De immutabilitate traditionis contra modernam haeresim evolutionismi

St Thomas says in the prologue of the little work contra errores Graecorum: « Errors that have arisen concerning the faith have given the holy doctors of the Church occasion to hand down the things of faith with greater circumspection, in order to eliminate the errors that have arisen; as is evident, the holy doctors who lived before the error of Arius did not speak so expressly of the unity of the divine essence as the doctors who followed; and the same happens in other errors, which appears expressly not only in different doctors but in one eminent doctor, Augustine. For in the books he published after the Pelagian heresy arose, he spoke more cautiously of the power of free will than in the books he published before the rise of that heresy, in which, defending the freedom of the will against the Manichees, he brought forward certain things which the Pelagians, adversaries of divine grace, took up in defence of their error. And therefore it is not surprising if modern doctors of the faith, after various errors have arisen, speak more cautiously and, as it were, more refinedly about the doctrine of faith, in order to avoid every heresy. Hence if anything is found in the sayings of the ancient doctors which is not said with as much caution as is observed by the moderns, such things are not to be despised or rejected, nor indeed ought they to be extended, but reverently explained ». Thus the Angelic Doctor in the cited passage, who had taken this doctrine, as he is wont, from Augustine himself: « We have learned, he says, in de dono persev. n. 53, that each heresy brought into the Church its own questions, against which divine Scripture would be defended more diligently than if no such necessity compelled. » And elsewhere the same Augustine notes that one ought not to look for so exact a manner of speaking in the Fathers who wrote before the heresies were born as in those who came afterwards: both because, not yet assailed by any question, and thinking that in the Catholic Church they were understood in a good sense, they spoke more securely¹; and because, touching briefly and in passing on matters not yet discussed, they lingered rather on the things they were then disputing against the enemies of the Church, and also in the exhortations to the various virtues by which God is served for obtaining true happiness². And this too is the common response, not only of theologians, but also of Athanasius, Jerome, Vincent of Lérins, and others. This is the rule in theology, and the solution of difficulties concerning tradition, whose doctrine is indeed always the same, but not always clear and expressed in the same way. For it receives in the course of time, as Vincent of Lérins says, evidence, light, distinction or precision, and that principally on the occasion of heresies newly arising. For the heresies themselves are those which create the most pressing necessity of scrutinizing the dogmas, of unfolding the concepts of which they consist, of distinctly proposing the notes that are to be discerned in them, of separating the modes of understanding and signifying from the things themselves understood and signified, of finding also suitable terms by which the highest things may be fittingly expressed — in a word, of perfecting all that pertains to theological explanation, and these can be obtained only by the most laborious and studious inquiry³.

For it is evident that one thing is that simple notion of the dogmas which is also retained by simple faith, and another the unfolded, polished, refined notion which the theologian seeks for the understanding of the faith. It is evident also that in theological speculation there is always something that creates the difficulty and something that creates the solution of the difficulty. Whence it had to happen that, before the laborious study which individual heresies provoked and made necessary in each matter, Catholic writers fell into certain ambiguities which are no longer found in later writers⁴. If, for example, the Son of God is God, no less than the Father, the attestations of this perpetual faith are clear in every age. But when one comes to consider that God is from God, God proceeding from the Father, God begotten of God begetting, speech is often confounded. Before the concept of the divine origins has been purified by the twofold way of remotion and excellence, and refined into a distinct notion of subsistent relations, every explanation of the mystery will be maimed and imperfect. Concerning the unbegotten and innascible, they will seem to speak as if this innascibility contained something of greater perfection; concerning divine generation, as if it had an admixture of efficiency, which indeed every act of begetting implies among us; concerning God begotten, as if the begotten one depended on his principle, as among creatures the originated depends on its originator. And this imperfection in the manner of expounding and speaking is not altogether dissolved, except when the necessity of answering the most troublesome questions of heretics reduces minds to more precise modes of speech⁵. The same will also appear in the dogma of the Incarnation. One and the same is the Son of God and the Son of man, Son of God from eternity, Son of man in time, who, remaining what he was, began to be what he was not. This is the bare and simple faith. But when one comes to consider how the humanity was joined — by a union, indeed, that is physical and substantial — to him who pre-existed and remained in the form of God, no easy exposition will occur, since it all depends on unfolded and polished concepts of union in nature, union in person, and the formal differences of each. Wherefore, in that initial state of theological knowledge which preceded the categorical heresies concerning the hypostatic union, especially in view of the difficulty of expressing matters for which there was not yet a settled and fixed terminology, certain things cannot but be found which, to later writers already instructed by the knowledge and solutions of subsequent doctors, will appear ambiguous and, to all appearance, irreconcilable with the faith of the unconfused union of divinity and humanity in the one supposit of the Word⁶. The same again you will see in the dogma of original sin. It is indeed truly and properly called sin, but it is a sin of its own kind, which is not predicated univocally with the sin most known to all. A sin, I say, of nature, not of person; a voluntary sin, not by its own will, but by the will of the sole head of the human race; a sin which passes from the first parent to posterity, but as regards guilt, not as regards act; a sin, finally, which is in a certain way called another's, and in a certain way ours: another's by the propriety of the action, ours by the contagion of propagation. Therefore a newborn child is in one sense innocent and in another sense a sinner; therefore that great sin of Adam passes in some measure to posterity and in some measure does not pass; therefore, lastly, if before the rise of the Pelagian heresy there are patristic passages in which the truth of original sin shines forth, there will also be others where the doctrine will seem to be confounded and in some way obscured⁷. Nor must one speak otherwise about the dogma of grace, because if grace simply precedes the merit of good will, yet the good will of man still precedes many gifts of God, and especially the gift by which we are made and are just: namely, while man himself, by freely assenting and cooperating with the grace that stirs him, must dispose himself for his own justification. And therefore in the sacred writings it is said not only: Convert us, O Lord, to thee, and we shall be converted, but also: Be converted to me, and I will be converted to you.

