son are one God, and in relation to the creature one Creator and one Lord, so in relation to the Holy Spirit they are one principle; but in relation to the creature the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are one principle, as one Creator and one Lord.

15. 16. But a more inward question is asked, PL: ulterius, “a further question.” whether, just as the Son has by being born not only that he is Son, but altogether that he is; so the Holy Spirit too has by that whereby he is given not only that he is a gift, but altogether that he is: whether, then, he was before he was given, but was not yet a gift, or whether, by the very fact that God was going to give him, he was already a gift even before he was given. But if he does not proceed except when he is given, neither would he proceed before there was one to whom he might be given; how, then, was the substance itself already, if it is not except because it is given: as the Son, not only that he is Son, which is said relatively, but altogether that he is, has the substance itself by being born?

Or does the Holy Spirit always proceed, and proceed not in time, but from eternity; but because he so proceeded as to be able to be given, he was already a gift even before there was one to whom he might be given? (See John 15:26) For it is understood in one way when he is called a gift, in another when he is called a thing given. For he can be a gift even before he is given; but a thing given cannot in any way be so called unless it has been given. See John 7:39; Rom 5:5. The distinction is a little less artificial in Latin, between donum, “gift,” and donatum, meaning “that which has been given.” That is the sense in which we must here understand the English word “donation.”

16. 17. Nor let it disturb us that the Holy Spirit, though he is coeternal with the Father and the Son, is yet said to be something in time, as this very thing which we have called a thing given. For he is the gift of the Spirit sempiternally, but a "thing given" in time. (See Acts 9:20; John 4:10, 7:39; Rom 5:5) For even "Lord" is not said except when he begins to have a servant, and this relative appellation too is for God in time: for the creature, of which he is Lord, is not sempiternal. How, then, shall we maintain that even relatives are not accidents, since nothing happens to God in time, because he is not changeable, as we treated at the beginning of this discussion?

Behold, to be Lord he does not have sempiternally, lest we be compelled to call the creature sempiternal too, because he would not rule sempiternally unless the creature also served sempiternally. But just as there cannot be a servant who has no master, so neither a master who has no servant.

And if anyone should arise who says that God indeed alone is eternal, but that times are not eternal on account of their variety and changeableness, yet that times did not begin to be in time (for there was no time before times began, and therefore it was not in time that it happened to God to be Lord, because he was Lord of the times themselves, which certainly did not begin to be in time): what will he answer about man, who was made in time, of whom certainly God was not Lord before there was one of whom he could be? At least, then, to be the Lord of man happened to God in time: and, that all controversy may seem to be removed, certainly to be your Lord, or mine, who only now began to be, happened to God in time. Or if even this seems uncertain on account of the obscure question of the soul, what about being Lord of the people of Israel? For although the nature of the soul which that people had already was—how, we do not ask—yet that people was not yet, and when it began to be is plain. Lastly, to be Lord of this tree and this crop happened in time, which only now began to be. For although the matter itself was already, yet it is one thing to be lord of the matter, another to be lord of a nature now made. For at one time a man is lord of wood, and at another time lord of a chest, though made from that very wood, which certainly did not exist when he was already lord of the wood.

How, then, shall we maintain that God is said nothing according to accident, except because nothing happens to his nature by which it is changed, so that those are relative accidents which happen with some change of the things of which they are said? As a friend is said relatively; for he does not begin to be unless he has begun to love: some change of will, then, comes about, that he be called a friend.

But a coin, when it is called a price, is said relatively, yet it is not changed when it begins to be a price: nor when it is called a pledge, and any such things. If, then, a coin can, by no change of itself, be said relatively so often, that neither when it begins to be so called, nor when it ceases, does any change come about in its nature or form by which it is a coin; how much more easily ought we to take it of that unchangeable substance of God, that something is so said relatively in relation to the creature, that, although it begins to be said in time, yet it is understood not to have happened to the substance of God itself, but to that creature in relation to which it is said? Lord, he says, you have become a refuge for us.

God, then, is called our refuge relatively, for he is referred to us; and he becomes our refuge then, when we flee to him. Does anything then come about in his nature that was not there before we fled to him? In us, then, some change comes about; for we were worse before we fled to him, and by fleeing to him we are made better: but in him none. So too he begins to be our Father when we are regenerated through his grace, since he gave us power to become sons of God. (See Gal 4:5; Eph 1:5; Rom 8:15–23) And so our substance is changed for the better when we are made his sons; at the same time he begins to be our Father, but by no change of his substance.

