not through his own nature, but through a subject creature, which creature both signified something and, the signification once accomplished, passed away. Thus indeed in that dove, and in the tongues of fire, it was fitting for the Holy Spirit to be signified (whom nevertheless we do not believe to have been locally sent), just as it was fitting that God the Father be signified by that voice which was made over Jesus when baptized: in which voice, nevertheless, we so take the person of the Father to be signified, that we by no means dare to ascribe a temporal utterance to his divinity. But the spirits which are sent from heaven then appear when it is commanded them by God, and then do not appear when it is not divinely enjoined upon them; yet they are sent thither, where they were not before they were sent.
Which concerning the Holy Spirit cannot rightly be either believed or said, since it is established that he is everywhere always wholly present, because the Spirit of the Lord has filled the whole earth (Wisd. i, 7). But false is what you said: When the devil was sent to Job, why did he not appear? For Holy Scripture did not say that the devil was sent to Job, although it said that he was permitted. In vain therefore do you turn useless words about the mission and appearing of angels, multiplying them and by turning them multiplying them; as though we for this reason denied that angels are sent, because they for the most part manifested themselves. Whereas indeed, in that they are sent, whether they appear to human eyes, or hide themselves from the sight of men;
they are nevertheless so sent as the apostolic authority attests: Ministering spirits, sent to minister for them who shall receive the inheritance of salvation (Heb. i, 14). But never can there be such a mission of the Holy Spirit. For he can have no likeness of mission with the angels, because wherever the holy angels are, they are all filled by that one Spirit, who is wholly in each and one in all. But the Holy Spirit is nowhere named an angel and a minister: since in the work there is indeed one announcement of the Trinity, and in the ministration of the Spirit there is not a ministry of servitude, but the help of divine majesty. Which the blessed Peter undoubtedly shows, saying:
Whether any man speak, let him speak as the words of God: whether any man minister, let him do it as of the power which God administers (I Pet. iv, 11). Here it is shown that to administer the help of power belongs to no creature, but to God alone. To that objection also, by which you said that the Holy Spirit prays, groans, and intercedes, I have, as far as the Lord God helped, given an answer; showing how that saying of the Apostle ought to be understood according to the rule of truth. For truly Christ, who is at the right hand of God, does indeed intercede for us (Rom. viii, 34), but according to that in which he deigned to be a Priest, and offered himself for us, an oblation and a victim to God for an odor of sweetness (Ephes. v, 2).
Thence therefore comes the prayer, whence comes the oblation; thence comes the priestly supplication, whence comes his nature common with us. Accordingly he himself is the one who both prays for us and is prayed to by us. For he prays for us according to that whereby he is our Priest, and the head of the body of the Church, the one mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus: but he is prayed to by us according to that whereby he is naturally one God with the Father. But the Holy Spirit performs no office of petition for us, neither with the Father nor with the Son; but together with the Father and the Son he grants one benign hearing to our petitions, bestows one mercy, confers one help, forgives one remission of sins.
For at once, when we beseech the Father, the whole Trinity is besought by us; because whatever is salutary for us, the whole Trinity bestows with inseparable power and goodness. BOOK IX. ON THE INVOCATION OF THE TRINITY. FRAGMENT XXXI. Not the Father only is invoked, but also the Son. In one person the whole Trinity is invoked. What is asked of one person, the whole Trinity does. You say that whether it be the Lord's Prayer, or all the common prayers and petitions, they are rightly poured out only to the person of God the Father alone. But we say that the Lord's Prayer indeed ought always to be poured out to the person of the Father alone; since in it we begin to pray in such a way that we first name the Father himself.
Whence, from that rule which the Saviour instituted, the Church, which is his body, has been accustomed to pour out her prayers to the person of God the Father. Yet, that we may recognize that in the invocation of one person the whole Trinity is equally honored by the homage of a faithful invocation, we find that by the patriarchs and holy martyrs the Son also was invoked; upon whom certainly you will not dare to fasten either ignorance of the truth, or any charge of irreligious error. In him therefore whom God set as the father of many nations (Rom. iv, 17), receive first the proof of this matter: concerning whom, while he was still Abram, and not yet by divine gift called Abraham, it is thus written in Genesis: And the Lord God appeared to Abram, and said to him:
To thy seed will I give this land. And Abram built there an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him. And he removed from thence to the mountain eastward of Bethel, toward the sea to the west, eastward: and he built there an altar to the Lord God, and called upon the name of the Lord God who had appeared (Gen. xii, 7, 8). Choose now one of two things, that either you say that God the Father appeared to holy Abraham, or you assert that the Son was invoked. For see what Scripture commends: And he called upon the name of the Lord God who had appeared: where it is recognized that the God who appeared is the very one invoked.
