Dialogues on the Holy Trinity 1 part 8/23

A. Consider then, if you please, my friend, how even Moses himself, the most sacred, attaches to the simple and uncompound nature of God a manner of speech befitting a person that is not simple.

For from this too it is possible, for those who examine it, to see without labor that which, within the one Godhead, is threefold according to hypostasis.

B. Indeed, I would still like to understand more fully what exactly it is that you mean.

Tell me, then, more clearly.

...having brought about, extempore, the coming-to-be of all other things;

'Let us make man according to our image and likeness.' And having interjected something brief in between:

'And God made man,' he says, 'according to the image of God he made him.' B. I understand.

For the Divine is surely all-powerful with respect to everything whatsoever, and abounds in itself with the ability to accomplish easily whatever it might wish, and it is itself the whole power of existing things.

For just as we say that he is himself wisdom and life, and nothing could live or indeed partake of the goods of wisdom without having its supply welling up from him as from a fountain, in the same way, I think, nothing among existing things could obtain strength, nor would it ever advance to being able to accomplish anything, without having been brought to this by the strength of the universe.

A. But how could they suppose at all that human nature has been formed in relation to God? Whose image will they say has been impressed upon those on earth? B. What if they should say it is the image of God the Father? A. But if they should say it is of God the Father alone, they will fall into the utmost wretchedness of reasoning.

B. In what way? A. First, because 'Let us make,' and indeed also 'according to our image,' would not suit a single person, but would rather befit those who are more than one, even more than two.

And besides this, we say the following, having pondered it well:

That which is reformed, when its original form has been lost and marred into unsightliness — would it not fittingly revert to that which it was in the beginning, and, having cast off the damage arising from its disfigurement, leap back again to the unmarred appearance of its nature? B. What do you mean? A. You shall indeed learn it very clearly:

If someone who had excellently and perfectly mastered a craft — say, for instance, the art of bronze-working — should fashion a statue, engraving upon it his own particular form, and this statue, dislodged from its base by someone who envied it, should fall with a crash and thus be mutilated and changed into something unsightly:

then, if the craftsman of this work should regard the matter as intolerable, and should wish, with a fiercer flame, to melt away the envy of the one who did the damage, and should indeed reshape the work again into its original form, removing the damage arising from its mutilation:

would it seem to you that he was thinking rightly, if, abandoning its proper form, he should artlessly transform it into the shape of something else altogether? B. Not at all.

A. But rather, by instilling into it again the form it had in the beginning, he truly reshaped it and engraved upon it once more his own image? B. Yes, indeed.

...has he renewed in him the form that was in the beginning, that is, unto likeness to himself, or has he rather instilled in him a different form and shape — if indeed the Son is by nature other than he, the Son to whom we have been conformed? For the most wise Paul writes thus to certain people:

'My little children, for whom I am again in travail until Christ be formed in you.' And again:

'For those whom he foreknew, he also foreordained' (again it is clear, of course, that this refers to God) 'to be conformed to the image of his Son; and these he also called.' For Christ reforms us through the Spirit into his own image, and intelligibly and ineffably imprints the beauty of his own nature upon the souls of the pious.

We have been formed, then, I suppose, no longer according to the true God, but rather the form of a created thing is conspicuous in us.

This indeed was long ago also celebrated through the voice of the Psalmist:

'Your youth shall be renewed like the eagle's' would then already have vanished into nothing, having been shown, it seems, to be pointless.

For according to the Scriptures, what pertains to us would then be no renewal at all, but rather a novel making, having obtained by no means an ascent toward what is above, nor having a return to what it was in the beginning, but being somehow forced down toward something lesser than before and suffering greatly from unsightliness.

And the earlier creation would also be, incomparably, superior to the renewal through Christ, if that earlier creation had instilled in us the distinction of being in the form of the only and true God, while this later renewal repaints us into a form that is not such, transforming us instead into the Son.

