Contra Felicianum Arianum De Unitate Trinitatis [Auctore Vigilio Tapsense]

Against Felicianus the Arian, On the Unity of the Trinity, One Book, Restored to Vigilius. Chapter One. You have wrung from me, most beloved son, that, not unmindful of my priestly office, I should write something on the Unity of the Trinity, which is always perfect and supreme God; and this, although I often excused myself as conscious of my own weakness, you demanded by many means, asserting that it is both fitting for religious persons to receive and for priests not to deny to the faithful the account of the common faith, lest either they, while not receiving it, begin to be easily deceived by the unfaithful, or, because those who desire it do not bestow it, the heavenly treasure of Christ’s members should not be dispensed, but should seem, in a certain way, to be hidden in the barren earth of skill. Therefore I confess myself conquered by probable reasons, lest I seem to hand over the unarmed to the opposing evils, while the faithful are not fortified with the bulwark of truth against the unfaithful. But because in questions of this kind a certain obscurity is frequently encountered in continuous speech, for this reason it has seemed best to me to include, in the brevity of the present little book, that discourse which was recently held between me and Felicianus, with the principal letters of the names prefixed for the sake of distinguishing the persons.

Chapter Two. For when we were sitting together some days ago, he said: Among other things which frequently offend me in your disputations, I think nothing worse than that you hand down the precepts of the faith to the unlearned in such a way that you prescribe to those conversing not so much from the reason of things to be understood, but rather from a certain display of testimonies. Which, not to call it crafty, at least how rustic it is no one is ignorant. First, because if the one who is being instructed has already believed the books, he obeys, he does not resist: otherwise he must contradict not so much you as those same testimonies which are thrust forward for what is affirmed. And therefore a better way for teaching seems to me to be this, by which first the reason of the faith is rendered without testimonies: after the one convinced by reason, that path is polished by the responding Scriptures. And not undeservedly: for if these testimonies are proved by the fact that they are not without reason, that reason can suffice by itself, which seems to establish even these not except through itself. But on the contrary, who can submit the neck of a reasonable faith to irrational testimonies, even if they are feigned to be divine? And that way of disputing, I confess, I would tolerate in others, whom the necessity of inexperience, because they cannot stand by themselves, compels to flee to alien things: but in you I by no means suffer this at all, because I see that eloquence together with knowledge of the faith is not lacking to you.

Then I said: "Do not think me so carried away by your praise of me that I would do injury to the holy fathers who preceded us. Nor shall I ever presume upon wisdom of speech, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power (1 Cor. 1:17; see Bede, commonly cited on this passage). Rather, content with the authority of the Scriptures, I prefer to obey simplicity than to swell with pride. But you say, 'One is better taught by reason than by testimonies.' What then? What reason can you offer, if you proclaim the virgin birth, if you do not deny that sight was restored to the blind, if you show that the buried have returned from the dead? Therefore, if the reason for these things is incomprehensible, yet their truth is evident, then in matters of faith, testimonies are more readily believed than reason is sought out. However, since you do not inconsistently separate these two things—when you have set forth reason, you do not omit testimonies either—for that reason, in this disputation, I will follow the same course that you yourself have approved.

CHAPTER III.—FELICIANUS: "Therefore," he said, "since we are at leisure, let us come to the question of your homoousion, which has been discussed not only among us but also often among our predecessors. And lest the discourse wander too far, do you yourself now, as is your custom, assume the role of the proposer, and inquire of me, who in turn will render an account of our faith to those who ask." Then I said: "Tell me, I ask, whether it is true what I hear you saying, that the Son is not at all homoousios with the Father?" FELICIANUS: "It is true, nor can I be persuaded that what is begotten is unbegotten, lest I seem to proclaim the same Father as the Son." AUGUSTINUS: "It is not so: for I do not have it in mind either that the same is unbegotten who is begotten; but rather that what is unbegotten is what is begotten." FEL.: "And how do you not say that the same is unbegotten who is begotten, if you think both are one, not the other?" AUG.: "I perceive that you have not at all attended to the force of the words: for when I say both are one, I do not entirely separate the substance of the true Father and the true Son; and when I do not proclaim the same Father as the Son, I distinguish the person of each, preserving the property of each. Therefore, if you seek substance, the Trinity itself is one God; if person, the Son is the other.

FELICIANUS: And how do you say that it is both the same and the Son is another? AUGUSTINE: The same, I say, by communion of substance; another by property of person. FELICIANUS: I do not understand how one substance is believed from itself, when one person is not said to be. AUGUSTINE: It is not, I say, one person, because one is said to have begotten, and the other is said to be begotten: and yet there is not a diverse substance of the begotten and the begetter, because the one born is shown not to be dissimilar to the one generating. FELICIANUS: I would like, please, for you to clarify your words with an easier example for me. AUGUSTINE: In things which are incomprehensible, examples do not come readily to the disputant: nevertheless, as far as it can be done, I will not fail even in this part. Behold, therefore, a father has a human son: it is indeed common to both that they are human, yet to one it is proper that he is a son, to the other it seems proper that he is a father; for in each the person is distinguished in such a way that the common humanity is not denied, while one begets, the other is begotten; but equally a human is called both the one who has begotten and the one who is begotten.

CHAPTER IV. — FELICIANUS: I would like to know this: is the begotten separated from the unbegotten by a beginning, or not? AUGUSTINE: Not even that is accepted by the truth of spiritual understanding, that the Father is separated from the Son by the intervention, I do not say of time, which consists of days and nights, but of any interval of duration or age whatsoever. FELICIANUS: If this is so, you admit two unbegotten beings. And how is one person thought to be the Father's and another the Son's, when by the signification of a common unbegotten nature both appear to be confused? AUGUSTINE: In this, indeed, a sophism of no small calumny is woven by your elders; yet, by the aid of the Trinity itself, it must be resolved by Catholic simplicity. For I call the Father unbegotten, the Son begotten, and yet I do not therefore not proclaim the begotten coeternal with the unbegotten, teaching only that the Father is unbegotten because he did not proceed from another, and the Son begotten because he did not exist from himself. It is not common to both to be born, it is not common to both to beget; and yet it is common that one is not separated from the other by the intervention of any time. Therefore, if you seek the Father's property, it suffices that he has no father; if the Son's, it is enough that he has no offspring: but we proclaim one and coeternal divinity of the Father and the Son.

