Sententia Ad Corinthios Primae

To the Corinthians, First. I. And God chose the ignoble and contemptible things of the world, etc. II. For if they had known, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory. III. Likewise on the same subject. IV. For the Spirit examines everything, even the depths of God. V. Thus also, no one has known the things of God except the Spirit of God. VI. Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwells in you? VII. For indeed our Passover is Christ, who was sacrificed. VIII. When I was not without the law of God, but was within the law of Christ. IX. But the head of Christ is God. A. For it is necessary that heresies exist, etc. XI. Likewise on the same subject. XII. God, who works all things in all. XIII. But all these things are worked by one and the same Spirit, distributing to each as he wills. XIV. When he has delivered the kingdom to God the Father. XV. But when all things have been subjected to him, etc. XVI. The first man, earthly from the earth; the second, heavenly from heaven.

XVII. Likewise on the same subject. (From a sermon on the ordination of a bishop.) The cause of birth does not pertain to the testimony of teaching; nor did Peter, the gatekeeper of the heavens, whom the despised nets made a fisher of men (Matt. 4:15), please by the origin of his birth, but by the end of his merits; just as Matthew (9:9), when he was taken from the toll booth, began his profit there where he was ordered to end his business. Why do I speak of individuals? Such was the assumption of all, in whose persons (1 Cor. 1:28) God, choosing the ignoble and contemptible things of the world, set the poor in spirit over the rich in wealth, approving as truly and fully most wealthy the one who had arrived at true and complete nobility not by taking up goods, but by laying down the burdens of crimes. II. (From the books Against the Phantom.) For they do not wish that we pray to the one who was crucified, etc., as in the letter (col. 212, a), up to let us not pray in heaven. And soon (col. 215, c), Come rather, holy prophet Isaiah, etc., up to what we suffer as evil in the body, Christ endured.

III. (From the books Against the Arians.) The Lord of majesty is said to have been crucified, although if you consider the property of the distinct substance, the divine sublimity, separated from all the insults of the cross, only the humility of the assumed body experienced the passion. For after God in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, was united to the creature he assumed, man is often signified by God, and God by man, as in that passage: "When the Son of man comes in his majesty" (Matt. 25:31), since no one doubts that majesty befits God rather than man; which the Psalmist also, expounding on God, says: "And you will see him in his majesty." And the prophet Malachi, called Angelus for the clarity of his words, concerning the passion of the Lord on the cross: "If a man affixes his God," he says, "because you affix me" (Mal. 3:8). Although, as no one will deny, it was not God, but a man, who was affixed.

IV. (From a sermon on the creed.) Hear what truth says: No one knows the Son except the Father, nor does anyone know the Father except the Son (Matthew 11:27). And if no one attains this knowledge in this world, whence does the Arian assume a measure in the division of the substance itself? If only the Father knows the Son, only the Son the Father, whence does a blind guide understand the greater or the lesser? Or perhaps he answers: if the Divinity alone reserves the secret of this knowledge, whence have you known the Son to be equal to the Father? But I say: the Son speaks of fatherhood, the creature testifies to omnipotence; concerning the innermost of the substance, however, if no one knows the Son except the Father, nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, where the knowledge is equal in alternating counsel, the nature is without doubt one in the perfection of the substance. For neither is greater or lesser he who is known neither less nor more. What now shall we say about the Holy Spirit, whom we are commanded to believe in the subsequent part of the creed in the Trinity? For if this knowledge confers the Father and the Son upon each other, the Holy Spirit will not be alien to it, concerning whom it is written that the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God (1 Corinthians 2:10). Therefore, not only the Father and the Son know each other, but they know their Spirit; to whom nothing at all is hidden, because nothing is known in truth without him. Wherefore the knowledge is as the cooperation of the Trinity.

