On the Trinity, Book 15

To train the reader through created things to know their Maker, we have now reached His image: the human being, in what surpasses other animals, namely, reason or understanding, and whatever else can be said of the rational or intellectual soul concerning what we call mind. Some Latin writers use this name in their own particular way to distinguish what is superior in human beings and absent in animals from the soul, which animals also possess. If we truly seek anything above this nature, it is God: a nature that creates rather than being created. We must now demonstrate whether this nature is the Trinity, not only to believers through the authority of divine Scripture, but also, if we can, to those who understand through some rational account. Why I say “if we can” will become clearer as we begin to investigate the matter through argument.

I hope that God Himself, whom we seek, will help our efforts bear fruit and enable us to understand the holy Psalm’s words: “Let the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoice. Seek the Lord and be strengthened; seek His face always.” What is always being sought seems never to be found; how, then, can seekers’ hearts rejoice rather than grieve if they cannot find what they seek? It speaks of the hearts of those who seek the Lord rejoicing, rather than those who find Him. Yet the prophet Isaiah testifies that the Lord God can be found when sought: “Seek the Lord; and as soon as you have found Him, call on Him; and when He has drawn near to you, let the wicked person abandon his ways and the unrighteous person his thoughts.” If He can be found when sought, why does it say, “Seek His face always?” Should He perhaps be sought even after being found? In investigating incomprehensible things, no one should think he has found nothing when he has discovered how incomprehensible the object of his search is. Why keep seeking after understanding that the object of the search is incomprehensible? Because we must not stop while the inquiry itself advances us. In seeking so great a good, we become better and better. It is sought in order to be found, and found in order to be sought. We seek it to find it more sweetly, and find it to seek it more eagerly. We may understand Wisdom’s words in Ecclesiasticus this way: “Those who eat me will still hunger, and those who drink me will still thirst.” They eat and drink because they find; they keep seeking because they hunger and thirst. Faith seeks, understanding finds; hence the prophet says, “Unless you believe, you will not understand.” Yet understanding continues to seek Him whom it finds; for “God looked down on humanity,” as the holy Psalm sings, “to see whether anyone understood or sought God.” Human beings should therefore have understanding for the purpose of seeking God. We have now spent enough time among God’s works to come through them to knowledge of their Maker. “For His invisible things are clearly seen from the creation of the world, understood through the things made.” Thus the book of Wisdom rebukes those “who could not know Him who is from the good things they see, nor recognize the Craftsman by attending to His works; instead, they considered fire, wind, swift air, the circle of stars, rushing waters, or the heavenly lights to be gods ruling the world. If delight in their beauty made them think these things gods, let them know how much better their Lord is: the Author of beauty created them. If they marveled at their power and activity, let them understand through them how much mightier their Maker is. For through the greatness and beauty of creatures their Maker can be seen by analogy.” I quoted Wisdom so that no believer would think my search pointless: I first sought traces of the supreme Trinity we seek in seeking God within creation, advancing step by step through trinities of different kinds until I reached the human mind.

The demands of discussion and reasoning have led us to say many things over fourteen books. We cannot view them all at once and quickly connect them in thought to what we want to grasp. With God’s help, I will try to collect briefly the conclusions established by argument in each book, without repeating the arguments, bringing before the mind in one view, as it were, the points established rather than how each was established. Then what follows will not be so distant from what preceded that reading it makes us forget the earlier material; or, if we have forgotten, rereading will quickly restore what slipped from memory. Book One demonstrates the supreme Trinity’s unity and equality from Holy Scripture. Books Two, Three, and Four do the same; carefully examining the sending of the Son and the Holy Spirit required three books. We demonstrated that being sent does not make the One sent less than the Sender merely because One sent and the Other was sent; the Trinity, equal in every respect and equally unchangeable, invisible, and everywhere present in its nature, acts inseparably. Book Five addresses those who think the Father and Son differ in substance because they suppose every statement about God concerns substance, and therefore argue that begetting and being begotten, or being begotten and unbegotten, indicate different substances because they differ. It demonstrates that not every statement about God concerns substance. “Good,” “great,” and other terms describing Him in Himself concern substance; other statements express relationships, referring to something other than Himself rather than describing Him in Himself. He is called Father in relation to the Son, or Lord in relation to the creature serving Him. If such a relational statement, concerning something other than Himself, also arises in time, for example, “Lord, You have become our refuge,” nothing happens to change Him: He remains entirely unchangeable in His own nature or essence. Book Six discusses the apostle’s description of Christ as “the power of God and the wisdom of God,” but defers a closer examination of the question: is He from whom Christ is begotten only the Father of His wisdom rather than wisdom Himself, or did wisdom beget wisdom? Whichever the answer, this book also demonstrated the Trinity’s equality, and that God is a Trinity rather than triple; the Father and Son are not, as it were, double in comparison with the single Holy Spirit, since the three are no greater than one. We also considered how to understand Bishop Hilary’s words, “Eternity in the Father, form in the Image, use in the Gift.” Book Seven resolves the deferred question: God, who begot the Son, is Himself power and wisdom, as well as the Father of His power and wisdom; so too is the Holy Spirit. Yet they are one power and wisdom, not three, just as they are one God and one essence. We next asked how they are called one essence and three persons, or, by some Greeks, one essence and three substances; we found that language requires a common term for answering what the three are, whom we truly confess to be three: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Book Eight also gives those who understand a rational demonstration that, in the substance of truth, the Father is not greater than the Son; nor are Both together greater than the Holy Spirit alone, any two in the Trinity greater than one, or all Three together greater than each individually. Next I showed how truth, seen by understanding, the supreme good from which all goodness comes, and righteousness, for which even an unrighteous mind loves a righteous mind, can help us understand, as far as possible, God’s nature, which is both incorporeal and unchangeable. Love, which Holy Scripture calls God, also begins to reveal the Trinity, however faintly, to those who understand: the one who loves, what is loved, and love. Book Nine advances to God’s image, the human being in respect to the mind; we found a kind of trinity there: the mind, the knowledge by which it knows itself, and the love by which it loves itself and its self-knowledge. These three are shown to be equal and of one essence. Book Ten examines this more carefully and precisely, finding a clearer trinity in the mind: memory, understanding, and will. We also found that the mind could never fail to remember, understand, and love itself, although it did not always think of itself; when it did think of itself, it did not distinguish itself from bodies in that same thought. We therefore deferred discussion of the Trinity whose image this is, to find a trinity even in bodily objects of sight and train the reader’s attention more clearly through it. In Book Eleven we chose sight, so that what we found there could also be recognized, without explicit discussion, in the other four bodily senses. A trinity of the outer person first appeared in external perception: the body seen, the form it imprints on the viewer’s sight, and the will’s attention joining them. But these three were clearly neither equal nor of one substance. Next we found another trinity in the mind itself, brought in, as it were, by external perceptions; here the three elements appeared to be of one substance: the bodily image in memory, the form it imprints when thought’s gaze turns toward it, and the will’s attention joining them. Yet we found that this trinity also belongs to the outer person, since it enters the mind from bodies perceived outside. In Book Twelve we decided to distinguish wisdom from knowledge, first seeking a trinity of its own kind in what is properly called knowledge, the lower of the two; although this already belongs to the inner person, it should not yet be called or considered God’s image. Book Thirteen develops this through a commendation of Christian faith. Book Fourteen discusses true human wisdom, distinct from knowledge, given by God through participation in God Himself; the discussion reaches a trinity in God’s image, the human being in respect to the mind, which is “renewed in the knowledge” of God, “according to the image of Him who created” humanity “in His own image”; thus it receives wisdom, in which eternal things are contemplated.

Let us now seek the Trinity who is God in eternal, incorporeal, and unchangeable realities themselves; in perfectly contemplating them, we are promised a blessed life that can only be eternal. The authority of the divine books declares that God exists; the entire natural universe surrounding us, to which we also belong, likewise proclaims its supremely excellent Creator, who gave us mind and natural reason to see that living things are superior to nonliving things; things with sensation to those without; things with understanding to those without; immortal things to mortal ones; powerful things to powerless ones; righteous things to unrighteous ones; beautiful things to misshapen ones; good things to evil ones; incorruptible things to corruptible ones; unchangeable things to changeable ones; invisible things to visible ones; incorporeal things to bodily ones; blessed things to miserable ones. Since we undoubtedly place the Creator above created things, we must confess that He lives supremely and perceives and understands everything, and cannot die, decay, or change; He is spirit rather than body, supremely powerful, righteous, beautiful, good, and blessed.

Everything I have said, and anything else worthily said about God in similar human language, applies to the whole Trinity, who is one God, and to each Person within it. Who would dare say that the one God, the Trinity itself, or the Father, Son, or Holy Spirit, does not live, perceive, or understand; or that any of them is mortal, corruptible, changeable, or bodily in the nature in which we affirm their equality? Who would deny that each in the Trinity is supremely powerful, righteous, beautiful, good, and blessed? If all these descriptions apply both to the Trinity itself and to each within it, where or how will the Trinity appear? Let us first reduce these many descriptions to a smaller number. What we call life in God is His very essence and nature. God lives only by the life that He Himself is. This life differs from a tree’s life, which has neither understanding nor sensation; and from an animal’s life, which has five senses but no understanding. The life that is God perceives and understands everything, perceiving through mind rather than body, because “God is a spirit.” God does not perceive through a body as bodily animals do, since He does not consist of soul and body. That simple nature perceives as it understands and understands as it perceives; its perception and understanding are identical. Nor could He ever cease or have begun to exist, since He is immortal. It is not said of Him without reason that “He alone has immortality.” His immortality is true immortality because His nature allows no change. This is also true eternity: God is unchangeable, without beginning or end, and consequently incorruptible. Calling God eternal, immortal, incorruptible, or unchangeable therefore says the same thing; calling Him living or understanding, that is, wise, likewise says the same thing. He did not receive wisdom to become wise; He is wisdom Himself. This is life, and the same life is power or might and beauty, by which He is called powerful and beautiful. What is more powerful and beautiful than wisdom, “which reaches mightily from end to end and sweetly orders everything”? Do goodness and righteousness differ in God’s nature as in His works, as though God had two different qualities, goodness and righteousness? Certainly not: His righteousness is His goodness, and His goodness is His blessedness. God is called incorporeal so that we may believe and understand Him to be spirit rather than body. If we say, Eternal, immortal, incorruptible, unchangeable, living, wise, powerful, beautiful, righteous, good, blessed spirit; only the last term seems to signify substance, as it were, while the others signify its qualities; but this is not true of that inexpressible, simple nature. Whatever seems to describe a quality there must be understood as describing substance or essence. We must never suppose that “spirit” describes God’s substance while “good” describes a quality: both describe substance. The same applies to all the terms mentioned, which we discussed at length in earlier books. Let us choose one of the first four terms listed in order: eternal, immortal, incorruptible, unchangeable; as I have argued, they have one meaning. This will keep our attention from being scattered among many objects. Let us take the first, eternal. Let us do the same with the next four: living, wise, powerful, beautiful. Animals also have a kind of life, without wisdom; Scripture compares wisdom and might in human beings by saying, “A wise person is better than a strong one;” and bodies, too, are commonly called beautiful. Of these four, therefore, let us choose wise. In speaking of God, however, we must not call these four unequal: they are four names for one thing. As for the third and final group of four, in God being righteous is the same as being good or blessed; being spirit is likewise the same as being righteous, good, and blessed. Yet among human beings a spirit can lack blessedness, or be righteous and good without yet being blessed; what is blessed is certainly righteous, good, and spirit. Let us therefore choose blessed, which even in human beings cannot exist without the other three.