FELICIANUS: As far as I am concerned, I do not see what you are now gathering from this. For although you contend with me in Aristotelian subtlety, it still cannot happen that you distinguish by any intervening antiquity of time the one who was begotten from the one who begot. AUGUSTINE: I know indeed, as the saying goes, in how difficult a place my speech finds itself; yet we have nothing to fear, who, by the help of the Holy Spirit, bear witness concerning God. What then shall we say? Is there something in the Father which is denied to be unbegotten, or not? If there is, then He is called unbegotten not in whole, but in part; otherwise the Son did not begin to exist in time. For if paternity does not take hold of the Father, no beginning of the offspring can be found. If a beginning is attributed to the offspring, the Father’s paternity will not be taught as eternal. And how will it stand that you teach the whole in the Father as unbegotten, when you hold that the very name of paternity has a beginning, since you say the Son began in time, and that while He did not yet exist, the Father could not have been called by that name?

FELICIANUS: I am not so foolish as to prefer time to the Son; but it is certain that a beginning is given to the one who is begotten. AUGUSTINE: What then? Do you say that there was nothing intermediate between the Father and the Son? FELICIANUS: Yes, precisely. AUGUSTINE: How then do you deny that the Son is coeternal with the Father, when you confess that there is nothing intermediate between the Father and the Son, since that very “not-intermediate” is as certainly “being” as a third thing? CHAPTER V. — FELICIANUS: Since you hem me in with the art of disputation, I will briefly explain what has been said by our elders. For they say, whenever the beginning of the Son and the eternity of the Father are discussed: “There was a time when he was not, and before he was born he was not.” AUGUSTINE: As far as I perceive, with the error of evil belief remaining, only the words have been changed. For you said, “There was a time when he was not.” Does this “there was” pertain to eternity, or to the Son? If to eternity, that is, as if some space of eternity before the Son’s nativity, behold, you will necessarily slip into the earlier blasphemy, when you insert some third time between the Father and the Son, and say that before the Son there was the Father and time, after these two the Son, after these three the Spirit. But if we admit that the Son could not be begotten without time, see how wide open these things we say are. For if the Son is not without time, certainly he must also be said to be begotten only in a place. With this admitted, before the Son and the Holy Spirit, a coeternal of a sort with the Father may be called place.

If that is so, that the Son could not be born without place and time, in what place, or in what time, do you say that place and time were made? If in none, behold, time and place could be made without time and place. If in some place or time, that very place and time themselves seem to require a place and time in their origin. But if something could be made so entirely without time and place that you cannot teach that place was made in a place, nor time in a time, then I know not with what rashness you contend that the Son could not be born without these—he who, as far as sound faith is concerned, is said to have made both place and time. But enough on this; now let us take up again what you proclaim was said by your predecessors. "There was," you say, "when he was not." If you refer that "there was" to time, behold, time existed before the Son; if to the Son, the Son never was not; for he already was when the Son was not, by whom time is said to have been made. But, "Before he was born," you say, "he was not." Who, I ask, was not before he was born? If the Son, then by that very understanding time is said to have existed before the Son. But if before the Son was born time did not exist, it follows that the Son is said to be coeternal with the Father, between whom and the Father no time is said to have existed; especially since, with the Evangelists bearing witness among other things, the Son is said to have made time as well. But perhaps someone might think that it was said of the Father: "There was when the Son was not.

To which statement the following do not accord, in which it is said, "And before he was born, he was not": for in himself the Father, always existing, cannot even by you be said to be born, who is not taught to have begun from the beginning; and into the Father cannot fall, "There was when he was not begotten." FEL. Since you weary me not a little with words contending, as my opinion holds, with unexpected subtlety, therefore I ask that, if it can be done, by the example of any thing whatsoever, you show that what you are trying to teach is possible. For I cannot otherwise believe, even if oppressed by the force of your speech, that the begotten is coeternal with the Father, unless you say either that both are begotten, or that each is father to the other. AUG. Since you compel me to examples of incomparable things, therefore let us see what the power of fire is, from which always splendor, always vapor is. Both are born from it, yet fire is not found without either of them to any extent. These three do not beget each other, because not from the splendor of fire is vapor, nor from the vapor are fire and splendor, but from fire splendor and vapor are always begotten. Since these are so, do you see that even in creatures something can be born, and yet no time be shown in which that from which it is born could have been found without the begotten? If therefore we perceive these things by visible examples, why should we not proclaim similar things concerning the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, at least as far as concerns their common and undifferentiated eternity?

For it is not necessary that we should equally call the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit unbegotten, just because we say that none of them is separated from another by an intervening age: since even from other things, some are shown to be begotten, yet not for that reason either equally begetting, or existing without each other. But what is the use of collecting many of these, when from the testimonies of a few it is permitted to judge the rest as well? CHAPTER VI. — FEL. Since you disturb my opinion, founded on the authority of the preceding fathers, by a new art of disputation; therefore I wish you to tell me what you think concerning the nature of the Son of God, that is, concerning the substance itself. For if, as you are accustomed to say, he is *homoousion* to the Father, he is in some way father to himself, otherwise he cannot be consubstantial with the begetter. For one of our number used to laugh at the opinion of *homoousion* in this way, saying, If the Son was brought forth not from outside, but from the same itself, the one is in some way divided into two, since the begetter is not said to be other than the begotten.