Accordingly, just as you will find in the writings of the ancient Fathers testimonies where infants are said to be without sin, so you will also find others where it is said that God gives grace to those whom he finds worthy, or prepared to receive it. This indeed is in a certain way true, although it is true that by the help of grace itself they are made worthy, whoever are found worthy. And this last point is not altogether passed over in the doctrine of those same ancients, although it is not set out with that clarity and precision with which, after a diligent examination of the question, Augustine said that the whole is to be attributed to God: « He who both prepares the good will of man to be helped and helps it when prepared. For the good will of man precedes many gifts of God, but not all; and those which it does not precede, in them it is itself also. For both are read in the holy utterances: His mercy will go before me, and: His mercy will follow me. He goes before the unwilling so that he may will; he follows the willing so that he may not will in vain. For why are we admonished to pray for our enemies, who are certainly unwilling to live piously, unless that God may work in them also the will? And again, why are we admonished to ask that we may receive, unless that what we will may be done by him by whom it has been brought about that we will? We pray therefore for our enemies that the mercy of God may go before them as it also went before us; and we pray for ourselves that his mercy may follow us »⁸. And so it is also with the others.

Not therefore from the imperfection of explanations or the ambiguity of certain assertions may one conclude that the more ancient Fathers were, with regard to the dogmas of our religion, of another sense and another view than the later ones. For plainly a different solution presents itself: Either that they had not yet advanced so far in the penetration and intimate understanding of revealed truth as those who wrote on individual matters after the heresies were born; or that, intent on confuting one error, they were not solicitous about the opposite error (for in every dogma one walks between opposing crags, and he easily seems to stumble on one who expends all his care on avoiding the other); or finally, that they sometimes employed modes of speech ambiguous in themselves and less polished without any added declaration, doubting not at all that they would be understood and accepted by their hearers in a Catholic sense. That this solution, moreover, is not only probable and likely, but is in fact uniquely true and firmly to be retained, must now be demonstrated more diligently.

But that we may proceed in a certain order, we must first consider those three states of doctrine enumerated in the thesis, according to which the testimonies and learned works of the Fathers can conveniently be reduced to three categories likewise.

1. The first is what we may call the state of simple faith. This is reported in the first place by the letters or confessions of the most ancient bishops and martyrs, in that golden age in which, still having the first-fruits of the Spirit and, as new wineskins, full of that new wine which was poured out at Pentecost, they did not yet have the most laborious occupation which God gave to the sons of men that they might be occupied in it — namely, disputing and dialecticizing; but from the treasury of their heart they brought forth the ingenuous doctrine which they had received from the apostles. Indeed, Ignatius, as he was going to martyrdom, clearly testified the simple faith concerning the Trinity, when he wrote to the Magnesians, c. 13: « Strive therefore to be confirmed in the doctrines of the Lord and of the apostles, that all things you do may prosper for you in faith and charity in the Son and the Father and the Spirit... Be subject to the bishop and to one another, as Jesus Christ was to the Father according to the flesh, and the apostles to Christ and to the Father and to the Spirit »¹. The same most holy martyr testified the simple faith concerning the Incarnation, epist. to the Ephesians c. 7: « There is one physician, both carnal and spiritual, made and not made, God existing in man, true life in death, both from Mary and from God, first passible and then impassible, Jesus Christ our Lord »². And to Polycarp, c. 3: « Await him who is above time, the timeless one; invisible, for us visible; impalpable, impassible, for us passible, who in every way endured for us »³. The simple faith concerning both mysteries was reported by that last prayer of Polycarp himself, when the pyre had already been kindled: « Lord God almighty, Father of thy beloved and blessed Son Jesus Christ, through whom we have received the knowledge of thee,... I bless thee, because thou hast deemed me worthy this day and this hour to receive a part in the number of thy martyrs, in the cup of thy Christ... Wherefore for all things I praise thee, I bless thee, I glorify thee with the eternal and heavenly Jesus Christ thy beloved Son, with whom to thee and to the Holy Spirit be glory both now and for ages to come. Amen »⁴. And that confession of blessed Epipodius, who, with teeth mingled with blood, uttered these words: « I confess that Christ is God with the Father and the Holy Spirit, and it is fitting that I pour out my soul to him who is both my creator and my redeemer. Nor does it matter by what end the bodily weakness is dissolved, provided that the soul, carried to heaven, returns to its author »⁵.

To this also pertain the passages of the more ancient writers, where it is set forth simply and without amplification what was the preaching of the Church, and what rule of believing was to be held. Such is that passage of Irenaeus, l. 1, c. 10: « The Church, sown throughout the whole world even to the ends of the earth, and having received from the apostles and their disciples that faith which is in one God, the Father almighty, who made heaven and earth, and the sea, and all things that are in them; and in one Jesus Christ, the Son of God, incarnate for our salvation; and in the Holy Spirit, who through the prophets preached the dispensations of God, and the advent, and the generation that is from the Virgin, and the passion..., and that all flesh of the human race is to be raised, so that to Christ Jesus our Lord, and God and Saviour and King, according to the good pleasure of the invisible Father, every knee should bow of things in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth ». Such also is that passage of Gregory Thaumaturgus, in the Exposition of the Faith which he left to his church at his death, and which Nyssen testifies that he read in the autograph itself: « One God, the Father of the living Word, of subsistent wisdom..., perfect begetter of the perfect, Father of the only-begotten Son. One Lord, alone from the alone, the Word accomplishing all things, wisdom comprehending all things, and the power by which the whole creation was able to be made: true Son of the true, and invisible from the invisible, and incorruptible from the incorruptible, and immortal from the immortal, and eternal from the eternal. One Holy Spirit, having his substance from God, the perfect cause of things living, the holiness that bestows sanctification... The perfect Trinity, in majesty and eternity and kingdom is in no way divided or alienated. Therefore neither anything made nor anything servile is in the Trinity, nor anything superinduced.... Nor was the Son ever lacking to the Father, nor the Holy Spirit to the Son, but the same Trinity is ever unchangeable and immutable » ⁶.