When we say eternal, wise, blessed, do these three constitute the Trinity called God? We have reduced those twelve to three; perhaps we can likewise reduce these three to one of them. If wisdom and power, or life and wisdom, can be identical in God’s nature, why not eternity and wisdom, or blessedness and wisdom? Reducing the many to a few made no difference between speaking of twelve or three; likewise, it makes no difference whether we speak of these three or the one to which we have shown the other two can be reduced. What method of argument, strength and power of understanding, liveliness of reason, or sharpness of thought can show how this one description of God as wisdom, leaving aside the others, is a trinity? God does not receive wisdom from anyone as we receive it from Him: He is His own wisdom. His wisdom and essence are not different, since for Him being wise is being. Holy Scripture indeed calls Christ “the power of God, and the wisdom of God.” Book Seven discussed how to understand this without making the Son seem to confer wisdom on the Father; our reasoning concluded that the Son is wisdom from wisdom, just as He is light from light, God from God. We likewise found that the Holy Spirit Himself is wisdom, and that all together are one wisdom, just as they are one God and one essence. How, then, do we understand this wisdom, who is God, to be a trinity? I did not ask how we believe it; among believers this should not be in question. But if there is a way to see through understanding what we believe, what is it? If we recall where a trinity first began to appear to our understanding in these books, Book Eight comes to mind; there we tried through argument, as best we could, to lift the mind’s attention toward understanding the supremely excellent, unchangeable nature that our mind is not. We contemplated this nature as near us yet above us, not spatially but in its own awe-inspiring and wonderful excellence, so that it seemed present with us through its own light. No trinity was yet apparent there, because we could not hold the mind’s gaze steadily on that brilliance to seek it; we discerned something only insofar as there was no physical mass requiring us to think two or three greater than one. When we reached love, which Holy Scripture calls God, a trinity began to shine faintly: the one who loves, what is loved, and love. But that inexpressible light drove back our gaze, revealing, in a sense, that our weak mind could not yet adapt to it. To refresh our strained attention, we turned back along our planned and already begun route toward the more familiar contemplation, as it were, of our own mind, according to which humanity is made in God’s image; from Book Nine through Fourteen we remained with the creature that we are, to understand and see God’s invisible things through created things. Now, having trained our understanding in lower things as much as necessary, or perhaps more than necessary, look! We want to rise to contemplate the supreme Trinity who is God, but lack the strength. We see completely certain trinities: those produced externally by bodies, or when we think about things perceived externally; or when clear reason discerns and knowledge retains things arising in the mind rather than belonging to bodily senses, such as faith or the virtues that are the arts of living; or when the mind itself, through which we know whatever we truly say we know, knows or thinks of itself; or when it contemplates something eternal and unchangeable that it is not — in all these cases we see completely certain trinities because they arise or exist within us as we remember, see, or will these things — do we see the Trinity who is God in the same way, because there too we understand and see, as it were, the Speaker and His Word, the Father and Son, and the love common to Both proceeding from them, namely, the Holy Spirit? Or do we see rather than believe these trinities belonging to our senses or mind, while believing rather than seeing that God is a Trinity? If so, either we do not understand and see any of God’s invisible things through created things, or, if we see some, we do not see the Trinity in them; something there can be seen, and something must be believed even though unseen. Book Eight showed that we see the unchangeable good that we are not; Book Fourteen reminded us of it in discussing the wisdom human beings receive from God. Why, then, do we not recognize the Trinity there? Does the wisdom called God fail to understand or love itself? Who would say that? Who fails to see that where there is no knowledge, there can be no wisdom? Should we think that the Wisdom who is God knows other things but not itself, or loves other things but not itself? Saying or believing this is foolish and impious. Here, then, is a trinity: wisdom, its self-knowledge, and its self-love. We likewise find a trinity in a human being: mind, the knowledge by which it knows itself, and the love by which it loves itself.

These three exist within a human being, but are not themselves the human being. The ancients defined a human being as a rational, mortal animal. These are therefore the highest things in a human being, but are not themselves the human being. One person, each individual human being, has these three in his mind, or as his mind. Or suppose we define a human being as a rational substance consisting of soul and body; he undoubtedly has a soul that is not body and a body that is not soul. These three, then, are not the human being, but belong to him or exist within him. Even setting the body aside and considering the soul alone, mind is something belonging to the soul, like its head, eye, or face; but these must not be imagined as bodily organs. “Mind” therefore names the highest part of the soul, rather than the soul itself. Can we say that the Trinity exists within God as something belonging to Him, rather than being God itself? Each human being is therefore one person, called God’s image in respect to his mind alone rather than his entire nature. He is an image of the Trinity in his mind. But the Trinity whose image he is is wholly God and wholly Trinity, nothing else. Nothing belongs to God’s nature without belonging to that Trinity; there are three Persons of one essence, unlike each individual human being, who is one person. There is another great difference. Whether we speak of the human mind, its knowledge and love, or of memory, understanding, and will, we remember nothing in the mind except through memory, understand nothing except through understanding, and love nothing except through will. But who would dare say that in the Trinity the Father understands Himself, the Son, and the Holy Spirit only through the Son, and loves them only through the Holy Spirit; that through Himself He only remembers Himself, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; likewise, that the Son remembers Himself and the Father only through the Father, and loves them only through the Holy Spirit; that through Himself He only understands the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; similarly, that through the Father the Holy Spirit remembers the Father, Son, and Himself, and through the Son understands the Father, Son, and Himself; but through Himself only loves Himself, the Father, and the Son? This would be as though the Father were His own memory and the memory of the Son and Holy Spirit; the Son the understanding of Himself, the Father, and the Holy Spirit; and the Holy Spirit the love of Himself, the Father, and the Son. Who would presume to think or affirm this about the Trinity? If the Son alone understands for Himself, the Father, and the Holy Spirit, we return to the old absurdity: the Father would derive His wisdom from the Son rather than Himself, and instead of wisdom begetting wisdom, the Father would be called wise through the wisdom He begot. Without understanding there can be no wisdom; if the Father does not Himself understand for Himself, but the Son understands for Him, the Son certainly makes the Father wise. But if God’s being is being wise, and His essence is identical with His wisdom, the Father would derive His essence from the Son, instead of the Son deriving His essence from the Father, as is true. This is utterly absurd and false. We certainly examined, disproved, and rejected this absurdity in Book Seven. God the Father is therefore wise by the wisdom that He Himself is, and the Son is the Father’s wisdom from the wisdom that is the Father, from whom He is begotten. It follows that the Father also understands by the understanding that He Himself is (He could not be wise without understanding), and the Son is the Father’s understanding, begotten from the understanding that is the Father. The same can appropriately be said of memory. How could someone be wise while remembering nothing, or failing to remember himself? Since the Father and Son are wisdom, the Son remembers Himself just as the Father remembers Himself; as the Father remembers Himself and the Son through His own memory rather than the Son’s, the Son remembers Himself and the Father through His own memory rather than the Father’s. Who would say there is wisdom without love? We must therefore conclude that the Father is His own love, just as He is His own understanding and memory. We see, then, that these three — memory, understanding, and love or will — in the supreme, unchangeable essence who is God are the Father alone, rather than the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Son, too, is wisdom begotten from wisdom. Just as He understands for Himself, rather than the Father or Holy Spirit understanding for Him, He remembers and loves for Himself: the Father does not remember for Him, nor the Holy Spirit love for Him. He, too, is His own memory, understanding, and love. He receives this from the Father, from whom He is born. The Holy Spirit also is wisdom proceeding from wisdom; He does not have the Father as His memory, the Son as His understanding, and Himself as love. He would not be wisdom if another remembered for Him, another understood for Him, and He only loved for Himself. He Himself has all three in such a way that they are Himself. He receives this from the source from which He proceeds. What human being can comprehend the wisdom by which God knows everything, in which what we call past has not passed away, and what we call future is not awaited as though absent, but past, future, and present are all present; things are not thought individually, with thought moving from one to another, but everything is simultaneously present in one view — who can comprehend that wisdom, which is also that same prudence and knowledge, when we cannot even comprehend our own? We can, in some way, see what is present to our senses or understanding; we know absent things once present through memory, if we have not forgotten them. We also infer the future from the past, rather than the past from the future, though our knowledge is uncertain. Some future thoughts, especially those immediately ahead, we seem to foresee more clearly and certainly; we do this through memory, whenever and insofar as we can, although memory seems to concern the past rather than the future. We can test this with words or songs whose sequence we recite from memory; we could not utter them in sequence without mentally foreseeing what comes next. Yet memory, rather than foresight, enables us to foresee it; until the words or song end, we utter nothing without foreseeing and anticipating it. Nevertheless, we are said to speak or sing from memory rather than foresight; someone exceptionally skilled at reciting many pieces this way is usually praised for memory rather than foresight. We know with complete certainty that this happens within or through our mind; but the more closely we try to examine how, the more our words fail and our attention falters as we try to reach some clarity through understanding, even if we cannot express it. With minds so weak, do we think we can comprehend whether God’s foresight is identical with His memory and understanding, when He does not consider each thing separately but embraces everything He knows in one eternal, unchangeable, inexpressible vision? In this difficulty and distress, we may well cry out to the living God, “Your knowledge has proved wonderful through me; it is beyond my strength, and I cannot reach it.” From myself I understand how wonderful and incomprehensible is Your knowledge, by which You made me, since I cannot even comprehend myself, whom You made! And yet, “in my meditation the fire blazed,” so that “I seek Your face always.”

I know that wisdom is an incorporeal substance, the light in which we see what bodily eyes cannot see; yet so great and spiritual a man [as Paul] says, “We now see through a mirror, in an enigma, but then face to face.” If we ask what this “mirror” is and what kind it is, we immediately think that only an image is seen in a mirror. That is what we have tried to do: through the image that we are, to see our Maker in some way, as through a mirror. The same apostle also indicates this: “With unveiled face, seeing the Lord’s glory as in a mirror, we are transformed into the same image, from glory to glory, as from the Spirit of the Lord.” He said “seeing as in a mirror,” meaning looking through a mirror rather than looking out from a watchtower: an ambiguity absent from the Greek in which the apostolic letters were written before their translation into Latin. In Greek, the word for a mirror displaying images sounds entirely different from the word for a watchtower whose height lets us see farther. Clearly, the apostle’s word “speculantes,” concerning the Lord’s glory, comes from “speculum,” not “specula.” When he says “We are transformed into the same image,” he certainly means God’s image; “the same” identifies the very image we see in the mirror, since this image is also the Lord’s glory. He says elsewhere, “A man should not cover his head, since he is God’s image and glory,” a passage already discussed in Book Twelve. “We are transformed” means that we change from one form to another, passing from an obscure form to a bright one: even the obscure form is God’s image, and therefore also “glory,” in which we were created as human beings superior to other animals. Human nature itself is meant in the words, “A man should not cover his head, because he is God’s image and glory.” This nature, supremely excellent among created things, is transformed from a disfigured form to a beautiful one when its Creator justifies it from ungodliness. Even in ungodliness, the more blameworthy the fault, the more certainly praiseworthy the nature. He therefore adds “from glory to glory”: from creation’s glory to justification’s glory. “From glory to glory” can also be understood in other ways — from the glory of faith to the glory of sight, from the glory by which we are God’s sons to the glory by which we will resemble Him, because “we will see Him as He is.” By adding “as from the Spirit of the Lord,” he declares that God’s grace grants us the blessing of this deeply desired transformation.