What, then, God begins in time to be called, which before he was not called, it is manifest is said relatively: yet not according to an accident of God, that something happened to him, but plainly according to an accident of that in relation to which God begins to be said something relatively. And that a friend of God (See Jdt 8:22; Jas 2:23) begins to be righteous, he himself is changed: but far be it that God should love anyone in time, as though by a new love which was not in him before, with whom neither have past things passed away, and future things are already done.

And so he loved all his saints before the foundation of the world, just as he predestined them; but when they are converted and find him, then they are said to begin to be loved by him, that it may be said in the way in which what is said can be grasped by human feeling. So too, when he is said to be angry with the wicked, and gentle with the good, they are changed, not he; as light is harsh to weak eyes, gentle to strong, by their change, namely, not its own.

1. 1. Some think that the equality of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit is hindered from being understood by the fact that it is written that Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God: so that for this reason the equality does not seem to hold, because the Father is not himself power and wisdom, but the begetter of power and wisdom. And indeed it is wont to be asked, with no slight earnestness, how God is said to be the Father of power and wisdom. For the Apostle says, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

And hence some of ours have reasoned against the Arians in this way—those, at least, who first raised themselves up against the Catholic faith. For Arius himself is said to have said: if he is a son, he was born; if he was born, there was a time when the son was not: See Hilary, On the Trinity 1.34; Ambrose, De Fide 1.18.120; 1.19.123; 4.8.79; 4.9.96; The Arian and Catholic Professions 10.24; Eusebius of Vercelli, On the Trinity 5.17–19. not understanding that even to have been born is, for God, to be sempiternal, so that the Son is coeternal with the Father, just as the splendor that is begotten by fire and diffused is coeval with it, and would be coeternal if the fire were eternal. Whence indeed the later Arians cast off that opinion, and confessed that the Son of God did not begin in time.

But among the disputations which ours had against those who said, there was a time when the Son was not, some inserted also this reasoning: "If the Son of God is the power and wisdom of God, and God never was without power and wisdom, the Son is coeternal with God the Father: but the Apostle says, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God; and to say that God at some time did not have power or wisdom is the part of a madman: therefore there was not a time when the Son was not."

1. 2. This reasoning compels us to say that God the Father is not wise except by having the wisdom which he begot, See Augustine, Revisions 1.25; Sir 1:4. not by existing through himself as the Father, wisdom itself. Then, if it is so, the Son too, as he is called God of God, light of light, it must be seen whether he can be called wisdom of wisdom, if God the Father is not wisdom itself, but only the begetter of wisdom. But if we hold this, why should he not be also the begetter of his own magnitude, and goodness, and eternity, and omnipotence, so that he himself is not his own magnitude, and his own goodness, and his own eternity, and his own omnipotence, but is great by that magnitude which he begot, and good by that goodness, and eternal by that eternity, and omnipotent by that omnipotence which was born of him, just as he is not himself his own wisdom, but is wise by that wisdom which was born of him? (See Sir 1:4)

For that is not to be feared, that we should be compelled to say that there are many sons of God, besides the adoption of the creature, coeternal with the Father, if he is the begetter of his own magnitude, and goodness, and eternity, and omnipotence. For this calumny is easily answered: that it is not so brought about, because many things have been named, that he is the father of many coeternal sons; just as it is not brought about that he is the father of two, when it is said, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the same is the power which is the wisdom, and the same the wisdom which is the power: so therefore also of the rest, that the same is the magnitude which is the power, and whatever others there are, that have either been mentioned above, or can still be mentioned.

2. 3. But if there is said in himself nothing except what is said in relation to the Son, that is, father, or begetter, or his principle; if also, as begetting that which he begets of himself, he is consequently principle to it; but whatever else is said, is said with the Son, or rather in the Son, whether great by that magnitude which he begot, or righteous by that righteousness which he begot, or good by that goodness which he begot, or powerful by that power or strength which he begot, or wise by that wisdom which he begot: but magnitude itself is not called Father, but the generator of magnitude: while the Son, just as in himself he is called Son, which is said not with the Father but in relation to the Father, so not in himself is he great, but with the Father whose magnitude he is; so too he is called wise with the Father, whose wisdom he is; just as the Father is wise with the Son, because he is wise by that wisdom which he begot; (See Sir 1:4) whatever, then, they are said in relation to themselves, is not said of the one without the other, that is, whatever they are said which shows their substance, both are said together.

