But who of sound understanding would think that in both places the Son of man spoke according to one substance, since certainly he could not have suffered all those things according to divinity, nor could he have been in heaven according to the flesh at the time when he was speaking such things on earth? Therefore one and the same is the Son of man, who, according to the flesh alone, was truly delivered up and truly slain, and on the third day rose again; and, according to divinity alone, was wholly on earth and wholly in heaven, when, placed only on earth according to the flesh, he truthfully said these things about himself. It is therefore true that in Christ there is one person of the deity and of the flesh, yet with the property of each nature preserved.
For Christ is sometimes spoken of according to divinity alone, sometimes according to the flesh alone, sometimes according to both substances. According to divinity alone the Apostle showed that Christ is to be understood, saying: Do not lie to one another, putting off the old man with his deeds, and putting on the new, who is renewed in knowledge, according to the image of him who created him. Where there is neither Gentile nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian nor Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all (Col. 3:9ff). But what he says here, "Christ is all and in all," is of the same kind as this: That God may be all in all.
We also recognize Christ named by the Apostle according to the flesh alone, where he says: For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the Scriptures (1 Cor. 15:3-4). That passage of the same Apostle is also found to fit this understanding, where he says: As many of us as were baptized in Christ were baptized into his death. For we were buried together with him through baptism into death (Rom. 6:3); and a little after: Christ, rising from the dead, dies no more; death shall no longer have dominion over him (ibid. 9).
Yet that same Christ he is known to preach according to both natures, saying: Whose are the fathers, and of whom is Christ according to the flesh, who is over all, God blessed forever (Rom. 9:5). It is manifest, therefore, that those rules which you wished to establish in the aforesaid names are supported by no strength, because they in no way agree with Christian truth. For not only when he is called the Son of God, or when he is called the Son of man, or when he is called Christ, or when he is called Jesus Christ; but even when he who is the Only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth (John 1:14),
in the holy Scripture is called God, we must consider what substance in that one person of the Son of God ought rightly to be understood without any error. For in that passage of the Acts of the Apostles, where the same Apostle Paul says to the elders and to the presbyters: Take heed to yourselves and to the whole flock, in which the Holy Spirit has placed you as bishops, to rule the Church of God which he acquired with his own blood (Acts 20:28); here indeed we understand God to be none other than the Son of God himself: who, however, is understood to have acquired the Church with his own blood not according to his eternal and unchangeable divinity, which he has unchangeably from the Father, but according to the humanity by which he was made a true man from the Virgin.
We do not, therefore, say that "Jesus Christ" is the name of humanity and of man alone, but we say the one Jesus Christ is God and man, in whom the true nature of man from the nature of the mother is present just as the true and eternal substance of the deity remains from the nature of God the Father. For he who is the Truth is the true Son both of the Father and of the mother, of whom blessed John says: We know that the Son of God has come, and has given us understanding, that we may know the true God, and may be in his true Son Jesus Christ (1 John 5:20). And since the true Son of God is by nature true God, who would not be true God unless he were the true Son of the Father's nature, therefore blessed John immediately added: This is the true God, and eternal life (ibidem).
But in that which is said, that Christ the Son of God was born of the Holy Spirit from the Virgin Mary, the Holy Spirit is none other than the Paraclete, who is the one Spirit of the Father and of the Son. For the same is the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father (John 15:26), who is wont in the holy Scriptures most evidently to be called the Holy Spirit. For the Father indeed is by nature spirit, and the Son spirit, and the Father holy, and the Son holy; but nevertheless no place is found in the divine oracles in which the Father or the Son is called "Holy Spirit" absolutely and without some addition. For it is written: God is Spirit (John 4:24); but there "God" is added, where without doubt the Father is acknowledged as God.