What we have said concerns the apostle’s words, “we now see through a mirror”; his addition, “in an enigma,” is unfamiliar to many who have not studied the books on modes of speech that the Greeks call Tropes, a Greek word we also use in Latin. Just as we more commonly say schemata than figures, we more commonly say tropes than modes. Giving each mode or trope its own appropriate Latin name is very difficult and unusual. Thus some Latin translators, unwilling to use a Greek word where the apostle says, “These things are an allegory,” paraphrase it as “These things signify one thing through another.” The trope called allegory has several species, including what is called enigma. The definition of a general term must include all its species; just as every horse is an animal but not every animal a horse, every enigma is an allegory but not every allegory an enigma. What is allegory except a trope in which one thing is understood through another? For example, the letter to the Thessalonians says, “Let us not sleep as others do, but stay awake and sober; those who sleep sleep at night, and those who get drunk are drunk at night. But let us who belong to the day be sober.” This allegory is not an enigma: its meaning is obvious to all but the very slow; an enigma is, briefly, an obscure allegory, such as “The leech had three daughters,” and similar examples. But when the apostle names an allegory, he finds it in an event rather than words; he shows that Abraham’s two sons, one by an enslaved woman and the other by a free woman, signify the two Testaments. This was an actual event, not merely something said. Before his explanation it was obscure; such an allegory, to use the general name, could therefore be specifically called an enigma. People unfamiliar with books teaching tropes are not the only ones asking what the apostle meant by saying we “now see in an enigma”; those familiar with them also want to know what the enigma is in which “we now see.” We must find one meaning encompassing both “we now see through a mirror” and the addition “in an enigma.” Together they form one sentence: “We now see through a mirror in an enigma.” In my judgment, just as “mirror” signifies an image, “enigma” signifies a likeness of some kind, but one obscure and difficult to discern. The apostle’s mirror and enigma may signify any likenesses suited to understanding God as far as He can be understood; yet nothing is better suited than what is rightly called His image. No one should therefore wonder that we struggle to see at all, even in the manner granted to this life: through a mirror, in an enigma. If seeing were easy, there would be no mention of an enigma here. An even greater enigma is that we do not see what we cannot help seeing. Who does not see his own thought? Yet who does see his own thought, through inward vision itself rather than bodily eyes? Who fails to see it, and who sees it? Thought is a kind of mental vision: whether its objects are present and also seen by bodily eyes or perceived by other senses; or absent, with their likenesses discerned in thought; or neither, when we think of things that are neither bodies nor bodily likenesses, such as virtues and vices; or when thought itself is thought about; or when we think of subjects taught in disciplines and liberal studies; or of all these things’ higher causes and principles in the unchangeable nature; or even when we think evil, empty, or false things, with our sense withholding assent or our assent mistaken.

Let us now discuss things we think of as known and retain in knowledge even when we do not think of them; whether they belong to the contemplative kind of knowledge, properly called wisdom as I argued, or the active kind, properly called knowledge. Together both belong to one mind and constitute one image of God. When we treat the lower separately, however, it should not be called God’s image, although some likeness of the Trinity can still be found there, as we showed in Book Thirteen. We now speak of all human knowledge together, in which we know whatever we know; this is necessarily true, or it would not be known. No one knows something false except by knowing it is false; then he knows something true, since it is true that it is false. We therefore discuss things we think of as known, and know even when we are not thinking of them. To express them in words, however, we must think of them. Even if no words sound, whoever thinks speaks in his heart. Thus Wisdom says, “They said within themselves, thinking wrongly.” Adding “thinking” explains “They said within themselves.” A similar Gospel passage concerns scribes who heard the Lord tell the paralyzed man, “Take courage, son; your sins are forgiven,” and said within themselves, “This man blasphemes.” How could they “say within themselves” except by thinking? It continues, “Jesus saw their thoughts and said, “Why do you think evil in your hearts?”” That is Matthew’s account. Luke recounts the same event this way: “The scribes and Pharisees began to think, saying, “Who is this who speaks blasphemies? Who can forgive sins except God alone?” Jesus perceived their thoughts and answered them, “What are you thinking in your hearts?”” Wisdom’s “They said, thinking” means the same as “They thought, saying” here. Both passages show that speaking within themselves, in their own heart, means speaking by thinking. They “spoke within themselves,” and were asked, “What are you thinking?” The Lord Himself says of the rich man whose land yielded abundantly, “He thought within himself, saying.” Some thoughts, then, are the heart’s speech. The Lord shows that the heart also has a mouth when He says, “What enters the mouth does not defile a person; what comes out of the mouth defiles a person.” One sentence encompasses two distinct human mouths: the body’s and the heart’s. What they thought defiled a person enters the body’s mouth; what the Lord said defiles a person comes from the heart’s mouth. He Himself explained His words this way. A little later He tells His disciples about this: “Do you still lack understanding? Do you not understand that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and is expelled into the latrine?” Here He clearly indicated the body’s mouth. What follows plainly concerns the heart’s mouth: “But what comes out of the mouth comes from the heart and defiles a person. For evil thoughts come from the heart,” etc. What could be clearer? Yet calling thoughts the heart’s speech does not prevent them, when true, from also being visions arising from the vision of knowledge. Outwardly, through the body, speech and sight differ; in inward thought they are one — just as sight and hearing are distinct bodily senses, but seeing and hearing are the same in the mind. Although outward speech is heard rather than seen, the holy Gospel says the Lord saw, rather than heard, inward speeches, that is, thoughts. “They said within themselves, This man blasphemes,” says the Gospel, and then adds, “Jesus saw their thoughts.” He therefore saw what they said. Through His own thought He saw their thoughts, which they supposed only they could see. Whoever can understand a word before it is sounded, and even before images of its sounds are considered in thought — this word belongs to no language among the languages of nations, including our Latin — whoever understands this can now see through this mirror and in this enigma a likeness of the Word of whom it is said, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” When we speak truth, that is, what we know, a word necessarily arises from the knowledge retained in memory, entirely of the same kind as the knowledge from which it is born. The thought formed by what we know is the word we speak in the heart: it is neither Greek, Latin, nor any other language. When we need to make this known to those we address, we adopt a sign to signify it. Usually we offer a sound, sometimes a gesture: one to the ears, the other to the eyes, so that the word we carry in our mind may become known through bodily signs to bodily senses. What is nodding or gesturing except speaking, in a way, to sight? Holy Scripture testifies to this; John’s Gospel says, “Truly, truly, I tell you, one of you will betray Me. The disciples looked at one another, uncertain whom He meant. One of His disciples, whom Jesus loved, was reclining against Jesus’ breast. Simon Peter gestured to him and said, “Who does He mean?”” Here he said through a gesture what he did not dare say aloud. We offer these and similar bodily signs to the ears or eyes of people present whom we address; letters were invented so that we could also converse with absent people. These are signs of spoken sounds, just as those sounds in our speech are signs of the things we think.

The word sounding outside is therefore a sign of the word shining within; the inward word more properly deserves the name. What the bodily mouth utters is the spoken sound of a word; it too is called a word because the inward word adopts it to appear outwardly. Our word becomes, in a sense, a bodily sound by taking on the sound through which it can appear to human senses, just as God’s Word became flesh by taking on the flesh in which He too could appear to human senses. As our word becomes a sound without changing into sound, God’s Word became flesh, but we must never say that He changed into flesh. Our word becomes sound, and that Word became flesh, by taking it on rather than being consumed and changed into it. Anyone seeking some likeness, however limited and unlike in many respects, of God’s Word must therefore look beyond our word sounding in the ears, whether spoken aloud or thought silently. Words sounded in every language are also thought silently, and the mind runs through verses while the bodily mouth is silent. Not only syllabic rhythms but also song melodies are bodily and belong to the bodily sense called hearing; yet through their incorporeal images they are present to those thinking of them and silently turning them over. We must pass beyond these to reach the human word through whose likeness, however limited, God’s Word may be seen in some way, as in an enigma. We do not mean the word spoken to one prophet or another, of which it is said, “God’s word grew and multiplied;” and again, “Faith comes through hearing, and hearing through Christ’s word;” and again, “When you received God’s word heard from us, you received it as it truly is, God’s word rather than a human word” (Scripture contains countless similar statements about God’s word, spread in the sounds of many different languages through human hearts and mouths; it is called God’s word because the teaching conveyed is divine rather than human). Through this likeness we now seek to see, however we can, the Word of God of whom it is said, “The Word was God;” of whom it is said, “All things were made through Him;” of whom it is said, “The Word became flesh;” of whom it is said, “God’s Word on high is the fountain of wisdom.” We must therefore reach the human word, the rational animal’s word, the word of God’s image made by God rather than born from God; it is neither spoken in sound nor thought as an image of sound belonging to a particular language. It precedes all the signs that signify it, and is begotten from knowledge abiding in the mind when that knowledge is inwardly spoken just as it is. The vision of thought closely resembles the vision of knowledge. When expressed through sound or another bodily sign, it is expressed as the body can see or hear it, rather than just as it is. When the word contains what knowledge contains, there is a true word and the truth expected from a human being; what is in knowledge is also in the word, and what is absent from knowledge is absent from the word. Here we recognize, “Yes, yes; no, no.” Thus the likeness belonging to the created image approaches as closely as possible the likeness belonging to the image that is born, by which God the Son is declared like the Father in substance in every respect. We must notice another likeness of God’s Word in this enigma; just as it is said of that Word, “All things were made through Him,” declaring that God made everything through His only-begotten Word, no human work exists without first being spoken in the heart. Thus it is written, “The beginning of every work is a word.” Here too, only a true word is the beginning of a good work. A word is true when begotten from knowledge of acting well, preserving here too “yes, yes; no, no”; whatever is in the knowledge by which we should live must also be in the word by which we should act, and whatever is absent from one must be absent from the other. Otherwise the word is a lie rather than truth, producing sin rather than a good work. Our word offers another likeness of God’s Word: our word can exist without a work following, but no work can exist without a word preceding; God’s Word could have existed without any creature existing, but no creature could exist except through the Word through whom everything was made. Therefore the Son alone, who is God’s Word, became flesh, rather than God the Father, the Holy Spirit, or the Trinity itself; although the Trinity brought this about. This was so that we might live rightly as our word follows and imitates His example, with no lie in our word’s contemplation or action. But this image’s perfection lies in the future. To attain it, the good Master trains us through Christian faith and devout teaching, so that “with unveiled face,” freed from the law’s veil, the shadow of things to come, “seeing the Lord’s glory as in a mirror,” that is, gazing through a mirror, “we may be transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as from the Spirit of the Lord,” as explained above. When this transformation has perfectly renewed the image, we will resemble God, because we will see Him “as He is,” rather than through a mirror; Paul expresses this as “face to face.” But who can now explain the immense unlikeness also present in this mirror, this enigma, this limited likeness? I will nevertheless touch on some points as best I can to make it apparent.