You say that we contend with Aristotelian artifice, but you yourself seem to have taken refuge in the snares of the dialecticians. Yet we, trusting in the truth of the faith, can by no means be terrified by these things. What then? You say, I believe, that the Son could not be born from the substance of the Father, lest we seem to divide the unbegotten Father from the Son by generation. If this is so, the Son is wrongly believed, who is proclaimed not as born from the Father, that is, from the same one himself, but as made from without among other things. To make this easier to understand, I will explain it as best I can. For of sons, some are adoptive, others natural. Those who are begotten are always and properly sons from the beginning; those who are first alien, then sons, when they seem to be adopted into the family. With which, then, is the Son of God to be compared? If with adoptive sons, he will be like us in relation to the Father; if with proper sons, he must be said to have subsisted from the substance of the begetter. But, you say, the paternal substance is divided into two, if the Son is substantially generated from the Father alone. How foolish this is, even visible things themselves teach us. For who among even carnal fathers has ever been divided by begetting? If this division does not occur even in the condition of the body—for no one has begotten a son in such a way as to lose himself in the process—do you say that the Son could not be born with the integrity of the Father preserved? But why say more? For those examining the birth and origin of the Son of God, these points, if I am not mistaken, occur: that is, that he is either from the Father, or from nothing, or from another, or from himself.

Let us, I ask, consider the consequence of these. If from Himself, He is not rightly called Son who is proclaimed not born but unbegotten; if from nothing, He is shown to be a creature along with the rest, not the author of creation; if from another, He is proclaimed the Son not of the Father in whom we believe, but of some unknown father. But if beyond these four a fifth cannot be found, and of these three cannot possibly be predicated on account of evident blasphemy, it remains that He was substantially begotten from the Father, because, as we have said, neither can a fifth be found nor can any mode other than the first be taught concerning these, especially since He is neither a creature, nor the Son of another father, nor is He called unbegotten like the Father. FEL. As if I either proclaimed a fifth beyond these, or anything among these three: I who say that the Son did not come forth from the substance of the Father, yet do not deny that He was begotten from His will. AUG. You are driven into one of the aforementioned by the consequence itself. For when we inquire about the substance of the Son, whom you do not confess to have been substantially begotten from the Father, you undoubtedly contend that He was made from nothing among other things, since we say that even corruptible creatures subsist only in that we affirm that God both willed them through ineffable dispensation and was able to effect them through singular power, while we prove that there was a will by which it pleased God, and a power which lies subject to the Lord.

Felicianus: Therefore, does the Father’s power not suffice for the existence of the Son? Augustine: As if I were contending about the Father’s power, and not about the truth of paternity itself. Or did He choose to call Himself Father of one whom He wished to be like, not to Himself, but to creatures? And therefore you must admit that the Son existed from the substance of the Father, if He is both born and God; or else deny that He is both Son and God, if He was created not from the Father’s substance, but from nothing, with only the Father’s will and power operating, as also in the case of other creatures. Chapter VII. — Felicianus: Since you compel me by necessity to such a confession, I will not keep silent about what is customarily said by our elders. For they say that the Son is a creature, but a perfect one, and one that can rule over all creatures. Augustine: I rejoice indeed that you have disclosed the innermost poison of an irreligious teaching by an open confession; yet you put forward nothing that seems worthy of belief. For a creature is, from the fact that it is not yet, or at some time was not, the substance of any corruptible thing, brought into being by the will of almighty God, in itself. Let us see whether this definition falls upon the Son of God. For the Son, in that which He is, was brought forth by the truth of an undifferentiated nature; He who is from Him who is, that is, from the begetter, was born not unlike.

And therefore between the Son and the creature, first of all, unless I am mistaken, there is this distinction: that He is substantially begotten from the Father; the creature is not produced from the substance of the maker, but is accomplished solely by will and power. The latter is corruptible by nature, unless it is preserved by grace; He is incorruptible, who by being born seems to have an incorruptible substance from the incorruptible Father. The Son is in all things like the Father; the creature is unlike the maker. He does not come from that which is not into that which is; and therefore never passes from that which is into that which is not: the latter comes from that which is not into that which is; and therefore, so far as it concerns itself, from that which is it returns into that which is not, by the condition of its origin. Felicianus: I do not see what secret obscurity you have wrapped this in; and therefore you will do well if you explain what, in my opinion, has been said by you incomprehensibly, in a more intelligible manner.

I said, I say, concerning the Son, when I distinguished him from creatures by definition, that he is not from that which is not into that which is; which is as if I were to say, he was not made from nothing. And therefore he is never to be dissolved from that which is into that which is not; that is, never into nothing, from that very thing which he is, by the property of his own nature. But a creature is from that which is not into that which is: by which it is shown that it is brought forth from nothing. And therefore, as far as it concerns itself, from that which is into that which is not; that is, into nothing, unless perpetual grace should prevent it, it is to be turned by the quality of its own nature. Therefore the Son will never not be, who is taught to be perpetual substantially; and this, as is proper, is known to be separated without injustice from the condition of all creatures, which were made through him. CHAPTER VIII. — FEL. Although you touch my understanding with a new subtlety of things, yet I do not know how you say that the Son is coeternal with the Father: since both by the common mode of speaking and by the law of nature, the begetter seems to be prior to the begotten.

If we judge the creator of natures by the laws of creatures, while we proclaim the Father to be prior to the Son, why do we not, by the same law of nature, say that the Son is stronger than the Father through the passage of time, since neither does the Son lack increments as he is born, nor does old age inflict the injury of weakness upon the Father? But if reason itself does not accept this, let us set aside in God the law of corporeal understanding, and not say that the maker is like his works, especially since from what is evident among us, we can also demonstrate that which is hidden. For just as a mother, without example, gave birth to her own author, so the Father is to be believed to have ineffably begotten a coeternal Son. From a mother is born one who already existed before; from a Father, one who was never absent. Let faith believe this; let understanding not demand it, lest it either think what is not found to be unbelievable, or, having found it, not believe it to be unique. For behold, Christ was born from a mother, and yet the mother's modesty was not diminished by contact with a man. A virgin gave birth, because a virgin conceived; and, with the order of things not preserved, Christ took up an entire body from the mother's entire body. If, therefore, by a new manner, with no example, he is taught to have been born according to the flesh from a body, what wonder is it if he proceeded from the Father not according to the custom of human birth?