If these things are so, then neither is the Father God without the Son, nor the Son God without the Father, but both together God. And what was said, in the beginning was the Word, is understood: in the Father was the Word. Or if in the beginning is said as if it were said "before all things"; what follows, and the Word was with God—the Word indeed is taken as the Son alone, not the Father and the Son together, as though both were one Word (for thus Word is as Image, (See Col 1:15) but the Father and the Son are not both together an image, but the Son alone is the Image of the Father, just as he is also the Son: for both are not together the Son): but what is added, and the Word was with God, it is much that it be so understood: the Word, which is the Son alone, was with God, which is not the Father alone, but the Father and the Son together God.

But what wonder, if in two things far different from each other this can be said? For what is so different as mind and body? Yet it can be said, "the mind was with man," that is, in man: although the mind is not the body, while man is mind and body together. See Cicero, De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum 4.7.16; 5.12.34; Sallust, The War With Jugurtha 2.1; Lactantius, Divine Institutes 7.5.16. So that even what is consequently written, and the Word was God, may be so understood: "the Word, which is not the Father, was God together with the Father."

Do we then say it thus, that the Father is the generator of magnitude, that is, the generator of his power, or the generator of his wisdom: but the Son is magnitude, power, and wisdom: but God great, almighty, wise, both together? How, then, is it "God of God, light of light"? For not both together are God of God, but the Son alone is of God, namely the Father: nor are both together light of light, but the Son alone is of the light, the Father.

Unless perhaps, to intimate and most briefly to impress that the Son is coeternal with the Father, it was so said, "God of God, and light of light," and anything said in this manner, as if it were said, "this which is not the Son without the Father, of this which is not the Father without the Son, that is, this light which is not light without the Father, of this light the Father which is not light without the Son": so that when it is said, "God," which is not the Son without the Father, and "of God," which is not the Father without the Son, it may be perfectly understood that the begetter did not precede that which he begot.

But if it is so, this alone cannot be said of them, "this of that," in which both together are not. As "Word of Word" cannot be said, because both are not together Word, but the Son alone; nor "Image of Image," because both are not together image; nor "Son of Son," because both are not together Son, according to what is said, I and the Father are one. For we are one was said; "what he is, that am I too according to essence, not according to relation."

3. 4. And I do not know whether it is found said in the Scriptures, "they are one," of things whose nature is different. But if several things of the same nature also think differently, they are not one insofar as they think differently. For if they were already one from the fact that they were men, he would not say, that they may be one, as we too are one, when he commended his disciples to the Father. But truly Paul and Apollos, because both were men, and thought the same: he who plants, he says, and he who waters, are one. When, therefore, one is so said that "what one" is not added, and several are called one, the same nature and essence, not disagreeing nor dissenting, is signified.

But when "what one" is added, something can be signified that is made one out of several, though different in nature. As soul and body are certainly not one (for what is so different?), unless there be added or understood what one, that is, one man, or one animal. Hence the Apostle: he who cleaves to a harlot, he says, is one body: he did not say, "they are one," or, "it is one"; but he added, "body," as one body composed by union out of two different things, male and female. And, he who cleaves to the Lord, he says, is one spirit: he did not say, "he who cleaves to the Lord is one," or, "they are one"; but he added, spirit. For the spirit of man and the Spirit of God are different in nature; but by cleaving there comes about one spirit out of two different ones, so that without the human spirit the Spirit of God is blessed and perfect, but the spirit of man is blessed only with God. (See 1 Cor 2:11–14; 3:16; Gen 1:2)

And not in vain, as I think, when the Lord said so much and so often in the Gospel according to John about that unity—whether his own with the Father, or ours with one another—he nowhere said, "that we and they may be one": but, that they may be one, as we too are one. The Father, then, and the Son are one, certainly according to the unity of substance, and there is one God, and one great one, and one wise one, as has been treated.

3. 5. Whence, then, is the Father greater? (See John 14:28) For if greater, greater by magnitude: but since the Son is his magnitude, neither is that one certainly greater than him whom he begot, nor is that one greater than the magnitude by which he is great: therefore equal. For whence is he equal, if not by that whereby he is, for whom to be is not one thing, and to be great another? Or if the Father is greater by eternity, the Son is not equal in any matter whatever. For whence is he equal? If you say by magnitude, that magnitude is not equal which is less eternal, and so with the rest. Or is he perhaps equal in power, but in wisdom not equal? But how is that power equal which is less wise? Or is he equal in wisdom, but in power not equal? But how is that wisdom equal which is less powerful? It remains, then, that if he is not equal in any one matter, he is not equal. But Scripture cries out, he did not think it robbery to be equal to God. Every adversary of the truth, then, who is at all held by apostolic authority, is compelled to confess the Son equal to God in some one matter whatever. Let him choose which he will: from this it will be shown to him that he is equal in all things that are said of his substance.