In the same category you will still count those testimonies in which the Fathers, before the heresies arose, outside all ardor of disputation and necessity of controversy, not speculating, not glossing, not arguing, not assuming the patronage of some special cause, but discoursing from the sole abundance of a faithful heart, assert a dogma not yet attacked by any negation so ingenuously that it plainly appears that it is not so much they who speak as the native spirit of faith and tradition which speaks in them. Testimonies of this kind concerning the dogma of original sin Augustine brings forward in l. 1 c. Iulianum, n. 5-20. These, afterwards briefly resumed by him in n. 32-33, will serve you as an example: « Saint Irenaeus says that the ancient wound of the serpent is healed by the faith of Christ and the cross, and that by the sin of the first parent we were bound as it were with chains. Saint Cyprian says that a little child perishes unless it has been baptized, although there are remitted to it not its own sins but another's. Saint Reticius says that the sins of the old man, whom we put off through the bath of regeneration, are not only old but inborn. Saint Olympius says that the vice spread from the first parent into the offspring, so that sin is born with man. Saint Hilary says that all flesh is from sin, except that of him who came in the likeness of flesh of sin, without sin. He says that he was born under the origin of sin and under the law of sin, whose voice is: I was conceived in iniquities. Saint Ambrose says that little children who have been baptized are reformed from malice into the beginnings of their nature. He says that in Adam we all die, because through one man sin entered into the world, and his guilt is the death of all. He says that in his wound the whole human race had died, unless that Samaritan, coming down, had healed his grievous wounds. He says that Adam existed, and that all existed in him; that Adam perished, and that all perished in him. He says that we are stained by contagion before we are born, and that human conception is not free from iniquity, because, he says, we are conceived in the sin of our parents, and in their transgressions we are born... Saint Innocentius says to you that by the bath of regeneration every past vice is purged, which came through him who, falling by free will, was plunged into the depths. Saint Gregory (of Nazianzus) says that it would have been better not to have fallen from the tree of life by the most bitter taste of sin, but that we ought to be amended after the fall... He says that by regeneration from water and the Spirit the stains of the first birth are purged, by which we are conceived in iniquities. Saint Basil says that we have contracted the disease of sin, because Eve was unwilling to fast from the forbidden tree.... Finally, the holy bishop John (Chrysostom) says...., he too says that Adam so sinned that great sin as to condemn the whole human race in common. He says that Christ wept at the death of Lazarus because mortality, shaken from its everlasting state, had loved the lower world. He says that Christ found us bound by our ancestral bond which Adam wrote, and by our own subsequent debts. He says that Adam was therefore called the figure of him who was to come, because just as he became the cause of death, which was brought in through food, to those born of himself, although they did not eat of the tree, so Christ became the provider of justice for those who are from him, although they have done nothing just, which he bestowed on all through the cross. He says that it does not seem to have much reason that one should be condemned for another, and yet it was done through Adam; whence he rather persuades us to believe what appears more fitting and reasonable, that one is saved for another, which is fulfilled in Christ, etc. ». These things indeed the more ancient Fathers said concerning original sin, under the sole guidance of the primitive tradition, still running in its native simplicity. But you will also take splendid examples of testimonies of the same kind from those things which Augustine himself left written concerning divine grace, before all theological inquiry, in his first works. Such is that passage of the Confessions, l. 10, c. 29, 31, 37: « O love, who ever burnest and art never extinguished, charity, my God, set me on fire. Thou commandest continence. Give what thou commandest, and command what thou wilt... I hear the voice of my God commanding: Let not your hearts be weighed down with surfeiting and drunkenness. But remember, Lord, that we are dust, and that thou madest man from dust, and he had perished, and was found. Strengthen me that I may be able. Give what thou commandest, and command what thou wilt... We are tempted by these temptations (of human praises) daily, Lord; without ceasing we are tempted. Our daily furnace is the human tongue. Thou commandest us continence also in this kind. Give what thou commandest, and command what thou wilt ». Likewise that passage in l. 2 de Ordine, n. 52, where, addressing his mother Monica, he says: « Let us pray therefore, not that riches may come to us, but that those things may come which make us good and blessed. That these vows may be most devoutly fulfilled, I entrust this business especially to thee, mother, by whose prayers I believe without doubt and affirm that God has given me this mind, that I should prefer nothing at all to the finding of truth, wish nothing else, think nothing else, love nothing else ». But lest it be thought that the prayer itself by which other gifts are obtained from God is from us, and not descending from divine grace: « O God, creator of the universe, he says in l. 1 Soliloq. n. 2, grant me first that I may pray to thee well, then that I may conduct myself as worthy to be heard by thee, and finally that thou mayest set me free ». Certainly, not incited by the ardor of disputation, not preoccupied by some preconceived end, not even instructed by profound theological study, did Augustine say these things, but led by the sole doctrine which he had learned as a neophyte in the Church, and full of the spirit of grace which he had received in baptism, what he simply believed he also simply professed, according to that saying: I believed, and therefore I spoke.

