6 Feb 2009
Section: 1.13.25-29
25. The divine nature is common to all three Persons
But they are obviously deceived in this connection, for they dream of individuals, each having its own separate part of the essence. Yet we teach from the Scriptures that God is one in essence, and hence that the essence both of the Son and of the Spirit is unbegotten; but inasmuch as the Father is first in order, and from himself begot his wisdom, as has just been said, he is rightly deemed the beginning and fountainhead of the whole of divinity. Thus God without particularization is unbegotten; and the Father also in respect to his person is unbegotten. They also foolishly think they may conclude from our statement that we have set up a quaternity, for they falsely and calumniously ascribe this fiction of their own brain to us, as if we pretended that three persons came forth by derivation from one essence. On the contrary, it is clear from our writings that we do not separate the persons from the essence, but we distinguish among them while they remain within it. If the persons had been separate from the essence, the reasoning of these men might have been probable; but in this way there would have been a trinity of gods, not of persons whom the one God contains in himself.
Thus is their useless question answered: whether or not the essence co-operates in producing the Trinity, as if we imagined that three gods descend from it. Their rejoinder that if not, the Trinity would therefore be without God, is born of the same foolishness. For although the essence does not enter into the distinction as a part or a member of the Trinity, nevertheless the persons are not without it, or outside it; because the Father, unless he were God, could not have been the Father; and the Son could not have been the Son, unless he were God. Therefore we say that deity in an absolute sense exists of itself; whence likewise we confess that the Son since he is God, exists of himself, but not in respect of his Person; indeed, since he is the Son, we say that he exists from the Father. Thus his essence is without beginning; while the beginning of his person is God himself. Those orthodox writers who formerly spoke concerning the Trinity applied this name only to the persons, since it would have been not only an absurd error but even the sheerest impiety to embrace the essence in this distinction. For those who want to make a Trinity of these three-Essence, Son, and Spirit-are plainly annihilating the essence of the Son and the Spirit; otherwise the parts joined together would fall apart, and this is faulty in any distinction. Finally, if Father and God were synonymous, thus would the Father be the deifier; nothing would be left in the Son but a shadow; and the Trinity would be nothing else but the conjunction of the one God with two created things.
26. The subordination of the incarnate Word to the Father is no counter evidence
They object that Christ, if he be properly God, is wrongly called Son. To this I have replied that when a comparison of one person is made with another, the name of God is not to be taken without particularization, but restricted to the Father, seeing that he is the beginning of deity, not in the bestowing of essence, as fanatics babble, but by reason of order. In this sense is to be understood that saying of Christ to the Father, “This is eternal life, that they believe thee to be the one true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent” [John 17:3 p.]. For speaking in the person of the Mediator, he holds a middle rank between God and man; yet his majesty is not on this account diminished. For even though he emptied himself [Phil. 2:7], he lost not his glory with the Father which was hidden to the world. Thus the apostle in Heb., ch. 2, although he admits that Christ was for a short time abased beneath the angels [vs. 7, 9], does not hesitate at the same time to declare him to be the everlasting God who founded the earth [ch. 1:10].
