Tractatus de Deo Trino secundum personas

«The same faith, which the Council of Nicaea and the Fathers afterwards confirmed, had been handed down from the Apostles in the universal profession and preaching of the Church. For the Fathers and Martyrs of the earlier age, against errors mutually opposed to one another and repugnant to the dogma of the Church, vindicated no less the unity of the Godhead than the distinction of persons, with the same sense albeit not always with the same formulas and modes of explanation, by which the dogma was afterwards defined by the Nicene and subsequent Fathers. When, however, those older Fathers, in view of the character of the heresies of their age, insisted chiefly on the real distinction of persons, they supposed the unity of nature as conceded by their adversaries; yet they cannot be regarded as having extended the distinction of hypostases to the nature itself, although for the most part they did not clearly set forth the mode of distinction.»

Two things we shall accomplish in this thesis: first, we shall consider the explicit doctrine of the pre-Nicene Fathers on the unity of the Godhead in distinct persons, who are one God; then we shall look at the manner in which at times they urge the distinction alone more vehemently, on the supposition of unity as conceded and affirmed by the adversaries themselves, and we shall show that even now, from certain general principles alone, the Fathers had before their eyes not a distinction of nature but of persons, and that in these very persons they regarded not so much the mode of distinction as they vindicated its reality against heretics.

I. St. Athanasius speaks thus of the apostolic tradition of the Nicene faith against the novelty of the Arians. «We indeed demonstrate that this doctrine has passed from Fathers to Fathers; but you, O new Jews and disciples of Caiphas, what Fathers can you produce for your words? Certainly you will never bring forward anyone prudent and wise; for all abhor you except the one devil... who even now persuades you to calumniate the ecumenical synod, because, namely, it defined not your own things but those which from the beginning were handed down to us by those who from the beginning themselves saw, and were ministers of the word; for the faith which the synod confessed in writing is itself the faith of the Catholic Church»

Athan. de decret. Nic. n. 27. St. Augustine, in his books on the Trinity, lays as a bulwark the consensus of all the preceding Fathers. «All whom I have been able to read, who before me wrote of the Trinity which is God, the Catholic expositors of the divine books, old and new, intended to teach according to the Scriptures that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, by an inseparable equality of one and the same substance, intimate the divine unity, and therefore are not three Gods but one God, although the Father begot the Son, and therefore the Son is not He who is the Father.... and the Holy Spirit is neither the Father nor the Son.... This also is my faith, since this is the Catholic faith» August. Trin. l. n. 7.

1°. Certainly in the second century, just as the Church condemned the monarchian heretics who denied the distinction of persons, so in like manner it proscribed the contrary heresy of those who, in whatever form of doctrine, together with the distinction of persons would also introduce a distinction of nature in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. For in a distinction of nature of this kind one of the two is necessarily contained: either that there are three Gods, or that the Son and the Holy Spirit are not God; and both of these were already in the third century condemned even by a public and solemn judgment as repugnant to the revealed and handed-down faith. Most explicit, therefore, was the profession of the Church, that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are three really distinct persons, yet that these three and each of the three are one true God, besides whom there is no other. Athanasius relates that Pope Dionysius, in the middle of the third century, first wrote against the Sabellians; then from his letter he recites these words. «Moreover it will be fitting to say also against those who divide the most august preaching of the Church of God (τὸ σεμνότατον κήρυγμα τῆς Ἐκκλησίας τοῦ Θεοῦ, the most august mystery preached by the Church of God), the monarchy, I say, and cut it asunder and distribute it into three powers and separated hypostases and three deities.... who are diametrically, so to speak, opposed to the opinion of Sabellius. For his impiety consists in this, that he says the Son is the Father and conversely; but these in some way preach three Gods, when they divide the holy unity (τὴν ἁγίαν μονάδα, the holy unicity) into three hypostases mutually alien and wholly separated. For the divine Word must needs be united to the God of all things, and the Holy Spirit must remain and live in God, and finally it is altogether necessary that the divine Trinity be reduced and gathered into one as into a certain summit, I mean the omnipotent God of all things¹. For the doctrine of the mad Marcion, which cuts and divides the monarchy into three principles, is diabolical, not that of true disciples of Christ and of those to whom the discipline of the Savior is pleasing. For these well know that the Trinity indeed is preached in divine Scripture, but that three Gods are taught in neither the Old nor the New Testament.