What then have we gained through Christ, if it turns out that we have been robbed of likeness to God itself and have entirely stripped off the illustrious boast of our nature, if indeed our whole blessedness consists in becoming like God? But this, I think, is now sheer nonsense and a laughing matter, mere old wives' tales.

For we are transformed back into the first image, being sealed with the precise seal of the Son so as to possess this likeness — he who is both the exact expression and the likeness of the Father, and not other than him, in that they are identical in substance.

A. Observe, then, into how great an absurdity the argument would slide for those who have determined to censure those who hold this opinion and have chosen to think in this way.

For if the Father alone is the true God — and they will say this is so out of sheer madness — then, I suppose, the Son would be thrust out, as by a necessary consequence, from truly being God.

A. But he will surely be altogether in a lesser state than that in which the Father is, since indeed God who is by nature and in truth is beyond all things.

for the argument now leads somehow to this conclusion.

A. Observe, then, Hermias, that we run the risk — according to what seems, unintelligently, good to them — of reckoning the Son, though held to be inferior, to be somehow already better and even superior to God the Father himself, if we consider that we must be persuaded without delay by the voices of the saints.

B. And indeed the matter is not disputable.

A. You shall then hear the divinely inspired Paul crying out thus: that he became a Pharisee according to the law, persecuting the Church out of zeal, becoming blameless according to the righteousness that is in the law; 'but whatever things were gains to me, these I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ.'

'Yes indeed, and I count all things to be loss because of the surpassing worth of the knowledge of Christ Jesus our Lord.' B. Yes, he said this, but what would this signify? A. Did not the law proclaim as an oracle to the men of old that God and Lord are one? B. Yes.

A. And they say, perhaps, that this one is the Father.

A. But he who says he has been shown to be, for us, the steward of the ineffable mysteries of Christ, the mystagogue of the inhabited world — having learned or pondered what, did he place the knowledge of Christ incomparably among the better things, and call it surpassing, and consider the things of the law refuse, while he was utterly astonished at and greatly admired the evangelical and saving proclamation? Or is it not necessary for us to reckon and think that, of whatever things the knowledge is greater, it must immediately follow that these things should also be fittingly superior to those with which they are compared? B. I think so.

...Is it not a mark of folly and ignorance of mind to say, or even to suppose, that the Son is ever better than the Father, who has, as it were, the root and fountain, namely the begetter? For we would altogether insult, together with the plant, the fruit; and together with the root, the shoot; and together with the fountain, the stream that pours forth from it and is not alien to it; and together with the light, the radiance that shines forth and flashes from it.

B. How could it not be so? A. Then must we not, of necessity, admit the Son, who binds himself with the Father into natural unity by this reasoning, and is brought together with him within the natural and true Godhead? B. Yes, necessarily indeed;

Yet tell me this: how could the knowledge of Christ be superior to and surpass the ancient and legal instruction, even though he has been taken up together into natural identity with the Father and God who is true, and has been proclaimed together with him through the ancient Scriptures? A. It will be far better, and will leap far beyond the former.

For it has a clearer proclamation and expands into a knowledge unfamiliar to the law.

For this very reason Moses himself, our hierophant, earnestly entreated, and indeed very often, to attain an exact and unshadowed knowledge concerning Him-Who-Is, and indeed said to God, the Savior of all things:

Show yourself to me, that I may know you with certainty. Yet he was commanded to dig into the rock and, through a very narrow opening, to gaze upon him, if he so wished — God thereby signifying to us in riddles, I think, even in this, that the Law flashes forth but a slight knowledge of God upon those being instructed, and scarcely lets in, as it were through a small hole, the illumination concerning this.

For he wanted them to believe that God is one only, drawing away those who had gone astray from the things falsely supposed to be divine.

But how the divine and ineffable nature stands in itself, in its own inner constitution, he did not clearly show forth, as, of course, the saving proclamation does — I mean, that which comes through Christ.