Therefore, when holy Scripture signifies the Father or the Son, it is accustomed to say either "Spirit" only, or "holy," and either to add a name by which the Father or the Son may be understood, or, if it does not add a name, then from what precedes or follows it may be recognized whether it ought to be fitted, according to the rule of true faith, to one person, or to the holy Trinity itself at once. He, then, is the one Holy Spirit, of whom according to the flesh Christ was born, from whom every Christian is spiritually reborn. For by that grace of the Holy Spirit, by which the only-begotten God deigned to become the Son of man, it has been granted to us to be adopted as sons of God. But Jesus Christ is the Son not of the Trinity, but of God the Father alone:
who is worthily called coeternal with God the Father, even having received his own flesh, because there is in him one person of the divinity and of the flesh: and the very Son of God, who took flesh into the person of the deity, has by nature a deity coeternal with God the Father, without beginning. Nor is there any other Holy Spirit whom we name in our prayers together with the Father and the Son, besides the one Paraclete Spirit: whom we know to be the one Spirit of the Father and of the Son in such a way that we most certainly know him to be consubstantial and coeternal with the Father and the Son. And in this we show that we worship one God, because we believe and confess one substance of the Trinity.
But you are in no way worshippers of the one God, you who say the nature of the Father is one, that of the Son another, that of the Holy Spirit another: and while you do not worship one God, yet you do not worship three gods either; but what is worse, because you say that you indeed worship two gods, that is, the Father as the greater god, and the Son as the lesser god; and along with them, as it were, you worship the Holy Spirit, from whom you altogether take away the name of God, and whom you call a creature without any reverence. Hence, since you show yourselves to be worshippers of a creature, assuredly (if you wish) you will be able to worship not three only, but even five gods. FRAGMENT XXXIV. The Church does not sacrifice to the Father alone, nor give glory to the Father alone, but to the whole Trinity.
Christ makes his own body both a temple and a sacrifice for us. We give thanks to the Father and the Son as to God, but to the Father through the Son as through a man. The Holy Spirit does not have a place among the works of God. But it is fitting that your falsehood be consequently refuted, in that which you say, that I always affirmed every sacrifice to be offered to the Father alone: which I neither ever said nor say. For the holy catholic Church sacrifices not to the Father alone, but at once to the holy Trinity; and just as, directing its prayer to the person of the Father alone, it at the same time invokes the whole Trinity, so what it offers to God the Father, it at the same time sacrifices to the Trinity.
For whether in prayer or in sacrifice, true faith makes no distinction of the gift, because there is no diversity of power in the Trinity: whence whatever is offered to one person must equally be offered to the Trinity. This is shown by the examples of the holy patriarchs and prophets: where it is principally to be observed by us that an altar was always built for this to God, that God might be honoured with the due service of sacrifice. For the altar is first named in the sacred books there where holy Noah, coming out of the ark, is reported to have offered victims to God. For thus it is written:
And Noah built an altar to the Lord, and took of all the clean cattle, and of all the clean fowls, and offered a victim upon the altar to God (Gen. 8:20). For the Lord also, showing that an altar is constructed for the sake of this thing, speaks thus to Moses his servant: You shall make me an altar of earth, and shall offer upon it your holocausts and your peace-offerings (Exod. 20:24). Let us therefore inquire to whom our fathers built an altar, that we may recognize that they also offered sacrifice to that same one. After that altar, then, which Noah built to the Lord, we read of an altar constructed by holy Abraham. For thus it is written: And the Lord God appeared to Abraham, and said to him: To your seed I will give this land.
And Abraham built there an altar to the Lord, who appeared to him. And he departed from there to a mountain to the east of Bethel, and pitched his tent there, Bethel to the west, Ai to the east: and he built there an altar to the Lord God, and called upon the name of the Lord God who appeared to him (Gen. 12:7-8). When we treated above of the invocation of God, we remember that we already set forth this passage; let us now repeat the same sense. For, wishing to show the Son to be less than the Father, you are wont to say that it was the Son who appeared to the holy fathers. What then do you now say? Since our Abraham built an altar to the God who appeared to him: but there was no necessity of building an altar, except for the offering of sacrifices.