No less again are they to be blamed, who think that the Son is a made thing (ποίημα), and that the Lord is created (γεγονέναι τὸν Κύριον)... If the Son was made, there was a time when He was not (ἦν, ὅτε οὐκ ἦν): but He always was, if He is in the Father, as He Himself declares, and if Christ is the Word and wisdom and power; for that Christ is these things the divine letters teach, as you know; these, however, are the same powers of God, and therefore if the Son was made, there was a time when these were not: there was therefore a time when God was without these, which is most absurd²... Therefore neither ought the admirable and divine unity (τὴν θαυμαστὴν καὶ θείαν μονάδα) to be divided into three deities, nor ought the dignity and supreme greatness of the Lord to be overthrown by the opinion that He was made; but we must believe in God the Father almighty and in Jesus Christ His Son and in the Holy Spirit, and that the Word is united to the God of all things. For He says: I and the Father are one; and I am in the Father and the Father is in me. Thus, namely, both the divine Trinity and the holy preaching of the monarchy will be preserved whole» s. Dionys. apud Athanas. de decret. Nic. n. 26.

«The most august preaching of the Church of God», i.e. the public and common profession and doctrine, on the testimony of the Pontiff, was reduced to these points: that a) three are distinct, the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, and therefore Sabellius was condemned; that b) God is one, and therefore the divine nature, although it is in three persons distinct from one another, is nevertheless an indivisible and non-multipliable unity (μονάς), and hence the three are the God of all things, who is preached as one God in the Old and New Testament. Whence in whatever way three deities, three principles, are spoken of — not only as the Marcionites and other Gnostics had long before taught, but also as then the monarchians and afterwards the Arians brought the calumny against the Church, and as in a later age the tritheists taught — all these errors the most august preaching of the Church excludes. c) By this very preaching the Church confesses the Son and the Holy Spirit to be true God just as the Father, and therefore those are condemned who would say that the Word, and consequently also those who would say that the Holy Spirit, is a creature.

Before Dionysius, the very same faith of the one Godhead in distinct persons, at the beginning of the third century, is shown both by the deeds and by the doctrine of the Pontiffs Zephyrinus and Callistus, however distortedly they are reported by the calumniator of these Saints in the work which the editor Miller entitled «Origen's Philosophumena».

a) Just as Dionysius condemned the Sabellians, who confounded the persons, no less than the others, who divided the unity of nature; so also Callistus cast out Sabellius himself «from the Church, because he did not think rightly» (Philos. p. 288); on the other hand, however, he required the profession that the Father and the Son are one indivisible spirit, not one thing and another, but one and the same. Because the author of that history (φιλοσοφουμένων) and those coalescing with him into a sect refused this profession, Callistus publicly denounced them as enemies of the unity of God (δημοσίᾳ ἡμῖν ὀνειδίζοντα εἰπεῖν ἄθεοί ἐστε, Philos. p. 285. 289). b) The doctrine of SS. Zephyrinus and Callistus on the unity of the Father and the Son their adversary himself exhibits thus. Zephyrinus, at the urging of Callistus, who afterwards succeeded him in the pontificate, publicly preached: «I know one God, Christ Jesus, and besides this one no other (namely, no other God), who (Jesus Christ God) was born and suffered». At the same time, however, Callistus declared: «not the Father died but the Son» (Philos. p. 285) ³. Another Father, another Son is therefore preached against Sabellius; but just as Christ the Lord called the Father «the only true God» (supra th. III. Coroll. 2), so also the Son is the same one God, besides whom there is no other God. Further, the doctrine of Callistus, now Pontiff, is set forth: that the Father and the Son «are one indivisible spirit, that the Father is not one spirit and the Son another spirit, but one and the same spirit; and that He who was incarnate in the Virgin is not a spirit other than the Father, but one and the same spirit; and that this is what is meant by what was said: do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father in me: For, he says, I shall not call two Gods the Father and the Son, but one». The adversary indeed, reporting these things, concludes that in this way one person of the Father and of the Son is taught, because he could not or would not understand the distinction according to persons, if there is no distinction according to nature; nevertheless he himself admits that Callistus did not want to say that the Father had suffered, nor that there is one person, «in order, he says, to escape the blasphemy against the Father» (Philos. p. 289.) ⁴. He repeats the same calumny, as if Callistus had distinguished the Father from the Son by name alone, because he taught: «The Father and the Son are one in essence; for God is not a spirit other than the Word, nor is the Word a spirit other than God, and this Word is one God and was incarnate» (Philos. p. 329).

In the third century, therefore, just as the distinction of persons against the Sabellians, so no less the undivided unity of the divine nature was declared most explicitly by the Roman Pontiffs Zephyrinus, Callistus, and Dionysius as the common and handed-down faith of the Church and vindicated against contrary errors.⁵

2°. When the dogma of the unity of God had to be reconciled with the distinction of persons, and to be explained against the Gnostics, sometimes also against the pagans, or to be defended against the objections of the monarchians, the Fathers of the second and third centuries proposed both parts of the dogma — not only the distinction, namely, but also the unity — with the same clarity, as the common faith.