The substance of the mother is not diminished; we know that a son is born from her body without harm to the parent. And is it believed that the incorporeal Father’s substance is diminished, when from that same Father, substantially and incorporeally brought forth, he is said to be begotten? Therefore, if we weigh the nature of things with understanding as our guide, let us grant a beginning, unless we deny an end. Otherwise, let us say that the Son has no beginning, not because of grace, but because we confess him to be perpetual by nature. In sum, greater and lesser can be said in three ways: by age, by form, by power—by age, older than a boy; by form, taller than a small person; by power, stronger than a weakling. Let us see whether any of these applies to the Son: for he is not lesser in age, since he is known to have existed as a beginning from the Father who is a beginning; nor in form, since it is not lawful to proclaim him as anything other than God; nor in power, from whom we know everything perfect to have been made. CHAPTER IX. — FEL. I desire to know in what way the dignity of the Father passed to the Son, and the humility of the offspring did not return to the Father.

Augustine: These things are not now said according to nature, as examples of divine matters teach us. For consider: let us suppose that some king and a king’s son, having laid aside the insignia of royal majesty, should take up the garments of a subject soldier, and for the sake of a certain dispensation of the father and the safety of their companions, should endure the insults of rebels; does it follow that, because this participation in royal power is certainly known to descend by birth, the injury therefore certainly reaches the one who begot him, not by an affection that does not share the son’s suffering, but by the very property of the passion? It is not so, because it is certain that the son was not born from the son to the father, but the son from the father. And for that reason we say that everything which pertains to the communion of nature is alike between them; that is proper which is known to have happened accidentally to the person. Therefore, by being born, the Son has everything with the Father that the Father is; but the Father does not have with the Son whatever he himself specially suffered. What is born from man as man is not common to both, but is a special accident, which for the most part, without prejudice to the common nature, is taught that neither has in the other. The substance of the Father is one, the person is one. When this substance begot, from it without doubt it is known to have existed not as diverse, but as another; which is not judged to be other than the first, while it is taught both as common and as proper: common, I say, by unity of substance; proper, by distinction of person.

Since, therefore, that which is born stands in itself, not everything that happens to it necessarily passes to the begetter, just as whatever is proper and substantial to the begetter reaches the one being born. For it is not that, as the divinity of the Father is conferred upon the Son by the generation itself, so care, sickness, poverty, death, and the humility of the offspring are referred back to the Father. This does not happen because, although it is from one, that is, a substance similar to the Father’s was begotten, yet because it now stands in itself, whatever is externally imposed upon it is not said to be common, but proper. If, therefore, this is the condition of the human race, that the substance of a son is never so changed by the one who begot him into something else that it cannot be the same but becomes another—while many things happen externally to the son, the common nature nonetheless remains—what is it fitting for us to believe about God and His Son? What is it proper to preach? For although, according to the simple glory of the undivided majesty, their nature is not dissimilar, yet a body was specially assumed by the Son, so that he who could suffer nothing in the common divinity of the substance might be humbled in the weakness of our flesh.

A human son does not assume another nature; and when he suffers in that nature which is common with his father, he nevertheless does not transmit the injury to the father. And is God the Father believed to be passible because the Son was humiliated, since He is believed to have endured the treachery of the Jews not in that same nature which is common to both, but rather in our nature, which He alone assumed? In sum, I ask, what was it that hung on the cross? What was it that the lance is said to have wounded? Was it the passible flesh, or the substance of the divinity? If, as a preacher of the incorporeal, you take up the profane majesty, you will seem to believe God to be corruptible; if you take up the passible flesh, that cross is not common with the Father, so that it could touch Him through this flesh. CHAPTER X. — FEL. In sweeping away everything we have said like a torrent, you are preaching two Christs, not one. And not without reason; for if the divinity endured absolutely nothing in Him, then Christ was another according to the man; otherwise, through the affection of the common divinity, the passion itself would have reached even the Father.

It is not so; for I do not confuse, I do not divide our Saviour: I do not confuse, lest I should proclaim either an incorporeal and imaginary flesh, or a carnal and mortal divinity: I do not separate, lest I should seem to introduce one offspring of God the Father according to flesh, and another according to majesty: because the same Son of God both proceeded from the Father without beginning, and deigned to be born in time from the virgin. Impassible in his own, he suffered in ours, while he deigned to clothe his incomprehensible majesty, as if with a garment of flesh, from the womb. One person of the Mediator, not one substance: one person, I say, lest Christ be not one; not one substance, lest, with the dispensation of the Mediator removed, he be called either only the Son of God or only the son of man. Therefore I do not extend the assumed flesh in Christ to the perpetuity of divine generation; nor do I confine the immense divinity within the age of bodily birth: because the same one is, in divinity, the author of things, who, in flesh, is the redeemer of men; the same one is impassible in himself, who suffered in the body; while the Son, born similar to each parent, so truly expressed the property of each nature from each parent, that it is established both that he assumed true flesh from his mother, and that he possesses undifferentiated divinity from his Father.

To these, joined into one person by the incomprehensible dispensation of the Mediator, he preserved what was proper to each, but joined to what was proper what was alien to each: he preserved what was proper, in that he did not lose the immensity of the divinity and did not reject the weakness of the flesh: he joined to what was proper what was alien, in that the same and inseparable Christ is both slain by what is proper to the flesh and not held in the underworld by what is proper to the divinity: by what is proper to the flesh he tasted the death of life, by what is proper to the divinity he rendered the flesh everlasting. Therefore it is not rightly said, The Father suffered in the Son, since the Son suffered in the flesh, which he does not have in common with the Father. Thus the flesh was glorified by majesty, while majesty is taught to have been humbled in the flesh. But both, not from two Christs, as you think, but from one and the same Christ, whom after the Virgin’s birth we know as God and man, we are certain that we proclaim. CHAPTER XI. — FEL. If therefore Christ was born from the Virgin, how is he said to be coeternal with God the Father?