Or, because it is not said, He called upon the Lord God who had appeared, but, Upon the name of the Lord God who had appeared, do you from this perhaps suppose that one was the one who appeared and another the one invoked? Say then whom the holy patriarch invoked, or in whose name you suppose him to have invoked. Beyond doubt you assert that either the Father was invoked in the name of the Son, or the Son in the name of the Father. But whichever you shall have chosen, you must be overcome by the force of truth. For if you assert that the Son was invoked in the name of the Father, on account of that which he says, I am come in the name of my Father (John v, 43); behold, meanwhile you must confess that the Son was invoked by the holy patriarchs. But what is it to invoke, if not to pray? Him therefore Abraham prayed to, whom he invoked.
Does it please you, or displease you, that the Son was invoked by holy Abraham? If it pleases you, either say that the Father was not there invoked, or acknowledge a common honor in the invocation of one person. But surely, if you say that the Son was invoked in the name of the Father, you will not be able from this invocation to separate the Father. Why therefore, when the Son is invoked, do you believe that the Father also is invoked, and when the Father is invoked, do you not believe the Son also to be invoked? Since indeed just as there the invocation runs back from the offspring to the origin, so also here let it run back from the origin to the offspring. God therefore, who is invoked in the name of the Lord God, is invoked assuredly in his own name: nor is it anything else to invoke the Lord than to invoke the name of the Lord. Otherwise, who is he to whom Isaiah says:
O Lord, besides thee we have known no other, we have called upon thy name (Isa. xxvi, 13)? Or to whom does Jeremiah say: But thou, O Lord, art among us, and thy name is invoked upon us (Jer. xiv, 9)? David also, praying, says: Save me, O God, by thy name, and judge me in thy strength (Ps. liii, 3). Finally, if you think that the rule of faith does not allow the Son to be invoked, you must necessarily censure the blessed Stephen, of whom it is written that the Jews stoned him as he invoked and said: Lord Jesus, receive my spirit (Acts vii, 59). Undoubtedly also you cast away the doctrine of the apostle Peter, who says: Grace be with all who invoke Jesus Christ unto perpetuity.
Peace be to you all who are in Christ (I Pet. v, 14). Why therefore does the blessed Stephen pour out his prayer to the Son, if the Son is never to be entreated? or whom else does David invoke but the Son, saying that which we noted above: Thou that rulest Israel, give ear; thou that leadest Joseph like a sheep (Ps. lxxix, 1)? Whose coming also he demands, saying (v. 5): Stir up thy power, and come to save us. Recognize therefore that, when the Father is invoked, the Son also is equally invoked, and when the Son is invoked, no less is the Father invoked, and that from this same invocation the Holy Spirit is by no means separated. For we owe to the holy Trinity one homage of prayer, in whose name being baptized, we have received the grace of redemption.
To the Father therefore we say in prayer, Through our Lord Jesus Christ thy Son, asking that through him he may do what we pray, through whom he deigned to make us that we might exist. For the Father made and makes all things through the Son, because there is one Lord Jesus Christ through whom are all things (I Cor. viii, 6); of whom likewise it is written, that all things were made by him, and without him was made nothing (John i, 3); and that all things were created by him and in him, and he is before all, and all things consist in him (Col. i, 16, 17). But because that which is said, Through our Lord Jesus Christ, you think to be an adjuration, in this also acknowledge the Son equal to the Father. For the apostolic authority says:
For God, in promising to Abraham, because he had no one greater by whom he might swear, swore by himself (Heb. vi, 13). God therefore, who does not swear except by himself, is not adjured except by him who is known to be with him of one nature. Although that conclusion of the prayer rather shows through whom the Father works, and does not contain the language of an adjuration. Yet in whatever manner it be said, it suffices, since it is said for this end, that every prayer, and all petitions, may be concluded in the name of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, since we have shown that the blessed martyr Stephen also, in the very moment of his passion, directed his prayer not to the person of the Father, but to that of the Son;
and since again the whole Church always directs its prayer or petition to the person of the Father; you ought to recognize that all the reason of our faith, although it seems to be directed to one person of the Trinity, yet contains in it the honoring of the whole Trinity. For he who says: He who hates me, hates my Father also (John xv, 23), and of whom the blessed John says: He who loves him that begot, loves him also who is born of him (I John v, 1); just as he is commonly with the Father either held in hatred or loved, so when the Father is entreated, together with him the Son is known by the faithful to be entreated.