Now he knew that everything by which we are made good is a gift of God, and that faith together with works is a gift of God, making no distinction between first and subsequent things, between beginning and end, but comprehending the very beginning of piety, whose foundation is faith, the very first desire and thought of conversion, and finally the prayer itself through which the rest are obtained. Nevertheless, what difference there is between those simple confessions of simple faith and the books in which afterwards, copiously, clearly, and learnedly, he expounded and defended the same dogma of grace against the rising Pelagian heresy, there is no one who will not see. There, therefore, is a new example of those testimonies which report the simple faith of primitive tradition, prescinding from every explanation or consideration of difficulties⁷.

2. But now the second state of doctrine comes to be considered, in which explanations still imperfect are joined to simple faith. This is especially to be seen in some Fathers of the second and third centuries concerning the dogma of the Trinity, namely when they intended to declare somewhat and expound credibly the most high mystery to pagans or Jews, or when they refuted the Sabellians, who said that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit were one and singular God not only in nature but also in person; and that (which must be carefully noted) before the heresies of Arius and Macedonius arose, which denied the divine nature to the Son and the Holy Spirit and attributed to them a created nature.

Athenagoras in his Legation for the Christians wishes to clear the Christians themselves of the crime of atheism with which they were accused by the pagans, by showing that they are not atheists, « who assert God the Father, and the Son God, and the Holy Spirit, and demonstrate their power in unity and distinction in order »⁸. Behold, you have a simple and pure confession of the Christian faith. But lest anyone should think it ridiculous that God has a Son of his own, or that Christians think of God the Father and the Son as the poets fabled, who introduced gods no better than men, lo, the explanation subjoined: « The Son of God is the Word of the Father in idea and operation; for from him and through him all things were made, while the Father and the Son are one. But since the Father is in the Son, and the Son in the Father, by the unity and power of the Spirit, the Son of God is the mind and word of the Father. But if it occurs to you, according to your supreme intelligence, to inquire what the Son means, I shall say briefly that he is the first offspring of the Father, not because he was made (for God had the Word in himself from eternity, as being rational from eternity), but because he came forth so that he might be the idea and act of all material things which lay like formless nature and inert earth »⁹. In this explanation it is obscure, first, that the Son is called the mind of the Father, and then that he is said to have come forth so as to be the idea and act of that empty and void earth of which Moses speaks in the beginning of Genesis.

Justin, disputing with Trypho the Jew (n. 36), had asserted in most weighty words that Christ is true God, and is called in the old Scripture the Lord of hosts. But after the discourse had turned to other things, Trypho resumes the question (n. 48): « Resuming therefore the discourse at which you stopped, complete it. For it seems to me wonderful indeed, and one that cannot be demonstrated at all. For what you say, that this Christ pre-existed as God before the ages, and then endured to be born and made man, that seems to me not only abhorrent to opinion, but even foolish ». Then Justin answers that this doctrine truly seems abhorrent to opinion to those who are never willing to understand or do the things of God, and he premises that there are two distinct questions: whether Jesus was the true Messiah foretold in the Law, and whether he is true God; for there are some (namely the Ebionites) who confess him as Christ, although they pronounce him a man born of men: « To whom I do not assent, nor would I assent, even if the greatest part (of Christians) which agrees with me said the same. For we have been commanded by Christ to believe not human doctrines, but those which were preached by the blessed prophets and handed down by him ». Behold again a most firm and by no means ambiguous profession of the Catholic faith. But now, in order to expound this truth credibly to a Jewish man, Justin sets about showing that there is another besides the Father, the creator of all things, who is called God in the ancient Scripture, and who foreshadowed the future Incarnation by the theophanies of the Old Testament. He recognizes him in one of the three angels who appeared to Abraham under the oak of Mamre; in that mysterious angel, I say, of whom it is afterwards read: The Lord rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah sulphur and fire from the Lord out of heaven. He sees the same in him who appeared to Jacob, and then to Moses among the flames¹⁰ of the burning bush, testifying of himself: I am who am. Thus shalt thou say to the children of Israel: He who is, sent me to you. Then he concludes, n. 60-61: « He who said to Moses that he was the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob will not be the creator God of the universe, but the same as he who was shown to you to have appeared to Abraham and Jacob, and to minister to the will of the creator of the universe, and by his counsel to have ministered in the judgment of Sodom, so that, even if, as you say, the angel and God were two, no one not altogether deprived of mind would dare to say that the author and parent of the universe, leaving the supercelestial things, was seen in a small part of the earth... By another testimony also from the Scriptures I will demonstrate to you that God, before all created things, begot from himself a certain rational power, which is called both the glory of the Lord by the Holy Spirit, and now Son, now Wisdom, now Angel, now God, now Lord and Word... For it has all these appellations from the fact that it ministers to the will of the Father, and was begotten by the will from the Father... Such is what we see, that from fire another fire is born, without that from which this one is kindled being diminished, etc. » ¹¹. Where it is equally obscure and difficult that Justin says it is absurd if anyone thinks that the unbegotten Father himself appeared in a small part of the earth, and therefore that the apparitions of God must be referred to another person; likewise that the Son ministers to the will of the Father, and was begotten by the will from the Father¹².