First, what kind and extent of knowledge can even the most skilled and learned person acquire, from which our thought is truthfully formed when we speak what we know? Let us set aside what enters the mind through bodily senses, where so many things differ from their appearance that someone overwhelmed by their seeming truth may think himself sane while actually mad. Thus Academic philosophy gained such strength that, doubting everything, it became still more miserably mad. Setting aside bodily perceptions, then, how much remains that we know as we know we are alive? Here we have no fear of being deceived by something merely resembling truth; someone deceived is certainly still alive. This is not an external appearance about which the eye can be deceived, as when an oar looks bent in water, towers seem to move as we sail past, or countless other things differ from their appearance: this is not discerned by bodily sight. Knowing we are alive is our innermost knowledge against which even the Academic cannot object: “Perhaps you are asleep without knowing it, and seeing things in a dream.” “Who does not know that dream appearances closely resemble waking appearances?” But someone certain of his own life does not say, “I know I am awake,” but “I know I am alive”; asleep or awake, he is alive. Dreams cannot deceive him about this knowledge: sleeping and dreaming belong to someone alive. Nor can the Academic refute this knowledge by saying, “Perhaps you are mad without knowing it, since the appearances seen by the mad closely resemble those seen by the sane.” But someone mad is alive. He answers the Academic with “I know I am alive,” rather than “I know I am not mad.” Someone who says he knows he is alive therefore can neither be deceived nor lie about it. Present a thousand kinds of deceptive appearances to someone saying “I know I am alive”; he fears none, since someone deceived is still alive. If human knowledge included only such things, they would be very few, except that each kind can multiply until they are no longer few, but extend infinitely. Someone saying “I know I am alive” claims knowledge of one thing. Add “I know that I know I am alive,” and there are two; knowing these two is a third item of knowledge. He can add a fourth, fifth, and countless others if he can keep going. He cannot grasp an infinite number by adding units, or express something infinitely many times; but he grasps and states this with complete certainty: the sequence is true and so innumerable that he cannot grasp or express its infinite number. We can observe the same with a certain act of will. It would be shameless to answer someone saying “I want to be happy” with “Perhaps you are deceived.” If he says, “I know that I want this, and I know that I know it,” he can add a third, knowing these two; a fourth, knowing that he knows these two; and so on ad infinitum. Likewise, if someone says, “I do not want to be mistaken,” whether mistaken or not, is it not true that he does not want to be mistaken? Would answering “Perhaps you are deceived” not be utterly shameless? Whatever else deceives him, he is certainly not deceived about not wanting to be deceived. If he says he knows this, he can add as many known things as he chooses, recognizing that their number is infinite. Someone saying “I do not want to be deceived, I know that I do not, and I know that I know it” can indicate an infinite number here too, however awkward the expression. Other arguments also refute the Academics’ claim that human beings can know nothing. But we must limit ourselves, especially since this is not our subject in the present work. I wrote three books on that subject early in my conversion; anyone able and willing to read and understand them will certainly not be shaken by the many arguments the Academics devised against discovering truth. There are two kinds of things known: those the mind perceives through bodily senses and those it perceives through itself. These philosophers have chattered at length against bodily senses, but have never cast doubt on the utterly certain truths the mind perceives through itself, such as “I know I am alive.” Yet we must never doubt the truth of what we have learned through bodily senses; through them we have come to know heaven and earth and what we know within them, as far as their Creator and ours has willed to make them known to us. Nor should we deny knowing what we have learned from others’ testimony; otherwise we do not know that an ocean exists; or that lands and cities widely reported to us exist; or that people and their deeds known from reading history existed; or the news brought daily from many places and confirmed by consistent, agreeing evidence; or, finally, where or to whom we were born. In all these matters we have believed others’ testimony. Since denying this is utterly absurd, we must acknowledge that other people’s bodily senses, as well as our own, have greatly increased our knowledge. Everything the human mind knows through itself, bodily senses, or others’ testimony is stored and retained in memory’s treasury; from these a true word is begotten when we speak what we know, a word preceding every sound and every thought of sound. The word then most closely resembles the known thing from which it is begotten as an image, since the vision of thought arises from the vision of knowledge; it belongs to no language, but is a true word about a true thing, having nothing of its own and deriving entirely from the knowledge from which it is born. When the speaker learned what he knows does not matter; sometimes he says it immediately after learning it, provided the word is true, arising from known things.

But God the Father, from whom the Word is born as God from God — has He, in the wisdom that He Himself is, learned some things through bodily senses and others through Himself? Who could say this while conceiving God as above the rational soul rather than as a rational animal — at least, as far as He can be conceived by those who place Him above all animals and souls, though they see Him by inference through a mirror and in an enigma, not yet face to face as He is? Has God the Father learned from someone elsewhere the things He knows through Himself, rather than through a body, since He has none? Has He needed messengers or witnesses to know them? Certainly not: His own perfection suffices for knowing everything He knows. He has messengers, the angels; but not to report unknown things to Him, since nothing is unknown to Him. Their good lies in consulting His truth about their own actions. This is what it means to say they report certain things to Him: they learn from Him through His word without bodily sound, rather than Him learning from them. They also report what He wills, sent by Him to whomever He wills, hearing everything from Him through His word: finding in His truth what they must do, what they must report, to whom, and when. We too pray to Him without informing Him of our needs. “Your Father knows,” says His Word, “what you need before you ask Him.” He did not acquire this knowledge at any point in time; without beginning He foreknew everything that would occur in time, including what we would ask Him and when; whose prayers He would answer or not answer, and about what. His creatures, spiritual and bodily, exist because He knows them; He does not know them because they exist. He was not ignorant of what He would create; He created because He knew, rather than knowing because He created. He did not know them differently after creation than before it, since they added nothing to His wisdom; that wisdom remained unchanged while they came into existence as and when appropriate. Ecclesiasticus likewise says, “All things are known to Him before creation, and likewise after completion.” “Likewise,” it says, not differently; they were known to Him in the same way before creation and after completion. Our knowledge therefore differs greatly from this knowledge. God’s knowledge is also His wisdom, and His wisdom is His essence or substance. In that nature’s wonderful simplicity, being wise and being are not different: being wise is being, as we often said in earlier books. Most of our knowledge, however, can be lost and recovered, since for us existing differs from knowing or being wise; we can exist without knowing or understanding things we have learned from elsewhere. As our knowledge differs from God’s, our word, born from our knowledge, differs from God’s Word, born from the Father’s essence. This is equivalent to saying born from the Father’s knowledge or wisdom; or, more precisely, from the Father who is knowledge, the Father who is wisdom.

God’s Word, the Father’s only-begotten Son, like and equal to the Father in every respect, God from God, Light from Light, Wisdom from Wisdom, Essence from Essence, is entirely what the Father is, yet is not the Father: One is Son, the Other Father. He therefore knows everything the Father knows; His knowing, like His being, comes from the Father, since knowing and being are one there. The Father’s knowing, like His being, therefore does not come from the Son. As though speaking Himself, the Father begot the Word equal to Himself in every respect; He would not have spoken Himself completely and perfectly if His Word contained anything more or less than Himself. Here, in the highest sense, we recognize, “Yes, yes; no, no.” This Word is therefore truly truth, since it contains whatever is in the knowledge from which it is born, and contains nothing absent from that knowledge. This Word can never contain anything false, because it remains unchangeably as He is from whom it comes. For “the Son can do nothing from Himself except what He sees the Father doing.” This inability belongs to power: truth’s inability to be false is strength rather than weakness. God the Father therefore knows everything in Himself and in the Son; in Himself as Himself, as it were, and in the Son as His Word concerning everything within Himself. The Son likewise knows everything: in Himself, as things born from what the Father knows in Himself; in the Father, as the source from which what the Son knows within Himself is born. The Father and Son therefore know reciprocally: One by begetting, the Other by being born. Each simultaneously sees everything in their knowledge, wisdom, and essence: not in parts or individually, as though shifting His gaze from here to there, back again, and from one object to another, unable to see some things without ceasing to see others; as I said, He sees everything simultaneously, never failing to see any of it. Our word, then, which involves neither sound nor thought of sound, concerns what we inwardly speak as we see it, and therefore belongs to no language; in this enigma it thus somewhat resembles God’s Word, who is also God, since our word is born from our knowledge, as that Word is born from the Father’s knowledge. Although our word resembles that Word in some way, let us willingly consider how unlike it also is, as far as we can express this.

Is our word born only from our knowledge? Do we not also say many things we do not know? We say them without doubt, believing them true; if they happen to be true of the things we describe, they are still not true in our word, since a word is true only when born from something known. In this sense our word is false when we are mistaken, rather than lying. When we doubt, our word does not yet concern the doubtful thing, but the doubt itself. Although we do not know whether the doubtful thing is true, we know we doubt; saying we doubt therefore expresses a true word, since we say what we know. What about our ability to lie? When we lie, we willingly and knowingly have a false word, in which there is a true word: that we are lying, since we know this. Confessing we have lied, we speak truth; we say what we know, since we know we lied. But the Word who is God, more powerful than us, cannot do this. For He “can do nothing except what He sees the Father doing;” and He “does not speak from Himself”; everything He speaks comes from the Father, who uniquely speaks Him; the Word’s great power lies in His inability to lie, since there can be no “yes and no” there, only “yes, yes; no, no.” “But what is not true should not even be called a word.” I gladly agree. When our word is true and rightly called a word, what then? Can we call it essence from essence, just as we can call it vision from vision or knowledge from knowledge, as God’s Word is supremely called, and should be called? Why not? For us, being and knowing differ; we know many things that live, in a sense, through memory and die through being forgotten. When these things are no longer in our knowledge, we still exist; when our knowledge has slipped from our mind and perished, we remain alive. Some things are known so that they can never slip from memory, since they are present and belong to the mind’s own nature — for example, knowing we are alive (this lasts as long as the mind, and since the mind always lasts, it too always lasts). In these and similar cases we should especially contemplate God’s image. Yet although these things are always known, they are not always thought about. Since our word is spoken in thought, it is difficult to see how an everlasting word could concern them. The soul lives everlastingly and everlastingly knows it lives. Yet it does not everlastingly think of its life or its knowledge of its life; turning to other activities, it stops thinking about this without ceasing to know it. Thus, even if knowledge within the mind can be everlasting, thinking of that knowledge cannot be everlasting; and since our true inward word is spoken only through thought, God alone can be understood to have an everlasting Word coeternal with Himself. Unless perhaps the very possibility of thought — since something known can be truly thought even when we are not thinking of it — constitutes a word as enduring as the knowledge itself. But how is something a word before being formed in thought’s vision? How could it resemble the knowledge from which it is born without having that knowledge’s form, being called a word only because it can acquire that form? This amounts to calling something a word because it can be a word. What is it that can be a word and is therefore already considered worthy of that name? What is this thing, capable of being formed but not yet formed, except something in our mind we toss back and forth, turning it this way and that, as we think of one thing after another that we discover or that occurs to us? The true word arises when, as I said, what we toss back and forth reaches what we know, and is formed by it, taking on its complete likeness; each thing is thought just as it is known, that is, spoken this way in the heart without sound or thought of sound, which would necessarily belong to a particular language. Even if, to avoid a laborious dispute over terminology, we concede that this element of our mind capable of being formed from knowledge can already be called a word, before being formed, because it is already capable, so to speak, of being formed, who could fail to see its immense difference from God’s Word, who exists in God’s form without first being capable of formation and then being formed, or ever being capable of formlessness, but is simple form, simply equal to Him from whom He comes and with whom He is wonderfully coeternal?