For after this mystery of the divine generation, if we consider in Christ the human aspects—that which we celebrate, that a Virgin gave birth—the Father sent, the Son came, the Holy Spirit infused. Therefore, even in humility, the clarity of equality is not hidden by any diminishment. (From the books against the Arians.) But God has revealed to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit examines all things, even the depths of God. For what man knows what is in a man, except the man's own spirit which is in him? Thus, no one knows what is in God, except the Spirit of God (Ibid., 10, 11). I humbly ask that you, as arbiters enlightened by God, judge this passage; and consider whether the Holy Spirit is equal to the Father or the Son, from the very profundity of His knowledge. No one knows the Son except the Father, nor does anyone know the Father except the Son. But because neither the Father nor the Son knows anything without the Spirit, therefore no one knows what is in God except the Spirit of God; because the Spirit cannot know anything without the Father or the Son. What does it mean, "no one knows except the Father," "no one except the Son," "no one except the Holy Spirit," if not that in the Trinity we can find nothing apart from unity? We read elsewhere, "He who does not have the Son does not have the Father" (1 John 2:23). And likewise in another place, "If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His" (Romans 8:9). Since that which cannot be had except as a whole simultaneously, how can it be divided?

VI. (From a sermon on Pentecost.) Do you not know that you are a temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you (1 Cor. 3:16)? Behold, then, the Spirit is God, if He dwells in a temple, which no one inhabits except God. Whence He says, Your members are in you a temple of the Holy Spirit, whom you have from God (1 Cor. 6:19). Therefore, if you have God from God, and you are a temple of God, and your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit; wherever the Spirit has not been received, God is not grasped. Hence, when we say such things, let not those be angry with us whom we are trying to persuade concerning the Holy Spirit: because unless God is believed, I know not what is said about the present feast, or what honor the heretic pays to His coming, whom, as far as he himself is concerned, he even bows down with the name of servitude: since, although if the Son has freed you, then you are truly free (John 8:36), yet where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty (2 Cor. 3:17).

VII. (From a sermon on the Feast of the Chalice.) The impiety of the rebellious Jews is punished by such a rite of superstition that they eat a corruptible animal, that is, a lamb, with veneration, while they scorn the food of the true and immaculate Lamb with the most dangerous hunger. Hence they think they are celebrating the sacrament of the Passover, of which today the whole Church takes the beginning, understands the mystery, and desires the reward, which the Lord’s word clearly suggests to his disciples, saying: “You know that after two days the Passover will happen” (Matt. 26:2)? It means one thing, “will be” or “will be celebrated,” but another thing, “the Passover will happen.” Therefore let the Jew count for me, from the exodus of Israel up to now, as many years as he wishes: yet the first Passover will still happen after two days, when, fulfilling the past figures, as the Apostle says, “our Passover, Christ, was sacrificed” (1 Cor. 5:7). VIII. (From the books Against the Phantom.) What could be clearer than that saying of the Apostle, etc., as in the letter (col. 206, r), up to “who had given the law in the commandment.

IX. From a sermon on Jonah. "The sea," he says, "covered my head" (Jonah 2:6). Nor did he say this in vain concerning only the head, whom the sea had undoubtedly enveloped on every side; but the contempt of the world concealed the Lord of heaven. The head of man is Christ, but the head of Christ is God (1 Cor. 11:3). My humility veiled my glory, and God (2 Cor. 5:19), who as the head was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, could not be perceived by those who had joined the man to the gibbet. (From a sermon on the Rogations.) The action of the present age, with the outcomes of causes delayed, is confused by the perversity of all works; it is not time, but the cause of judgment. Grant, moreover, in the present an evident distinction between good and evil, and what remains for examination? Grant that here it is permitted to no one to do evil; what more will eternity have? Grant that here no one deviates from the faith, and how is it fitting that heresies exist (1 Cor. 11:19)? For we cannot dissemble that what truth proclaims must be, must be. It is indeed necessary that heresy exist, not because Christ is diminished by its fabrications, but because the Christian is increased by its snares. Thus also, besides fornication which alone sins against its own body, other evils: if you do not clothe the naked, if you punish the innocent, if you plunder your neighbor, if you take the tunic from one ready to yield even the cloak, if you strike the right hand even of the left hand offering, if you direct the burdened man for a thousand paces, and for another two, one meditating service.