The martyr Hippolytus, writing against the heresy of Noetus, which is the same as that of Sabellius, says in c. 8: « It is necessary therefore that, whether he will or not, he confess the Father God almighty, and Christ Jesus the Son of God, God made man to whom the Father subjected all things except himself, and the Holy Spirit, and that these are truly three. But if he wishes to know how one God is demonstrated, let him know that there is one virtue or power of this ». Can what we believe, I ask, be said more expressly? But coming to explanations, Hippolytus says among other things in c. 10: « When God was alone, and had nothing coeternal with himself, he willed to make the world. And thinking and willing and speaking the world, he made it... But of the things that were made, he begot the Word as leader, counsellor, and worker. And when the Word had it in himself, and was invisible to the created world, he made him visible, sending forth the prior voice, and generating light from light, he brought forth for creation itself the Lord, his own sense; and he who before was visible to himself alone, but invisible to the world, he made this one visible, so that the world, seeing him who appeared, might be able to be saved ». And below, c. 14: « If the Word was with God, and was God, what then? Will anyone say that John says two Gods? Two Gods indeed I will not say, but one, and two persons... The economy of consent is reduced to one God. For there is one God who commands, the Father. He who obeys, the Son. He who teaches knowledge, the Holy Spirit. The Father who is above all, the Son through all, the Holy Spirit in all. Otherwise we cannot understand one God, unless we truly believe in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit » ¹³. Where again it is obscure what is said about the generation of the Word made visible in the creation of the world; difficult, what is added about the Father who commands and the Son who obeys. — Still more difficult perhaps might seem the things which Dionysius of Alexandria wrote against the same Sabellians; whose refutation is to be found in the fragments that survive of the apology sent by the same Dionysius to Pope Dionysius¹⁴. Nevertheless, since in it the holy bishop clearly clears himself of the errors objected, far from a new difficulty being added in this part, help is rather supplied, whence the others are washed away. And the Benedictine editors rightly note that this apology of Dionysius is of greater moment in that it is an example to us of what the other Fathers before the Council of Nicaea would have done, to whom certain things fell out that were in appearance akin to Arian impiety, if a similar necessity had compelled them to explain their mind more openly.

These things therefore will exhibit to you a kind of specimen of that state in which the explanations of dogmas were still imperfect, that is, the manner of expounding and speaking was not yet so precise, because the heresies had not yet arisen against which afterwards, with greater clarity of concepts and propriety of terms, the divine truth was defended. For what happened in the dogma of the Trinity, it will be easily understood, with due proportion preserved, happened also in the others. The same in the dogma of the Incarnation, concerning which before Nestorius and Eutyches there are found in the writings of the Fathers modes of speaking which, if they were tested by the strict rigor of dialectic, would imply a distinction of the supposits of God and man, or on the contrary, and more frequently, could provide an occasion for the perverse understanding of a certain mixture of the two natures coalescing into one third¹⁵. The same in the dogma of original sin, in which the Pelagians, its attackers, seemed to themselves to triumph, fortifying themselves with certain sayings of Chrysostom, which Augustine reduces to their legitimate sense in the first book against Julian¹⁶. The same in the dogma of grace, in which Augustine himself, as soon as he began to descend to the theological scrutiny of this matter, confesses ingenuously that he sometimes slipped, not indeed by a settled and fixed view, but as it were by inquiring, opining, examining less accurately¹⁷. The same also in the rest, nor is it necessary to linger longer in bringing forward examples.

3. Now therefore the third state of doctrine remains, to which a third class of testimonies also corresponds: namely the state of precise explanation, in which, to use the words of Vincent of Lérins, what was formerly believed more obscurely is understood more clearly, and posterity rejoices that what ancient times venerated without understanding is now unfolded. This stage, as regards most dogmas, begins with the peace of the Church given by Constantine. For from that time onward there was a great advance of knowledge in the penetration of revealed truths, and it was most conspicuous in the fourth and fifth centuries especially, according as the occasions of rising errors brought. Then in the works of Athanasius, Hilary, Basil, and Nazianzen there is a full treatment of the divine processions; which attains its perfection in the fifteen books of Augustine on the Trinity, that principle now being clearly enunciated which in the most high mystery supplies the key of understanding, as far as the condition of mortals allows: namely, that all things in God are the same where the opposition of relation does not stand in the way. Then shines forth the doctrine concerning the sacraments, grace, original sin, and the new economy of the Gospel in relation to the Old Testament, in the controversies of Augustine with the Donatists, the Pelagians, and the Manichees. Then come forth the Ephesine definitions concerning the hypostatic union, and that splendid letter of Leo the Great to Flavian, where the whole dogma of the Incarnation is expounded so clearly and with such precise terms and formulas.

But neither will it be doubtful to you that the authorities of this later age are absolutely to be preferred. For after the resolutions of the Fathers who fought against the heresies, always to appeal to the more ancient is nothing else than to spread a snare for the simple, so that they may prefer what is more obscure and more confused to what is clearer and more distinct, and what was said in passing to what has been more accurately unfolded. And this snare is known to be more dangerous because it is proposed under the appearance of antiquity. For what is more plausible, and in its depths truer, than to say with Vincent of Lérins that antiquity is to be followed? And who would believe that there is deception in this principle? And yet so it is. Antiquity is to be followed — this indeed is the rule of Vincent of Lérins. But one ought to add that, according to the same Vincent, posterity often speaks more clearly. And this is what the critics are wont to conceal, declining so far from the rule of Catholic understanding as not to fear to say that after controversies have arisen, the Fathers are not so easily to be heard, because the ardor of disputation drove them to say more than they wished. But one must not oppose the manner of speaking of the Fathers before and after disputations with heretics. Each is true, and each profits the Church, while in the first she sees the natural simplicity and wondrous perpetuity of her faith, but in the other she is instructed unto a deeper understanding and a more exact notion of the articles of the same faith. For heresies make doctors more solicitous. Although on the other hand it is also most certain that the Fathers who wrote before the heresies arose have something stronger, because they appear more evidently free from all partisanship¹⁸. Therefore these two modes complete one another, and in different respects each excels the other.