Irenaeus very frequently, especially in Bks. III and IV, sets forth the doctrine. The God who revealed Himself in the Old Testament is one God, besides whom there is no other; but that one God is the Father and the Son in distinct persons. «Who is the God of the living, except He who is God, above whom there is no other God?... The living God, therefore, who was adored by the prophets, this is the God of the living and His Word, who also spoke to Moses, who also confuted the Sadducees... Christ Himself, therefore, together with the Father is the God of the living, who spoke to Moses, and who was manifested to the Fathers». Bk. IV, c. 5, n. 2. He often repeats that the fabricator of the world, or demiurge, is not some being inferior to the supreme God, as the Gnostics thought, but is the one supreme God Himself. Then he calls the one supreme God the creator now the Father, now the Word of the Father, now the Father through the Word and through Wisdom, i.e. through the Holy Spirit. The Father, indeed, is said to have created all things through the Word and Wisdom, not as if these three were one thing and another, but rather the Father and the Word and Wisdom are not distinguished, inasmuch as they are God the creator, but are altogether one; and hence it comes to the same whether one says: God creates through the Word and Wisdom, or it is said: God creates through Himself. This indeed is the same explanation of the unity of the three that we have heard from other Fathers teaching that one person is no less one with another according to the Godhead than with itself. «According to magnitude, says Irenaeus, it is not possible to know God; for it is impossible that the Father be measured.... Since God is so great, and He it is who through Himself constituted and chose and adorned and contains all things, and among all things also this world... Not, therefore, did angels make us, nor could angels make the image of God, nor any other besides the Word of the Lord, nor a Power far removed from the Father of all things. For God had no need of these to make what He Himself had predetermined in Himself to be made, as if He did not have His own hands. For His Word and Wisdom, the Son and the Spirit, are always present to Him, through whom and in whom He freely and willingly made all things, to whom also He speaks, saying: let us make man in our image and likeness, Himself taking from Himself the substance of creatures (by His omnipotence creating), and the exemplar of the things made and the figure of the world's adornments (the archetypal ideas)... And that the Word, that is the Son, was always with the Father, we have shown by many things. That Wisdom also, which is the Spirit, was with Him before every constitution, He says through Solomon: God founded the earth by Wisdom... One God, therefore, who made and fitted all things by the Word and Wisdom; this, however, is the demiurge» Iren. Bk. IV, c. 20, n. 1-4: «Only one God, the fabricator... this is the Father, this is God, this is the founder, this is the maker, this is the fabricator, who made these things through Himself, that is, through His Word and through His Wisdom» Bk. II, c. 30, n. 9.

Athenagoras, in the second century, to the pagans themselves, in his apology or embassy on behalf of the Christians, sets forth indeed no other doctrine concerning the one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, than the common profession of the Christians. First, by philosophical arguments and also by the confession of the philosophers, he shows that God cannot be anything but one simple spirit without any composition, and the creator of the world. This one God the books of the prophets teach: «I am God, the first and the last; and besides me there is no God» Legat. n. 7-9. Then he declares more distinctly what kind of one God the Christians believe; we are not atheists, who hold one unbegotten and eternal God, by whom all things were made through His Word. For we believe also in the Son of God, not such as the sons of the gods that the poets invent, «but the Son of God is the Word of the Father in idea and power (Λόγος Πατρὸς ἐν ἰδέᾳ καὶ ἐνεργείᾳ, i.e. the expression of the paternal intellect and the eternal exemplar, according to which all things were created): for from Him (the Son) and through Him all things were made, since the Father and the Son are one. Since, however, the Son is in the Father and the Father in the Son by the unity and essence of spirit (ἑνότητι καὶ δυνάμει Πνεύματος ⁶ i.e. the Father is in the Son, and the Son in the Father, because the Father and the Son are one substantive spiritual power). The Son of God is the mind and Word (νοῦς καὶ λόγος) of the Father». Besides the Father and the Son, Christians believe also in the Holy Spirit proceeding from God, as a ray proceeds from the sun, as splendor from fire. «Who, therefore, would not marvel, when he hears that those are called atheists who teach God the Father and God the Son and the Holy Spirit, and show both their essence in unity and their distinction in order » ⁷ ibid. n. 10. 12. 24.