4. 6. For if the virtues that are in the human mind, although each is understood in one way and another, are yet in no way separated from one another, so that whoever are equal, for example, in fortitude, are equal also in prudence, and temperance, and justice. For if you say that these are equal in fortitude, but that one excels in prudence; it follows that this one's fortitude is less prudent, and through this they are not even equal in fortitude, since that one's fortitude is more prudent. And so you will find with the other virtues, if you run through them all with the same consideration. For it is not a question of the strength of the body, but of the fortitude of the mind.

How much more, then, in that unchangeable and eternal substance, incomparably simpler than the human mind, do these things so hold? For to the human mind to be is not the same as to be brave, or prudent, or just, or temperate; for the mind can be, and have none of these virtues. But to God to be is the same as to be brave, or to be just, or to be wise, and whatever you may say of that simple manifoldness, or manifold simplicity, by which his substance is signified.

Wherefore, whether it be so said "God of God," that this name fits the single ones, yet not so that both together are two gods, but that there is one God. For they so cohere together, as the Apostle witnesses comes about even in distant and different substances. For both the Lord alone is spirit, and the spirit of man (See John 3:6, 4:24; 1 Cor 2:11) alone is certainly spirit, yet if it cleaves to the Lord it is one spirit: how much more there, where there is an altogether inseparable and eternal connection, lest it seem absurdly to be said as it were the Son of both, when he is called the Son of God, See Matt 14:33, 16:16; Mark 1:1, 3:12; Luke 1:35, 4:41; John 1:34–49, 6:70, 10:36, 20:31; 1 John 3:8, 4:15, 5:5. if that which is said "God" is said only of both together: or whether whatever is said of God that indicates his substance is said only of both together, indeed of the Trinity itself together? Whether, then, it be this or that, which is to be discussed more carefully, now, as far as the matter goes, it is enough to see that in no way is the Son equal to the Father, if, namely, in anything that pertains to signifying his substance he is found unequal, as we have already shown.

But the Apostle said he was equal. In all things, then, the Son is equal to the Father, (See Phil 2:6) and is of one and the same substance.

5. 7. Wherefore the Holy Spirit too consists in the same unity and equality of substance. For whether he be the unity of both, or the holiness, or the love, or the unity because he is love, and the love because he is holiness, it is manifest that he is not one of the two by whom each is joined, by whom the begotten is loved by the begetter and loves his own generator, and that they are not by participation, but by their own essence, nor by the gift of any superior, but by their own proper gift, keeping the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

And this, by grace, we are commanded to imitate, both toward God and toward ourselves, See Deut 6:5, 10:12, 11:13; Matt 22:37–38; Mark 12:29–31; Luke 10:27; John 13:34, 15:12–17; Lev 19:18; Rom 13:9; Gal 5:14; Jas 2:8. on which two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets. So those three are God, one, alone, great, wise, holy, blessed. But we are blessed from him, and through him, and in him; because by his gift we are one among ourselves, but with him one spirit, because our soul is cleaved fast behind him. And for us it is good to cleave to God, because he will destroy everyone who fornicates away from him.

The Holy Spirit, then, is something common to the Father and the Son, whatever it is. Or it is the very communion, consubstantial and coeternal; which, if it can fittingly be called friendship, let it be so called; but it is more aptly called love. And this too is substance, because God is substance, and God is love, as it is written. But just as he is substance together with the Father and the Son, so he is great together, and good together, and holy together, and whatever else is said in relation to himself: since for God to be is not one thing, and to be great or to be good another, and the rest, as we showed above. For if love is there less great than wisdom, wisdom is loved less than it is: it is, therefore, equal, so that as great as wisdom is, so much is it loved: but Wisdom is equal to the Father, as we argued above: equal, therefore, is also the Holy Spirit; and if equal, equal in all things, on account of the supreme simplicity that is in that substance. And therefore there are not more than three: one loving him who is from him, and one loving him from whom he is, and the love itself. Which, if it is nothing, how is God love? If it is not substance, how is God substance?

6. 8. But if it is asked how that substance is both simple and manifold, the creature must first be considered, why it is manifold, but in no way truly simple. And first the universal body certainly consists of parts; so that there is there one part greater, another lesser, and the whole is greater than any part however large. For both heaven and earth are parts of the universal mass of the world: and the earth alone, and heaven alone, consists of innumerable parts, and in a third of itself is less than in the rest, and in half less than in the whole; and the whole body of the world, which is generally wont to be called by two parts, that is, heaven and earth, is certainly greater than heaven alone or earth alone. And in each body magnitude is one thing, color another, figure another. For with magnitude diminished the same color and the same figure can remain, and with color changed the same figure and the same magnitude can remain, and with the same figure not remaining a thing can be just as large and colored in the same way: and whatever other things are said at once of a body can be changed both at once and severally without the rest. And through this the nature of body is convicted of being manifold, but in no way simple.