To the God, therefore, who appeared to him, holy Abraham offered sacrifice, for whom he built an altar for no other reason than that he might sacrifice. He also called upon him, since he is read to have called upon the name of the Lord God who appeared to him. Accordingly, either confess that by the service of one prayer the Father and the Son are invoked together, and that one sacrifice is offered to the Father and the Son together; or, if you will not do this, you must either say that the Father appeared, or confess that sacrifice was offered by the holy patriarchs to the Son alone, and you will be compelled to take away from the Father what you try to remove from the Son. Similarly of Isaac too we read, of whom Scripture says: And he went up from there to the well of the oath, and the Lord appeared to him in that night, and said to him:
I am the God of Abraham your father. Do not fear, for I am with you, and I will bless you, and multiply your seed, for the sake of Abraham your father. And Isaac built there an altar, and called upon the name of the Lord (Gen. 26:23ff). Attend diligently: he who appeared to Abraham and to Isaac is himself the God of Abraham, and to him an altar was built by Abraham and Isaac, and thereby to him sacrifice was offered by both. Let us come also to Jacob, that we may show that he too, endowed with a like faith, built an altar to the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, and himself likewise called upon him. For thus it is written of him: And Jacob came to Salem, a city of the Shechemites, in the land of Canaan, when he had come from Mesopotamia of Syria;
and he encamped before the city; and he bought a parcel of the field, in which he pitched his tent, from Hamor the father of Shechem, for a hundred lambs. And he set up there an altar, and called upon the God of Israel (Gen. 33:18ff). Again a little after holy Scripture says thus: And God said to Jacob: Arise, go up to the place Bethel, and dwell there, and make there an altar to the God who appeared to you when you fled from the face of Esau your brother (Gen. 35:1). And a little after: And Jacob came to Luz, which is in the land of Canaan, that is Bethel, he and all the people who were with him; and he built there an altar; and he called the name of that place, the House of God. For there God appeared to him when he fled from the face of his brother Esau (ibid. 6-7).
Now it is certain that by the holy patriarchs sacrifice was offered to that God for whom an altar was built by them, and whom they clearly invoked humbly. But I think you will not dare to say that the patriarchs invoked one God, and the holy apostles and martyrs another. For they invoked one God, because in whom the patriarchs believed, in him also the apostles and martyrs believed. But because the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac himself, at the fitting time, gave the Old Testament, in which the promises of the New Testament were held veiled under fitting figures (whence, even if there were other sacraments of that time, yet the faith of the Christian religion was never at any time different);
the one and true divinity of the Trinity so ordained that even by prophetic oracles it should be declared that a true sacrifice was to be offered by the faithful to Christ the Lord in the time of the New Testament. This Zephaniah the prophet, filled with the Holy Spirit, intimates in these words: Wait for me, says the Lord, in the day of my resurrection, for a testimony. For my judgment shall be upon the gathering of the nations, that I may receive kings, and pour out upon them the wrath of my fury: for in the fire of my jealousy the whole earth shall be consumed. Because then I will turn upon the peoples a language for its generations, that they all may call upon the name of the Lord, and serve him under one yoke. From beyond the rivers of Ethiopia I will receive those who observe me.
Those who are scattered shall offer victims to me in that day (Zeph. 3:8-10). Who is he who says that victims are to be offered to himself, except him who commanded that he should be waited for in the day of his resurrection? And who foretold that he would rise again, except him who was delivered up for our offences, and rose again for our justification (Rom. 4:25)? But who will doubt that both the holy patriarchs and the prophets in the time of the Old Testament offered one sacrifice to the Father and the Son? Since at the very beginning of the nativity which Christ had of the Virgin, he consecrated to himself the sacrifice of the nations who were to believe, when the Magi offered:
making them, namely, the first-fruits of the nations, and in their gift showing the first-fruits of the immolation owed to himself. For the Magi, adoring Christ the Lord, humbly offered also gold, frankincense, and myrrh. But it is certain that in sacrifices offered to God, gold is paid to royal power by yearly devotion, and myrrh is applied to dead bodies for burial. In this threefold kind of oblation, therefore, is contained the perfect mystery of the Christian faith; by which there might be recognized in Christ both the weakness of the flesh he assumed, and the everlasting and royal omnipotence of the deity. For in one and the same Christ they believed mortal flesh, royal power, and the deity exalted above all things;
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acperhocdocueruntcredendamesseveramRedemptorisutor. tem, etipsiveroRegireddendam, quaminnobissuamcreavitetrenovavitimaginem ; eteidemDeosummoetveroexhibendam, quamGræciλατρειανvocant, sacrificiiservitutem. Sicineorumcordibusinventumest, nonatramento, sedSpirituDeiviviconscriptum : DominumDeumtuumadorabis, etillisoliservies (Deut. VI, 13); et : Sacrificansdiis, eru. dicabitur, nisiDominosoli (Exod. xxn, 20). Nam, utdetuisquoquelitteristibialiquidingeramus, utthusinsacriiiciosoleresemperofferrifacillimerecorderis, canentemrecenseVirgilium, CentumqueSabaeoThurecalentarae. (Æneid. l. I, v.