God’s Word is therefore called Word rather than God’s thought, to avoid suggesting that anything in God can be turned over, receiving a form at one time and recovering it at another to become a word, then losing that form and turning about, in a sense, without form. That excellent master of speech certainly knew words and had examined thought’s nature, when he wrote in his poem, “And turns over within himself the varied outcomes of war,” meaning he thinks of them. God’s Son is therefore called His Word rather than His Thought. Our own thought becomes our true word when it reaches what we know and is formed by it. God’s Word must therefore be understood without attributing thought to God, as simple form itself, containing nothing capable of formation that could also lack form. Holy Scripture does speak of God’s thoughts; but this is the same manner of speaking by which it also mentions God’s forgetfulness, although, strictly speaking, He certainly has no forgetfulness. This enigma therefore reveals immense unlikeness to God and His Word, although we previously found some likeness in it. We must also acknowledge that even when we resemble Him, when “we will see Him as He is” (the writer certainly recognized our present unlikeness), we will not equal Him in nature even then. The nature made is always less than the nature making it. Our word will then contain no falsehood, since we will neither lie nor be deceived. Perhaps our thoughts will no longer turn back and forth from one thing to another, but we will see all our knowledge together in one view. Even when this happens, if indeed it happens, the creature once capable of formation will have been formed, lacking nothing of the form it ought to attain; it will still not equal that simplicity where there is only form, rather than something capable of formation that has been formed or reformed; there the substance itself, neither formless nor formed, is eternal and unchangeable.

We have said enough about the Father and Son, as far as we could see through this mirror and in this enigma. We must now discuss the Holy Spirit, as far as God grants us to see Him. According to Holy Scripture, the Holy Spirit belongs to Both, rather than to the Father or Son alone; He thus indicates the common love by which the Father and Son love one another. To train us, divine speech makes us investigate more eagerly things hidden in the depths, to be searched out and drawn forth, rather than things lying in plain sight. Scripture therefore has not said, “The Holy Spirit is Love.” Saying this would have removed a substantial part of the question. Instead Scripture says, “God is love”; it therefore remains uncertain, and must be investigated, whether Love is God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, or the Trinity itself who is God. We are not going to say that love is called God merely because it is His gift, rather than because love itself is a substance worthy of God’s name, as when God is told, “You are my patience.” This does not mean our patience is God’s substance, but that He gives it to us; elsewhere we read, “My patience comes from Him.” Scripture’s own wording readily refutes that interpretation; “You are my patience” resembles “You, Lord, are my hope,” and “My God is my mercy,” and many similar passages. It does not say “O Lord, my love,” “You are my love,” or “God, my love”; it says “God is love,” just as it says “God is spirit.” Anyone unable to distinguish this must seek understanding from the Lord rather than further explanation from us; we cannot make it clearer. “God is love,” then; the question is whether this means the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, or Trinity itself, since the Trinity is one God, not three gods. Earlier in this book I argued that we must not understand the Trinity who is God from the three elements identified in our mind’s trinity as though the Father were the memory of all Three, the Son their understanding, and the Holy Spirit their love; as though the Father neither understood nor loved for Himself, the Son understanding for Him and the Holy Spirit loving for Him, while He only remembered for Himself and Them; as though the Son neither remembered nor loved for Himself, the Father remembering for Him and the Holy Spirit loving for Him, while He only understood for Himself and Them; and as though the Holy Spirit neither remembered nor understood for Himself, the Father remembering for Him and the Son understanding for Him, while He only loved for Himself and Them. Instead, all Three together and each individually have all three, each in His own nature. These do not differ in Them as memory, understanding, and love or charity differ in us; they are one reality amounting to all, like wisdom itself. Each has this in His nature in such a way that He is what He has, being an unchangeable, simple substance. If we have understood this, and its truth is clear as far as we are allowed to see or infer in such great matters, I do not know why the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit should not each be called Love, and all together one Love, just as each is called Wisdom, and together they are one wisdom rather than three. Likewise the Father is God, the Son God, and the Holy Spirit God, and all Three together one God. Yet it is meaningful that in this Trinity only the Son is called God’s Word, only the Holy Spirit God’s Gift, and God the Father alone is the One from whom the Word is born, and from whom the Holy Spirit principally proceeds. I added principally because we find that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son as well. The Father gave the Son this too, not as though He already existed without having it; whatever He gave the only-begotten Word, He gave in begetting Him. He therefore begot Him so that the common Gift would proceed from Him too, and the Holy Spirit would be the Spirit of Both. This distinction within the inseparable Trinity requires careful attention rather than a passing acknowledgment; it explains why God’s Word is also specifically called God’s Wisdom, although the Father and Holy Spirit are also wisdom. If one of the Three is to be specifically called Love, who could be more fitting than the Holy Spirit? In that simple, supreme nature, substance and love are not different: substance itself is love, and love itself substance, in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; yet the Holy Spirit is specifically called Love. Likewise, “Law” sometimes signifies all the words of the Old Testament Scriptures together. The apostle quotes the prophet Isaiah, “Through other languages and other lips I will speak to this people,” yet introduces this with, “It is written in the Law.” And the Lord Himself says, “It is written in their Law, ‘They hated Me without cause,’” although this appears in a Psalm. Sometimes “Law” specifically means what was given through Moses: as in, “The Law and the Prophets were until John;” and, “All the Law and Prophets depend on these two commandments.” Here “Law” specifically means what came from Mount Sinai. “Prophets” also includes the Psalms; yet elsewhere the Savior Himself says, “Everything written about Me in the Law, Prophets, and Psalms had to be fulfilled.” Here, conversely, He intends “Prophets” to exclude the Psalms. Thus “Law” broadly includes the Law, Prophets, and Psalms together, but specifically means what was given through Moses. Likewise “Prophets” broadly includes the Psalms, but specifically excludes them. Many other examples could show that many names apply both broadly and specifically to particular things, but we should avoid a long discussion of something obvious. I have said this so that no one will think we wrongly call the Holy Spirit Love because God the Father and God the Son can also be called Love. We specifically call God’s only Word Wisdom, although broadly both the Holy Spirit and the Father Himself are wisdom; likewise the Holy Spirit is specifically called Love, although broadly the Father and Son are also love. God’s Word, His only-begotten Son, is explicitly called God’s Wisdom by the apostle, who says, “Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God.” Where the Holy Spirit is called Love can be found by carefully examining the apostle John’s words; after saying, “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God,” he adds, “Everyone who loves is born from God. Whoever does not love has not known God, because God is love.” Clearly, he calls the love he said was from God “God”; love is therefore God from God. Since the Son is born from God the Father, and the Holy Spirit proceeds from God the Father, we rightly ask which is more properly meant here by the love who is God. The Father alone is God without being from God; the love who is God from God is therefore either the Son or the Holy Spirit. Next the apostle mentions God’s love, meaning His love for us, rather than ours for Him: He “loved us and sent His Son to make atonement for our sins,” then he urges us to love one another, so that God will remain in us — since he had called God Love. Immediately, wanting to speak still more clearly, “By this,” he says, “we know that we remain in Him and He in us: He has given us of His Spirit.” The Holy Spirit, of whom He has given us, therefore makes us remain in God and God in us; this is what love does. He is therefore the God who is love. A little later he repeats “God is love,” and immediately adds, “Whoever remains in love remains in God, and God remains in him;” thus he had said earlier, “By this we know that we remain in Him and He in us: He has given us of His Spirit.” He is therefore meant where we read that God is love. God the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from God, when given to a human being, kindles love for God and neighbor in him, and is Himself love. Human beings have nothing by which to love God except from God; thus John says shortly afterward, “Let us love, because He first loved us.” The apostle Paul also says, “God’s love is poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit given to us.”

No gift of God is more excellent than this. It alone distinguishes the sons of the eternal kingdom from the sons of eternal destruction. Other gifts are also given through the Holy Spirit, but without love they bring no benefit. Unless the Holy Spirit is given to someone to such a degree that he becomes a lover of God and neighbor, he is not transferred from the left hand to the right. The Spirit is specifically called the Gift only because of love. Someone without this love, “even if he speaks in human and angelic tongues, is sounding brass and a clanging cymbal; even if he has prophecy and knows all mysteries and all knowledge, and has all faith to move mountains, he is nothing; even if he gives away all his possessions to feed the poor, and surrenders his body to be burned, it benefits him nothing.” How great a good this is, without which such great goods bring no one to eternal life! Love or charity itself — two names for one thing — brings a person to the kingdom even if he does not speak in tongues, have prophecy, or know all mysteries and all knowledge, or give all his possessions to the poor, either because he has nothing to give or some necessity prevents him, or surrender his body to be burned when no trial of such suffering comes upon him. Love alone makes faith itself beneficial, since faith can exist without love but brings no benefit. The apostle Paul therefore says, “In Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but faith working through love:” thus distinguishing it from the faith by which even “the demons believe and tremble.” Love, which is from God and is God, is therefore specifically the Holy Spirit, through whom God’s love is poured into our hearts, and through this love the whole Trinity dwells in us. The Holy Spirit, though God, is therefore rightly also called God’s gift. What else should that gift properly mean except love, which brings us to God, and without which no other gift of God brings us to God?