The spiritual creature too, such as the soul, is indeed in comparison with body simpler: but without comparison with body it is manifold, itself too not simple. For it is simpler than body for this reason, that it is not diffused by mass through space of place, but in each body it is whole both in the whole and whole in any part of it; and therefore, when something comes about in however small a particle of body which the soul perceives, although it does not come about in the whole body, yet the whole soul perceives it, because it is not hidden from the whole: but yet even in the soul, since to be skilled is one thing, to be unskilled another, to be sharp one, to be retentive another, desire one, fear another, gladness one, sadness another; and since some of these can be without others, and some more, some less, innumerable things, and in innumerable ways, can be found in the nature of the soul; it is manifest that its nature is not simple but manifold. For nothing simple is changeable; but every creature is changeable.

7. 8. But God is indeed said in manifold ways to be great, good, wise, blessed, true, and whatever else does not seem unworthily said; but the same is his magnitude which is his wisdom (for he is great not by mass, but by power), and the same goodness which is wisdom and magnitude, and the same truth which is all those things; and there to be blessed is not one thing and to be great, or wise, or true, or good, or altogether to be itself, another.

7. 9. Nor, because he is a Trinity, is he therefore to be thought triple; otherwise the Father alone, or the Son alone, will be less than the Father and the Son together. Although it is not found how it can be said either the Father alone or the Son alone; since always and inseparably both that one is with the Son, and that one with the Father: not that both are the Father, or both the Son; but because they are always in one another, neither alone. But because we say that the Trinity itself is also God alone, although he is always with the spirits and holy souls; but we say "alone" what God is, because they are not also God with him: so we say that the Father alone is Father, not because he is separated from the Son, but because both together are not the Father.

8. 9. Since, therefore, the Father alone, or the Son alone, or the Holy Spirit alone is as great as the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit together, he is in no way to be called triple. For bodies grow by their conjunction. For although he who cleaves to his wife is one body, (See Eph 5:31; Gen 2:24; 1 Cor 6:16) yet a greater body comes about than if it were of the man alone, or of the wife alone.

But in spiritual things, when a lesser cleaves to a greater, as the creature to the Creator, that one becomes greater than it was, not this one. For in those things that are not great by mass, to be greater is to be better. But the spirit of any creature becomes better when it cleaves to the Creator than if it does not cleave: and therefore also greater, because better. He, then, who cleaves to the Lord is one spirit, but yet the Lord does not on that account become greater, although that one becomes so who cleaves to the Lord.

In God himself, therefore, when the equal Son cleaves to the equal Father, or the Holy Spirit equal to the Father and the Son, God does not become greater than each of them; because there is nothing by which that perfection may grow. But perfect is the Father, or the Son, or the Holy Spirit, and perfect God is the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit: and therefore a Trinity rather than triple.

9. 10. And since we have shown how it can be said "the Father alone," because there is no Father there but he; that sentence must be considered by which it is said that the one true God is not the Father alone, but the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. For if anyone asks whether the Father alone is God: how will it be answered that he is not, unless perhaps we say thus, that the Father is indeed God, but that he is not God alone; but that God alone is the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit? But what shall we do with that testimony of the Lord? For he was speaking to the Father, and had named the Father to whom he spoke, when he said: but this is eternal life, that they may know you the one true God. (Here Augustine changes “only” to “one.” Greek and Vulgate read “only.”)

Which indeed the Arians are wont to take thus, as if the Son were not the true God. See Tomus Damasi, anath. 12. These being excluded, it must be seen whether we are compelled to understand, when it was said to the Father, that they may know you the one true God, as though he wished to intimate this, that the Father alone too is the true God, lest we should understand God to be nothing but those three together, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Do we then, from the Lord's testimony, call both the Father one true God, and the Son one true God, and the Holy Spirit one true God, and at once the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, that is, at once the Trinity itself, not three true gods, but one true God? See Tomus Damasi, anath. 24–25. Or, since he added, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent, must "one true God" be understood, and is the order of the words, "that they may know you and Jesus Christ whom you have sent as one true God"?