Therefore we must hold that, as often as Christ in this person of Mediator addresses God, under this name of God is included his deity, which is also Christ’s. Thus when he said to the apostles, “It is expedient that I go up to the Father” [John 16:7; cf. ch. 20:17] “because the Father is greater than I” [ch. 14:28, Vg.], he does not attribute to himself merely a secondary deity so that he is inferior to the Father with respect to eternal essence; but because endowed with heavenly glory he gathers believers into participation in the Father. He places the Father in the higher rank, seeing that the bright perfection of splendor that appears in heaven differs from that measure of glory which was seen in him when he was clothed with flesh. With the same intent, Paul elsewhere says that Christ “shall deliver up the Kingdom to the God and Father” [I Cor.15: 24], “that God may be all in all” [I Cor. 15:28]. Nothing is more absurd than to deny that Christ’s deity is everlasting. But if he will never cease to be the Son of God, but will ever remain the same as he was from the beginning, it follows that there is comprehended under the name of “Father” the unique essence of God which is common to both. And certainly for this reason Christ descended to us, to bear us up to the Father, and at the same time to bear us up to himself, inasmuch as he is one with the Father. Therefore to restrict the name “God” to the Father, to the exclusion of the Son, is neither lawful nor right. On this account, also, John indeed declares him to be the true God [John 1:1; I John 5:20] lest anyone think of placing him in a second rank of deity beneath the Father. Moreover, I wonder what these makers of new gods mean when, having confessed Christ as true God, they immediately exclude him from the deity of the Father. As if he could be true God and not be one God, and as if a divinity transfused were anything but a newfangled fiction!
27. Our adversaries falsely appeal to Irenaeus
They pile up many passages from Irenaeus, where he declares the Father of Christ to be the sole and eternal God of Israel. This is either shameful ignorance or consummate depravity. For they ought to have considered that that saintly man was dealing and contending with fanatics who denied that the Father of Christ was that same God who had of old spoken through Moses and the prophets, but fancied a sort of specter produced from the corruption of the world. Therefore he is wholly concerned with this point: to make it plain that no other God is proclaimed in Scripture than the Father of Christ, and that it is wrong to imagine another. Hence it is no wonder he so often concludes that there was no other God of Israel than he who is celebrated by Christ and the apostles. So also now, when we must resist another sort of error, we shall truly say: the God who of old appeared to the patriarchs was no other than Christ. Indeed, if anyone objects that it was in fact the Father, our reply will be ready: while we contend for the divinity of the Son, we do not at all exclude the Father. If the readers were to pay attention to this advice of Irenaeus, all contention would cease. In Chapter 6 of Book 3 all strife is easily brought to naught, where the godly man insists on this one thing, “that he who in Scripture is called God in an absolute and undifferentiated sense is in truth the only God, and that Christ indeed is called God in an absolute sense.” Let us remember that this was the basis of his argument, as is clear from the whole drift, and especially in Book 2, Chapter 46: that he is not called Father enigmatically and parabolically.
Besides this, he elsewhere contends that both the Son and the Father were jointly declared to be God by the prophets and the apostles [Book 3, Chapter 9]. Afterward he defines how Christ, who is Lord over all things, and King, and God, and Judge, received power from him who is God of all things, namely, in respect to subjection in that he was humbled even to death on the cross [Book 3, Chapter 12]. Moreover, a little later he affirms that the Son was the Maker of heaven and earth, who gave the law through the hand of Moses, and appeared to the patriarchs. Now if anyone prates that for Irenaeus the Father alone was the God of Israel, I shall turn back upon him what the same writer openly teaches, that Christ is one and the same, just as the prophecy of Habakkuk also refers to him: “God will come from the south” [Hab. 3:3, Vg.] [Book 3, Chapters 18 and 23]. To the same end pertains what is read in Book 4, Chapter 9. Christ himself, therefore, is God with the Father of the living. And in Chapter 12 of the same book he explains that Abraham believed in God, because the Maker of heaven and earth, and the sole God, is Christ.
