Tractatus de Deo Trino secundum personas

« That God is one, not by specific unity but by the unity of singularity or numerical unity, is manifest in the revelation of the Old and of the New Testament; whence those who, in the distinction of the divine persons, would also distinguish the nature, and under any doctrinal configuration would number gods, have always been judged to have fallen away from the fundamental dogma of all revelation. »

The doctrine of the unity of the divine nature, and in general of the absolute perfections of God, already laid out in the treatise on the One God, is here presupposed as a foundation. For the revelation concerning the distinction of persons includes this unity, and unless this is perpetually kept before one's eyes, the distinction itself cannot be understood, as it is contained in Scripture and in the explanation of the Fathers from apostolic times onward. Hence it is necessary to have a clear view of the manner in which Scripture, the professions of faith, and the holy Fathers — especially in that age in which the distinction of persons was chiefly and almost solely to be defended — presuppose this truth of unity and propose it as fundamental and, without controversy, most certain among all the faithful. For just as the doctrine of the distinction perfects the understanding of the unity, so in turn the common profession of the unity illustrates the preaching of the distinction, if at any time the Fathers spoke somewhat obscurely about the latter, as to how it is. On account of this intimate connection of the one doctrine with the other, the order of things demands that, even with the whole treatise on the One God presupposed, we here consider more distinctly the manner in which revelation and ecclesiastical preaching safeguard the unity of God as a supreme principle, to which accordingly the doctrine of the distinction of persons in revelation and in the Catholic profession could never have been contrary, but must be understood as necessarily coordinated and in a sense consonant with that same unity.

I. The revelation of the Old Testament indeed has the unity of God as its first article and principal foundation, expressed most frequently and in every form of speech. In the New Testament appeal is made to this very doctrine and to this revealed faith, and it is confirmed in exactly the same sense in which it is set forth in the Old Testament. Moreover, this unity of God is not only inculcated to exclude the fictitious gods who were worshipped by the Gentiles; but the unity is taught as absolute, to exclude any distinction and numbering of Gods.

In the Mosaic legislation the first article in order and dignity is contained in a solemn protestation: « Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord (יהוה) is one..... Thou shalt fear the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve, and by his name thou shalt swear » Deut. VI. 4 sqq. This very thing Christ the Lord declares to be the « first commandment », and proves it by a paraphrase: « because God is one and there is no other besides him » Marc. XII. 29-34. In this same exclusive form the same is repeated in the last testament, as it were, of Moses to the people, where God is introduced confirming under oath: « see that I alone am, and there is no other God (אלהים) besides me » Deut. XXXII. 39. 40. cf. Io. XVII. 3; Eph. IV. 3-6. To confirm this faith God directs portents, theophanies, and special providence toward his people: « that thou mightest know that the Lord himself is God (יהוה הוא האלהים) and there is no other besides him.... Know therefore this day and consider in thy heart, that the Lord himself is God in heaven above and upon the earth beneath, and there is no other » Deut. IV. 35. 39. cf. i Cor. VIII. 4. 5. So also frequently in the prophets and in the Psalms. « I am the Lord and there is no more: besides me there is no God. That they may know, who are from the rising of the sun and who from the west, that there is none besides me. I am the Lord and there is no other » (hebr. no more) Is. XLV. 5. 6 sq. cf. Rom. III. 29.30; i Tim. II. 5.