Thus therefore, since the truth of the distribution of the testimonies of tradition into the three classes mentioned above now sufficiently appears, and no difficulty occurs concerning the first and the third, but only concerning that intermediate one which marks the transition from simple faith to explanations either of deeper understanding or of more diligent caution against the novelties of heretics: it is now to be seen what is the legitimate interpretation with regard to those things which in that state of transition seemed to bear the appearance of heterodoxy.

And the whole inquiry will be reduced to two observations. The first and preliminary will be that those passages of the Fathers that now come under consideration can be understood in a plainly orthodox sense. The second and principal, that they not only can but must be taken in that sense, prescinding even from the explicit professions of the authors, if account be taken of the criteria alone that are proper to Catholic tradition.

1. And as to the first, it is not worthwhile to descend to a discussion of individual passages; it will suffice to bring forward an example from those that are the most difficult, and that could offer the better handle for calumny — I mean those testimonies of the ancients concerning the mystery of the Trinity reported above, from which the critics wish to persuade us that those same ancients were ignorant of the consubstantiality of the persons, and that besides the highest and supreme God they acknowledged two other inferior gods, according to the dogma of the pagans! In which exegesis of theirs they perhaps had the causes of their deception in the neglect of the principles of scholastic theology.

Certainly consubstantiality not only does not conflict with the order of origin among the persons, but rather so necessarily coheres with it that, if once several unproceeding persons were thought in God, by that very fact the dogma of one God in three persons would evidently become absurd. On this matter see the treatise On the Trinity, theses 9 and 31, with the prologue to Q. 28. For this reason the Gospel inculcates this very order of origin so insistently and so studiously, employing even formulas that might seem to carnal understanding to be to the detriment of equality — as when it is said of the Son that he can do nothing of himself, and of the Holy Spirit that he will not speak of himself, that whatever he shall hear he shall speak, and other things of the kind. The dogma of the Trinity therefore posits one unproceeding person, from whom is the Son; from whom together with the Son, as from one principle, is the Holy Spirit. For thus and not otherwise are the divine persons distinguished among themselves by the relations of origin alone, and not at all by anything absolute — that is, by the essence or substance, which together with the operative power and the operation itself, both within and without, is one and the same. So too the operation of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit is the same, but it is in the Father with the relation of one communicating, it is in the Son with the relation of one receiving from the Father, it is in the Holy Spirit with the relation of one receiving from both. Now therefore it must be seen whether there have a place there the incriminated expressions of the Father to whom the Son and the Holy Spirit minister in all things (Iren. l. 4, c. 7; Justin, in Tryph. n. 61); of the Father who commands, of the Son who obeys (Hippol. ubi supra); of the Father who makes, of the Son through whom it is made, or of the Father who is the whole substance, of the Son who is the derivation of the whole and a portion (Tertull. in apolog. c. 21, and c. Praxeam c. 9). And that in such expressions there cannot be propriety of words — on that there will surely be no question between us. But we too sometimes say of God things that do not carry with them a greater propriety of terms. For we say that God repents, and that God is angry; nor do we fear to attribute to God hands and arms and eyes. Do we therefore make God corporeal? Do we make him mutable in his counsels, or subject to human passions? Far be it. For if from those expressions there be removed whatever is human, nothing else will remain signified by hands and arms but power and might; nothing else by anger but the efficacious will to punish sins; nothing else by repentance but a change, not of counsel, but of the things that are subject to counsel. Say the same in the present matter. For in one who ministers, in respect of him whom he serves; in one who obeys, in respect of him whom he obeys; and finally in an instrument, in respect of him whose instrument it is — two things are considered: first, that from him whom he serves, whom he obeys, whose instrument he is, he has derived either the operative power or the will to operate; second, that he has it as different from that which is in the principal agent — namely, as participated, dependent, and subject. Now remove from such terms, if haply they be transferred to divine things, all that sounds the imperfection of dependence, and nothing else will remain signified but the order of origin alone, according to which, as was said a little before, the operation in the Son, although the same as the operation of the Father, is nevertheless in him with the relation of one receiving from the Father, as it is in the Holy Spirit with the relation of one receiving from both. And you will say that the modes of speaking of Irenaeus, of Justin, of Hippolytus (nay, even of Tertullian, whose style is always hyperbolic and labours under an exaggerated realism) — you will say, I repeat, that these modes of speaking do not admit an orthodox sense, especially when the Arians, who were to abuse them, did not yet exist, and the principles common among Christians concerning the divinity of themselves sufficiently excluded the grossness of carnal understanding?¹.

Further, consubstantiality stands very well with appropriation, whereby some essential attribute, although in reality common to the three persons, is nevertheless considered as if it belonged to one before the others. And this appropriation, being used both in the Scriptures and in all the symbols of faith and among all the Fathers, doctors, and theologians, belongs so manifestly to the Catholic² treatment of the Trinity that it is a wonder if it can be either ignored or rejected by our critics. « It must be said, says St Thomas, that for the manifestation of the faith it was fitting that essential attributes be appropriated to the persons. For although the trinity of persons cannot be proved by demonstration, it is fitting that it be declared through certain things more manifest. But essential attributes are more known to us according to reason than the properties of the persons, because from creatures, from which we receive knowledge, we can arrive with certainty at the knowledge of essential attributes, but not at the knowledge of personal properties. As therefore we use the similitude of a vestige or image found in creatures for the manifestation of the divine persons, so also essential attributes. And this manifestation of the persons through essential attributes is called appropriation ». Nor indeed can the matter be arbitrary, but having its foundation most of all in a certain peculiar fitness between the essential attribute and the property of the person, it supplies the best solution to the many difficulties that occur in the present matter.