The Noetians (in Hippolytus, Against Noetus, and in Epiphanius, haeres. 57) prove by many testimonies of Scripture these two things: that the true God is one, and that Christ is true God; whence they infer that by the names Father, Son, Holy Spirit, not one and another but the same is signified, and hence that He who is the Father was incarnate and suffered under the name of the Son (hence they are called Patripassians). Now the Catholics (the presbyters of Smyrna and Hippolytus) agreed with the Noetians in both antecedents, that there is only one God, and that Christ is true God; but at the same time they taught that not only Christ the Son, but the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, three distinct persons of one essence, are this one true God. The distinction — not otherwise than Dionysius of Alexandria later, dealing against the same heresy of the Patripassians (Athanas. de sententia Dionys. n. 9. seq.), — Hippolytus demonstrates chiefly by considering Christ, the incarnate Word. Hence all the texts brought forward by the Noetians to demonstrate the unity of the Father and the Son, which they extend to a unity of person, Hippolytus explains by looking to the incarnate Son in human nature, so that the personal distinction between the Father and the Son may be the more evident. For since this Word-man is one person, and since this person is evidently distinguished as the Son sent by the Father who sends ⁸, the Father necessarily must be believed to be one person and the Word another. Then, according to the doctrine of Christ, the distinction of the third person, the Holy Spirit, is no less certain. By this very fact, however, that God is one, as even the Noetians rightly affirm, the distinction is not in the Godhead or in the nature of the persons. «It is necessary, therefore, that even unwillingly he (Noetus) 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 so that these are three. But if he wishes to know how one God is demonstrated, let him know that the power of this one is one (the essence, ὅτι μία δύναμις τούτου). And as far indeed as concerns power, one is God; as far as concerns the economy (as to the origin and distinction of one person from another, cf. Tertull. contr. Prax. c. 3), the manifestation is threefold (the same power is in the three, and manifests itself to us). These things, therefore, brethren, are shown by us to be said consistently; for God is one» Hippol. contr. Noet. n. 8 (Galland. II. p. 459). «God alone, being, having nothing coeval with Himself, willed to create the world..... The Word indeed creates, Wisdom adorns... And thus another stood by Him. When I say another, I do not say two Gods, but as light from light, or as water from a fountain, or as a ray from the sun. For one is the power which is from the whole; the whole, however, is the Father, from whom is the power, the Word ⁹ (i.e. the Father and the Word are one power, and therefore one God; but the Father is called the whole, as the fountain and principle from which the Word proceeds, and therefore the Father and the Word, who are one power, are distinguished as principle and principled). This (the Word) is mind, which, coming forth (through the incarnation), is shown in the world as the Son of God (Παῖς Θεοῦ, Christ the man)... This economy John hands down to us in the Gospel, and this Word he himself confesses to be God, saying thus: in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God was the Word. If the Word was with God and was God; what then, will someone say, does John teach two Gods? Two Gods indeed I shall not say, but one, but two persons and a third economy, the grace of the Holy Spirit ¹⁰. The Father indeed one, but two persons, because also the Son, the third, however, the Holy Spirit... Otherwise we cannot understand the one God (as He has been revealed), unless we truly believe in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit» ibid. n. 10-14. The whole doctrine of Hippolytus Epiphanius embraced and illustrated, haeres. 57. T. I. p. 480. seq.

In like manner Tertullian agrees with Praxeas in preaching the unity of God, provided that the latter would also confess the distinction of persons, who by the unity of substance are one God. «We believe, he says, indeed in one God, under this dispensation, however, which we call the economy..... This heresy thinks itself to possess the pure truth, while it thinks the one God is to be believed in no other way than if it say that the same and identical one is both Father and Son and Holy Spirit, as if even so He were not one in all things, while all things are from one, namely by the unity of substance» contr. Prax. c. 2. «The work of the Gospel, the substance of the New Testament..... that thenceforth three are believed to constitute one God, so that in a new way one might be believed through the Son and the Holy Spirit, so that now God might be openly known in His own proper names and persons, who also of old, preached through the Son and the Holy Spirit, was not acknowledged» ib. c. 31.

The orthodox bishops, in the Second Council of Antioch or writing before it to Paul of Samosata before he was deposed ¹¹, prove by many arguments from the Old and New Testament, first of all, that the Son of God is true God; then they protest that the Father and the Son are not two Gods, as the Samosatene charged against the Catholics, but one and the same God. Since the Samosatene taught that Christ is called God for this reason, that the Word, the divine power, as the efficiency of God, dwelt in the man Jesus; and hence from eternity only by foreknowledge, and in time indeed actually could

On the whole, the explanation of Hippolytus is the same as that of Callistus, insofar as the latter's opinion can be gathered from the relation of the calumniator. How then shall we persuade ourselves that this author of the book τῶν φιλοσοφουμένων, whose opinion concerning the Trinity is no less repugnant to the doctrine of Hippolytus than to that of Callistus, and who was likewise the bitterest adversary of the holy Pontiffs and the head of a sect at least schismatic or even heretical against the Roman Church, was St. Hippolytus himself, a man celebrated in the tradition of the same Roman Church with pious veneration and the highest praises? The Son is proclaimed God, but in a sense far different from that in which the Father is God, lest two Gods be introduced; the Fathers condemn this doctrine, because the Son is that very true God who appeared in the V. T. and is proclaimed God in all the Scriptures. Therefore, they say, the whole Church from the Apostles onward professes that the Son is by essence and hypostasis eternal God, and yet that the Father and the Son are not two Gods but one God. «It seemed good to us, they say, to set forth in writing the faith which we received from the beginning and hold as handed down in the holy Catholic Church even to the present day from the doctrine of the Apostles... We profess and proclaim that the Son is the Wisdom and the power of God, existing before the ages, God not by foreknowledge but by essence and hypostasis, the Son of God. But whoever refuses to believe and profess that the Son of God is God before the constitution of the world, saying that two Gods are announced if the Son of God is proclaimed God, him we judge alien to the ecclesiastical rule (τοῦ ἐκκλησιαστικοῦ κανόνος), and all the catholic Churches agree with us» Collect. Concil. Mansi I. p. 1033; Opp. Dionys. Alex. ed. de Magistris p. 280. seq.; Routh. Reliquiae sacr. III. p. 289.

