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Lastly, we shall see that which we had set out to inquire: whether the Son or 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; 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 species, whether in the dove or in the fiery tongues. Let us therefore pass over those who too carnally have thought the nature of the Word of God and the Wisdom, which remaining in itself renews all things, whom we call the only Son of God, to be not only changeable but even visible. For these have brought a very gross heart to the searching out of divine things, more boldly than reverently.
For the soul, since it is a spiritual substance, and since it too was made, and could not have been made except by him through whom all things were made and without whom nothing was made — although it is changeable, is nevertheless not visible. Yet this they believed concerning the Word himself and the very Wisdom of God, through whom the soul was made — although that Wisdom is not only invisible, which the soul also is, but also unchangeable, which the soul is not. For that same unchangeability of hers is recalled in the words: 'Remaining in herself, she renews all things.'
And these men indeed, trying as it were to prop up the ruin of their error with the testimonies of the divine Scriptures, adduce 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 to have been said of the Father only, 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 for ever and ever'; and that other: 'Blessed and only Potentate, King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone hath immortality and dwelleth in light inaccessible, whom no man hath seen nor can see.' How these things are to be understood, I think we have now sufficiently discussed.
But those who will have these things understood not of the Son nor of the Holy Spirit, but only of the Father, say that the Son was visible not through the flesh assumed of the Virgin, but even before, through himself. 'For he himself,' they say, 'appeared to the eyes of the fathers.' To whom if you should say: 'How then is the Son visible through himself, so also mortal through himself, that it may be established for you that what was said, "Who alone hath immortality," you wish to be understood only of the Father? For if the Son is mortal on account of the flesh assumed, on account of this allow that he is also visible' — they answer that they do not call the Son mortal on account of this flesh, but that as he was visible before, so also he was mortal before.
For if they say the Son is mortal on account of the flesh, then the Father is no longer, apart from the Son, alone in having immortality, because his Word also, through whom all things were made, has immortality. For not because he assumed mortal flesh did he therefore lose his own immortality, seeing that not even to the human soul could it happen that it should die with the body, the Lord himself saying: 'Fear not them that kill the body, but cannot kill the soul.' Or did the Holy Spirit also assume flesh? (About which they will assuredly, beyond doubt, be thrown into confusion.) If the Son is mortal on account of the flesh, how do they take the Father alone, apart from the Son and apart from the Holy Spirit, to have immortality, seeing that the Holy Spirit did not assume flesh?
For if the Holy Spirit has not 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 only that he alone has immortality. Wherefore they think that they can prove the Son to be mortal through himself even before the incarnation, because that very changeableness is not unfittingly called mortality, according to which the soul also is said to die — not because it is changed and turned into a body or into some other substance, but in its very own substance, whatever now is in another mode than it was, is discovered to be mortal in respect of that whereby it ceased to be what it was.
'Since therefore,' 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 species but in manifold ways, one way and another, he is both visible through himself, because before the flesh was assumed his substance was conspicuous to mortal eyes, and mortal inasmuch as he is changeable. So too the Holy Spirit, who appeared at one time as a dove, at another as fire. Whence,' they say, 'not to the Trinity, but singularly and properly to the Father alone, does that belong which was said: "To the immortal, invisible, the only God," and: "Who alone hath immortality and dwelleth in light inaccessible,"
whom no man hath seen nor can see.' Passing over, therefore, these men 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 the Son and the Holy Spirit, remains not only invisible but also unchangeable, and thereby subsists in true and sincere immortality;
we, who say that God — neither the Father nor the Son nor the Holy Spirit — has ever appeared to bodily eyes except through a corporeal creature subject to his power, let us in catholic peace, with peaceful zeal, inquire — ready to be corrected if we are fraternally and rightly reproved, ready even if we are bitten by an enemy who nonetheless speaks the truth — whether God appeared without distinction to our fathers before Christ came in the flesh, or whether some one person of the Trinity, or each singly as if by turns.
And first, in that which is written in Genesis, that God spoke with the man whom he had fashioned of the clay — if, setting aside the figurative meaning, that the truth of the deed may be held even according to the letter, we treat of these things — God seems then to have spoken with the man in the form of a man. This indeed is not expressly set down in the book, but the context of the reading suggests it, especially by that which is written, that Adam heard the voice of God walking in paradise at eventide, and hid himself in the midst of the tree that was in paradise, and answered God when he said, 'Adam, where art thou?': 'I heard thy voice and hid myself from thy face, because I am naked.' For how such a walking and conversing of God could be understood according to the letter, except in a human form, I do not see.
