On the Trinity

Book I

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40 On the Trinity. ———————————— Book I. 1. When I was seeking an employment adequate to the powers of human life and righteous in itself, whether prompted by nature or suggested by the researches of the wise, whereby I…

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He Who is man is also God, that He Who died is immortal, that He Who was buried is eternal. We, then, are raised together by God in Christ through His death.

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ather: the very hopelessness of His own condition forced Him to commit His Soul to the keeping of Another. 32. Their folly being as great as their blasphemy, they fail to mark that Christ’s words, spoken under similar…

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Book II

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52 Book II. 1. Believers have always found their satisfaction in that Divine utterance, which our ears heard recited from the Gospel at the moment when that Power, which is its attestation, was bestowed upon us:— Go now…

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or you will plead that a word is the sound of a voice; that it is a naming of things, an utterance of thoughts. This Word was with God, and was in the beginning; the expression of the eternal Thinker’s thoughts must be…

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rit, and revealed what freedom and knowledge, what boundless scope for adoration, lay in this worship of God, the Spirit, in the Spirit. 32.

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Book III

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62 Book III. 1. The words of the Lord, I in the Father, and the Father in Me , confuse many minds, and not unnaturally, for the powers of human reason cannot provide them with any intelligible meaning.

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lete. The sequel is, I have glorified Thee on the earth, having accomplished the work which Thou hast given Me to do. And now, O Father, glorify Thou Me with Thine own Self with the glory which I had with Thee before…

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Book IV

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71 Book IV. 1. The earlier books of this treatise, written some time ago, contain, I think, an invincible proof that we hold and profess the faith in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, which is taught by the Evangelists and…

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ue purport of the words. Each point shall be considered in orderly sequence. 15. Their starting-point is this; We confess, they say, One only God, because Moses says, Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is One .

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Scripture, which had called Him Man, confesses Him God? For its words are, And Sarah conceived, and bare Abraham a son in his old age, and at the set time of which God had spoken to him .

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and veneration confess of the Unoriginate God that there is no God beside Him; claim for God the Only-begotten that apart from Him there is no God. 42.

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Book V

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85 Book V. 1. Our reply, in the previous books, to the mad and blasphemous doctrines of the heretics has led us with open eyes into the difficulty that our readers incur an equal danger whether we refute our opponents,…

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I ask you Which it is that you describe as alone the righteous Judge. The Lord rains from the Lord; you will not deny that He Who rains from the Lord is the righteous Judge, for Abraham, the Father of the Gentiles—but…

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rse; for to Israel the prophecy was addressed. And now I ask, What is Israel to-day? The Apostle gives the answer:—They who are in the spirit, not in the letter, they who walk in the Law of Christ, are the Israel of God…

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Book VI

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98 Book VI. 1. It is with a full knowledge of the dangers and passions of the time that I have ventured to attack this wild and godless heresy, which asserts that the Son of God is a creature.

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rth? Who so void of reason as to say that the birth of God resulted in anything else than in God being born? The abiding God was not born, but God was born from the abiding God; the nature bestowed in that birth was the…

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rely stated from certain knowledge, but as a bold and baseless claim. We cannot denounce this constantly professed humility as an insolent demand for the rights of another, a laying of hands on what is not His own, an…

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it a beginning. For the proceeding forth of God from God is a thing entirely different from the coming into existence of a new substance.

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who prays for His effectual help must earn it by a true confession of Himself. Not, indeed, that the suppliant’s confession could augment the power of Him, Who is the Power of God; but the earning was to be the reward…

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Book VII

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118 Book VII. 1. This is the seventh book of our treatise against the wild extravagance of modern heresy. In order of place it must follow its predecessors; in order of importance, as an exposition of the mysteries of…

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ly inherent in some being and can have no independent existence. But it was to save us from concluding that the Son is alien from the Divine nature of His Father that He, the Only-begotten from the eternal God His…

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nd no negation of it; His Godhead is not affected, for His Divine nature is untouched. Their unity is not affected, for no difference is revealed to sever Them; and Their unity is not presented in such a light as to…

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ntial nature, the property of destroying by combustion the flickering inconstancy of flame. Yet all the while it is fire, and in all these manifestations there is but one nature.