Not less luminous is the declaration of the creed divinely handed down to St. Gregory Thaumaturgus, who «eminently stood out» among the bishops fighting against the Samosatene (Euseb. H. E. VII. c. 28). «One God, the Father of the living Word, of the subsisting Wisdom (σοφίας ὑφεστώσης)... One Lord, alone from the alone, God from God... invisible from invisible... One Holy Spirit, having subsistence from God and shining forth through the Son, namely to men ¹²;]; the perfect image of the perfect Son; life, the cause of the living; holy fountain, sanctity, the author of sanctification; in whom (the Holy Spirit) God the Father is manifested, who is above all things and in all things, and God the Son, who is through all things; a perfect Trinity, which in glory and eternity and kingdom is neither divided nor estranged... the unchangeable and invariable, ever the same Trinity» (Galland. III. p. 385. 447).

3°. That this faith in one God, who is a Trinity in persons, belonged always not to some deeper and more hidden theology alone but to the profession common to all the faithful, can be established from the creed which was expounded in the catecheses; from the very form of baptism; from the doxology, by which from the apostolic age there was rendered one adoration, one «glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit», or «glory to the Father and to the Son with the Holy Spirit». For that this formula of glorification and of public profession proceeded from apostolic tradition, St. Basil shows at length, «which those who from the beginning prescribed and handed down to posterity confirmed through long custom in the Churches, with a use always advancing together with time» Bas. de Spiritu Sancto n. 71.

But it becomes most clear from the confessions of the martyrs what was the common understanding of this mystery in the primitive Church. They confess before the tyrants one only God, who is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; and while they proclaim one God, the creator of all things, and His Son Christ, when the question is put by the judges whether this Christ is another God, the constant answer is that there is one God, besides whom there is no other God. This confession of the martyrs we see to be the same in the various Churches, and for this faith they underwent torments and death. «True God, I glorify you with the eternal and heavenly Jesus Christ, your beloved Son, with whom to you and to the Holy Spirit be glory both now and in the future ages» St. Polycarpus at Smyrna in the year 166 (Ruinart Act. MM. ed. Veron. p. 31. n. 12; p. 36. n. 14). «I confess Christ with the Father and the Holy Spirit to be God, and it is worthy that I give back my soul to him, who is both my creator and my redeemer» St. Epipodius at Lugdunum in the year 178 (ib. p. 65. n. 6). «I confess the Lord Christ, the Son of the most high Father, the only one of the only one; I profess that he himself with the Father and the Holy Spirit is the one only God... I sacrifice to the one and living God, who is blessed for ever» St. Vincentius at Valentia in Spain in the year 304 (ib. p. 325 n. 5). «I adore the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit; I adore the holy Trinity, besides which there is no God... I now sacrifice myself to Christ, my God... Let us adore the inseparable Trinity, which Trinity is the unity of the Godhead... I sacrifice and immolate myself to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit» St. Euplus at Catana in the year 304 (ib. p. 362). «Lord God almighty, Jesus Christ... I give thanks to you, Lord Jesus Christ... to you I offer my sacrifice, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit live and reign, God, for ever and ever» St. Afra of Augusta

Vindelicorum, in the year 303 or 304 (ib. p. 401. n. 3). «Tarachus (the martyr) said: I serve and sacrifice to my God... More and more I desire to trust in the name of God and of his Christ. Maximus (the governor) said: unjust and accursed one, how do you serve two Gods, whom you confess by word, and now deny the Gods? Tarachus said: I confess plainly him who is the true God (ἐγὼ Θεὸν ὁμολογῶ τὸν ὄντως ὄντα). Maximus said: now you have confessed Christ and God (καὶ πρὶν καὶ Χριστόν τινα ἔφης εἶναι Θεόν). Tarachus said: and rightly (οὕτως ἔχει), for this is the Son of God, the hope of Christians, for whom we suffer and are saved» St. Tarachus in Cilicia in the year 304 (ib. p. 377). «Polemon (the judge) said: which God do you worship? Pionius (the martyr) answered: the almighty God, who made heaven and earth... whom we have known through his Word, Jesus Christ... To Sabina Polemon turned his words: which God do you worship? She answered: the almighty God, whom we have known through his Word, Jesus Christ. After this, with Asclepiades standing near at hand, Polemon said: which God do you worship? He answered (Asclepiades): Christ. Polemon: what then, is he another? He answered: no, but he himself, whom they too confessed a little while before... The judges said again: which God do you worship? Pionius answered: him who made heaven and adorned it with stars, who established the earth... Then they (the judges): do you mean him who was crucified? And Pionius: I mean him whom the Father sent for the salvation of the world» ¹³ with his companions at Smyrna in the year 250 (ib. p. 122 sqq.). In both the interrogations of Tarachus and of Pionius the pagans try to convince the holy martyrs that many Gods are worshipped by them, because they called both the Father and Christ almighty God; but the Christians confess that the Father and the Son are one and the same God, not one God and another; and so, although the Father is one and the Son another, they are not distinguished by Godhead but are one God.