Augustine: On this point, indeed, we also have a dispute against others; and therefore, lest the explanation of the truth be more difficult, we will first set forth the cause of the error. For, beginning from one principle of false belief, they split into two, as it were, kinds of dissimilar ravings of understanding. For it is common to both to preach one nativity of Christ, not two. But some receive that principal nativity, by which God was born from God before all things; others receive only this one, by which this man proceeded from the virgin, as the definition of their own dogma; who, consequently, from a badly cast seed, fell into a pit of similar blasphemy. For behold, those who do not believe him born from the virgin overturn all the faith of the Gospels, all the usefulness of Baptism, all the preaching of the Apostles, and, in sum, all the authority of the New Testament, as if by a certain blindness of Jewish unbelief. And therefore they are to be thought not even to have known the majesty of the Son of God himself, because they have rejected the sacrament of the Mediator, by which the Father wished him to become known to the Gentiles. But those others, who contend that he was not born from the Father before any beginning, but was born in time from the virgin's childbirth, have not learned that he is the Creator of all, nor that he is the Lord consimilar in omnipotence and majesty to the Father. For how will he be thought to have made all things, before whose birth it is certain that everything existed? Or how is his divinity to be professed, when, before he was born, each and every thing was made?

How is His divinity believed to be perpetual, when it is proclaimed to have been brought about in time, not always as the Father’s? Therefore these also in a certain way deny the mystery of the Mediator of the consequent things by necessity; because they do not proclaim Christ as God and man, not from eternity and time, not from power and from weakness, not from the Father before all things a Son like the Father and from the mother among all things a true, not an imaginary, son of man, born in the open, not through verisimilitude. Hence it comes about that they are not even to be thought to know God in the flesh, whom they do not think to have been born from the Father before the assumption of flesh. You see therefore in what manner among these, although with differing means, yet the same beginning, the same outcome of error is taught. We, on the contrary, defend each nativity in such a way that we do not remove either by the affirmation of the other: for we neither condemn the temporal by the perpetuity of that first one, nor do we confine the eternal by the brevity of this temporal one; knowing the inseparable offspring of the true God, and the most true flesh of this true offspring afterwards; not then confessing that the divinity of Christ began when the virgin conceived; nor that the flesh then began, when that monad, without an interval of intermediate time, in a certain ineffable birth, begot a monad differing in nothing except that it is taught to be a monad. The voluntary weakness of Christ did not horrify His omnipotent majesty, nor did bodily weakness extinguish omnipotence.

I know that the divinity of the Son of God descended into the lower regions by the property of the flesh; I know that the flesh ascended to heaven by the merit of the divinity. It is not a property of God that He felt hunger; but it is a property of God that He satisfied many thousands of men with not a few loaves. It is not a property of the flesh that He walked with dry feet over the roaring waves; but it is a property of the flesh that He endured spitting, slaps, and scourges. Yet one and the same Christ it is, who both so often suffered injuries and, when cast into the deep, did not sink. By this agreement in the Mediator of God and men, we confess the divinity affected by the injury of the assumed body, just as we know the flesh glorified by the majesty of the divinity. Therefore Christ died, who also rose again; yet not both from one, but each from its own, yet in each He Himself, perfect, accomplished both, while one and inseparable He completed such diverse things: with one He tasted death, with the other He raised the dead; and thus He, the true Mediator of both, showed Himself God and man, neither with a doubled person nor with a confused substance. The Son of God entered the virgin’s womb, that He might be born again, though already begotten before; He took up the whole man, who already had from the Father the most full divinity. Not unlike the parent, when He was born from the eternal as perpetual; not unlike a man, when He is born from a mother as about to die. Yet the same both eternal in His own, and about to die in ours; while He contains both from Himself, and loses neither from the other.

Thus, from God and man, Christ was born not imperfect, but most full in diverse property, just as each human being is taught to be perfect from soul and body. The body is not one person, the soul another: although the soul is one thing and the body another, yet one and the same man is taught to be both body and soul. Again, body and soul are not one and the same thing, because from both, one man is made. For these do not confuse substance in the unity of person, nor do they double the person by diversity of substance, since one from these is known to have existed as man. They do not lose their own properties: but because they have come together into one and inseparable, from their own properties they seem to have become common. The mind is affected in the body by the body's pains, the body is wearied by the mind's thoughts: and yet one of these is proper to the body, the other to the mind; which, when it happens to one man, seems common to both body and mind. Thus after the birth from the virgin, there was not one person of God and another of man, but the same Christ was son of God and son of man. And just as in one man the soul is one thing, the body another: so in the Mediator of God and men, the Son of God was one thing, the son of man another; yet one Christ the Lord was from both. One thing, I say, for distinction of substance: not one person, for unity of person.

CHAPTER XII. — FEL. In the preceding, you indeed compelled me to believe in the nativity of Christ from his mother, while preserving his perpetuity. But because things extorted by the force of speech against reason cannot be continuous in us, therefore, when I look back with careful attention to my own proposition, I do not yet seem to myself to have found in what you have said what I seek. For I do not know how you teach that he was born in time, whom you say was already coeternal with the Father. For to be born is like a certain motion of a thing not existing before it is born, which by the benefit of nativity brings it about that it exists. From this it is gathered that Christ, who existed, could not have been born; if he could be born, he did not exist. AUG. You compel us to an inquiry into incomprehensible things by a new curiosity of questioning; and therefore it can only be explained by certain outlines of examples what you seek. Allow me, then, to bring forward for the sake of affirmation a matter from another question: and since I now put it forward not for its own sake of belief, but for the demonstration of another, do not cast me into explaining what I believe in it; but think that I believe it for the present in such a way that you can more easily understand what I will say. Let us imagine, then, as many wish, that there is in the world a general soul, which by an ineffable motion so gives life to all seeds that it is not concreted with the things born, but itself bestows life to those to be born.

Certainly, when this [soul] has arrived in the passible womb to form matter for its own uses, it makes itself one person with that thing which it is agreed does not have the same substance: and, by the working soul and the suffering matter, one human being is made from two substances, although the soul is taught to be one thing, the flesh another. And thus we confess that the soul is born from the womb, although we say that it, coming to the womb, conferred life upon the conceived child. It is said to be born, I say, from the mother, because from her it fitted for itself a body in which it could be born: not because, before it was born, as far as it itself is concerned, it had not existed at all. And here, if you, as a contemplator of everyday speech, attend to the force of words, we set forth contraries, we preach things that are mutually opposed: yet in these it is agreed that what we say is true. We know that the soul is born from the mother's womb together with the body: but we also see that the soul is proclaimed as prior to the mother. In the child, the mother gives birth to the soul: but yet even in the mother herself, it is only the soul that lives, without which she herself cannot even be what gave birth. Therefore, if the origin of the living being's power...