Indeed, the appropriation of power, wisdom, and goodness is most usual, and that too is better known than to need much explanation. For power has the character of a principle, and is appropriated to the Father, who is the principle among the divine persons. Wisdom, exemplarity, idea, art, shines in the conception of the intellect, and is appropriated to the Son, who proceeds as the word. But goodness is the reason and object of love, and is appropriated to the Holy Spirit, who proceeds as love. Just as, therefore, the ancients attributed to the Father the work of the first creation, of which it is said in Genesis: In the beginning God created heaven and earth; but the earth was void and empty, and the spirit of God was borne over the waters, because in this work the omnipotence that draws the world from nothing absolute shines forth: so they attributed to the Son, as the Word of the Father, the work of the second creation — that is, of the formation, distinction, and adornment of things — because that work is the work of wisdom. Moreover, the procession of the Word from the Father in order to the adorning of the world was considered by them as a certain sending forth into the light, or bringing forth ad extra, of the Word himself conceived from eternity. In this sense Athenagoras said that the Word came forth in order to be the idea and act of all material things, which were like unformed matter and an inert earth. And Hippolytus said that the Father, creating the world, begot the Word, making him visible and capable of being seen, whereas before he was incapable of being seen and invisible. For just as an architect who has in his mind the idea of a building that no one previously saw makes it visible when he begins to form the building out of unformed materials, so the Father brought forth ad extra his Word begotten from eternity, when he said: Let there be light, let there be a firmament, and the rest that is recorded in Genesis. And just as the art of the craftsman in some way goes forth outside in order to impress and figure itself in the artifact, and to become its act and form: so in the work of the adorning of the world there went forth that uncreated art appropriated to the Word, of which Prov. VIII-27: When he prepared the heavens, I was present; when he enclosed the abyss with a sure law and compass; when he established the ether above, and weighed the fountains of waters; when he surrounded the sea with its limit, and set a law to the waters that they should not pass their bounds; when he hung the foundations of the earth, I was with him, composing all things. Hence, from first to last, this second and temporal generation of the Word, about which the critics raise so great a question, is in the mind of the ancients nothing but the manifestation of God in the creation of things, as regards that uncreated idea or understood reason of the universe which is specially appropriated to the Word because of the mode of its procession. That such a manifestation adds nothing new to the Word, but posits a change on the part of the creature alone, can be doubtful to him only to whom even the first principles of natural theology were still unknown — nay rather, to whom it would not even be perspicuous that the interior idea of the architect is in no way changed in itself when, through the execution of the work, it is brought forth ad extra³. How then could the expressions of the ancients concerning the Word proceeding forth from the Father to the making of the world seem to anyone irreducible to an orthodox sense?

But what shall we now say of all the passages of Justin in which the theophanies of the Old Testament are attributed to the Son, for the reason that « no one who is not altogether out of his mind would dare to say that the author of the universe and the Father, leaving all things supercelestial, was seen in a little part of the earth? » This reason too is set forth still more expressly below, in the same dialogue with Trypho (n. 127), where it is said: « Do not think that the unbegotten God himself descended or ascended from any place. For that ineffable Father and Lord of the universe neither comes into any place, nor walks, nor sleeps, but remains in his own region, whatever that be, seeing keenly and hearing keenly, not with eyes indeed or ears, but with an ineffable power, and he sees all things and knows all things, nor does any of us escape him, nor is he moved, nor can he be contained in a place — nay, not even in the whole world, since he was even before the world was made. How then should he either speak to anyone, or appear to anyone, or be seen in the narrowest part of the earth? » Here at least, you will say, we must surrender, so that even unwilling we confess that Justin acknowledged in the Father and the Son a nature plainly dissimilar. Nay rather, I say, so dissimilar that the conclusion would follow which you yourself would shrink from — namely, that the nature of the Son was in Justin's mind corporeal and animal, in which, to be sure, he could have ascended, descended, walked, slept, and performed the other things that are denied of the Father. And what, I ask, is more inadmissible? How would Justin everywhere preach the Son as God begotten before the ages and in time incarnate of the Virgin? How would he understand those most magnificent words of Scripture: I am who am, the Lord of hosts, the Lord strong and mighty, the Lord has reigned, and other such things which so often, both in the First Apology and in this very Dialogue, he contends are to be referred to Christ? But do not forget, I pray, that Justin is disputing with a Jew, and while he wishes to persuade the Jew that the theophanies of the Old Testament are not to be referred to that single divine person whom the Jews admitted, he first intends to destroy the absurd and carnal opinion of the Jews concerning those theophanies themselves: Even as, he says at n. 114, it pleases your teachers, who think that the parent of the universe and unbegotten God has hands and feet and fingers and a soul, after the manner of a composite animal, and who therefore teach that it was the Father himself who was seen by Abraham and Jacob. And against this Jewish and crude imagination do battle all the things that were reported above. He intends, then, that the theophanies are not so to be taken as if God had been seen in his own proper substance, but according as visible species and audible voices were formed by divine operation. But now this operation, together with the representative species, Justin attributes to a person distinct from the person of the Father: namely, to that person who in operating bears himself as the minister of the Father; to that person who, being one day to be incarnate, even then assumed the part of announcing to men the wills of the Father; to that person to whom could fit the names of angel and of sent one, which continually occur in the theophanies of the Old Scripture; to that person of whom from the beginning of the disputation (n. 56) he had said: « I shall endeavour to persuade you, since you understand the Scriptures, of what I say — namely, that another is and is called, under the creator of the universe, God and Lord, who is also called angel, because he announces to men whatever the Creator of the universe wishes to announce to them, above whom there is no God »⁴. Finally, to that person of whom at the end (n. 127) he concludes: « Neither Abraham, therefore, nor Isaac, nor Jacob, nor any one of men saw that utterly ineffable Father and Lord of all, but him who, according to his will, is both God, his Son, and angel, from the fact that he ministers his will, whom he also willed to be born a man of the virgin, who was also once fire in the conversation with Moses from the bush ». Nor let it be troublesome to you in these things that Justin subjects the Son to the Father. For he does not subject him as a servant to the creator, but as a son to the fountain of divinity, so that according to our manner of conceiving — (for lisping as we can, we resound the sublime things of God) — the order of origin may be expressed⁵. Nor charge it as a crime against Justin that he said the same Son was begotten of the Father according to the will of the Father, or by the will of the Father. For besides that this is rightly understood in the sense that St Thomas sets forth in the First Part, Q. 41, a. 2⁶, lest namely in this generation of the Son from the substance of the Father someone imagine a necessity dominating the Father and imposed on him unwilling, as the Marcionites feigned concerning their second and fictitious god — Justin explains himself in the same dialogue with Trypho, at n. 128, saying: « But that power, which the prophetic word calls both God and angel, is not to be counted a mere name, like the light of the sun, but is also another thing in number (understand: something subsisting and distinct); I have also briefly discussed this above, when I said that that power was begotten from the Father, by his power and will, not however by an abscission, as if the substance of the Father were divided, as all other things that are divided and cut are not the same as before they were cut; and by way of example I took the fires which we see kindled from another fire, that fire not being diminished from which many can be kindled, but remaining the same. » Where you see that the generation of the Son by the will of the Father is opposed to the generation that is among us by the division of substance — that is, the spiritual generation to the material one. Toward this too tends the similitude of fire last adduced, in which Justin in some way anticipates the Nicene definition: « God of God, light of light ».