For since we have come to know the Son, we believe that he has appeared and sprung forth, as it were, from the root of the Father, and the glory of the offspring, inscribing as on a tablet the nature of the begetter, has enabled the eye of the mind to attain to things beyond mind and speech.

Therefore he also said to the Father and God who is in heaven:

'I have manifested your name to men'; and to the Jews, on the other hand:

'You know neither me nor my Father;'

'if you knew me, you would know my Father also.' Now, to know of one of the things that exist merely that it is, but not also how it is, everyone, I think, would say is far less than what one ought to know, namely both that it is and how it is.

The instruction given through the Law, then, lags behind for us the evangelical proclamations: on the one hand proclaiming to the ancients that God is one only, but nowhere expanding the nature of the Godhead into the threefold according to hypostasis, and again gathering it together into natural unity.

For it is the new Scripture that has taught us these things.

If, then, union and natural identity are not admitted in the case of God the Father and the Son — for I am going straight to the matters proposed at the outset — there will be confusion and distortion, and the faith of the sacred Scriptures will no longer have, I think, any firmness or stability at all.

{B.} How, or in what way? {A.} Since the divine Scripture cries out to us that God is one, by nature and in truth, we shall exclude the Son from the honor and glory belonging to this, unless the identical and unvarying essence be admitted, in some way, to be shared with God the Father.

Or have you not learned from the saints crying out to us concerning God, in one place, that 'There is one lawgiver and judge,' and again, in another, 'He who alone has immortality'? Whom, then, must we suppose to be the only lawgiver and judge, and the only one who has immortality? {B.} The Father, surely, in every way.

for I think they would say nothing other than this.

{A.} Yes, they will indeed say so — I know it myself too.

for their aim of ill-counsel comes down precisely to this.

Then how will the divine proclamation to us — I mean the evangelical one — not be deceit and imposture, and even in things more shameful than these, if it persuades us that we must vote truth to the Son's words, when he said, 'I am the life,' although, according to them, he does not have immortality, if the Father alone is immortal?

And indeed, that he will be judge and has appeared as lawgiver, you would need, I think, no labor at all to understand.

For have you not heard him saying, in one place, 'It was said,'

'You shall not commit adultery, but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman to desire her has already committed adultery with her in his heart'; and, in another place again, 'For neither does the Father judge anyone, but he has given all judgment to the Son'? {B.} I have heard it.

But tell me this: do you wish that we exercise the argument with objections raised in contradiction, or shall we let it run its course, as it were unopposed, without any hindrance from those on the other side? {A.} Well then, proceed to this nobly.

For the exercise would sharpen the mind, both to contend more fervently than before against those who oppose, and more vigorously to repel the arguments of those who seem to resist.

{B.} Well then, let us now speak of each point in turn and clearly.

For I shall reckon this not at all as your own opinion, but rather as that of those who oppose.

{B.} God the Father is the one lawgiver and judge.

For to legislate and to judge would befit only the nature that reigns as sovereign over all things.

Yet the Son too has come to this glory, God the Father having granted him leave to take it.

{A.} And to which of those who think rightly would it not be obvious, my friend, that you will be pouring out upon us idle words, and heaping up a cold and useless multitude of notions, unless you show us the writings of the saints in agreement with what you have said? For we shall not follow those who wish and are accustomed to belch forth things from their own mind alone, but those who speak from the mouth of the Lord, according to what is written:

'Appoint, O Lord, a lawgiver over them; let the nations know that they are but men.' And that this has been fulfilled, quite clearly, in his own case, the Son himself also comes to declare to us, saying:

'But I have been established king by him upon Zion, his holy mountain, proclaiming the ordinance of the Lord.' Now, he who has kingship and legislative power as a gift of another's will — how could he not have an adopted, and in no way natural, but rather adjudged authority in both respects? {A.} 'Awake, you drunkards, from your wine' — let someone, and quite fittingly, cry this out to those who are perverted.