Let us inquire: the soul is prior to the mother, and from this same mother it is seen to be born again together with the offspring. The soul, I say, is prior, through which the mother is animated; the mother is prior, through which the soul is seen to be born in the son. But the mother does not turn the soul into flesh, nor does she change flesh into soul; rather, the Creator of flesh and soul and of the whole man presented animated flesh from the mother’s womb, He who, through the dispensation of analogy joining diverse things in one and the same man, both joined each with an indissoluble unity and confounded neither by the participation of the other. Thus, therefore—indeed, far more incomprehensibly and sublimely—was the Son of God born by the assumption of a perfect man from a mother, He who is, by His singular omnipotence, not only the capacity but also the cause of being born for all who are begotten. According to the man, I say, God was born of a virgin, in the same manner in which the soul is taught to be born with the body: not because there is one substance of both, but because from both is made one person; not that the body is one thing and the soul another, but that one man is body and soul. Thus, after the birth from the Virgin, the Son of God is not one and the son of man another, but the same Christ is the son of God and of man. And thus, just as in one man the body is one thing and the soul another, so in the one Mediator the son of God is one thing and the son of man another; but yet it is the same and not another who is the son of God and the son of man, although he is the son of God on account of one thing and the son of man on account of another.

We do not say that the Son of God began from the beginning of the flesh, lest anyone believe the divinity to be temporal; we do not know the flesh of the Son of God as eternal, lest we think that He assumed not the truth of a human body but some kind of image. For neither does the truth of the flesh consume the majesty of the Son of God, nor does the immensity of the divinity consume the truth of the flesh, while one shines with its own powers, the other is taught by our infirmities. But one and the same inseparable Christ is both humbled in what is assumed and glorified in what is His own, since He does not disdain to be affected by injuries and yet preserves equality with the Father. Therefore Mary gave birth, and did not give birth, to the Son of God: she gave birth when Christ was born from her according to the flesh; she did not give birth when the Son existed from the Father from the beginning; she gave birth when from her the Word became flesh, so that He might dwell among us (John 1:14); she did not give birth when in the beginning was God the Word, which provided origin to all things. Do not, therefore, determine the origin of God the Word by the virgin’s childbirth: do not say that the body born of the virgin is coeternal with the divinity; for the Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus (1 Tim. 2:5), is coeternal with the Father in the first birth, a participant in our time in the second; in the former He is the author of time, in the latter He is a partaker of age.

CHAPTER XIII. — FEL. Since you have treated the mystery of the Mediator with clear reasoning, and sufficiently for anyone to believe, I therefore ask that you command me to be instructed on what is to be thought also concerning the soul of Christ. For it has always been handed down by our ancestors that the body of Christ was animated by the very habit of the Son of God, in place of a common soul; nor was it in need of the addition of a vital spirit, since the source of life dwelling in it could confer upon it that by which it lived. AUG. We could indeed teach what is prescribed in this question by the definition of Catholic authority, with the testimonies of the divine volumes; but since now it has pleased us to discuss everything by reason alone, not by the indication of books, therefore, reserving the monuments of Scripture for another time, as was done above, so also we will treat the inquiry concerning the soul. That this may be done more easily, let us briefly inquire, with only one passage from the Apostle subjoined, what was the cause for our Savior of taking on a man: having found this, we will pass without any difficulty also to those things which are consequent upon this preceding one. From the beginning, therefore, God made man from body and soul: who, having transgressed the precepts of the law, after the usurpation of the forbidden tree, received in a certain way the sentence of capital punishment.

Here he could return to that state from which he fell only by the grace of his author, reformed, as it were, by a kind of right of postliminy: just as one who has cast himself from a height into a precipice by his own will had it in his power to do what he did, but it is certain that what falls is no longer subject to his own choice. Thus he rises by another’s benefit who fell by his own fault. Nor, therefore, is he to be said to have fallen by his own act because he is known to rise by another’s; nor, on that account, to have risen by his own act because it is certain he did not fall by another’s. But of this elsewhere; now let us return to the point. The venerable Paul says, therefore, that Christ was born according to the flesh for this reason: that just as through one man sin entered this world, and through sin death, and so it passed into all men, in whom all sinned. And a little later: But not as the transgression, so also the grace. For if by the transgression of one many have died, much more has the grace of God and the gift in the grace of one man, Jesus Christ, abounded to many. And not as through one sin, so also the gift. For judgment from one leads to condemnation, but grace from many transgressions leads to justification. For if by the transgression of one death reigned through one, much more shall we, receiving an abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness, reign in life through one, Jesus Christ. Therefore, as through the transgression of one all men are led into condemnation, so through the righteousness of one all men are led into justification of life.

Just as through the disobedience of one man many were constituted sinners, so also through the obedience of one many are constituted just (Rom. 5:12, 15-19). Therefore Christ came to save what had perished (Luke 19:10). Let us first see, then, what it is that perished through the transgression of the first-formed man, and from this we will be able easily to know what the Lord, by coming, was able to save. We must therefore inquire who it was that received the law of the Creator: for without doubt he sinned who despised the commandments; he despised the commandments who committed what was forbidden. But Scripture says: The Lord commanded Adam, saying, "From every tree that is in paradise you shall eat, but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat; on the day you eat of it, you shall die the death" (Gen. 2:16). Let us now ask whether the whole man received this law. For if, as is contained in the book of Genesis, he received it already perfect in body and soul, then by transgressing he sinned as a whole; and if he sinned as a whole by transgressing, then as a whole he perished at that time by the fault of his sin. If, however, he perished as a whole, then as a whole he stood in need of the benefit of the Savior; and if he stood in need of the benefit of the Savior as a whole, then Christ, by coming, saved the whole; and if by coming he saved the whole, he assumed not a body without a soul, but body and soul, of which the whole man consists, and by which he seems previously to have sinned.