For it cannot be said that a voice alone was produced where God is said to have walked, or that he who walked was not visible in the place, since Adam too says that he hid himself from the face of God. Who then was he? Was it the Father, or the Son, or the Holy Spirit? Or was it altogether God, the Trinity itself without distinction, that spoke to the man in the form of a man? Indeed the very context of the 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 each of those days — whom we are accustomed to take as God the Father, saying that whatever he willed 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 therefore God the Father spoke to the first man, and he himself walked in paradise at eventide, and the sinner hid himself from his face in the midst of the tree of paradise, why should he not be understood to have himself appeared to Abraham and to Moses, and to whom he willed and as he willed, through a changeable and visible creature subject to himself, while he himself remains in himself and in his own substance, by which he is unchangeable and invisible? But it could be that Scripture passed secretly from person to person, and when it had related that the Father said:
'Let there be light,' and the rest which he is recalled to have made through the Word, it thereupon indicated the Son to be speaking to the first man — not openly setting this forth, but intimating it to be understood by those who could. Whoever therefore has the powers whereby he can penetrate this secret with the keen edge of the mind, so that it may appear to him clearly whether even the Father can, or whether only the Son and the Holy Spirit can, appear to human eyes through a visible creature — let him proceed to search out these things, and, if he can, to express and treat them in words;
the matter nevertheless, as far as pertains to this testimony of Scripture where God spoke with man, is, in my judgment, hidden — because it does not even evidently appear whether Adam was accustomed to see God with bodily eyes, especially since there is a great question of what sort of eyes were opened to them when they tasted the forbidden food; for before they had tasted, these were closed. This only would I not rashly say: if that Scripture intimates paradise to be a certain bodily place, then God could in no way walk there except in some bodily form. For it can be said that only voices were produced which the man might hear, without his seeing any form; nor, because it is written, 'Adam hid himself from the face of God,' does it forthwith follow that he was accustomed to see his face.
For what if he indeed could not see, but himself feared to be seen by him whose voice he had heard and whose walking presence he had perceived? For Cain too said to God: 'From thy face I will hide myself'; nor are we thereby compelled to confess that he was accustomed to behold the face of God with bodily eyes in any visible form, although concerning his crime he had heard the voice of him questioning and speaking with him. But of what sort was the speech with which God then sounded in the outward ears of men, especially when speaking to the first man — this is both difficult to find out, and we have not undertaken it in this discourse.
Nevertheless, if only voices and sounds were produced by which a certain sensible presence of God was afforded to those first men, why I should not there understand the person of God the Father, I know not — seeing that his person is shown both in that voice when Jesus, shining forth on the mountain before three disciples, appeared, and in that where the dove descended upon him who had been baptized, and in that where he cried out to the Father concerning his own glorification, and it was answered him: 'I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.'
This is not because a voice could have come to be without the working of the Son and the Holy Spirit (for the Trinity works inseparably), but because that voice was produced which should manifest the person of the Father alone; just as the Trinity fashioned that human form from the Virgin Mary, yet it is the person of the Son alone, for the invisible Trinity fashioned the visible person of the Son alone. Nor does anything forbid us to understand that those voices addressed to Adam were produced not only by the Trinity but also to take them as demonstrating the person of that same Trinity. For there we are compelled to understand none but the Father, where it was said: 'This is my beloved Son'; for Jesus can neither be believed nor understood to be also the Son of the Holy Spirit, nor indeed His own son. And where there sounded:
'and I have glorified it, and will glorify it again' — we confess it to be none but the person of the Father; for it is the answer to that word of the Lord in which He had said: 'Father, glorify Thy Son,' which He could say to none but God the Father alone, and not also to the Holy Spirit, whose son He is not. But here, where it is written: 'And the Lord God said to Adam,' nothing can be said as to why the Trinity itself should not be understood. Likewise also what is written: 'And the Lord said to Abraham: Go forth from thy land and from thy kindred and from thy father's house,' it is not made plain whether only a voice came to Abraham's ears, or whether something also appeared to his eyes. A little afterward, however, it is said somewhat more openly: 'And the Lord appeared to Abraham and said to him:'
'To thy seed will I give this land.' But neither there is it expressed in what appearance the Lord was seen by him, nor whether it was the Father or the Son or the Holy Spirit who was seen by him. Unless perhaps for this reason they think that the Son was seen by Abraham, because it is not written 'God was seen by him,' but 'The Lord was seen by him'; as though the Son were properly 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 in that passage: 'The Lord said to me: Thou art my Son;'
'I have this day begotten thee'; and that other: 'The Lord said to my Lord: Sit at my right hand'; since also the Holy Spirit is found called Lord, where the Apostle says: 'Now the Lord is the Spirit,' and lest anyone should suppose that the Son was meant, and that He was called Spirit on account of His 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 will doubt. Neither here, then, does it evidently appear whether it was some person of the Trinity, or God the Trinity Himself — of which one God it was said: 'Thou shalt adore the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve' — that was seen by Abraham.