For the Son, existing in the form and equality in every respect with the Father, underwent a voluntary self-emptying, lowering himself into the condition that is ours, and became man — to whom, as man, to reign and to legislate is nothing other than a given, granted thing.

But since he has become poor together with us and, by way of economy, has taken on a measure befitting a servant, he acknowledges as adoptively received that which belongs to him by nature, and he conforms himself very closely to the works and words of the self-emptying; and there would be, I think, no harm at all from this to those who believe in him, provided they take careful note of the occasion fitting to the words.

For when did Christ legislate for the nations, and when did he come proclaiming, in Zion, the ordinance of the Lord? Was it not when he became man? And indeed, one might see quite clearly in the Mosaic writings that the Son was sent to proclaim the ordinance of the Lord to those of Israel at no other time than when he entered into our poverty, and the Lord of the prophets was named a prophet, and the Word, who is in the bosom of the Father, was declared to be numbered among those of the earth.

For God said somewhere, assuring the most holy Moses concerning this very matter:

'I will raise up for them a prophet from the midst of their brothers, like you.'

and did he not spring forth from among those born of the earth? Or rather, do you not say this — which is better and true — that he has been styled a brother and has come to hold Moses' rank, that is, as a tutor, and has been led to legislate as necessary, fulfilling as it were a kind of ministerial service, at the time when, thoroughly setting aside the transcendence of his inborn glory, he lowered himself, in due time and need, into voluntary self-emptying? {B.} Indeed, you have spoken excellently; know that I too understand it so.

{A.} Well then, if they should choose to apportion rightly what befits each occasion, they would not, I think, slip into a deranged mind and a perverted heart;

and they would already, in some way, gain the ability to understand rightly the word of truth.

Now, adding to what I have said, I might further say this: if it seems to someone a small matter, and reckoned as nothing, that for each of the things written in the divinely inspired Scripture one ought to apply the occasion fitting and most appropriate to it, then what would prevent one — even supposing the only-begotten Word of God had not yet become as we are — from saying that he had already died, having endured the cross and all that pertains to it, and that, even before the coming together and union with this flesh taken from the earth, the Jews had impiously done violence against him, and had done and said things that perhaps befit only their own madness?

since indeed, as one who had already suffered, Christ said somewhere:

'I gave my back to the scourges, and my cheeks to blows, and I did not turn my face away from the shame of spitting.' Would it not then rightly be madness and a laughingstock to suppose that the Son endured these things not at the fitting time — clearly, the time after taking flesh? {B.} True.

{A.} But let us leave off discussion of this matter and, for the present, move on, if that seems good to you.

{B.} Which one? {A.} I mean, to bring the matter to the test and learn it accurately, and to ask those on the opposing side whether, in being established king and lawgiver, being of such a kind according to essence — or rather, perhaps being merely of such a kind — belongs to the Son.

{B.} I think they would say that being of such a kind, or merely happening to be so, does not belong to the Son in the fact of his being established;

for I do not think they would go so far in folly on this point — even though they babble immeasurably — as to be so bold as to say that being established is a definition of essence;

but perhaps they will say this: that the very fact of being established is evidence of the nature of the one who is established.

'For he would not,' they say, 'have received from another that which belongs to him by nature.'

{A.} Well then, noble sirs, it will again be said by us that you are by no means sound of mind and lovers of doctrinal correctness, but rather that, being altogether prone to derangement and deceit, you will be caught out.

For you have quickly forgotten that one must assign the things written to their fitting occasions, and grant to the times of the incarnation those things that are not altogether befitting God, even if they happen to be said concerning the Only-Begotten.

Since, then, you have not entirely swerved away from right reasoning, and you say that being established, when predicated of the Son, does not indicate essence but rather signifies something about a matter of fact — what, then, prevents us from thinking and saying that God the Father willed the Son, who is king and lawgiver essentially, to be shown forth to those on earth as what he already is? And I do not mean that he began to reign, but rather that he was, in some sense, inclining toward the necessity of henceforth legislating for them, and toward willing already to yoke under his own scepters those who, through the error of polytheism, had slipped away from the rule and authority under him.