We have, then, in all these things obscure explanations, conceptions not sufficiently precise, and finally improper expressions, which, if they had not preceded the time of the Arian impiety that arose, could seem suspect. But we certainly do not have any that would not receive an orthodox interpretation on fair and equitable terms. And the same must be said in the matters of other dogmas. See for example the letter of Cyril of Alexandria to John of Antioch, in which he refutes the calumnies of his adversaries concerning what he held — that a concretion or confusion or commixture of the Word of God with the flesh had taken place, that the divinity is passible, etc.⁷. See also Augustine, l. de praedest. SS. n. 27, where there is a most excellent observation concerning the tradition of the dogma of grace down to Pelagius.

2. Since these things are so, it now remains to ask whether those same more difficult testimonies of the Fathers not only can but also must be understood in that Catholic sense of which we have spoken. Nor must the answer be sought from afar, for the conclusion of what was premised in ch. 1 is sufficient. For in those things that constitute the very sum of the faith, the sense of the present Church is a most certain argument of the sense of the primitive Church, as was proved above. Moreover, all those Fathers whose authority has always been received, and is received even now, could not in fact have deflected from that sense. It is necessary, therefore, that if you find anything in their sayings that is not said with all the caution that the moderns observe, you nevertheless, adhering to the criteria that are proper to the interpretation of sacred tradition and of its monuments, take it without doubt in that orthodox sense in which it can be understood, whatever be the probabilities that, from the viewpoint of a bare and simple scientific criticism, might still seem to you to occur to the contrary.

And this was Augustine's most solid manner of arguing with regard to Chrysostom, whose authority Julian was bringing forward against the dogmas of original sin. For Augustine observed that it was impossible for Chrysostom to have believed otherwise than the others whose consent he had already shown — surely in a matter that did not admit a diversity of views, but concerned the very foundations of religion. For if he had truly held otherwise in so great a cause, where the sum of the Christian religion consists, he would not have obtained and preserved so great an authority in the Church. And therefore, from the fact that his authority had remained entire, it was taken as a sign that his sense had been Catholic. « Do you dare, then, says he in l. 1 c. Iul. n. 22, to oppose these words of the holy bishop John, as though by way of contrary, to the sentences of so many and such great colleagues of his, and to separate him from their most concordant society, and to set him up as their adversary? Far be it, far be it to believe or to say this evil of so great a man. Far be it, I say, that John of Constantinople should resist so many and such great fellow bishops of his — and especially the Roman Innocentius, the Carthaginian Cyprian, the Cappadocian Basil, the Nazianzen Gregory, the Gallic Hilary, the Milanese Ambrose — concerning the baptism of little children and their liberation by Christ from the paternal handwriting. There are other things in which even the most learned and best defenders of the Catholic rule, with the frame of the faith safe, sometimes do not agree among themselves, and one says something better and truer than another about one and the same thing. But this matter of which we now treat pertains to the very foundations of the faith... Comparing therefore John with the elders, whose own sins are forgiven in baptism, he said that they have no sins; not, as you yourself set down his words, that they are not defiled by sin, since you wish, certainly, to be understood that they are not defiled by the sin of the first man... I will set down the very Greek words that were spoken by John: Διὰ τοῦτο καὶ τὰ παιδία βαπτίζομεν, καὶ τοι ἁμαρτήματα οὐκ ἔχοντα. Which is in Latin: Therefore we also baptize infants, although they have no sins. You see certainly that it was not said by him that little children are not defiled by sin, but that they have no sins: understand, their own; and there is no contention. But, you will say, why did he not himself add 'their own'? Why, do we think, unless because, disputing in the Catholic Church, he did not think himself to be understood otherwise, was assailed by no one with such a question, and spoke the more securely while you were not yet litigating? »

Where you see that Augustine does not cling to the rules of textual criticism, as our moderns say, but to higher principles that must govern all legitimate patristic exegesis. Those principles, I say, whose rejection or neglect constitutes the principal vice of the criticism of which certain things are now to be observed in the following chapter.