Letter 189

189. To Eustathius the chief physician.

The practice of your art is, for all of you who pursue medicine, a love of mankind. And it seems to me that whoever, among all the pursuits men are zealous for in life, sets your science first, would arrive at a fitting judgement and not fail of what is proper; since the most precious thing of all, life itself, is to be shunned and full of pain unless one can possess it together with health — and the giver of health is your art. But in your case the science is exceptionally accomplished, and you make the bounds of your love of mankind wider for yourself, not confining the favour of your art to bodies alone, but devising also the correction of the soul's ailments. And I say this, not only following the report of the many, but taught by my own experience, in many other matters, and especially now in the indescribable malice of our enemies — a malice which, like an evil flood pouring down upon our life, you skilfully drained away, dispersing this grievous inflammation of our heart by pouring over it the comforting flow of your words. For I, looking to the repeated and varied assaults of our enemies against us, thought I ought to keep silent and receive in quiet what was brought upon me, and not to answer those armed with falsehood — that evil weapon, which often through the very appearance of truth thrusts in its point. But you, doing well, urged me not to betray the truth, but to refute the slanderers, that the many might not be harmed by falsehood prevailing over truth.

Now those who have taken up against us this groundless hatred seem to me to do something very like the fable of Aesop. For just as that fabulist made the wolf bring certain charges against the lamb — ashamed, as it were, to appear to destroy without just cause one who had done him no prior injury — and, when the lamb easily dissolved every accusation brought against him by slander, made the wolf abate nothing of his fury, but, beaten in the matter of justice, conquer with his teeth; so those for whom hatred of us has been pursued as though it were one of the good things, blushing perhaps to seem to hate without cause, fabricate causes and charges against us. And they do not abide to the end by any of the things they say, but allege now this, and a little later another, and again yet a third as the ground of their hostility toward us. Their malice rests on nothing; but when they have shaken off one charge, they fasten upon another, and from that again they take up a third; and even if all the charges are dissolved, they do not desist from hating. They accuse us of professing three Gods, and they ring this in the ears of the many, and do not cease persuasively to build up this slander. But the truth fights on our behalf, both publicly before all and privately before those we meet, as we show that everyone who speaks of three Gods has been anathematized by us, and is not even judged to be a Christian. But when they hear this, Sabellius is ready to hand against us, and the disease that springs from him is rumoured against our teaching. Again, against this too we put forward our customary weapon, the truth, showing that we shudder at such a heresy as much as at Judaism.

What then? After so many attempts, have they grown weary and rested? It is not so. But they bring against us a charge of innovation, framing the accusation against us in this way: they charge us with confessing three hypostases, and with speaking of one goodness, and one power, and one Godhead. And this, they say, is not outside the truth; for we do say it. But in bringing the charge they object that their custom does not have this, and that Scripture does not compose it so. What, then, do we say to this as well? We do not think it just to make the custom prevailing among them a law and a canon of right doctrine. For if custom has force as a proof of rightness, then it is certainly permitted to us also to bring forward in opposition the custom prevailing among us. And if they cancel ours, neither are we bound to follow theirs. Let the divinely inspired Scripture, then, be our arbiter; and with whomsoever the doctrines are found to agree with the divine words, on their side will the verdict of truth certainly fall. What, then, is the charge? For two things at once have been brought forward in the accusation against us: one, that we distinguish the hypostases; the other, that we no longer number any of the names befitting God in the plural, but, as has been said, declare the goodness and the power and the Godhead, and all such things, in the singular. Now toward the distinction of the hypostases those who teach a difference of essences in the divine nature could have no quarrel; for it is not likely that those who speak of three essences should not also speak of three hypostases. Therefore this alone stands in the charge: that we proclaim in the singular the names applied to the divine nature.