Why, then, was he silent about the Holy Spirit? Is it because it is consequent that, wherever there is named one cleaving to another in such great peace that through it both are one, from this the very peace too is now understood, although it be not mentioned? For in that place too the Apostle seems as it were to pass over the Holy Spirit, and yet there he is understood, where he says, all things are yours; but you are Christ's; and Christ is God's; and again, the head of the woman is the man; the head of the man is Christ; but the head of Christ is God.

But again, if God is nothing but all three together, how is the head of Christ God, that is, the head of Christ the Trinity, since in the Trinity is Christ, so as to be the Trinity? Or is that which is the Father with the Son the head to that which is the Son alone? For the Father is God with the Son, but the Son alone is Christ: especially because the Word now made flesh is speaking, according to whose humility the Father is even greater, as he says, because the Father is greater than I; so that this very being God, which to him is one with the Father, may be the head of the man the Mediator, which he alone is. For if we rightly call the mind the principal part of man, that is, as it were the head of the human substance, although man himself is man with the mind; why is not the Word with the Father, which together is God, much more fittingly and much more the head of Christ, although Christ as man (See 1 Tim 2:5) cannot be understood except with the Word which was made flesh?

But this, as we have already said, we shall consider somewhat more carefully later. But now the equality of the Trinity and the one and the same substance have been demonstrated, as briefly as we could, so that, however that question may stand, which we have deferred to discuss with keener attention, nothing may hinder us from confessing the supreme equality of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

10. 11. A certain man, wishing most briefly to intimate the properties of the single persons in the Trinity, said, eternity in the Father, form in the Image, use in the Gift. Hilary, On the Trinity 2.1.1. And because he was a man of no slight authority in the treatment of the Scriptures and the assertion of the faith—for Hilary put this in his books—having scrutinized as far as I can the hidden meaning of these words, that is, of Father, and Image, and Gift, of eternity, and form, and use, I think that in the word eternity he followed nothing except that the Father has no Father from whom he is, but the Son is from the Father so as to be, and so as to be coeternal with him.

For an image, if it perfectly fulfills that of which it is the image, is itself made equal to it, not it to its image. In which image he named form, I believe, on account of beauty, where there is already such great congruence, and first equality, and first likeness, disagreeing in nothing, and in no way unequal, and in no part unlike, but answering exactly to him whose image it is. Where there is first and highest life, for which to live is not one thing and to be another, but the same to be and to live: and first and highest understanding, for which to live is not one thing and to understand another, but that which is to understand, this is to live, this is to be, See Marius Victorinus, Against Arius 4.16; 21; 22. one all things: as a perfect Word, to which nothing is lacking, and a certain art of the almighty and wise God, full of all the living unchangeable reasons; and all are one in it, as it is itself one from the One, with whom it is one.

There God knows all the things he made through it, and therefore, though times depart and succeed, nothing departs from or succeeds to the knowledge of God. For these things that were created are not known by God because they were made: but rather were made, or are changeable, because they are unchangeably known by him.

That ineffable embrace, then, of the Father and the Image is not without enjoyment, without love, without joy. That love, therefore, that delight, that felicity or blessedness—if indeed it can be worthily said by any human voice—he briefly called use, and it is in the Trinity the Holy Spirit, not begotten, but the sweetness of the begetter and the begotten, with vast bounty and abundance flooding all creatures according to their capacity, that they may keep their order and rest in their places.

10. 12. All these things, then, which were made by divine art, show in themselves both a certain unity, and form, and order. For whatever of these there is, is both some one thing, as are the natures of bodies and the dispositions of souls; and is formed by some form, as are the figures or qualities of bodies, and the teachings or arts of souls; and seeks or keeps some order, as are the weights or placings of bodies, and the loves or delights of souls.

It is fitting, therefore, that, seeing the things that are made, understood through the Creator, we understand the Trinity, of whom in the creature there appears, as is fitting, a trace. (See Sir 50:31) For in that Trinity is the highest origin of all things, and the most perfect beauty, and the most blessed delight. And so those three both seem to be determined by one another PL: ad se invicem, “with reference to each other.” and are infinite in themselves.

But here in corporeal things, one thing is not as much as three together, and two things are something more than one: but in that highest Trinity one is as much as three together, nor are two something more than one. And they are infinite in themselves. So both the single ones are in the single ones, and all in the single ones, and the single ones in all, and all in all, and all one. Whoever sees this, whether in part, or through a glass in a riddle, let him rejoice in knowing God, and let him honor him as God, and give thanks: but whoever does not see, let him strive through piety toward seeing; not through blindness toward calumniating. For God is one, yet a Trinity.