and thereby they taught that the true belly (i.e. bodily humanity) of the Redeemer is to be believed, and to be rendered to him as to the true King, in that he created and renewed in us his own image; and that to the same most high and true God is to be exhibited what the Greeks call latreia, the servitude of sacrifice. Thus was found written in their hearts, not with ink, but by the Spirit of the living God: You shall adore the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve (Deut. 6:13); and: He who sacrifices to gods shall be rooted out, save to the Lord alone (Exod. 22:20). For, to bring in for you something even from your own letters, that you may most easily recall that incense is wont always to be offered in sacrifice, review Virgil as he sings: And a hundred altars glow with Sabaean incense (Aeneid, Book I, verse
425). And to Christ, to whom you know incense was offered, do not doubt that sacrifice also, in the unity of the Father and of the Holy Spirit, is offered by the one and true Church. For the blessed martyr Stephen too offered himself as a sacrifice to Christ the Lord, whom he invoked that he might receive his spirit, saying: Lord Jesus, receive my spirit (Acts 7:59). Now it is written that a contrite spirit is a sacrifice to God (Ps. 51:19); to which holy Azarias says: In a contrite soul and a spirit of humility may we be received, as in the holocausts of rams and bullocks, and in the multitude of fat lambs, so let our sacrifice be in your sight (Dan. 3:39-40).
But he offered his own spirit to that Lord whom holy Stephen invoked that he might receive his spirit. Now none of the holy men is said to have invoked any but God. And especially the holy patriarchs are then commemorated to have invoked the name of the Lord as often as they built altars, on which they offered sacrifices to that God whom they invoked: so that scarcely ever is any of them said to have invoked the name of the Lord without the construction of an altar. Hence, aptly and most fittingly in this place, the blessed martyr Stephen is said not to have petitioned, but to have invoked the Lord Jesus, when he is known to have offered himself as a sacrifice to God.
Whence it appears that without doubt, when he was being stoned, he was invoking him to whom he was offering himself as a sacrifice and altogether a living victim. And not to the Father and the Son only, but also to the Holy Spirit, that is, to the holy Trinity itself, the one true and good God, does true faith offer one sacrifice and exhibit one homage of adoration: whose whole Church is thus one temple in all the saints, just as in the one name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit it knows itself to have been freed from the kingdom of death and of sin. Hence it is that the blessed Apostle, showing the one majesty of the holy Trinity by nature, says: Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you (1 Cor. 3:16)?
And to show that the Holy Spirit dwells in us, in his temple, not as a minister but as true and most high God, he again says: Do you not know that your bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God (1 Cor. 6:19)? And to show the Holy Spirit to be true God, he added: Glorify and bear God in your body. Therefore the Holy Spirit cannot be, in the sacrifice of the holy Church, foreign to the Father and the Son, he who has the whole holy Church as one temple together with the Father and the Son. Nor can we fail to offer sacrifice to him whose temple we are, since Paul the apostle commands that our very bodies, which are the temple of the Holy Spirit, be presented as a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing to God (Rom.
12:1). But how is sacrifice not offered to the Holy Spirit by the Church in bread and wine, when the same Spirit is known to have the Church itself both as temple and as sacrifice? For our very Saviour himself, who suffered for us, leaving us an example, and who is the head of the body, the Church, showing in himself what we should recognize in ourselves, made one and the same body of his own not only a temple but also a sacrifice. For he himself says: Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up (John 2:19). Which the evangelist John, explaining, says: But he spoke this of the temple of his body.
And Paul the apostle thus records that Christ offered himself for us: Be therefore imitators of God, as most dear children; and walk in love, as Christ also loved us, and offered himself for us an oblation and a victim to God for an odour of sweetness (Eph. 5:1-2). Christ therefore made his own body both a temple for us, and offered it as a victim. That his body is the whole Church the blessed Apostle testifies, saying of the Lord himself: Who is the head of the body, the Church (Col. 1:18). Who again says (v. 24): And I fill up those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ in my flesh, for his body, which is the Church.