Must we also prove that the Holy Spirit is called in the sacred writings the gift of God? If people seek this proof too, we have in the Gospel according to John the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, who says, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink: whoever believes in me, as the Scripture says, from his belly will flow rivers of living water.” The evangelist goes on to add, “And this He spoke of the Spirit, whom those who believe in Him would receive.” Paul the apostle therefore also says, “And we have all been made to drink into one Spirit.” The question, then, is whether this water, which is the Holy Spirit, is called God’s gift. Just as we find here that this water is the Holy Spirit, so we find elsewhere in the Gospel itself that this water is called the gift of God. For when the same Lord was talking with the woman of Samaria at the well, to whom He had said, “Give me a drink,” and she had answered that the Jews “have no dealings” with the Samaritans, Jesus answered her, “If you had known the gift of God, and who it is that says to you, Give me a drink, you might perhaps have asked Him, and He would have given you living water. The woman says to Him, Sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep: where, then, do you get this living water, etc.? Jesus answered her, Everyone who drinks this water will thirst again; but whoever drinks the water I will give him will never thirst; but the water I will give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up to eternal life.” Since the evangelist has explained that this living water is the Holy Spirit, the Spirit is undoubtedly God’s gift, of which the Lord says here, “If you had known the gift of God, and who it is that says to you, Give me a drink, you might perhaps have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.” What one passage calls “From his belly will flow rivers of living water,” the other calls “will become in him a fountain of water springing up to eternal life.” Paul the apostle also says, “To each of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ;” and then, to show that Christ’s gift means the Holy Spirit, he goes on to add, “Therefore He says, He has ascended on high, He has led captivity captive, and has given gifts to men.” And everyone knows that the Lord Jesus, when He had ascended into heaven after the resurrection from the dead, gave the Holy Spirit, with whom those who believed were filled, and spoke the languages of all nations. And let no one object that he says gifts, not gift: for he quoted the text from the Psalm. The Psalm reads, “You have ascended on high, You have led captivity captive, You have received gifts in men.” This is how it stands in many manuscripts, especially the Greek ones, and so we have it translated from the Hebrew. The apostle therefore said gifts, as the prophet did, not gift. But where the prophet said, “You have received gifts in men,” the apostle preferred to say, “He gave gifts to men:” and this allows us to gather the fullest meaning from both expressions, the prophetic and the apostolic; because both possess the authority of a divine utterance. For both are true, both that He gave to people and that He received in people. He gave to people as the head to His own members; the same One who gave received in people, no doubt as in His own members; it was because of these, His own members, that He cried from heaven, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” Of these same members He says, “Since you have done it to one of the least of these that are mine, you have done it to me.” Christ Himself, therefore, both gave from heaven and received on earth. Both prophet and apostle also said gifts because many gifts specific to each are distributed among all Christ’s members by the Gift, which is the Holy Spirit. No individual has all the gifts; some have these and others those. Yet all have the Gift itself through which each receives his particular gift, that is, the Holy Spirit. Elsewhere too, after mentioning many gifts, “All these,” he says, “one and the same Spirit works, distributing to each individually as He wills.” And this word is found also in the Epistle to the Hebrews, where it is written, “God also bearing witness both with signs and wonders, and with various miracles, and gifts of the Holy Spirit.” Here too, after saying, “He ascended on high, He led captivity captive, He gave gifts to men,” he says further, “But that He ascended, what does this mean except that He also descended into the lower parts of the earth? He who descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, to fill all things. And He gave some apostles, some prophets, and some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers.” (This, we see, is why gifts are spoken of; because, as he says elsewhere, “Are all apostles? Are all prophets?” etc.) Here he has added, “For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ.” This is the house built after captivity, as the Psalm sings; Christ’s house, called His Church, is built from those rescued from the devil, who held them captive. The One who conquered the devil led this captivity captive. To keep the devil from dragging those destined to become the holy Head’s members into eternal punishment with him, He bound him first by the bonds of righteousness, and then by those of power. The devil himself, therefore, is called captivity, which was led captive by the One who ascended on high, and gave gifts to men, or received gifts in men. In the canonical book recording the Acts of the Apostles, we read that Peter the apostle — when the Jews’ hearts were troubled as he spoke about Christ, and they said, “Brothers, what should we do? Tell us,”— said to them, “Repent, and be baptized each of you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” The same book also tells us that Simon Magus wanted to give the apostles money to receive power from them, so that the Holy Spirit could be given by the laying on of his hands. And the same Peter said to him, “May your money perish with you, because you thought you could buy God’s gift with money.” And in another place of the same book, when Peter was speaking to Cornelius, and to his companions, and was proclaiming and preaching Christ, the Scripture says, “While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word; and the circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astonished, because on the Gentiles too the gift of the Holy Spirit was poured out. For they heard them speak in languages and glorify God.” And when Peter later explained to the brothers in Jerusalem what he had done, that he had baptized those who were not circumcised, because the Holy Spirit, to untie the knot of the question, had come upon them before they were baptized, and the brothers at Jerusalem were stirred when they heard this, he says, after his other remarks, “When I began speaking to them, the Holy Spirit fell upon them, as upon us in the beginning. And I remembered the word of the Lord, how He said, John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit. If, therefore, He gave the same gift to them as to us who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to prevent God from giving to them the Holy Spirit?” And there are many other scriptural testimonies that unanimously affirm that the Holy Spirit is the gift of God, insofar as He is given to those who love God through Him. But it is too long a task to collect them all. And what could satisfy those not satisfied with the ones we have cited? They must certainly be reminded, since they now see that the Holy Spirit is called the gift of God, that when they hear of “the gift of the Holy Spirit,” they should recognize in it the manner of speaking which is found in the words, “In stripping off the body of flesh.” For as the body of the flesh is nothing else but the flesh, so the gift of the Holy Spirit is nothing else but the Holy Spirit. He is therefore God’s gift insofar as He is given to those to whom He is given. But in Himself He is God, even if He were given to no one, because He was God co-eternal with the Father and the Son before He was given to anyone. Nor is He lesser than they are, because they give, and He is given. For He is given as a gift of God in such a way that, as God, He also gives Himself. For the One of whom it is said, “The Spirit blows where He wills,” cannot be said to lack power over Himself. As I have already mentioned, the apostle says, “One and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each person individually as He wills.” Here we have the harmony of the One given with the givers, rather than the creation of the One given and the rule of the givers. Therefore, if Holy Scripture proclaims that God is love, and that love is of God, and brings it about that we remain in God and He in us, and that we know this because He has given us of His Spirit, then the Spirit Himself is God, who is love. Next, if none of God’s gifts is greater than love, and there is no greater gift of God than the Holy Spirit, what follows more naturally than that He is Himself love, who is called both God and of God? And if the love by which the Father loves the Son, and the Son loves the Father, inexpressibly reveals their communion, what is more suitable than that the Spirit common to both should be specifically called love? It is sounder both to believe and to understand that the Holy Spirit is not alone love in that Trinity, yet is specifically called love for good reason, as we have explained; just as He is not alone in that Trinity either a Spirit or holy, since both the Father is a Spirit, and the Son is a Spirit; and both the Father is holy, and the Son is holy — as devotion does not doubt. It is for good reason that He is specifically called the Holy Spirit; for because He is common to both, He is specifically called what both are in common. Otherwise, if in that Trinity the Holy Spirit alone is love, then doubtless the Son too turns out to be the Son, not of the Father only, but also of the Holy Spirit. He is declared to be this in countless places we read — the only-begotten Son of God the Father; and the apostle’s words about God the Father are also true: “Who has delivered us from the power of darkness and has transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of His own love.” He did not say, “of His own Son.” Had he said that, it would have been entirely true, just as he has in fact often said it entirely truly; but he says, “the Son of His own love.” Therefore He is the Son also of the Holy Spirit, if there is in that Trinity no love in God except the Holy Spirit. Since this is completely absurd, it follows that the Holy Spirit is not alone in it love, but is specifically so called for the reasons I have sufficiently explained; and that the words, “Son of His own love,” mean nothing else than His own beloved Son — the Son, that is, of His own substance. For the love in the Father, which is in His inexpressibly simple nature, is nothing else than His very nature and substance itself — as we have already often said, and are not ashamed of often repeating. Therefore the “Son of His love,” is none other than He who is born of His substance.

Therefore the logic of Eunomius, from whom the Eunomian heretics arose, is ridiculous. For when he could not understand, and refused to believe, that the only-begotten Word of God, by which all things were made is the Son of God by nature, — that is, born of the Father’s substance — he claimed that He was not the Son of His own nature or substance or essence, but the Son of the will of God; meaning to assert that the will by which he begot the Son was something accidental [and optional] to God — namely, as we sometimes will something we did not will before, as though these very things did not show our nature to be changeable — something we must never believe of God. For it is written, “Many are the thoughts in the heart of man, but the counsel of the Lord abides for ever,” precisely so that we may understand or believe that as God is eternal, His counsel also is eternal, and therefore unchangeable, as He Himself is. And what is said of thoughts can most truly be said also of the will: there are many wills in the heart of man, but the will of the Lord abides forever. Others, to avoid saying that the only-begotten Word is the Son of the counsel or will of God, have declared this same Word to be the counsel or will itself of the Father. But I judge it better to say counsel of counsel, and will of will, as substance of substance, wisdom of wisdom, so that we are not led into the absurdity already refuted, and say that the Son makes the Father wise or willing, if the Father has not in His own substance either counsel or will. Someone certainly gave a shrewd answer to the heretic who cunningly asked whether God begot the Son willingly or unwillingly, so that answering unwillingly would lead to the absurd conclusion that God was miserable; while answering willingly would let him immediately infer, as though by an unanswerable argument, the conclusion he wanted: that He was the Son, not of His nature, but of His will. But the other, very alertly, asked him in turn whether God the Father was God willingly or unwillingly; so that answering unwillingly would imply misery, which it is sheer madness to believe of God; and answering willingly would bring the reply, Then He is God too by His own will, not by His nature. What could he do but fall silent and see that his own question had bound him in an unbreakable bond? But if any person in the Trinity is also to be specifically called the will of God, this name, like love, is better suited to the Holy Spirit; for what else is love, except will? I see that my argument in this book about the Holy Spirit, based on Holy Scripture, is sufficient for faithful people who already know that the Holy Spirit is God, and not of another substance, nor lesser than the Father and the Son — as we have shown to be true in the earlier books, according to the same Scriptures. We have reasoned also from God’s creation, and, as far as we could, have urged those demanding reasons about these subjects to see and understand His invisible things, as far as they can, through created things and especially by rational or intellectual creation made in God’s image; through which mirror, so to speak, they might discern as far as they could, if they could, the Trinity which is God, in our own memory, understanding, will. If anyone intelligently considers these three things as divinely established in his mind’s nature, and remembers by memory, contemplates by understanding, embraces by love, how great that power is in the mind through which even eternal, unchanging nature can be remembered, seen, and desired, he undoubtedly finds an image of the highest Trinity. And he should direct his whole life toward remembering, seeing, and loving that highest Trinity, so that he may remember, contemplate, and delight in it. I have sufficiently warned him, as it seemed to me, that when comparing this image, made by the Trinity and worsened through his own fault, with that same Trinity, he must not think it alike in every respect, but should recognize a great unlikeness even within whatever likeness there is.

I have tried as best I could, through this likeness in a riddle and by inference however slight rather than face to face, in our memory and understanding, to indicate God the Father and God the Son, that is, God the begetter, who has in some way spoken by His own co-eternal Word all things that He has in His substance; and God His Word Himself, who Himself has nothing either more or less in substance than is in Him, who, truly rather than falsely, has begotten the Word; and I have assigned to memory everything that we know, even if we were not thinking of it, but to understanding the shaping of thought in a particular way. For we are usually said to understand what we have found true through thinking; and this is what we then leave in memory. But there is a still more hidden depth in our memory where we first found this when we thought of it, and in which an inner word is begotten belonging to no language — so to speak, knowledge of knowledge, vision of vision, and understanding appearing in [reflective] thought from understanding that already existed hidden in memory. Yet unless thought itself also had some memory of its own, it would not return to those things which it had left in the memory while it turned to think of other things. But I have shown nothing in this riddle concerning the Holy Spirit that might seem like Him, except our own will, or love, or affection, which is a stronger will, for our natural will is affected differently as various objects come near or present themselves, attracting or repelling us. What does this mean, then? Are we to say that our will, when right, does not know what to desire, what to avoid? Further, if it knows, it undoubtedly has a kind of knowledge of its own, such as cannot be without memory and understanding. Or should we listen to someone who says that love does not know what it is doing when it does nothing wrong? There are both understanding and love in the primary memory where we find stored and ready what we can reach in thought, because we find also those two things there, when we find by thinking that we both understand and love anything; these things were also there when we were not thinking of them. There are also memory and love in the understanding formed by thought, the true word we speak inwardly without any nation’s language when we say what we know; for the gaze of our thought does not return to anything except by remembering it, and does not care to return without loving it. Love too, which joins the vision present in memory to the vision of thought formed from it, as though parent and offspring, would not know what to love rightly unless it had knowledge of what it desired, which it cannot have without memory and understanding.