For if, with the whole man sinning, Christ assumed only his flesh, the soul of that first transgression would remain condemned even now without any hope. But if this is so, I do not know what the person of the Mediator has conferred upon us, who, not redeeming our better part in its entirety, took up brute flesh by itself, and that which without a soul could not even feel his benefit. Yet I would wish to ask such preachers why, having taken flesh, the dispensation of the Mediator omitted the soul: unless perhaps, knowing it to be innocent, he did not believe it needed healing, or, thinking it alien to himself, he did not bestow upon it the benefit of redemption, or, judging it wholly incurable, he was unable to cure it, or, as vile and seeming fit for no uses, he cast it away. Two of these err with the unbelief of a blasphemous spirit against the Creator of the whole man himself. For they believed him first impotent, second not the God of all. For how is he taught to be Omnipotent, if he could not cure the hopeless? Or how is he God of all, if he himself did not make our soul? As for the other two, in one the cause of the soul is unknown, in the other its merit is not measured. Or is he to be thought to understand the cause of the soul, who tries to separate it, instructed by the habit of innate reason for receiving the law, from the sin of voluntary transgression? Or how does he know its nobility, who says it is despised by the vice of ignobility, preferring the flesh, which is known to be fashioned not from the breath of God like the soul, but from the dust of the earth?

But if none of these views about the soul is rightly held, let us believe that our Redeemer assumed the whole man, lest we seem in some way to deprive our soul of its eternal benefit. "But alas!" he says, "Christ assumed only the flesh, he did not seek the soul." Here, if you, as one knowledgeable about things, consider the origin of each, the substance of the soul is more precious; if you consider the guilt of transgression, because of its understanding, the cause is worse. But I know that Christ is both perfect in wisdom and do not doubt that he is most merciful; of these, first he did not despise the better and more capable of prudence, and second he took up that which had been more wounded. For it is not fitting for wisdom to love the more foolish of two equally his own more; nor for perfect mercy not to have helped the more needy. CHAPTER XIV. — FEL. Indeed, everything that you have said not only reasonably but also truly, I confess I have understood in the preceding, and I do not deny that I have approved it: but how the divinity of Christ is said to have experienced death, I do not know. Concerning this, whether you have said something obscurely, or I, due to the slowness of my intellect, have not been able to grasp what was sufficiently said, I do not know.

For I dare not believe that that fountain of life, from which all things have their being, during the three days in which the body lay in the tomb, so far fell from the property of its own nature that, if it may be said, with its senses entombed it lost all motion of vital substance, and for the sake of the redemption of the human race abandoned not only the Father but also all the ornaments of spiritual glory. Alc. Far be it, far be it from the faithful that such a suspicion should arise, that Christ experienced our death in such a way that, as far as in him lay, life lost life. For if this were so, how could we say that anything lived during those three days, if we believe that the fountain of life was lost? Therefore, the divinity of Christ experienced death through participation in the human affection which he had voluntarily undertaken, but it did not lose the power of its own nature, by which it gives life to all things. Thus in the tomb he did not abandon his flesh by dying with it, just as in the womb of the Virgin he formed it by being born with it: and thus in both, to be born and to die, the Lord willed it not compelled by another, but voluntarily, so that it is established that he underwent what he himself did; and therefore he is not not suffering because he himself was doing it; nor is he not doing it because another was not enduring it. For if you consider the mystery of the Lord’s incarnation with the cooperation of the undivided Trinity, in this humility the same one is both author and work: the same author, who is voluntarily born, voluntarily suffers; the same work, because although both are done by no other compelling, yet he alone himself undergoes both.

He made flesh in the mother's womb; you have the author of the work: he himself deigned to be born in her; you have the work of the author: yet it is one person, with the property of each substance preserved, both of the author and of the work. Thus, therefore, he died, with life not departing, just as he suffered, with power not perishing. No one takes his soul from him; because he has the power to lay it down, and the power to take it up again; you have here also the author of the work: he lays down his soul for his friends (John 10:18, 17), you have the work of the author. To conclude with a general definition: whenever Christ in the flesh suffers something, it is the work of the author; but because he undergoes it by his own power, not compelled by another, he himself is the author of the work. Therefore, the divinity did not come to Mary by local motion, but by the manifestation of its ineffable power it filled the mother's womb with the one to be born; and it did not deprive what is wholly of its substance of its fullness. He did not leave the Father when he came to the virgin, everywhere whole, everywhere perfect, because incorporeal simplicity admits no division, and fullness knows no name of part. Therefore, at one and the same time he himself was wholly in hell, wholly in heaven: there suffering the injury of the flesh, here not abandoning the glory of the divinity. He was among the dead for the resurrection of the dead, he was above the heavens for the life of the living. Truly dead, truly alive: in him the assumption of mortality received death, and the divinity preserved did not lose life.

Whenever, therefore, you consider those things which were humbly endured by Christ, recognize the author himself of the voluntary passion. Thus it will come about that, while humility is ascribed to the one suffering, power to the one acting, the same Christ is taught at one and the same time to suffer as weak and to act as omnipotent. But lest you believe that we accept some insensibility in the death of the Son of God, it is not untimely to investigate what has been perceived concerning death: in which, without doubt, the body is abandoned, but our life did not perish; for the departing soul does not lose its own power, but leaves behind that which it had animated, and, as far as it is concerned, causes the death of another, while itself not receiving death. It causes it, I say, not by giving life to what it deserts, not by losing what lives. Therefore, the death of a man is nothing other than the setting of the flesh: from which, when the power of the life-giving force has departed, it returns to the earth from which it was taken, having lost the senses which it did not possess through itself. But, you say, death is the opposite of life. I admit it: but not from that class of opposites which destroy each other by the opposition of existing substance; but rather from that class which, when they befall something, cannot indeed exist simultaneously, but are generated by the habit and privation of one substance only. Just as, for example, we teach night and day: for these too are taught to be opposites of the same kind, since they seem to be the substance not of both, but of one only.