28. The appeal to Tertullian also is of no avail
Not a whit more truthfully do they adopt Tertullian as their advocate; for even if he is sometimes rough and thorny in his mode of speech, yet he not ambiguously hands on the sum of the doctrine that we defend. In his view, although God is one, his Word exists by dispensation or economy; God is one in unity of substance, and nonetheless the unity is disposed into a trinity by the mystery of dispensation. There are thus three, not in status, but in degree; not in substance, but in form; not in power, but in its manifestation. He says, indeed, that he retains the Son as second to the Father, but he understands him to be not different except by way of distinction. Elsewhere he speaks of the Son as visible; but after he has argued both sides of the question, he decides that he is invisible in so far as he is the Word. Finally, affirming that the Father is determined by his own person, Tertullian proves himself far removed from that fabrication which we are refuting. And although he recognizes no other God than the Father, nevertheless, explaining himself in the next passage, he shows that he is not speaking exclusively with respect to the Son, because he denies that there is another God than the Father, and thus his monarchy is not broken by distinction of person. And from his unwavering purpose one can readily gather the meaning of his words. For he contends against Praxeas that although God is distinguished into three persons, yet this does not make more than one God, nor is his unity sundered. And because according to Praxeas’ fabrication Christ could not be God without being the same as the Father, he therefore toils mightily over this distinction. That he, indeed, calls the Word and the Spirit a portion of the whole, even though it is a hard saying, is yet excusable, seeing that it is not applied to substance, but merely marks the disposition and economy that has to do with the persons alone, as Tertullian himself testifies. Upon this also hangs his statement: “How many persons, O most wicked Praxeas, do you think there are, unless there be as many as there are names?” Thus, also, a little later: “That they may believe the Father and the Son each in their names and persons.” By these references I think I have been able sufficiently to refute the impudence of those who try from Tertullian’s authority to deceive the simple.
29. All acknowledged doctors of the church confirm the doctrine of the Trinity
And certainly anyone who diligently compares the writings of the ancients among themselves will find in Irenaeus nothing else than what his successors set forth. Justin is one of the earliest, yet he supports us at every point. They will object that both by him and by the rest the Father of Christ is called the one God. Hilary also teaches the same thing, indeed speaks more sharply, that eternity is in the Father. Is that to deprive the Son of the divine essence? Yet he is wholly concerned with the defense of the very faith to which we adhere. Our enemies, however, are not ashamed to pluck out any kind of mutilated utterances, from which they would have us believe that Hilary is the patron of their error!
With regard to their citation of Ignatius, if they want it to have any weight, let them prove that the apostles made a law concerning Lent and like corruptions. Nothing is more disgusting than those vile absurdities which have been put forth under the name of Ignatius. Even less tolerable is the shamelessness of those who cover themselves with such masks in order to deceive. Indeed, the agreement of the ancients is clearly seen here, that in the Council of Nicaea, Arius dared not make a pretense on the basis of the authority of any proved writer; and no one of the Greeks or the Latins excuses himself for disagreeing with those before him. We need say nothing of how carefully Augustine (toward whom these rascals are most hostile) searched the writings of all, and how reverently he embraced them. To be sure, in some small details he was accustomed to show why he was compelled to depart from them. Even in this argument, if he read anything ambiguous or obscure among other writers, he does not hide it. Nevertheless, he takes for granted the doctrine these men are attacking, as received without controversy from the earliest times.Yet from a single word it is clear that what others had taught before was not unknown to him, when in Book 1, Christian Doctrine, he says that unity is in the Father. Will they chatter about his then forgetting himself? Yet elsewhere he clears himself of this calumny, where he calls the Father the beginning of all deity because he is from no one; and wisely considers that the name of God is especially ascribed to the Father because if the beginning comes not from him, the simple unity of God cannot be conceived.
Now, the godly reader will, I hope, recognize that these words refute all the chicaneries by which Satan has heretofore tried to pervert or darken the pure faith of doctrine. Finally, I trust that the whole sum of this doctrine has been faithfully explained, if my readers will impose a limit upon their curiosity, and not seek out for themselves more eagerly than is proper troublesome and perplexed disputations. For I suspect that those who intemperately delight in speculation will not be at all satisfied. Certainly I have not shrewdly omitted anything that I might think to be against me: but while I am zealous for the edification of the church, I felt that I would be better advised not to touch upon many things that would profit but little, and would burden my readers with useless trouble. For what is the point in disputing whether the Father always begets? Indeed, it is foolish to imagine a continuous act of begetting, since it is clear that three persons have subsisted in God from eternity.