Nor is it to be taken confusedly, from whom are all things, through whom are all things, in whom are all things; nor of many gods, but to him be glory forever and ever. Amen. (See 1 Cor 8:6)

1. 1. Now let us inquire more carefully, as far as God grants, what we deferred a little before: whether each single person in the Trinity can also be called, in itself and not with the other two, God, or great, or wise, or true, or almighty, or just, and whatever else can be said of God, not relatively, but in relation to itself; or whether these things are not said except when the Trinity is understood.

For this makes the question, because it is written, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God: whether he is so the father of his wisdom and power that he is wise by this wisdom which he begot, and powerful by this power which he begot; and because he is always powerful and wise, (See Sir 1:3) he always begot power and wisdom. For we had said, if it is so, why is he not also the father of his magnitude by which he is great, and of the goodness by which he is good, and of the justice by which he is just, and of others if there are any?

Or if all these are understood under several words in the same wisdom and power, so that the magnitude is that which is power, the goodness that which is wisdom, and again the wisdom that which is power, as we have already treated; let us remember that, when I name any one of these, it is to be so taken as if I mentioned them all.

It is asked, then, whether the Father even singly is wise, and is himself wisdom to himself, or whether he is wise in the way that he is speaking. For he is speaking by the Word which he begot; (See Sir 1:4–5) not by a word that is uttered, and sounds, and passes away; but by the Word which was with God, and the Word was God, and all things were made through him: by a Word equal to himself, by which he always and unchangeably speaks himself. For he is not himself the word, just as he is not the son, nor the image. But speaking: excepting those temporal voices of God which come about in the creature; for they sound and pass away: (See Matt 3:17, 17:5; John 12:28) speaking, then, by that coeternal Word, he is understood not singly, but with the Word itself, without which he is certainly not speaking.

Is he then also wise as he is speaking, so that he is wisdom in the way that he is the Word, and this is to be the Word which is to be wisdom; this is also to be power, so that power and wisdom and Word are the same, and it is said relatively, as Son and image: and he is not singly powerful or wise, but with the very power and wisdom which he begot; as he is not singly speaking, but by that Word, and with that Word which he begot; and so great by that and with that magnitude which he begot?

And if he is not great by one thing and God by another, but is great by that whereby he is God, because for him to be great is not one thing and to be God another; it is consequent that he is not God singly either, but by that and with that deity which he begot, so that the Son is the deity of the Father in the way that he is the wisdom and power of the Father, and as he is the Word and image of the Father. (See Sir 1:3–5; 1 Cor 1:18–30; 2 Cor 4:4; Col 1:15; 1 Thess 2:13; Rev 19:13)

And because for him to be is not one thing and to be God another, so the Son is also the essence of the Father, just as he is his Word and image. And through this, even excepting that which the Father is, the Father is not anything except because he has a Son: so that not only is that which is called Father (which is manifestly said of him not in relation to himself, but relatively to the Son, and therefore Father because he has a Son); but altogether, that he is what he is in relation to himself, he is for this reason, that he begot his own essence. For just as he is great only by that magnitude which he begot, so he also is only by that essence which he begot; because for him to "be" is not one thing, and to be great another.

Is he, then, the father of his own essence, as he is the father of his own magnitude, as he is the father of his own power and wisdom? For the same is his magnitude which is his power, and the same essence which is his magnitude.

1. 2. This discussion arose from what is written, that Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.

Wherefore our speech is constrained into these straits, when we desire to utter the unutterable, so that we must either say that Christ is not the power of God and the wisdom of God, and so impudently and impiously resist the Apostle;

or confess that Christ is indeed the power of God and the wisdom of God, but that his Father is not the father of his own power and wisdom, which is no less impious; for thus he will not even be the Father of Christ, because Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God;

or that the Father is not powerful by his own power, nor wise by his own wisdom; which who would dare to say?

or that in the Father to be is one thing and to be wise another, so that he is not by the very thing by which he is wise; which is wont to be understood of the soul, which is at one time unwise, at another wise, as a nature changeable, and not supremely and perfectly simple;

or that the Father is not anything in relation to himself, and that not only that which is the Father, but altogether that which he is, is said relatively to the Son. How, then, is the Son of the same essence of which the Father is, since, in relation to himself, the Father is neither essence, nor is at all in relation to himself, but even "to be" is for him in relation to the Son?

But rather much more of one and the same essence, because one and the same essence is the Father and the Son; since for the Father his very "being" is not in relation to himself, but in relation to the Son, whose essence he begot, and by which essence he is whatever he is. Neither, then, is in relation to himself, and each is said relatively in relation to the other.