And since there is one Spirit of the Father and of the Son, it is necessary that while the Father or the Son is invoked, in the Father and the Son he also who is the one Spirit of both should be invoked. But there is one Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God the Father, in whose name we conclude every prayer which we direct to the Father: nor yet without the name of the Holy Spirit, that we may show that we humbly beseech the whole Trinity. For we do not say to the whole Trinity: Through our Lord Jesus Christ thy Son, but to the Father alone, whose the only-begotten Son is, the Lord Jesus Christ.
To this end, moreover, as we have already said above, we join the name of Jesus Christ and of the Holy Spirit when we pray to the Father, that whatever we ask, we may show ourselves to be petitioning from the whole Trinity. Otherwise, show us how that can be fulfilled which our Saviour himself, in that very last discourse which (according to the Gospel of John) he had with the disciples, is known to have enjoined. For in a certain place of the aforesaid discourse he says: If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, you shall ask whatever you will, and it shall be done unto you (John xv, 7). Here he said that it must be asked, but whether it is to be asked of himself or of the Father he did not show. Yet a little after he took care to disclose the person of the Father as him to be petitioned, saying:
You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and have appointed you, that you should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain; that whatever you shall ask the Father in my name, he may give you (Ibid., 16): which he again inculcates, saying: Amen, amen, I say to you, if you shall ask the Father anything in my name, he will give it you (John xvi, 23). Nevertheless, hear how he also took care to intimate to the disciples that he himself is to be petitioned, saying: Amen, amen, I say to you, he that believeth in me, the works that I do he also shall do, and greater than these shall he do; because I go to the Father, and whatever you shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you shall ask me anything in my name, that will I do (John xiv, 12, 13, 14).
Behold, the Son of God suggests that he himself also is to be petitioned. But if the Father shall have been petitioned anything in the name of the Son, without doubt he will give it, because the Son who is faithful in his words has promised this: if the Son also be petitioned anything in his own name, this he promises without hesitation that he will do. Accordingly, either say that the work of the Father and of the Son is one, and that the persons are joined in prayer; or if you separate the persons, so that you do not believe that what the Father is asked, the Son is asked, it is necessary that if you think the homage of prayer is to be claimed for one alone, to him alone you should ascribe also the effect of the operation. And by this, according to your opinion, in the very holy apostles and martyrs a great diversity is found in their prayers:
while one prays to the Father, another invokes the Son. For we read that by the blessed Paul the Father was invoked for the faithful, as he himself says: For this cause I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom all fatherhood in heaven and on earth is named, that he would grant you according to the riches of his glory to be strengthened with power through his Spirit unto the inner man, that Christ may dwell by faith in your hearts (Ephes. iii, 14). Which certainly the Father without doubt did. But the blessed Stephen invoked the Lord Jesus, that he might receive his spirit (Acts vii, 59). Which likewise the Lord Christ, being invoked, fulfilled. What then do you now say?
Did the Son with the Father do what Paul asked of the Father, and the Father with the Son do what Stephen invoked the Son? Or did the Father alone do what Paul asked of the Father alone, and Christ alone fulfill what Stephen invoked of the Son alone? For if you shall say that what, according to your opinion, Paul asked of the Father alone was done by the Father alone, no less will you confess that what Stephen begged of the Son alone was accomplished by the Son alone without any cooperation of the Father. And by this you assert separate works of the Father and of the Son: wherein you contradict the very Son of God, who says: For whatsoever things the Father does, these the Son also does in like manner (John v, 19).