From what has been set forth — both the explanations of the Fathers and the testimonies of the martyrs — it is evident that the universal faith and understanding of the dogma of the Church was the same from the Apostles onward, and that it was defended in the Council of Nicaea and afterwards more diligently and with settled and fixed dogmatic formulas, so that the dogma might be preserved intact in direct opposition to the new errors.

II. If you compare Petavius's book I de Trin. c. 3-5 with his own Prolegomena to the very books on the Trinity, it will not be so readily possible to form a clear and distinct notion of what, in the end, according to Petavius's opinion concerning the unity of nature and the consubstantiality of the three divine persons, not a few Fathers who flourished before the Nicene definition believed as a certain and settled doctrine; for the opinions of the Fathers, taken in the way in which they are understood by Petavius in book I, will seem to be repugnant to those things which he himself demonstrates in the Prolegomena concerning the faith of the same Fathers. Many later theologians, and among these Natalis Alexander, Maranus, Lumper, Moehler (in the work «Athanasius Magnus») and, among the Anglicans, George Bull, interpreted the more difficult locutions of the ancient Fathers not as Petavius in book I, but in another sense, which agrees with Petavius's own Prolegomena; and that this interpretation of theirs is true they demonstrated from the very principles of the Fathers, so that concerning the full agreement of the doctrine before the Nicene synod with the profession of the synod and of the subsequent Fathers with regard to the one Godhead of the three distinct persons, the matter seemed to be clear at least among Catholic theologians. Now, however, certain new interpretations are brought forward, in which a manifest error in understanding the revealed dogma, attributed to the Fathers, is covered over with the name of imperfect understanding; and this theory is defended from the principles concerning the progress of the Catholic intellect, which, in our opinion at least, are extended beyond just limits.

On the one hand these theologians confess that the faith and the profession of the dogma was the same in the ante-Nicene Fathers as afterwards; on the other hand, however, they affirm that the manner of conceiving and explaining the dogma itself was «deficient». Moreover, they find the defect not only in the use of arguments, of comparisons, of obscure expression, but in this: that most of the ante-Nicene Fathers thought the nature of the Son to be another and inferior nature than the nature of the Father is, and accordingly they indeed judged the same also concerning the nature of the Holy Spirit. Those ancient Fathers, they say, all believed the Son of God to be God, but they had not yet understood consubstantiality with the Father in the sense of the Council of Nicaea; indeed they seemed to tend toward asserting the nature of the Son as a participation in the nature of the Father, inferior «in quantity». «For as long as the ratio by which a person is related to a person is not distinguished from the ratio by which the nature in the Son is related to the nature in the Father, so long is the personal subordination (that one person has origin from another) necessarily transferred also to the essence, nor does it admit the knowledge of absolute consubstantiality; which happened to the apologists and to most of the ante-Nicene Fathers» Dr. Kuhn de Trin. § 12. p. 123. These recent theologians do not approve that we strive, by a comparison made with the declarations and formulas of the subsequent Fathers, to reduce the harsher modes of speech of the ante-Nicene Fathers to the same sense as regards the matter itself, admitting only the distinction and the progress from a more obscure and confused manner of conceiving to clearer and more distinct definitions; but they press those harsher locutions of the ancients as expressing an inferior degree and therefore a diversity of nature in the Son of God in comparison with the Father, God of all things. «The anxious zeal, they say, with which many theologians everywhere defend the more ancient Fathers, and the arbitrariness with which they reduce their opinions to the explanations of the later Fathers, is not to be imitated but rather deserves reproach». For the rest, as to the doctrine of the ante-Nicene Fathers, they bid us be secure on the basis of a principle frequently repeated in our age, which I confess I do not understand what it means, when the question concerns not the mind and will of men but doctrine and the opinion objectively considered in itself. For they say, as it were for a sufficient apology for the sound doctrine of those Fathers: «What makes a heretic is not an incomplete or even false theory, but an incomplete and perverse faith pertinaciously retained». Again, however, the same theologians not infrequently speak in such a way that they seem to concede that the Fathers in question did indeed hold the very matter of the unity of nature in distinct persons, but were only unable to express clearly and distinctly enough what they conceived with the understanding of faith. But if it is so, why should not the opinions of those ancients be reconciled with the doctrine of their successors and with the Catholic explanation of the mystery? Certainly the whole explanation of the doctrine of the ante-Nicene Fathers proposed by these learned men, so that (as they say) they may show in the understanding of the dogma of the Holy Trinity a progress from the imperfect to the more perfect, seems to me to tend toward introducing the opinion that the Fathers themselves, most of them, from the Apostles down to the fourth century, had nothing settled and fixed concerning the sense in which Christ the Son of God is and is called God, and the sense in which the three, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, are one God; indeed it seems to follow from the interpretations of these theologians that the real unity of the singularity of God, and therefore the consubstantiality of the persons, which two dogmas are «the substance of the New Testament», was still unknown in the first centuries at least to most of the Doctors, and so much the more to the other faithful.