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annot be separate and divided when the One speaks through the voice of the Other. These words are the revelation of the mystery of Their unity.

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Book VIII

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137 Book VIII. 1. The Blessed Apostle Paul in laying down the form for appointing a bishop and creating by his instructions an entirely new type of member of the Church, has taught us in the following words the sum…

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the Father is in Christ naturally must first deny that either he is himself in Christ naturally, or Christ in him, because the Father in Christ and Christ in us make us one in Them.

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station of the Spirit, he continues: To one indeed is given through the Spirit the word of wisdom; and to another the word of knowledge according to the same Spirit; to another faith in the same Spirit; to another the…

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the Father did, and that He had received all judgment from the Father; moreover that He must be honoured even as the Father. And in all these things having before declared Himself Son, He had made Himself equal to the…

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Book IX

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155 Book IX. 1. In the last book we treated of the indistinguishable nature of God the Father and God the Son, and demonstrated that the words, I and the Father are One , go to prove not a solitary God, but a unity of…

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ut His life to God, Whose nature it is to live. We ought, therefore, he says, to die to our body, that we may live to God in Christ Jesus, Who after the assumption of our body of sin, lives now wholly unto God, uniting…

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ootstool of Thy feet ( Ps. cx. 1 ). David himself calleth Him Lord, and whence is He his Son ? The Scribe is not far from the Kingdom of God when he confesses one God, Who is to be loved above all things.

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hese words of the Lord are not new, or attested now for the first time in the teaching of the Gospels, for He testified to this very mystery of God the Father glorifying the Son with Himself by the noble joy at the…

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Me . Here is no doubt that the Son wills: for while the Father wills that those who believe in the Son should have eternal life, the Son wills that the believer should be 173 where He is.

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n now, and see if they have done altogether according to the cry of it: and if not, I will know . Here we perceive God not knowing that which notwithstanding He knows.

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Book X

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182 Book X. 1. It is manifest that there is nothing which men have ever said which is not liable to opposition. Where the will dissents the mind also dissents: under the bias of opposing judgment it joins battle, and…

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on of God; nor one in the form of God, and another born perfect man in the form of a servant: so that, as by the nature determined for us by God, the Author of our being, man is born with body and soul, so likewise…

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of death, it is the death that is the cause of the sadness. But a sadness even to death implies that death is the finish, not the cause, of the sadness.

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He Who was born was not a pre-existent Being, but began at that moment to exist . Hence follows also the error that God the Word, as it were some part of the Divine power extending itself in unbroken continuation, dwelt…

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s, yet really arose from the dead, and ascended into heaven, what remains, except to believe in the secret mystery, which is hidden from the world and the rulers of this age, and to confess that, ascending or…

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Book XI

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203 Book XI. 1. The Apostle in his letter to the Ephesians, reviewing in its manifold aspects the full and perfect mystery of the Gospel, mingles with other instructions in the knowledge of God the following: As ye also…

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eaks here in manifestation of the fact that He had assumed flesh and also brought it up, living, from Hades. Throughout the Psalm He is foretelling by the Spirit of prophecy the mysteries of His Passion: it is therefore…

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what He delivered, and the Son does not forfeit what He gave. 30. As to the subjection, there are other facts which come to the help of our faith, and prevent us from putting an indignity on Christ upon this score, but…

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baffle the zeal of all pursuers. His ways are plunged in the depths of incomprehensibility: nothing can be fathomed or traced to the end in the things of God.

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Book XII

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218 Book XII. 1. At length, with the Holy Ghost speeding our way, we are approaching the safe, calm harbour of a firm faith. We are in the position of men, long tossed about by sea and wind, to whom it very often…

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re declaring that He is without birth, inasmuch as He always has been; since, according to the workings of human reason, that which always has existed cannot possibly have been born: since (so they urge) the cause of a…

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rred whereby human perception might penetrate behind the birth, which transcends times eternal. Yet let the faith of a devout imagination accept this as limit of its speculations, remembering that the Lord Jesus Christ,…

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s was not the birth of the divinity, but the creating of the flesh; the new Man taking the title of the race, and being created according to God Who was born before the ages.

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