But if you shall say that in fulfilling the petitions of Stephen the martyr and of the apostle Paul there is one work of the Father and of the Son, acknowledge that the one work of both could by no means have been possible except through the unity of nature; so that both the Father saw himself invoked by Stephen in the Son, and the Son recognized himself entreated by Paul in the Father. But that you may recognize that the apostolic doctrine holds this, that both the Father and the Son are invoked by us, see how the blessed Apostle commends Christ as to be invoked, who writes thus to the Corinthians:
Paul, called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God, and Sosthenes a brother, to the Church of God which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all that invoke the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, in every place of theirs and ours. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ (I Cor. i, 1, 2, 3). You perceive, surely, that for those who invoke the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, grace and peace are divinely besought by the Apostle. What then remains, except that everyone who does not invoke the name of the Lord Jesus Christ can have from him neither grace nor peace? But whoever shall not have received grace from God will without doubt receive everlasting punishment;
and he who has not received peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ will by no means attain to salvation. For the invocation of that very name the blessed Paul commends by the prophetic word, saying: Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved (Rom. x, 13; Joel ii, 32). It is therefore certain, according to the rule of true faith, in which the one substance of the holy Trinity is believed, that no separation of the Father and the Son takes place, whether the Father or the Son be invoked by the faithful. But by those neither the Father is invoked, nor the Son, who in the invocation which is offered to the Father, do not believe that the Son is naturally invoked together with the Father.
For this the natural unity of the Trinity holds, that inseparably to those three persons the homages of holy religion should be rendered, in whom there is one inseparable and unchangeable nature. In the prayers indeed which the one true Church pours out to God, both the unity of nature is preserved, and the distinction of persons is guarded: so that when the prayer is directed to the Father, who is the origin of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, the one nature of the Trinity may appear; but by the mention of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, the very end of the prayer may show forth the true Trinity.
Thus the perfidy of Sabellius and of Arius is overcome, when in the very prayers and petitions the truth both of one nature and of three persons is proclaimed by the Catholic priests. FRAGMENT XXXII. Jesus Christ is not the Son of the Trinity, although according to the flesh he is the work of the whole Trinity: but according to the Deity he is the Son of the Father alone, according to the humanity the Son of the Virgin Mary alone. For who could ever be found of such madness as to dare to proclaim Jesus Christ the Son of the whole Trinity? For the Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth (I Tim. iii, 15).
He who knows the Father to be the one Father of the one Son, and knows the Holy Spirit to be the one Spirit of the Father and of the Son, can never call Jesus Christ the Son of the Trinity, since he can in no way preach two Fathers, nor two Sons, nor two Holy Spirits. Jesus Christ, therefore, not only according to his divinity (in which he is by nature equal to God the Father), but also according to his soul and flesh (in which the same God is consubstantial with his mother), is not only the Son of God the Father, but is indeed his only-begotten Son. Accordingly, we not only in no way call Jesus Christ the Son of the Trinity, but we also confess Jesus Christ to be the Son of God the Father alone in such a way that we by no means separate him.
For it is a great impiety to think that Christ is one and Jesus Christ another, since Jesus Christ is assuredly the one Son of God and of man: the Son, namely, of God the Father alone, and not of the whole Trinity. For the same Jesus Christ, according to the flesh, is acknowledged to be the work of the whole Trinity, and yet he is not for that reason found to be the Son of the whole Trinity. For the human nature of the Son of God, that is, the form of a servant, was made by the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit together, that is, by the holy Trinity itself; but Jesus Christ alone received it, as the blessed Apostle says: Have this mind in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus:
who, though he was in the form of God, did not think it robbery to be equal with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant (Phil. 2:5-7). This same Jesus Christ, therefore, not only in the form of a servant but also in the form of God, is the one Son of God the Father alone; for in taking the form of a servant he did not receive the person of a man, but a nature. For in the womb of the Virgin, that the Word might become flesh, there was made at once one conception of the Word and of the flesh; and in the one person of the Word there were conceived together the divine and human nature: not that the two natures might become one, but that from both natures there might subsist that person of the one Jesus Christ which always was.