But that such a progress cannot be admitted, if the question is universally about the Catholic understanding and not only about the error of one or another ancient Doctor, is most certain both from the proper nature of this dogma of which we speak, and from the manner in which the subsequent Fathers testified their agreement with the more ancient Fathers, and from the express and common doctrine of the ante-Nicene Fathers and martyrs.

1°. It is a question of a principal truth, expressly recorded in the Scriptures by the Apostles themselves, necessarily declared to the faithful in the preaching of the Apostles, to be explicitly believed by all the faithful, to be professed in the very initiation of baptism and daily in the creed, and to be sealed even with blood before tyrants. This truth is: that there is one God, besides whom there is no other God; that the three distinct persons, the Father,

the Son, and the Holy Spirit are this one God, not, however, three Gods; namely, that the incarnate Word of the Father, Christ, is true God, and therefore not another God but one God with the Father and the Holy Spirit. But it is repugnant to the whole nature of the Church, divinely constituted and fortified by the promises of Christ for the custody of the deposit of faith, that a truth comprehended in revelation in the manner we have said, explicitly handed down by the Apostles, to be explicitly believed by all the faithful always and everywhere, should at some time not be, according to its genuine sense, in the Catholic understanding of the Church. Therefore, in the understanding and explanation of truths of this kind, such a progress as these theologians assume cannot be admitted from the very general principles of tradition and of the economy of the Christian faith. For the nature of the dogmas which were explicitly, in themselves, handed down by the Apostles to the Churches, always expressly proposed to the faithful «by instant preaching» as to be explicitly known and believed by all, is far different from that of certain other truths, which either were revealed only implicitly in others, or were proposed by some common use and observance of discipline rather than by express doctrine, or at any rate were received by simple faith but were not inculcated by instant preaching. In these latter matters we do not deny that a progress of explanation can sometimes take place through the authentic magisterium under the direction of the Holy Spirit, in almost the same way in which those theologians assert progress in the explanation of the dogma of the Holy Trinity (see Tractat. de Traditione). From the general principles, therefore, it is concluded that it could in no way happen that the Catholic Fathers, considered in common, did not understand and teach, as regards the matter itself, the same unity of the Godhead and the same distinction of the three persons which was defined in the Council of Nicaea and afterwards vindicated in many ways. From this, however, it did not follow that the manner of speaking, whether about the unity or about the distinction, received into use was always equally determinate, in no way ambiguous, and excluding the very possibility of a false and heretical sense, of which kind we see the ecclesiastical formulas to be that were afterwards established and declared in many ways against heretical errors.

2°. Therefore if anything among the antecedent Fathers, considered in common, were ambiguous, admitting in itself several senses, it would necessarily have to be understood according to the explanations of the subsequent Fathers, who themselves proclaim their agreement with their predecessors, and profess to teach nothing other, though in other and stricter words, than what was handed down from the elders from the apostolic age. Thus Athanasius, with regard to the doctrine of consubstantiality, compares the Fathers of the third century with the Nicene Fathers. «It is not fitting to pit those against these; for they are all Fathers, nor would it be holy to discriminate among them, as if some had taught well and others, on the contrary, badly; for they all fell asleep in Christ... Nor did those three hundred write any opinion of their own, nor, trusting in themselves, did they rely on words not written before; but they too, proceeding from the Fathers (their predecessors), made use of their words» Athanas. de Synod. n. 43. If, however, the question is about the opinions of certain individual Fathers, certainly they are neither infallible, nor does the perpetuity and constancy of the universal tradition in itself, or the demonstration of it, depend on the integrity of their doctrine. Nevertheless, in a Christian dogma of this kind, such as is the profession of the one and triune God, dissent from the Catholic understanding and a twisting to a perverse sense cannot be admitted even in individual Fathers, unless it be evidently demonstrated that their doctrine can in no probable way be reconciled with the Catholic opinion. The reason for this lies in the very principles of the Fathers, in their union with the Church, in the authority and veneration with which they were regarded as lights by the Church herself, in the connection by which the Fathers of different ages, the later ones, cohere with the earlier; and especially with regard to the present question the reason is most clear in the very nature of the dogma, which could not be unknown to Catholic doctors, and certainly could not have been called into question within the confines of the Church without other Pastors and Doctors immediately crying out. This matter is established most luminously by the fact itself. When Dionysius of Alexandria, in order to express the real distinction of the Father and the Son against the Sabellians more effectively, had used certain modes of speech by which a distinction and diversity of nature seemed to be signified, he was immediately accused before the successor of Peter, Dionysius the Roman Pontiff, who on this occasion set forth the common faith, as concerning the distinction of persons so concerning the unity of nature, with that clarity which we saw above; to this definition the Alexandrian most fully assented and protested that he had always been in the same faith. (See S. Athanas. I. de sentent. Dionysii 11. 15. 17. 18. 20; de decret. Nicaen. n. 26). But about Dionysius there will be a place to speak elsewhere. The same agreement, solicitude, and clarity of understanding in guarding the deposit appears no less manifestly in the condemnation of all heretics, however subtly they disputed and covered their error with ecclesiastical words. The reason which, especially in dogmas of this kind of public and common profession, persuades that the agreement of the Fathers is always to be presumed, and that the dissent of some can be conceded only on evident demonstration, is embraced by Augustine, speaking of another dogma even less obvious than the profession of the Holy Trinity: «because, he says, they too (the Eastern Fathers) are certainly Christians, and the faith of both parts of the world is this one faith, because this faith is the Christian faith» Aug. contr. Iul. I. n. 14. (See Tract. de Tradit. th. XV.).

