Epistula xxvi ad Evagrium monachum

Letter 26 To the monk Evagrius, concerning the Godhead. I greatly admire and am exceedingly astonished at your sobriety, how you become the cause of such speculations and such great inquiries, placing us under necessity of speaking and the struggle of demonstration by your precise questions, bringing upon us necessary and useful questions. Clearly, then, there is every necessity that, following the questions, we make our answers clear. And now, therefore, the question presented by you was of this kind and concerning this: in what manner the nature (which one might rightly call substance rather than nature) of Father and Son and Holy Spirit might be, whether it is simple or composite. For if it is simple, how will it admit the number three of the aforementioned? For the simple is uniform and numberless. But that which falls under numbers must necessarily be divided, even if it is not subjected to numbers; and that which is divided is passible, for division is a passion. If, then, the nature of the Superior is simple, the positing of the names is superfluous; but if the positing of the names is true, and one must obey the names, the uniform and simple is immediately removed. What, then, would be the nature of the matter?

of making these statements to us. The demonstration of these things the word of truth will accurately present, not putting forward an undemonstrated fantasy of faith, irrationally clinging to a lack of demonstration, nor trying to cover the rottenness of its own conviction with the testimonies of old myths, but setting forth the confirmation of the theorem into the open by means of precise inquiry and correctness of reasoning. Come then, let our discourse from this point lead the way, and let it declare how one must conceive the Divine, whether it is simple or threefold. For the triad of names compels us both to speak and to believe in this way, and some, having made use of these, have constructed rotten and utterly stale doctrines, supposing that the essence, together with the appellation of the names, undergoes a passion of division. But those, as you yourself say, are to be dismissed, as they advocate their own opinion in a rotten manner; let us turn our own mind to the correct comprehension of knowledge. What then God is, let us first posit; and then in this way we will come precisely to the demonstrations. It is certainly a simple and indivisible essence, having obtained the simple and incorporeal by nature. But perhaps the argument from the division of the names opposes me, taking away the uniform nature of the Superior by the number three. Is it then necessary, because of the uniform nature, for us to flee the confession of Father and Son and Holy Spirit? May it not be so! For the position of the names will not harm the indivisible unity of the Superior. For intelligible things are both called by myriad names (since they are called by very many names in each nation), and are outside every appellation.

since no name properly belongs to the intelligible and incorporeal. For how could things that do not fall under our sight, nor can be grasped at all by human senses, be properly named? Let us take the smallest part of the intelligible, the soul, for an accurate understanding of the Whole. For the soul is called by a feminine name, yet it is far removed from any effeminate nature, being neither male nor female in essence. And likewise, the word begotten by it has a masculine name, yet it too, as we say, is outside all corporeal masculinity-femininity. If even the lowest of the intelligible, soul and word, do not possess a proper name, how shall we say that the first and the intelligible beyond all intelligibles are invoked by proper names? But naming is useful, because it necessarily leads us to a conception of the intelligible. Some, however, supposing that the substance is coarsely divided together with the appellations, think unworthily of divine things in their own conceptions. It is fitting for us, the judges of truth, to know that the divine and indivisible substance of the Superior is undivided and uniform; but for the sake of the usefulness of our souls' salvation, it seems to be divided by names and to undergo division by necessity, as we have said. For just as the soul, being intelligible, gives birth to an infinite multitude of thoughts, yet is neither divided by the affection of thought, nor does the soul ever become poor because of the multitude of thoughts, but rather becomes richer than poorer.

Just as this uttered and common speech, which is common to all of us, is indivisible from the soul that produces it, and is established no less in the souls of the hearers at the same time, being neither separated from that soul nor absent from these hearers, and works a union rather than a division of them and of our souls—so conceive also the Son as never having been separated from the Father, and again the Holy Spirit from Him, similarly as thought in the mind. For just as it is not possible to conceive any division or cut between mind, thought, and soul, so too can no cut or division ever be conceived between the Holy Spirit, the Savior, and the Father, because the nature of intelligible and divine things, as we said, is indivisible. Or again, just as it is not possible to find a division between the center of a circle and the ray, due to the impassible, incorporeal, simple, and indivisible nature, but the ray is joined to the circle, and conversely the circle, like an eye, pours forth rays like a river over the whole, producing for us floods of light, as it were, and suddenly flooding the entire cosmos—so too, certain rays of the Father, as it were, have been sent to us: the luminous Jesus and the Holy Spirit. For just as the rays of light, having by nature an indivisible relation to one another, are neither separated from the light nor cut off from each other, and send the grace of light down to us.

In the same way, our Savior and the Holy Spirit, the twin ray of the Father, both minister the light of truth to us and are united with the Father. And just as from some source of waters, a nectar-like water flows abundantly, and it happens that a vast stream and an irresistible current is divided into two rivers in its flow, having had one flow from a single eye of the source from the beginning—the rivers being formed with two streams in their appearances, yet nothing is harmed in their essence by the division (for the flow is divided by the position of the rivers, but they possess one and the same quality of flavor; for even if each of the aforementioned rivers seems to be terminated far away somewhere and to stand distant from the source, it nevertheless has its origin united with the mother for the continuity of the source)—so likewise, the God of all goods, the steward of truth, and the Father of the Savior, the first cause of life, and the plant of immortality, the source of everlasting life, having sent forth a two-streamed intelligible grace of the Son and the Holy Spirit to us, neither has himself suffered any harm in his essence (for he underwent no diminution through their arrival to us), and they have come through to us, and are no less inseparable from the Father. For the nature of the higher beings is indivisible, as we said, from the beginning. Many things, then, most honored one, could be found, even more than those mentioned, for a clear demonstration of the most necessary union of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in the way that one must suppose it to be.

But since it is easier for you and those like you to learn the greater part from a few things, for this reason I thought it right to stop here the discourse concerning this subject. Why, abandoning what it is to believe, do we fabricate technicalities about faith and fulfill the desire of the common enemy? For the devil, the common destroyer of humanity, having reasoned that when calm prevails among us, the things of piety flourish, and when faith holds sway, good living prevails and we become friends of the Creator, so that we might not approach from where he fell—see what he has done, and how cunningly he has woven the war against us. The contriver of evils, skilled in deceptions, versatile in plots, and rich in evil devices, has prepared some, under the pretense of piety, to march against faith, and through them has cast upon all the pious untimely contentiousness and soul-destroying war, and has set the members of the Church against each other. Let us therefore turn this very cunning against his own head, and transform his joy into pain and inconsolable grief. Let us mourn the peace which he hates. Let us abandon quarreling and weighing the words of doctrine. Let us cease wanting to be teachers of teachers. Let us hate word-fighting for the ruin of hearers. Let us believe as our fathers handed down. We are not wiser than the fathers; we are not more precise than the teachers. God called us in peace, not in battle.

As we were called, so let us remain at the mystical table, at which we partake of heavenly things. Let us not become at the same time table-companions and plotters against one another; let us not be communal here and treacherous outside. The Lord was called Firstborn from the Virgin, not because he summoned some second being of like kind, but because he is incomparably Firstborn in relation to the sons of men. For neither, because the Apostle spoke concerning the Lord’s generation from the Father without beginning, saying, “Who is Firstborn of all creation,” did he thereby enroll a brother of the Lord. Nor again, when the same called him Firstborn from the dead, did he thereby introduce a blood-relative of the Lord who similarly trod upon Hades. But the Lord is Firstborn from the Father and from the Virgin and from the dead, so that through all these the unique dignity of his sonship might be known. For the Lord’s birth is incomparable; for where the mother is a virgin, how is the birth to be interpreted?