But I think it altogether absurd, if one should choose to outwit some by sophistry, to say that the Father's Word has been called to the beginning of legislating by the good pleasure of him who begot him, while yet not supposing him to be, by nature, a lawgiver as God.

For consider: if in a dark little chamber, full of gloom, the light of the sun's ray did not, for a certain time, enter in, no one having allowed its entrance, and then, this being changed, it entered at once, and the darkness was driven out, and the light, unaccustomed to the place, laughed forth upon it — and this light, if it should take on a voice, might perhaps relate to those astonished at the sight that it had been sent forth from the sun that begot it, in order that it should be poured also into that place and continually illumine the things held fast by darkness —

— would we say that it came into being, as far as its nature is concerned, at the moment it first entered? {B.} Certainly not, in all likelihood.

{A.} Why then do those men raise up against us, as though it were an impregnable fortification, the fact that the Son is said to be established as lawgiver, or as king, by God the Father — although his legislating did not at all then, when he entered upon its beginning, prove his glory according to nature to have had a beginning, but rather signified that henceforth the nations too, in their multitudes, must submit to his own ordinances, with God the Father joining in approval and consent — even though, formerly, in the earlier times and seasons, only Israel had been yoked and had bowed its neck to the divine laws? {B.} But if they should choose to demonstrate clearly that the Son is a lawgiver, how, or from where, could this be done on our part? {A.} And indeed, I think that what we have just said will suffice, at least for those who are more apt to learn, in this matter.

For concerning the law and the things decreed for the ancients, God says clearly: one is not to add to them, nor take away from them — for it would befit only that nature which reigns as sovereign over all things to have the right to legislate, and to add and take away whatever it should wish;

and the Son has legislated, and has taken away the ancient commandment as unprofitable, and has brought in the new one instead, that is, the evangelical one, and this as a lawgiver, not in a subdued manner, but with authority befitting God.

And the wise Paul, in his epistle, also sets his seal on this argument:

'I became to the Jews as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews; to those under the law, as under the law — though I myself am not under the law — that I might gain those under the law;'

'to those without the law, as without the law — not being without the law before God, but under the law of Christ — that I might gain those without the law.' For observe how, having rejected the idea of being without the law before God, he says he is under the law of Christ, thereby assigning to him the glory that belongs on both counts, and attributing to him, as to God by nature, the special prerogative of legislating.

Since, then, according to the words of the saint, one who is under the law of Christ would not be without the law before God, what argument could still exclude the Son from being both lawgiver and God? {B.} None, as I think.

{A.} One might also, very fittingly, add this to what has been said.

{B.} What is that? {A.} That no one, I think, could ever show that the Father and God legislated separately and alone for the ancients, or for those who came after them; but one could very easily observe him doing so with the Son and through the Son.

For where, or to whom, has the Father given the law while the Son was silent and absent? {B.} Indeed, the wise Paul writes to us that 'God, having in former times spoken to the fathers by the prophets...' And Moses, again, said somewhere to those of Israel:

'The Lord our God spoke to us at Horeb.' {A.} Well said, my friend.

Since the saints, as you say, have attributed to the person of God the Father that ancient oracle uttered in shadows, come, let us show you that the Son himself, naming it, declares it to be his own word.

For he came, indeed, not at all to abolish the law, nor in any way to overturn the words of the prophets, but rather to bring to fulfillment both the prophets and the law:

'For I say to you,' he says, 'not one iota or one stroke shall pass from the law until all things come to pass.'

'Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.' Do you understand, then, how, having said that the law must, in every way and altogether, come to its fulfillment in truth, he called it his own words? One might also see him, elsewhere again, crying out clearly through one of the holy prophets:

'I myself, who spoke, am present.' — For I, who spoke of old, have become man and have taken on the form that is yours, even though it was God the Father who uttered the oracles through the holy prophets.