Or is the Father alone said not only that which is called Father, but altogether whatever is said relatively in relation to the Son; while that one is said also in relation to himself? And if it is so, what is said in relation to himself? Is it the essence itself? But the essence of the Father is the Son, as the power and wisdom of the Father, as the Word of the Father and the Image of the Father. (See 2 Cor 4:4; Col 1:15)

Or if the Son is said essence in relation to himself, but the Father is not essence, but the begetter of essence, and is not in relation to himself, but by that very essence which he begot, as he is great by that very magnitude which he begot; then the Son is also said magnitude in relation to himself, then also power, and wisdom, and Word, and Image. But what is more absurd than that an image be said in relation to itself?

Or if Image and Word are not the same as power and wisdom, but those are said relatively, while these in relation to himself, not to another; then the Father begins to be wise not by that wisdom which he begot, because he cannot be said relatively in relation to it, and it not be said relatively in relation to him. For all things that are said relatively are said in relation to one another.

It remains, then, that the Son too be said essence relatively in relation to the Father. From which results a most unexpected sense, that the essence itself is not essence; or at least that when essence is said, not essence, but a relative is indicated. As when a master is said, not essence is indicated, but a relative which is referred to a servant; but when a man is said, or anything of the sort, which is said in relation to himself, not to another, then essence is indicated. A man, then, when he is called a master, the man himself is essence, but master is said relatively; for man is said in relation to himself, master in relation to a servant. But in the matter we are treating, if the essence itself is said relatively, the essence itself is not essence.

There is added to this, that every essence that is said relatively is also something apart from the relative; as a man master, and a man servant, and a horse a beast of burden, Jumentum, meaning a beast precisely as referred to its burden, or what it draws, by its jugum or yoke. and a coin a pledge; man and horse and coin are said in relation to themselves, and are substances or essences; but master and servant and beast of burden and pledge are said relatively in relation to something.

But if there were not a man, that is, some substance, there would not be one who might be called master relatively: and if a horse were not a certain essence, there would not be what might be called a beast of burden relatively; so if a coin were not some substance, neither could a pledge be said relatively.

Wherefore, if the Father too is not anything in relation to himself, there is altogether no one who might be said relatively in relation to something. Aristotle, Categories 7.6a36–8b24; Pseudo-Augustine, Aristotle’s Ten Categories 11.

For it is not as the color of a colored thing is referred to it, and color is not at all said in relation to itself, but is always of something colored; while that of which it is the color, even if, by being called colored, it is referred to the color, yet what is called body is said in relation to itself: in no way is it to be thought that the Father is said nothing in relation to himself, but that whatever is said is said in relation to the Son; while the same Son is said both in relation to himself and in relation to the Father, when he is called a great magnitude and a powerful power, certainly in relation to himself, and the magnitude and power of the great and powerful Father, by which the Father is great and powerful. Not so, then, but each is substance, and each is one substance.

But just as it is absurd to say that a white thing is not whiteness, so it is absurd to say that a wise one is not wisdom; and just as whiteness is said white in relation to itself, so wisdom too is said wise in relation to itself. But the whiteness of a body is not essence; since the body itself is essence, and that its quality: whence also a body is called white from it, for which to be is not the same as to be white. For there form is one thing, and color another; and both are not in themselves, but in some mass, which mass is neither form nor color, but formed and colored. But wisdom is both wise, and is wise by itself. And since whatever soul becomes wise by participation in wisdom, if it again become unwise, yet wisdom remains in itself, nor, when the soul has been changed into folly, is it changed.

It is not so in him who becomes wise from it, as whiteness in a body which is white from it. For when the body has been changed into another color, that whiteness will not remain, but will altogether cease to be. But if the Father too, who begot wisdom, becomes wise from it, (See Sir 1:4) and for him to be is not the same as to be wise, then the Son is his quality, not his offspring, and there will then not be there the highest simplicity. But far be it that it should be so; because there is truly there a supremely simple essence: this, then, is there to be which is to be wise. But if this is there to be which is to be wise, the Father is not wise by that wisdom which he begot; otherwise it is not he who begot it, but it that begot him.

For what else do we say, when we say, for him to be is the same as to be wise, except, he is by that whereby he is wise? Wherefore that which is the cause to him of being wise is itself the cause to him of being: accordingly, if the wisdom which he begot is the cause to him of being wise, it is also the cause to him of being. Which cannot come about except by begetting or making him. But neither begetter nor founder of the Father would anyone in any way call wisdom. For what is more insane?