But Christ suffered for us, leaving us an example, that we should follow his steps. So Christ taught us by his own example, and showed that we are the sacrifice of him whose temple we also are. But we are the temple not only of the Father and of the Son, but also of the Holy Spirit: accordingly we humbly immolate one sacrifice to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit. And since in the temple, by two offices especially, that is, of prayer and of supplication, the human condition is found to serve that one most high and true and good God, on account of which our Saviour also, entering the temple, said: My house shall be called a house of prayer (Matt. 21:13);
He also says that two men went up into the temple to pray, the one a Pharisee, the other a publican (Luke 18:10). Therefore, just as we offer one sacrifice to the Trinity itself, that is, to the one God, so to the Trinity itself we humbly render one service of prayer and supplication. Wherefore whoever, in offering to the Father the sacrifice that is offered, denies it to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, let him acknowledge himself to be estranged from the members of Christ. For the holy Church, which is the true body of Christ, just as she has known there to be one temple and one sacrifice of the holy Trinity, so she has been accustomed to offer, in the truth of faith, hope, and charity, one sacrifice to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.
And so to the holy Trinity, to whom we owe one and undivided service in all things, just as we offer one sacrifice, so also with faithful devotion we sing one glory. For since it is established that the nature of the holy Trinity is one, it is fitting that one glory be spoken by the faithful, in hymns and psalms, to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. Nevertheless, on account of the taking up of the form of a servant, and the office of our High Priest, we rightly and faithfully give thanks to the Father through the Son: because, according to the true faith, we recognize in the Only-begotten the truth of both natures.
Whence, truly confessing Him not only equal to the Father according to the truth of eternal divinity, but also less than the Father according to the grace of the assumed humanity—since, as the holy evangelist teaches, we most certainly have known the Only-begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth (John 1:14)—we rightly give thanks to the Father and to the Son, because with the Father the Son is by nature one God; and we rightly give thanks to the Father through the Son, because He who from the nature of the Father is the only Son of God, the same from the nature of His mother was made the Son of man. And so we give thanks to the Father through the Son, inasmuch as He gave Himself to us humbled; we give thanks to the Father and to the Son, inasmuch as He bestows Himself upon us as the Most High.
We give thanks to the Father through the Son, because the eternal and immortal Only-begotten God became for our sake a mortal man in time; and we give thanks to the Father and to the Son, because the same Only-begotten God remains by nature co-eternal with God the Father. We give thanks to the Father through the Son, because He fulfilled the work of our redemption; we give thanks to the Father and to the Son, because He has promised us the gift of future blessedness. For He redeemed us by the lowliness of the flesh, and He will make us blessed by the sublimity of the Godhead. We do both, therefore, because we find both to be done in the holy Scriptures. For that we ought to give thanks to the Father through the Son, we learn by the apostolic word;
and that we ought to give thanks to the Father and to the Son, we find not only in the apostolic sayings, but also in the angelic praises. Yet these the apostolic word has handed down to us, because God Himself showed this to His apostles for the benefit of our instruction. For we know that blessed Paul said, when he wrote to the Romans: First indeed I give thanks to my God through Jesus Christ for you all (Rom. 1:8). He also says to the Colossians: Whatsoever you do in word or in deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father through Him (Col. 3:17); and any such things as can be found in the apostolic writings. But we also read that the same apostle said:
I give thanks to Him who has strengthened me, Christ Jesus our Lord, because He counted me faithful, appointing me to the ministry (1 Tim. 1:12). The Apostle therefore gives thanks through Christ, and he gives thanks to Christ. He gives thanks through Christ, according to that whereby Christ is of the fathers according to the flesh; and he gives thanks to Christ, according to that whereby Christ Himself is over all things, God blessed forever (Rom. 9:5). And that thanks are to be given to the Father and to the Son, the same blessed Apostle shows more clearly, when he both prays for us and recalls that the grace of God is given not only from God the Father, but also from Christ Jesus our Lord. For teaching that grace is given to us by God through Christ, he says:
According to the Spirit of sanctification, from the resurrection of the dead of Jesus Christ our Lord: through whom we have received grace and apostleship, for obedience to the faith in all nations for His name (Rom. 1:4-5). And again he says: Unhappy man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord (Rom. 7:24-25). But the same apostle, in all the openings of his letters, does not cease to ask grace for us from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. For if you wish to review the beginnings of the apostolic Epistles, you will find this in nearly all of them in which the name of the Apostle himself is contained: Grace to you, and peace from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ (Rom.