3°. If we now look at the doctrine itself, as it stands proposed in the monuments still left to us from before the Nicene times, the different Doctors are not so much to be distinguished among themselves as rather a twofold series of opinions is to be compared in all, or at least in most, of those Fathers.

a) All hold as a most certain fundamental principle that there is one God, besides whom there is no other; that he, considered absolutely or under the aspect of Godhead and essence, is one in such a way as the Jews and the Monarchians teach and rightly prove from the Scriptures; moreover, that it is altogether unlawful to render divine worship to anyone but the one true God. No less certain do they hold that Christ the Son of God, and likewise the third person, the Holy Spirit, is true God, to be adored with divine worship; that Christ the Son, distinct from the Father, is that one true God who appeared in the V. T. and revealed himself as the one God. It is clear, therefore, that by all those Fathers both the multiplication and the partition of the Godhead or of the divine nature is held, from Christian principles, to be absurd. Hence it is certain that the declarations of the real distinction between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit can never be understood by them in such a sense that the distinction reaches even to the one, most simple, and non-multiplicable divine essence.

b) Concerning the distinction of persons there is a twofold, different manner of arguing among those Doctors. When they simultaneously refute the opposite errors, on the one side of those asserting, along with the unity of nature, also the unity of person, on the other side of those distributing in any way whatsoever also the nature along with the distinction of persons, as we saw in the case of the Pontiffs Callistus and Dionysius; or what comes to almost the same thing, when the Fathers, vindicating the distinction of persons, simultaneously repel the calumny of the adversaries, as if nature were multiplied by this very thing, as Irenaeus often, and not rarely Tertullianus and others; in this disputation, I say, they join and defend with equal clarity the unity of nature and the distinction of persons. But frequently, on the supposition of the unity of the Godhead, they have before their eyes only the real distinction of the Father and the Son, which the heretics denied. Since here it was in no way the purpose of the Fathers to declare how the distinction is, but only its reality, whether it is, and since concerning the unity of nature they agreed without controversy with their Monarchian adversaries; it is no wonder that they often use those modes of speech which, considered in themselves, could signify not only a distinction of persons but even of natures, and which in another disputation, where the Godhead of the Son and the unity of nature would have to be vindicated, they themselves would not have used, and which we can still less conveniently use in a later age, since the formulas and definitions directly opposed to the errors both of the Monarchians and of the Triusians are now settled and fixed, formulas which necessity itself brought forth only gradually, that the dogma of unity and of distinction, always believed, might be fortified against heretics, and the frauds might be detected by which they concealed their error.

The origin of this more distinct and more constant terminology is attested by the history of the Council of Nicaea described by us above (th. IX), indeed by the whole history of the Arians and of the Pneumatomachi, as they were refuted and condemned both by the Fathers separately and in the Councils. What therefore St. Jerome says about those ancient doctors, Apol. contr. Rufin. 1. II. n. 17: «it can happen that they either simply erred, or wrote in another sense, or their writings were gradually corrupted by unskilled copyists; or at least that, before Arius was born in Alexandria like the noonday demon, they spoke certain things innocently and less cautiously, and such things as cannot escape the calumny of perverse men» — all this is to be conceded, if the speech is about the possibility of the matter and about the individual doctors considered separately, not indeed as considered in agreement. But if the question is about the fact, the first and the third ought not to be admitted without great proof; the second and the fourth are found to be most true upon inspection of the writings of those Fathers who have always been held orthodox.