But since these exist in one person, as a human being is one person, someone may tell us: These three things, memory, understanding, and love, are mine, rather than their own; they do not do what they do for themselves, but for me, or rather I do it by them. For it is I who remember by memory, and understand by understanding, and love by love: and when I direct the mind’s eye to my memory, and so say in my heart the thing I know, and a true word is begotten of my knowledge, both the knowledge and the word are mine. For it is I who know, and it is I who say in my heart the thing I know. When through thought I find in my memory that I understand and love something, although that understanding and love were there before I thought about them, it is my own understanding and my own love that I find in my own memory, by which it is I that understand, and I that love, not those things themselves. Likewise, when my thought remembers and wants to return to those things which it had left in the memory, and to understand and see them, and say them inwardly, it remembers through my own memory and wills through my own will, rather than its own. When my love too remembers and understands what it should desire and what to avoid, it remembers through my memory, rather than its own; and understands what it intelligently loves through my understanding, rather than its own. In brief, through all three, it is I that remember, I that understand, I that love, although I am neither memory nor understanding nor love, but have them. A single person can therefore say these things; that person has these three but is not these three. But in the simplicity of that highest nature, which is God, although there is one God, there are three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Something that is itself a trinity therefore differs from an image of a trinity in something else; because of the image, the thing containing these three is also called an image; just as both the panel, and the picture painted on it, are at the same time called an image; the panel is also called an image because of the picture painted on it. But in that Highest Trinity, which is incomparably above all things, there is such complete indivisibility that, although three humans cannot be called one human, that Trinity is both called and is one God, and that Trinity is one God, rather than being in one God. Nor is the Trinity like the human image, which has these three things but is one person; the Trinity is three persons, the Father of the Son, and the Son of the Father, and the Spirit of both Father and Son. Human memory, and especially the memory animals lack — namely, the memory containing intelligible things that did not enter through bodily senses — has in this image of the Trinity, according to its own small capacity, a likeness of the Father, however unequal beyond comparison that likeness may be. Likewise human understanding, formed from it by thought’s attention, when that which is known is said, and there is a word of the heart belonging to no language, despite its great disparity has some likeness to the Son. Human love proceeding from knowledge, and joining memory and understanding, as though common to parent and offspring, by which it is understood to be neither parent nor offspring, has in that image some likeness to the Holy Spirit, however exceedingly unequal. Nevertheless, in that image of the Trinity these three are not one human being, but belong to one human being; in the highest Trinity itself, of which this is an image, these three do not belong to one God, but are one God, and these are three persons, not one. It is certainly wonderfully inexpressible, or inexpressibly wonderful, that although this image of the Trinity is one person, and the Highest Trinity itself is three persons, that Trinity of three persons is more indivisible than this of one. For that [Trinity], in the divine nature, or deity if that is the better term, is that which it is, and is always unchangingly equal within itself: and there was no time when it was not, or when it was otherwise; and there will be no time when it will not be, or when it will be otherwise. But the three in the inadequate image, although they are not separate in place, for they are not bodies, nevertheless differ in greatness from one another in this life. Their having no separate physical masses does not prevent us from seeing that memory is greater than understanding in one person, but the reverse in another; and that in yet another love’s greatness surpasses both; and this whether the two themselves are or are not equal to one another. Thus each pair may be surpassed by each single one, each single one by each pair, and each single one by another: the lesser are surpassed by the greater. And when they have been healed of all weakness, and are mutually equal, even then what does not change through grace will not equal what cannot change by nature, because the creature cannot equal the Creator, and when it is healed of all weakness, it will be changed. But when the promised face-to-face vision comes to us, we will see this not only nonphysical but also absolutely indivisible and truly unchangeable Trinity far more clearly and certainly than we now see its image which we ourselves are. Yet those who see through this mirror and in this riddle, as far as this life permits, are not those who merely see in their own minds the things we have arranged and urged upon them; but those who see this as an image, so as to be able to refer what they see, in whatever way they can, to Him whose image it is, and to see through inference the One they see through observing the image, since they cannot yet see face to face. For the apostle does not say, We now see a mirror, but, We now see through a mirror.

Those who see their own minds, in whatever way that is possible, and in them the trinity I have discussed in many ways as best I could, and yet do not believe or understand it to be an image of God, do see a mirror, but are so far from seeing through it the One now to be seen through it, that they do not even know that what they see is a mirror, that is, an image. If they knew this, perhaps they would feel that they should also seek through it the One whose mirror it is, and for now somehow see Him, with sincere faith cleansing their hearts, that the One now seen through a mirror may be able to be seen face to face. And if they despise this faith that purifies the heart, what do they accomplish by understanding the most subtle arguments about the nature of the human mind, except to be condemned also by their own understanding’s testimony? They would certainly not fail so badly in understanding and scarcely reach any certainty if they were not wrapped in darkness as punishment, and burdened with the perishable body that weighs down the soul. And for what fault except sin is this evil inflicted on them? Therefore, warned by the greatness of this evil, they should follow the Lamb that takes away the sin of the world.

Those belonging to Him, even if far less intelligent than those others, cannot be rightfully held by the envious powers when freed from the body at this life’s end. The Lamb they killed without any debt of sin has conquered them; but not by the force of power before He had done so by the righteousness of blood. And free accordingly from the power of the devil, they are carried up by holy angels, being set free from all evils by the mediator between God and humanity, the man Christ Jesus. For according to the harmonious testimony of divine Scripture, both Old and New, both those foretelling Christ and those announcing Him, there is no other name under heaven by which people must be saved. And when cleansed from every infection of decay, they are placed in peaceful abodes until they take their bodies again, their own bodies, now imperishable, to adorn them rather than burden them. For this is the will of the best and most wise Creator, that the human spirit, devoutly subject to God, should have a body happily subject to it, and that this happiness should last forever. There we will see the truth without any difficulty, and will enjoy it fully, entirely clear and certain. Instead of inquiring through a reasoning mind, we will discern through a contemplating mind why the Holy Spirit is not a Son, although He proceeds from the Father. In that light there will be no place for inquiry: but here, I have found through experience that it is so difficult — as it undoubtedly will also seem to those who read my writings carefully and intelligently — that although in the second book I promised that I would speak of it in another place, yet whenever I have wanted to illustrate it by the creaturely image of it which we ourselves are, whatever my meaning might be, adequate expression has entirely failed me; indeed, even in my very meaning I felt I had reached effort rather than achievement. I had indeed found in one person, as a human being is one person, an image of that Highest Trinity, and had wanted, especially in the ninth book, to illustrate and make more understandable the relation of the Three Persons by that which is subject to time and change. But three things belonging to one person cannot match those Three Persons in the way human intention demands; and this we have demonstrated in this fifteenth book.

Further, in that Highest Trinity which is God, there are no intervals of time, allowing us to show, or even ask, whether the Son was born of the Father first and then the Holy Spirit proceeded from both; since Holy Scripture calls Him the Spirit of both. The apostle says of Him, “But because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts:” and the Son Himself says of Him, “For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you.” And many other testimonies of the divine Word prove that the Spirit, who is specifically called in the Trinity the Holy Spirit, is of the Father and of the Son: The Son Himself also says of Him, “Whom I send to you from the Father;” and in another place, “Whom the Father will send in my name.” We are taught that He proceeds from both because the Son Himself says, He proceeds from the Father. And when He had risen from the dead, and had appeared to His disciples, “He breathed upon them, and said, Receive the Holy Spirit,” so as to show that He proceeded also from Himself. He Himself is that very “power that went out from Him,” as we read in the Gospel, “and healed them all.” But the reason why, after His resurrection, He both gave the Holy Spirit, first on earth, and afterwards sent Him from heaven, seems to me to be this: that “love is poured out in our hearts,” through that Gift itself, by which we love God and our neighbors, according to those two commandments, “on which hang all the law and the prophets.” And Jesus Christ, to signify this, gave to them the Holy Spirit, once upon earth, because of love of our neighbor, and a second time from heaven, because of love of God. And if another reason can perhaps be given for this double gift of the Holy Spirit, we should at least not doubt that the same Holy Spirit was given when Jesus breathed upon them, of whom He shortly afterward says, “Go, baptize all nations in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” where this Trinity is especially impressed upon us. It is therefore He who was also given from heaven on the day of Pentecost, that is, ten days after the Lord ascended into heaven. How, therefore, is He not God, who gives the Holy Spirit? Indeed, how great a God is He who gives God! None of His disciples gave the Holy Spirit, since they prayed that He might come upon those upon whom they laid their hands: they did not give Him themselves. And the Church preserves this custom even now in the case of her leaders. Lastly, Simon Magus also, when he offered the apostles money, does not say, “Give me also this power, that I may give” the Holy Spirit; but, “that anyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit.” Scripture had not said earlier, And Simon, seeing that the apostles gave the Holy Spirit; but had said, “And Simon, seeing that the Holy Spirit was given by the laying on of the apostles' hands.” Therefore also the Lord Jesus Christ Himself not only gave the Holy Spirit as God, but also received Him as man, and therefore He is said to be full of grace, and of the Holy Spirit. And in the Acts of the Apostles it is written more plainly of Him, “Because God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit.” Certainly not with visible oil, but with the gift of grace signified by the visible ointment with which the Church anoints the baptized. And Christ was certainly not first anointed with the Holy Spirit when the Spirit descended on Him as a dove at His baptism. For at that time He graciously prefigured His body, that is, His Church, in which especially the baptized receive the Holy Spirit. Rather, we should understand Him to have been anointed with that mystical, invisible anointing when the Word of God was made flesh, that is, when human nature, without any prior merits from good works, was joined to God the Word in the womb of the Virgin, so that together they became one person. That is why we confess Him to have been born of the Holy Spirit and of the Virgin Mary. It is completely absurd to believe He first received the Holy Spirit when already thirty years old: for at that age He was baptized by John; He came to baptism without any sin at all, but not without the Holy Spirit. For if it was written of His servant and forerunner John himself, “He will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother's womb,” because, although begotten by his father, he received the Holy Spirit when formed in the womb; what must be understood and believed of the man Christ, whose flesh was conceived spiritually rather than carnally? Both natures, human and divine, are also shown by the statement that He received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, and poured out the Holy Spirit: since He received as man, and poured out as God. And we indeed can receive that gift according to our small measure, but we certainly cannot pour it out on others; for this to happen, we invoke over them God, who accomplishes it. Can we therefore ask whether the Holy Spirit had already proceeded from the Father when the Son was born, or whether He had not yet proceeded and proceeded from both when the Son was born, where there are no distinct times? We have been able to ask, in a case where there is time, whether the will first proceeds from the human mind, so that something may be sought that, when found, can be called offspring. Once that offspring is brought forth or born, the will is perfected and rests in this end, so that what was desire while seeking becomes love while enjoying; which love now proceeds from both, that is, from the begetting mind, and from the notion that is begotten, as if from parent and offspring. It is entirely impossible to ask these questions here, where nothing is begun in time, to be perfected at a later time. Therefore let him who can understand the generation of the Son from the Father without time, understand also the procession of the Holy Spirit from both without time. And let him who can understand, in that which the Son says, “As the Father has life in Himself, so has He given to the Son to have life in Himself,” not that the Father gave life to an already existing but lifeless Son, but that He begot Him outside time in such a way that the life which the Father gave to the Son by begetting Him is co-eternal with the life of the Father who gave it: let him understand, I say, that as the Father has it in Himself for the Holy Spirit to proceed from Him, He has also given the Son that the same Holy Spirit should proceed from Him, both outside time; and that the Holy Spirit is said to proceed from the Father in such a way that His proceeding also from the Son is understood as something the Son receives from the Father. For if the Son receives everything He has from the Father, then certainly He receives from the Father that the Holy Spirit proceeds also from Him. But let no one imagine times implying before and after; because these things are not there at all. How, then, would it not be completely absurd to call Him the Son of both: when, just as generation from the Father, without any change in nature, gives to the Son essence, without beginning of time; so procession from both, without any change in nature, gives to the Holy Spirit essence without beginning of time? For while we do not say that the Holy Spirit is begotten, yet we do not therefore dare to say that He is unbegotten, so that no one will infer from this word either two Fathers in that Trinity, or two who are not from another. For the Father alone is not from another, and therefore He alone is called unbegotten, not indeed in the Scriptures, but in the usage of those discussing these matters, who use whatever language they can about so great a subject. And the Son is born of the Father; and the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father as the primary source, the Father giving the procession without any interval of time, yet in common from both [Father and Son]. But He would be called the Son of the Father and of the Son, if — something abhorrent to every sound mind — both had begotten Him. Therefore the Spirit of both is not begotten of both, but proceeds from both.