But at the oak of Mamre he saw three men, whom he both invited and received into hospitality, and to whom, as they feasted, he ministered. Yet Scripture began to narrate that deed in such a way that it does not say 'Three men appeared to him,' but 'The Lord appeared to him.' And then, consequently, expounding how the Lord appeared to him, it weaves in the account of the three men whom Abraham, using the plural number, invites to receive into hospitality; and afterward he addresses them in the singular, as if one, and one, as if a single one, promises him a son by Sarah, whom Scripture calls the Lord, just as in the very opening of the same narrative: 'The Lord,' it says, 'appeared to Abraham.' He invites them therefore, 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 imminent destruction of Sodom is disclosed to him. [XI 20] This passage of Scripture demands no small nor passing consideration. For if one man had appeared, then those who say that even before He was born of the Virgin the Son was visible through His own substance — what else would they cry out but that it was He? 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, He was found in bearing like a man, seeing that 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 with God?
For had He already emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, made in the likeness of men and found in bearing as a man, when we know that He did this by the birth from the Virgin? How then, before He had done this, did He appear to Abraham as one man? Or was that form not a true one? I could ask these things if one man had appeared to Abraham and it were believed that He was the Son of God. But since three were seen, and not one of them was said to be greater than the rest in either form or age or power, why should we not here understand the equality of the Trinity, visibly intimated through a visible creature, and in the three persons one and the same substance?
For lest anyone should suppose that it was thus intimated that one among the three was greater, and that He was to be understood as the Lord, the Son of God, while the other two were His angels — because, though three were seen, Abraham there addresses one Lord — Holy Scripture, in contradicting such future thoughts and opinions, did not fail to forestall them, when a little after it says that two angels came to Lot, among whom that righteous man too, who merited to be delivered from the burning of Sodom, speaks to one Lord. For thus Scripture continues, saying: 'And the Lord departed, after He had ceased speaking to Abraham, and Abraham returned to his place. [XII] And two angels came to Sodom in the evening.' Here must be considered more attentively the very thing I have set myself to show.
With three, certainly, Abraham was speaking, and he addressed the 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: 'And the Lord departed, after He had ceased speaking to Abraham, and Abraham returned to his place. And two angels came to Sodom in the evening'? Or had perhaps that one departed, who was recognized as the Lord among the three, and had He sent the two angels who were with Him to consume Sodom? Let us therefore see what follows. 'There came,' it says, 'two angels to Sodom in the evening. And Lot was sitting at the gate of Sodom.'
'And when Lot saw them, he rose up to meet them and bowed himself 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 into hospitality in the plural, and honorably called lords, though perhaps they were thought to be men. But again it gives one pause, for 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 offered to them, as though they needed such humanity? But let whatever lie hidden here lie hidden; let us now pursue what we have undertaken. Two appear; both are called angels; they are invited in the plural; he speaks with the two in the plural, until Sodom is departed from. Then Scripture continues and says:
'And it came to pass, after they had brought them forth outside, that they said: Saving, save thy soul; look not back, nor stand in all this region; go to the mountain and there thou shalt be saved, lest perchance thou be overtaken. And Lot said to them: I pray, Lord, since thy servant hath found mercy before thee.' Is this also so here? 'He said to them: I pray, Lord' — if that one who was the Lord and had sent the angels had now departed? Why is it said 'I pray, Lord' and not 'I pray, lords'? Or, if he wished to address one of them, why does Scripture say: 'And Lot said to them: I pray, Lord, since thy servant hath found mercy before thee'?
Do we here also understand two persons in the plural number, yet, when the same two are addressed as though one, one Lord God of one substance? But which two persons do we here understand? The Father and the Son, or the Father and the Holy Spirit, or the Son and the Holy Spirit? Perhaps this last which I have named is the fitting one. For they said that they were sent, which we say of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. For nowhere in the Scriptures does it occur to us that the Father was sent. [XIII 23] But Moses, when he was sent to lead the people of Israel out of Egypt, is thus written to have had the Lord appear to him: 'He was feeding,' 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 out of the bush. And he saw that the bush was burning with fire, but the bush was not consumed. And Moses said: I will go and see this sight which I have seen so great, since the bush is not burnt up.' When therefore the Lord saw that he came to see, the Lord called him out of the bush, saying: 'I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.' And here He is first called the angel of the Lord, then God. Is then the angel the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob? Rightly, therefore, can the Saviour Himself be understood, of whom the Apostle says: 'Whose are the fathers, and of whom is Christ according to the flesh, who is over all, God blessed for ever.'