Or why should I dwell longer on the kinds of violence? In every dominion, the pride of the stronger has a temporal fruit of commanding, but the innocence of the suffering has an eternal one. XI. (From the books Against the Arians.) The Apostle says that heresies must be (1 Cor. 11:19). But it is necessary, not that heretics be what they are, but that Catholics endure what they are not. Just as the Lord said of the traitor Judas, that it had been good for that man not to have been born (Matt. 26:24). For he says this to him because his being born was evil for him who betrayed, but good for us, to whom salvation came through the betrayal. XII. (From the books Against the Arians.) When angels had appeared on earth, they cried out: "Glory to God in the highest" (Luke 2:14). If the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are in the highest, we rightly say, "Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit"; nor can we give glory and honor to the Father without the Son, since He Himself commands in the Gospel that all should honor the Son just as they honor the Father (John 5:23). And the Apostle says that no one honors the Lord Jesus except in the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 12:3).

XIII. (From the letters Against the Arians.) Concerning the divinity of the Holy Spirit, whom we read is neither made, nor begotten, nor created, the Apostle says: God, who works all things in all (1 Cor. 12:6). And in the same place: But all these things one and the same Spirit works, distributing to each as he wills (1 Cor. 12:11). And Peter in the Acts of the Apostles: What is fitting, he says, for you to lie to the Holy Spirit (Acts 5:3-4)? And later: You have not lied to men, but to God. Likewise in another place: Do you not know that you are a temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwells in you (1 Cor. 3:16)? And elsewhere: If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not his (Rom. 8:9). XIV. (From a sermon on the Ascension of Elijah.) And if the gifts are many, nevertheless all these things one and the same Spirit works, distributing to each as he wills (1 Cor. 12:11). Neither lesser in the fewer, nor greater in the more numerous; through whom, even if one receives less than another, let him understand that the gift itself can be diminished rather than the giver.

XV. (From the books Against the Arians.) Because I had set down from the Gospel: “All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Matt. 28:18), in order to show that that power, which he said was given to him, had always been safe in the nature of his divinity, I recalled that apostolic saying which was spoken concerning the Son: “When he has delivered the kingdom to God the Father” (1 Cor. 15:24), since indeed the Father could at no time have been without a kingdom: nor is the Father, who gave power to the Son, therefore greater, when the Son himself is said to be about to deliver the kingdom to the Father. For where someone confers something as a benefit, the giver is rightly considered greater than the recipient. In the divinity, however, from which what is ineffably given to the Son is not grace but nature, the equality of giver and recipient remains. XVI. (From the books Against the Arians.) But when all things have been subjected to him, then also the Son himself will be subjected to him who subjected all things to himself, so that God may be all things in all (1 Cor. 15:28). The Apostle set this down from the example of the eighth psalm. For thus it is written: “You have made him a little less than the angels; you have subjected all things under his feet” (Ps. 8:8). Therefore, he subjects all things to the feet of him whom he made a little less than the angels. Nor is it surprising that he is said to be lesser in that creature in which even angelic blessedness was greater.

XVII. (From the books Against the Phantasm.) He alone of man’s condition etc., as in letter I (col. 207, a), up to which he had undertaken, to descend into the infernal regions. XVIII. (From the books Against the Arians.) The Apostle Paul, in his letter to the Galatians, designating the inseparability of the persons, says that the one whom God sent as His Son was born of a woman; just as in another place he says: “The first man is of the earth, earthly; the second, of heaven, heavenly” (1 Cor. 15:47); since the one and the same mediator is from heaven as God, and from earth as man; who, born from the womb of the Virgin, before he ascended into the heavens, was fittingly called heavenly, because, mingled with the height of his heavenly substance, he became the Lord of heaven.