But because it is extremely difficult to distinguish generation from procession in that co-eternal, and equal, and nonphysical, and inexpressibly unchanging and indivisible Trinity, let it suffice for now to present to those unable to follow further what we said about this in a sermon for Christian listeners, and afterward wrote down. For when, among other things, I had taught them through Holy Scripture’s testimony that the Holy Spirit proceeds from both, I continued: “If, then, the Holy Spirit proceeds both from the Father and from the Son, why did the Son say, 'He proceeds from the Father.' Why do you think, except that He regularly refers even what is His own to the One from whom He Himself is? This also explains His words, 'My teaching is not my own, but His who sent me?' If, therefore, His own teaching is meant here, although He said it was not His own but His who sent Him, how much more should we understand there that the Holy Spirit proceeds also from Himself, when He says, He proceeds from the Father, without saying, He does not proceed from me? From the One from whom the Son received His divine nature, for He is God of God, He also receives the Holy Spirit’s proceeding from Him too; and the Holy Spirit therefore receives from the Father Himself His proceeding also from the Son, as He proceeds from the Father. Here too we may understand in some way, as far as people like us can understand, why the Holy Spirit is not said to be born, but rather to proceed; for if He too were called a Son, He would certainly be called the Son of both, which is completely absurd, since no one is son of two, except of father and mother. But we must never imagine anything like this between God the Father and God the Son. Even a human child does not proceed at the same time from both father and mother; but when he proceeds from the father into the mother, he does not at that time proceed from the mother; and when he proceeds from the mother into the light of this world, he does not at that time proceed from the father. But the Holy Spirit does not proceed from the Father into the Son, and then from the Son to sanctify creation, but proceeds simultaneously from both; although the Father has given the Son that the Spirit should proceed from Him just as from the Father. For we cannot say that the Holy Spirit is not life, while the Father is life, and the Son is life: just as the Father, while He has life in Himself, has given also to the Son to have life in Himself; He has also given the Son that life should proceed from Him, as it also proceeds from Himself.” I have brought this passage from that sermon into this book, but I was speaking to believers, not to unbelievers. But if they cannot gaze at this image, and see how true these things within their minds are, although these three are not three persons but all belong to a human being who is one person, why do they not believe what they find in the sacred writings concerning that highest Trinity which is God, rather than demand an entirely clear explanation that the dull and weak human mind cannot comprehend? Certainly, once they firmly believe the Holy Scriptures as most true witnesses, let them strive, by praying and seeking and living well, to understand, that is, so that the mind may see, as far as it can be seen, what faith holds firmly. Who would forbid this? Indeed, who would not instead urge them toward it? But if they think they should deny that these things exist, because they, with their blind minds, cannot discern them, those blind from birth should also deny that the sun exists. The light then shines in darkness; but if the darkness does not comprehend it, let them first be illuminated by the gift of God, that they may be believers, and let them begin to be light in comparison with the unbelievers; and once this foundation is laid, let them be built up to see what they believe, so that eventually they may be able to see. For some things are believed in such a way that they can no longer be seen at all. For Christ is not to be seen a second time on the cross; but unless we believe what was done and seen in this way, that we no longer expect it to happen and be seen in the future, we cannot come to Christ as He is to be seen without end. As for discerning through understanding, in some measure, that supreme, inexpressible, nonphysical, and unchanging nature, the sight of the human mind can exercise itself nowhere better, provided the rule of faith governs it, than in the mind itself, the part of human nature better than other animals and better than the other parts of the soul, which has been given a certain vision of invisible things, and to which, as though it presided with honor in a higher, inward place, the bodily senses also report everything for judgment, and above which there is nothing to which it should submit and be governed except God. Of the many things I have now said, I dare claim none is worthy of the inexpressible highest Trinity. Instead I confess that the wonderful knowledge of Him is too great for me, and that I cannot attain to it: O my soul, where do you feel yourself to be? Where do you lie or stand until all your weaknesses are healed by Him who has forgiven all your sins? You certainly recognize yourself to be in that inn where that Samaritan brought the man he found half-dead, with many wounds inflicted by robbers. And yet you have seen many things that are true, not by those eyes by which colored objects are seen, but by those for which he prayed who said, “Let my eyes see what is right.” Certainly, then, you have seen many things that are true, and have distinguished them from that light through which you have seen them. Lift up your eyes to the light itself, and fix them upon it if you can. In this way you will see how the birth of the Word of God differs from the procession of the Gift of God, which is why the only-begotten Son did not say that the Holy Spirit is begotten of the Father, otherwise the Spirit would be His brother, but that He proceeds from Him. Since the Spirit of both is a kind of communion of Father and Son sharing the same substance, He is not called the Son of both; we must never say this. But you cannot fix your sight there, so as to discern this plainly and clearly; I know you cannot. I speak the truth, I tell myself, I know what I cannot do; yet that light itself shows to you these three things in yourself, in which you may recognize an image of the highest Trinity itself, which you cannot yet contemplate with a steady gaze. It shows you that there is in you a true word, when it is born of your knowledge, that is, when we say what we know: although we neither utter nor think of any articulate word with meaning in any nation’s language, our thought is formed by that which we know; and there is in the mind’s eye of the thinker an image closely resembling the knowledge that memory contained, with will or love as a third joining these two as parent and offspring. Anyone able to do so sees and discerns that this will proceeds indeed from knowledge (for no one wills something without knowing anything of what it is or what it is like), yet is not an image of that knowledge: and this intelligible reality therefore suggests a kind of difference between birth and procession, since seeing through thought differs from desiring or even enjoying through will. You, too, have been able [to discern this], although you have not been and are not able to explain adequately in speech what, amid the clouds of bodily likenesses that constantly flit before human thoughts, you have scarcely seen. But that light which is not yourself shows you this too, that these nonphysical likenesses of bodies are different from the truth, which, by rejecting them, we contemplate with the understanding. These, and other things similarly certain, that light has shown to your inner eyes. Why, then, can you not look steadily at that light itself, except because of weakness? And what has produced this in you except sin? Who, then, is it that heals all your weaknesses except the One who forgives all your sins? And therefore I will finally end this book with a prayer, which is better than an argument.

O Lord our God, we believe in You, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. For the Truth would not say, Go, baptize all nations in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, unless You were a Trinity. Nor would You, O Lord God, command us to be baptized in the name of Him who is not the Lord God. Nor would the divine voice have said, Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one God, unless You were a Trinity in such a way as to be one Lord God. And if You, O God, were Yourself the Father, and were Yourself the Son, Your Word Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit Your gift, we would not read in the book of truth, “God sent His Son;” nor would You, O Only-begotten, say of the Holy Spirit, “Whom the Father will send in my name;” and, “Whom I will send to you from the Father.” Directing my purpose by this rule of faith, as far as I could and as far as You enabled me, I have sought You, and have wanted to see through understanding what I believed; and I have reasoned and worked hard. O Lord my God, my one hope, listen to me, so that weariness does not make me unwilling to seek You, “but that I may always ardently seek Your face.” Give strength to seek, You who have made me find You, and have given the hope of finding You more and more. My strength and my weakness are in Your sight: preserve the one, and heal the other. My knowledge and my ignorance are in Your sight; where You have opened to me, receive me as I enter; where You have closed, open to me as I knock. May I remember You, understand You, love You. Increase these things in me, until You renew me completely. I know it is written, “In an abundance of speech you will not escape sin.” But if only I spoke exclusively in preaching Your word and praising You! Then I would not only escape sin but earn merit, however much I spoke in this way. A man blessed by You would not command his true son in faith to sin, to whom he wrote, “Preach the word: be persistent in season and out of season.” Should we say that someone has not spoken much when he was not silent about Your word, O Lord, not only in season, but out of season? Yet it was not excessive, because it was only what was necessary. Set me free, O God, from that multitude of speech which I suffer inwardly in my soul, wretched as it is in Your sight, and fleeing for refuge to Your mercy; for I am not silent in thoughts, even when silent in words. And if, indeed, I thought of only what pleased You, certainly I would not ask You to set me free from such an abundance of speech. But many are my thoughts, such as You know, “thoughts of man, since they are vain.” Grant that I do not consent to them; and if ever they delight me, that I nevertheless condemn them and do not linger in them as though asleep. Do not let them prevail in me so that any of my actions arise from them; but at least keep my judgments and my conscience safe from them, under Your protection. When the wise man spoke of You in his book, which is now called by the specific name Ecclesiasticus, “We speak,” he said, “much, and yet come short; and to sum up our words, He is all.” When, therefore, we come to You, the many things we say while still falling short will cease; and You, as One, will remain “all in all.” And we will say one thing without end, praising You as one, ourselves also made one in You. O Lord the one God, God the Trinity, may those who are Yours recognize whatever I have said in these books that comes from You; if anything comes from myself, may it be forgiven both by You and by those who are Yours. Amen.