He therefore who is over all, God blessed for ever, is not absurdly here also understood to be 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 out of the bush in a flame of fire? Was it because He was one of the many angels, but by dispensation bore the person of His Lord; or was something of the creature assumed, which for the present business might appear visibly, and from which voices might be sensibly uttered, whereby the presence of the Lord might be exhibited through the subjected creature even to the bodily senses of man, as was fitting?
For if He was one of the angels, who could easily affirm whether the person of the Son had been laid upon him to announce, or that of the Holy Spirit, or of God the Father, or of the whole Trinity itself, who is the one and only God, so that he should 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.
Furthermore, if not only the Father is God, as all even the heretics concede, but also the Son — which, will they, nill they, they are compelled to confess, since the Apostle says: 'Who is over all, God blessed for ever' — and the Holy Spirit too, the same Apostle saying: 'Glorify therefore God in your body,' when above he had said: 'Know ye not that your bodies are the temple in you of the Holy Spirit whom ye have from God?', and these three are one God, as catholic soundness believes: then it is not sufficiently clear which person in the Trinity, and whether any, or that of the Trinity itself, that angel bore, if he was one among the rest of the angels.
But if for the use of the present matter a creature was assumed, which might appear to human eyes and sound in the ears, and be called both the angel of the Lord and Lord and God, then God the Father cannot here be understood, but either the Son or the Holy Spirit — although I do not recall that the Holy Spirit is anywhere called an angel. Yet it might be understood from the work; for it was said of Him: 'The things that are to come He will announce to you,' and 'angel' in Greek is interpreted 'messenger' in Latin. But of the Lord Jesus Christ we read most evidently in the prophet that He was called the Angel of great counsel, since both the Holy Spirit and the Son of God is God and Lord of angels. [XIV 24] Again, at the going out of the children of Israel from Egypt it is written:
'And 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 by day and the pillar of fire by night did not fail before the people.' Who here also would doubt that God appeared to the eyes of mortals through the subjected and corporeal creature, not through His own substance? But whether the Father or the Son or the Holy Spirit or the Trinity itself, the one God, likewise does not appear. Nor there is this distinguished, so far 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,' and the rest. [XV 25] Now indeed concerning the clouds and voices and lightnings and trumpet and smoke on Mount Sinai, when it was said:
'Now the whole of Mount Sinai was smoking, because God had descended upon it in fire, and the smoke went up like the smoke of a furnace. And all the people were exceedingly confounded in mind; and there were sounds of the trumpet going forth very strongly. Moses spoke, and God answered him with a voice.' And a little after, when the law had been given in the ten precepts, it consequently says: 'And all the people saw the voices and the lamps and the voices of the trumpet and the smoking mountain.' And a little after: 'And all the people,' it says, 'stood afar off. But Moses entered into the mist where God was, and the Lord said to Moses,' and the rest.
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 concerning God the Father not even the Arians ever dared to say this. Therefore all those things were made by the creature serving the Creator, and presented to human senses in a manner fitting for the dispensation — unless perhaps, because it was said, 'But Moses entered into the mist where God was,' carnal thought will suppose that the mist indeed was seen by the people, but that within the mist Moses saw with fleshly eyes the Son of God, whom the raving heretics wish to have been seen in His own substance.
Truly let Moses have seen Him with fleshly eyes, if with fleshly eyes there can be seen not only the Wisdom of God, which is Christ, but even that of any man whatsoever and of any sort of wise man. 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 it were the appearance of the firmament of heaven,' is it therefore to be believed that the Word and Wisdom of God stood through His own substance in the space of an earthly place — that Wisdom which 'reacheth from end to end mightily and ordereth all things sweetly' — and that thus the Word of God, through which all things were made, is mutable, so as now to contract, now to extend itself? May the Lord cleanse the hearts of His faithful from such thoughts.
But through the 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; although the invisible things of God are clearly seen by the creature of the world, being understood through the things that are made, His eternal power also and divinity. But as regards that which we have now undertaken, neither on Mount Sinai do I see how it may appear, through all those things which were terribly shown to the senses of mortals, whether God the Trinity or the Father or the Son or the Holy Spirit was properly speaking.
Nevertheless, if it be permitted to conjecture something here modestly and hesitantly, without the rashness of asserting: if one person of the Trinity can be understood, why do we not rather understand the Holy Spirit? — since the very law which was there given upon tablets of stone is said to have been written by the finger of God, by which name we know the Holy Spirit to be signified in the Gospel. 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, just as after the Lord's passion fifty days are counted from His resurrection, and the Holy Spirit, promised by the Son of God, came.