Behold, we say that it is day when the sun is above the earth; but the sun is understood to be a substance. When, after completing its daily course, it has withdrawn from the contemplation of human sight, it immediately makes night by withdrawing. It makes night, I say, by subtracting the abundance of light, not by receiving the substance of night into itself. Thus one substance of light appears both to make day and to make night, but not in the same way. For it makes day when it comes, and it makes night when it departs. Hence we often refute the not merely irreligious but also foolish division of the Manichaeans, by which they strive to separate good from evil as equally existing substances: by showing them the greater luminary by which we know day is made, and compelling them likewise to teach us what, if it is permissible to say, would be the greater darkness by which we would believe night is substantially made. But more on these matters elsewhere, who through the folly of their blasphemous dogma affirm common things either as existing when they do not exist, or as consequences instead of principles, or as contraries. If anyone not deprived of the eyes of faith examines these things, he confutes all their contrivances with easy reasoning. Therefore, as we had begun to say, the soul no differently than the sun bestows life upon the flesh when it comes, and brings about death when it departs.

Lest anyone think it is consumed by the death of the body, let him hear what the Lord in the Gospels defines on this matter with general authority: "Do not fear," He says, "those who kill the body, for they cannot kill the soul; but rather fear him who can kill both soul and body in the gehenna of fire" (Matthew 10:28). Therefore, the body is said to be killed while the soul survives, and consequently it is not necessarily the case that souls are destroyed by the destruction of bodies. If this is so, then even after the death of the body, minds nonetheless continue to live. And if this is rightly understood concerning each one of us, how is it claimed that the fountain of life, by reason of participation in human death, lost its power to give life? But you may say, "The soul and body can be killed in the gehenna of fire." This does not work against us, first, because that death seems to be not of nature but of crime. For when guilt is removed, we are commanded not to fear men, who, though they can kill the body, are nevertheless said to be unable to kill the soul. Next, because this is said to be possible only for God, of whom we believe that His only-begotten Son, by communion of nature and equality of power, has merited this. Therefore, the Savior took on the condition of our death, but not so as to make it worse, since He allowed it to dominate the soul contrary to its usual way; but rather so that He might prove that it in no way harms the soul, as is the case for all the righteous, and for life itself.

CHAPTER XV. — But let us suppose, even though the Gospels cry out against it, that souls perish: is there not in our Savior, although He does not repel death in these matters, a third and special majesty, which human death could not touch? In sum, let us see what He promised while placed on the cross. "Today," He says, "you will be with me in paradise" (Luke 23:43). "Today," He says, not after three days, when I will raise my flesh from the rest of the tomb; not when I will show in myself the firstfruits of the future resurrection. Whose voice do we think this is of majesty? Of the mind or of the body? But no one is ignorant that the body was in the tomb; it remains that this voice belongs to the divinity or the mind. But someone says: We believe this is the voice of the divinity, not of Christ's soul. And what do we receive in the one to whom the promise was made? "Today," He says to the thief, "you will be with me in paradise," whose body common death confined until the future resurrection. Therefore, it is the soul to which the Lord promised and granted this. If, then, when the body is dead, the soul is soon called to paradise, do we believe that anyone is still so impious as to dare say that the soul of our Savior was consigned to custody among the dead during that three-day period of bodily death? And who, you ask, is the other who, at the onset of the Passion, like Christ groaned, saying, "My soul is sad unto death" (Matthew 26:38)? Sad unto death, on account of the affection of the assumed flesh; not after death, when the fellowship of the deity promises blessedness.

This death is not the beginning of sorrow, but its end: nor do the scourges of the righteous begin after this, but cease; when they also cast off the impediments of fluctuating matter, and already grasp their author by the contemplation of a fuller understanding. CHAPTER XVI. — Therefore, you say, did the Son of God not suffer death even in the soul, and not feel it in the majesty? What then were you saying that He suffered? He felt it indeed and suffered it; but by participation in some disease, not by the property of His own wound. He felt it as all feel who live in their minds when the flesh is dying: not as the impious, who, as the same author says, are destroyed in both by the fires of Gehenna. Some indeed define common death even on this condition, saying that it is nothing other than when, from the consent of diverse things making life, a dissension has been brought about, as if by a certain separation from each other. If this is the death of a man, which does not consume what is joined but divides it, while restoring each to its origin; what shall we now say about the soul of the Savior, which—not to mention because of the indwelling divinity, and because of its singular righteousness, but certainly because of the common lot of dying—could so desert that body for three days that it itself could not utterly perish?

CHAPTER XVII. — Therefore, you say, the soul of Christ was not in the underworld, nor was the divinity. It was, I say: nor do I see how He could otherwise have resurrected His own flesh, if I were to proclaim that the power of God, as though absent, was not in the underworld. Yet let no one believe that I am thereby proclaiming a local presence of God, concerning whom we say these things for the sake of manifesting a certain work, because He was somewhere who was not absent everywhere. He lay dead in the tomb as far as the flesh was concerned, raising the dead in the underworld, bestowing life upon all in heaven: He did not abandon the world when He ascended to the heavens, nor did He desert heaven when He came to earth, but at one and the same time He filled the whole entirely, who, by appearing more fully in some places through the manifestation of His works, denied the recognition of His presence to the unworthy, but did not procure the absence of His immense divinity. CHAPTER XVIII. — Do you wish to know what I think about this death of the Mediator? This is entirely the opinion, which has been scattered by the necessity of the questions that have arisen incidentally in the preceding sections, by which I believe that the Son of God died, not according to the penalty of injustice which He did not have at all, but according to the law of nature which He undertook for the redemption of the human race: that death of which it is said, "Who is the man who will live and not see death?" (Ps. 88:49), not that of which Isaiah says, "But the dead will not see life" (Isa. 66). That death which is general to all according to nature, not that which is special to the wicked. Let us therefore consider.

in this to be in some way the life and power of a seed, by which the soul restores souls; and the flesh of all of us, with judgment impending, He will raise up our flesh: while through the operation of His own divinity, giving life to all things, from the one grain of the man He assumed, He is about to render to the Father an innumerable harvest. Then He will separate the wheat from the tares (Matt. 13:30), when He begins to give to the just their reward.