The truth of this matter, just as it does not permit a fourth person to be added to the fullness of the divine Trinity, so it altogether forbids Jesus Christ to be called the Son of the Trinity. This indeed the very tenor of the holy Creed also shows, where it is said: I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was born of the Holy Spirit from the Virgin Mary; the very one whom we call the Son of God, him also we confess to have been born of the Holy Spirit from the Virgin Mary. Therefore, when we say Jesus Christ his Son, that is, Jesus Christ the Son of God the Father, we point to the nativity of his divinity, by which he is eternal without beginning from the Father:
but when we say he was born of the Holy Spirit from the Virgin Mary, we confess the nativity by which the same only-begotten God, according to the flesh, took a temporal beginning from the Virgin. Accordingly Jesus Christ, as was said above, according to the flesh is indeed the work of the whole Trinity, but according to both nativities is the Son of God the Father alone: for the same one only-begotten God, temporally begotten a true man from the Virgin, is he who was born true God from the Father alone without beginning. FRAGMENT XXXIII. "Jesus Christ" is not the name of man alone, but also of God: and in the Scriptures it is sometimes taken according to the divine nature alone, sometimes according to the human alone, and occasionally according to both.
By one and the same Holy Spirit, both the Son of God deigned to become the Son of man, and it was granted to us to be adopted as sons of God. The Arians are not worshippers of the one God, but of many. And first, as to what you falsely put into my mouth, that "Jesus Christ is the name of a man," Paul, the teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth, refutes it as contrary to truth and contrary to faith, he who shows Jesus Christ to be both God and man. So that by the one and the same name of Jesus Christ, in one and the very same person, he wishes to be understood sometimes the divine substance alone, more often the human alone, or sometimes both together. For the same Apostle says: Have this mind in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus.
Who, though he was in the form of God, did not think it robbery to be equal with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and found in fashion as a man (Phil. 2:5ff). Writing also to Timothy, he says: Remember that Christ Jesus rose from the dead, of the seed of David, according to my Gospel (2 Tim. 2:8). Behold, in both places one Christ Jesus is named, but not according to one nature in Christ Jesus is each passage to be understood. For there is one Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not think it robbery to be equal with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, and who rose from the dead of the seed of David.
But Christ Jesus, emptying himself in the form of God and taking the form of a servant, is understood according to the divine nature alone: according to which he is also understood where he says: And one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through him (1 Cor. 8:6). But the same Christ Jesus, rising from the dead of the seed of David, can rightly be known according to the human substance alone. Again the Apostle says: I beseech you therefore, brethren, through our Lord Jesus Christ and through the love of the Spirit (Rom. 15:30). And in another place: I testify before God and Christ Jesus, who shall judge the living and the dead (2 Tim. 4:1).
In these places, assuredly, we understand the whole Christ Jesus to be named by the Apostle not according to the divine alone, nor according to the human alone, but according to both natures. Do you not see that Jesus Christ is not to be taken in all the places of Scripture solely according to that which is God, nor solely according to that which is man, but in each place of the Scriptures he ought to be taken according to that which the Truth teaches? For there is one Christ Jesus, Son of God and of man in both natures, one who is true in both. Hence neither can that stand which you say, "When we say the Son of God, we signify God the Son himself, that is, Christ himself the spiritual one."
For our Redeemer himself was not spirit without a body, when he said to the man born blind, to whom he mercifully and marvellously gave eyes: Do you believe in the Son of God? And when the man said to him: Who is he, Lord, that I may believe in him? Jesus said to him: You have both seen him, and it is he who speaks with you (John 9:35-37). Now it is manifest that in him it was not the divinity but the humanity that was seen with bodily eyes. Consider also the confession of blessed Peter, saying: You are the Christ, the Son of the living God (Matt. 16:16); and recognize that the Son of God himself is not God only, but God and man: especially since Christ himself, whom Peter confessed to be the Son of the living God, called himself the Son of man.
Hence, since there is one Christ, Son of God and of man, just as we do not always see him called the Son of God according to divinity alone, so neither do we always find him named the Son of man according to the flesh alone. For the very one who said to his disciples: Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and the Son of man shall be delivered to the chief priests and scribes; and they shall condemn him to death, and shall deliver him to the Gentiles, and they shall mock him, and spit upon him, and scourge him, and shall put him to death, and on the third day he shall rise again (Matt. 20:18-19); the same one said: No one has ascended into heaven, except him who descended from heaven, the Son of man, who is in heaven (John 3:13).