The unity of God and the exclusion of any number of gods is therefore revealed in such a way that every doctrine explicitly or implicitly handing down two or three gods ought, without further examination, to be judged contrary to revelation, which none of the faithful may be ignorant of. And therefore if in revelation there is speech about a real distinction and about plurality in things divine, it most certainly does not pertain to the Godhead and the divine nature Deut. XIII. Ps. LXXX. 9-11. Hence also in the prophecies of the Old Testament, with regard to this chapter of doctrine, no such progress is promised for the New Testament by which « rigorous monotheism » would be dissolved, as some are wont to speak not quite properly nowadays, but by which the revealed knowledge of the unity of God should become more universal and more distinct. « And it shall be in that day, living waters shall go out from Jerusalem, half of them toward the eastern sea and half of them toward the last sea; in summer and in winter they shall be. And the Lord shall be king over all the earth: in that day there shall be one Lord, and his name one » Zach. XIV. 7.9; Ps. LXXXV; 8-10. For a tempering of the all-perfect unity and singularity of the divine nature would be not progress, but the negation of revealed truth. For not only by affirmation alone is it said that God is one, which indeed would itself be abundantly sufficient; but also by negation and exclusion it is repeated, that besides the one God no other God was revealed to the patriarchs, to Moses, to the prophets, to the people of Israel, that he alone is God; and to this one only God revealed in the Old Testament the entire revelation of the New Testament also appeals.

II. From this first principle and foundation it is established that this very numerical unity of God and of the divine substance is always presupposed in the books of the New Testament, and is signified in them whenever the unity is joined together with the distinction and co-numeration of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit; when the Father and the Son are said to be one; the three one; the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are co-numbered under one name; the Son is said to be in the Father, the Father in the Son; all things which the Son and the Holy Spirit have are said to revert and be recapitulated to the Father as to the source, which relation of the Son to the Father and of the Holy Spirit to the Father and the Son is most amply evident in the whole doctrine of Christ. But there will be occasion to speak of this conjunction of unity with distinction in what follows, for the explanation of this matter constitutes the argument of this whole present treatise.

In like manner this very foundation of substantial unity is presupposed in the profession and explanation of the Christian faith, in all the creeds, in the declarations and disputations of the Catholic Doctors against the various errors, even those opposed to one another among themselves.

In the creeds, which certainly express the profession both of the pastors and of the body of the faithful, namely in the Apostles' Creed, faith « in God » or more expressly « in one God »¹ is the first article, as the bond and containing link of the distinction which follows, by which one must believe in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. This faith in the unity of God together with the distinction of the three who are God was taught, and all who were to be baptized were commanded to profess it as the badge of Christians even at the reception of the sacrament itself (cf. Constit. Apostol. l. VII. c. 41; Cassian. de Incarn. l. VI. c. 3, etc.). This the Fathers and Doctors repeat as the faith of the universal Church from the earliest age. « First of all believe that there is one God, who created all things ». Hermae Pastor l. II. mand. I. cf. Recognit. Clement. l. II. n. 43 sq. Irenaeus, against the emanations of the Gnostics from the pleroma of God, and against the fiction of one God of the Old, another of the New Testament, frequently inculcates this « rule of truth » l. I. c. 22; this « first and greatest chapter » l. II. c. 1, that there is one God, besides whom there is no other. « God alone is the one fabricator (δημιουργός)... who made all things through himself, i. e. through his Word and his Wisdom.... this God of Abraham and God of Isaac and God of Jacob, God of the living, whom the law announces, whom the prophets foretell, whom Christ reveals, whom the Apostles hand down, whom the Church believes. This Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is manifested to all through his Word, who is his Son ». l. II. c. 30. n. 9. « The Church spread throughout the whole world even to the ends of the earth, from the Apostles and their disciples received faith in one God the Father almighty » etc. Then follows in the same handed-down faith the profession of the whole Church in one Jesus Christ the Son of God, and in the Holy Spirit, who through the prophets preached the dispensations of God and the coming l. I. c. 10; l. III. c. 4. Origen, after he warned that « the ecclesiastical preaching handed down from the Apostles through the order of succession and remaining in the Churches up to the present » should be preserved, recounts some things from the profession of the universal and manifest Church. « But the species of those things which are manifestly handed down through the apostolic preaching are these. First that there is one God, who created all things.... the God of all the just, of Adam, Abel...., of the patriarchs, of Moses, of the prophets ». There is subjoined the manifest preaching « that Jesus Christ, born of the Father before all creation, was incarnate, and was made man while he was God, and remained what he was, God. Then next they handed down the Holy Spirit as associated with the Father and the Son in honor and dignity » Origen. de Princip. Praefat. n. 2. 4.