That, once one possesses the glory of lawgiver, it must in every way naturally follow that he must also be judge — subjecting to bitter penalties those who dishonor what has been ordained and turn aside to what seems good to themselves — is nowhere in dispute.

A. Just as, then, even if one should perhaps say that the Father alone is lawgiver, and he alone is judge, the Son would in no way fall short of the glory and truth that belong to both, since nothing at all divides him from natural identity with God the Father.

Even if God the Father alone is said to possess immortality, this dignity will also be essential in the Son, and he will assuredly be called immortal—or rather, be immortality itself according to nature—and, being adorned with the same exaltations as the one who begot him, he will be worshiped both by us and by the holy angels.

But if they should say that these things are not so, and weave false fables into what is written for us, though they profess to uphold the truth, let them tell us this:

B. What is that, again? A. First, whether that which is deprived of life and immortality, and does not possess this of itself, will surely be mortal, and possesses life as something adventitious, given, as it were, by another? B. Yes, for that which is not immortal by nature will be mortal in potentiality.

A. And besides this, let them answer also: what would be understood, perhaps, as the activity of life toward those things lacking life? B. Vivification, evidently, just as, of course, illuminating would be the work of light.

But if someone should suppose that life is given life by another, and that light too is illuminated, would he seem to you to be conjecturing rightly? B. Not at all.

Rather, he would have slipped from sound reasoning.

For that which is given life by another is no longer life.

A. When, then, the Only-Begotten comes before us crying out:

'I am the resurrection and the life' — must we suppose that the life here spoken of is devoid of immortality, or how? B. Not devoid of it—how could it be? For I say that immortality according to nature is life.

A. Since, then, God the Father alone possesses immortality—for so somewhere the divine oracle has told us—how could the Son also possess it? But I think, surely, that the reality of the unity would demonstrate in both, and very easily, that life is essential and immortality innate—not adventitious—as a good.

But if, in their madness, they should think it necessary to say that the Son is a stranger to God the Father, and has cut off for himself some other, private nature, and does not possess true being as God—though he is by nature immortal, or rather is life itself—would they not then be attributing to one who ultimately belongs among creatures the very things that belong to the divine and ineffable nature alone, and the things for which he is rightly marveled at both by us and by the holy angels, and would they not be saying that these dwell in him too, according to what seems to them mere babble? B. In what way? A. That it befits, I think, the one who is truly and in truth God by nature—and they themselves, I know, would say this too—to be able to give life and to be life.

If, then, this is what the Father is essentially, but the Son, according to them, has slipped away from natural identity with him, and, falling into this pettiness, yet says of himself that he is life, and ascribes to his own nature the distinctive excellence of the Father's substance, how is what I said not true? For then the property peculiar to the ineffable nature has already been removed from that nature into non-being, having been called into existence, as it were, along with all other things.

For among things believed to exist, one would think of God before all things, and after this, creation.

But there is nothing else at all in between.

Or is what I said not true? B. It is true.

A. If, then, the Son is of a different substance, and not within that in which they say the Father exists, how could there be understood one and unvarying natural activity between things thus separated, according to the account of how they are? For, it says, 'as the Father raises up and gives life to whom he will, so also the Son gives life to whom he will.' B. But yes, they say—

—the Son is life, yet nonetheless he said:

'As the living Father sent me, I also live because of the Father.' Therefore he is life because of the Father.

A. Shall we then suppose, my good friends, that the Son himself is given life by the Father, along with all other things, and that his life must be reckoned among those things that possess life from without and by adoption? Then let the Son also be classed among those who die.

For what is admitted by adoption is liable to be cast off, and whatever possession one might choose, one could, as far as it is possible, dispose of it, whenever it is not held fast by the laws of nature so as to remain firmly fixed.