But most clearly the unity of God, such as the most ancient Fathers always understood it, appears from the disputations against the Monarchian heretics, against Praxeas, Noetus, the Sabellians, Paul of Samosata². For when these heretics asserted the unity of the divine substance in such a way that they at the same time denied the real distinction between the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, the defenders of the Catholic dogma hold this same unity of substance as most certain and placed among Christians beyond doubt. « The devil has variously emulated the truth; he has striven at times to shake it by defending it. He vindicates the one almighty Lord, the creator of the world; that he may also make heresy out of the one, he says that the Father himself descended into the Virgin.... But we, both always and now more as instructed through the Paraclete (of Montanus), the guide namely of all truth, believe indeed in the one God, under this dispensation, however, which we call the economy, that the Son, his Word, is also of the one God... who from thence sent from the Father the Holy Spirit the Paraclete, sanctifier of the faith of those who believe in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. That this rule ran down from the beginning of the Gospel... the very posterity of all heretics will prove.... This perversity (of Praxeas) thinks itself to possess the pure truth, while it thinks the one God is to be believed in no other way than if it calls the same and identical one both Father and Son and Holy Spirit; as if in this way also all things were not one, since all things are from the one, namely through the unity of substance, and nonetheless the sacrament of the economy is preserved, which disposes the unity into Trinity, directing three: the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Three, however, not in status (dignity) but in degree (of origin), nor in substance but in form (personal character), nor in power but in species (distinguishing notions): but of one substance and one status and one power, because there is one God, from whom those degrees and forms and species are assigned in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit » Tertull. contr. Prax. c. 1. 2. cf. Praescript. c. 13. 14. In exactly the same manner the priests of Smyrna agree with Noetus with regard to the unity of the divine substance (apud Epiphan. haer. 57. T. I. p. 480), and s. Hippolytus (n. 3. 6. 11. 14. Galland. T. II. p. 455 sq.); the Council of Antioch (Collect. Mansi T. I. p. 1033) with Paul of Samosata; Zephyrinus, Callistus, Dionysius, Roman Pontiffs, with the Sabellians (Philosophumena p. 285. 389; Athanas. de decret. Nicaen. n. 26), while nevertheless they condemn in the same places the confusion of persons of Noetus and of Sabellius and of Samosata, and teach that the one God is the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, three distinct ones. But these things demand a more diligent consideration in the following theses.

Meanwhile, from the declared foundation these two things are established:

a) If in Scripture and in ecclesiastical preaching of any age there is speech about the unity of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, so that they are co-numbered under the ratio of Godhead or of dignity or of the rendering of divine worship, or the unity is said to be according to substance, or they are said simply to be one, or any divine attribute is claimed for the Son and the Holy Spirit, and they are exempted from the condition of creatures: all these things must necessarily be understood of the numerical unity of the divine nature in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

b) In Scripture and among the Fathers of the Church, who claim the unity in some of these ways, the distinction between the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit cannot be understood according to the divine nature and substance. If therefore at any time locutions occur which seem to indicate a subordination and an inferior dignity of one person before another, this subordination certainly was not understood by them, and cannot be understood, by reason of nature and substance. However much obscurity you may find in the manner of speaking and in the scientific conciliation of the unity of God with the distinction of the three among some ancient Fathers, where « not yet is the Trinity perfectly treated » (Aug. in Ps. 54. n. 22.), yet in no age can an ignorance of the fundamental dogma of the divine unity, expressed in the creed for all the faithful, from the highest pastors down to the catechumens, be admitted in such a way that this truth within the very boundaries of the Church could ever have been called into question with no one contradicting (cf. Tract. de Tradit. et de Incarnat.).