But our answer to this is ready and clear. For he who condemns those who speak of one Godhead must of necessity agree either with him who speaks of many, or with him who speaks of none. For it is not possible to conceive anything besides what has been said. But the divinely inspired teaching does not permit us to speak of many; for wherever it makes mention, it makes mention of the Godhead in the singular, as, "In him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead," and elsewhere, "For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead." If, then, to extend the number of Godheads into a multitude belongs only to those sick with the polytheistic error, while to deny the Godhead altogether would belong to the atheists, what argument is it that slanders us for confessing one Godhead? But they uncover more plainly the aim of their argument: in the case of the Father they consent that he is God, and that the Son likewise is honoured with the name of Godhead, but the Spirit, when numbered with Father and Son, they no longer include in the conception of Godhead; rather, halting the power of the Godhead at the Son, they cut off the nature of the Spirit from the divine glory. We too, therefore, must make our defence, as far as we are able, briefly, against this notion as well.

What, then, is our argument? When the Lord delivered the saving faith to those who are made disciples by the word, he joined to the Father and the Son also the Holy Spirit. And what has once been joined, we say, holds the conjunction throughout all. For it is not the case that, ranked with them in one respect, it is fenced off in others. But in the life-giving power, by which our nature is transformed from a corruptible existence to immortality, the power of the Spirit is taken up together with Father and Son; and in many other respects too — as in the conception of the good, and the holy, and the eternal, the wise, the upright, the sovereign, the powerful, and everywhere, evidently — it has its inseparability in all the names understood in the better sense. We hold, therefore, that it is right to think that what is joined to Father and Son in so many lofty and God-befitting conceptions is separated from them in nothing. For we do not know of any difference of better and worse among the names conceived of the divine nature, so that it should be holy to suppose that, while we grant the Spirit a share in the lower names, we judge it unworthy of those that are more exalted. For all the conceptions and names that befit God stand equal in honour with one another, in that they do not disagree at all concerning the signification of the subject. For the appellation "good" does not lead the mind to one subject, and that of "wise" and "powerful" and "just" to another; but whatever names you may speak, the thing signified through all of them is one. And if you say "God," you have pointed to the same one whom you conceived through the rest of the names. But if all the names applied to the divine nature are of equal force with one another in pointing to the subject, leading our mind to the same thing under different emphases, what argument is it that grants the Spirit fellowship with Father and Son in the other names, but fences it off from the Godhead alone? For it is altogether necessary either to grant the fellowship in this too, or not to allow it in the rest either. For if it is worthy in those, it is surely not unworthy in this. But if, by their argument, it is too small for the fellowship of the name of Godhead with Father and Son to reach it, then it is not worthy to share in any other of the names befitting God either. For when the names are learned thoroughly and compared with one another through the emphasis contemplated in each, they will be found to fall in no way short of the appellation of God. A proof is that by this name many even of the lower things are named; or rather, the divine Scripture does not spare this shared use of the name, not even in the case of things utterly out of keeping, as when it names the idols with the appellation of God. For "the gods," it says, "who did not make heaven and earth, let them be taken away, and let them be cast beneath the earth," and, "All the gods of the nations are demons." And the woman with the familiar spirit, conjuring up for Saul by her sorceries the souls he sought, says that she has seen gods. But Balaam too, being a soothsayer and a diviner, who carried his divinations in his hand, as the Scripture says, and who had perfected for himself through the meddlesome art of augury the teaching that comes from demons, is recorded by the Scripture to be counselled by God. And there are many such things one might collect and set forth from the divine Scriptures, to show that this name in no way takes precedence over the rest of the appellations befitting God, since, as has been said, we find it spoken in a shared sense even of things out of keeping. But the name of the holy, and of the incorruptible, and of the upright, and of the good, we have nowhere been taught by Scripture to make common with what is unbefitting. If, then, in the names piously spoken of the divine nature alone and in a special way they do not deny that the Holy Spirit has fellowship with the Son and the Father, what argument is it to maintain that it is excluded from this name alone, of which even the demons and the idols were shown to partake by a certain shared use?

But they say that this appellation indicates nature, and that the nature of the Spirit has no fellowship with Father and Son, and that therefore it does not share in the fellowship of this name. Let them show, then, by what means they came to know the difference of nature. For if it were possible for the divine nature itself to be contemplated in itself, and to find through what appears both what is proper to it and what is foreign, then we should certainly have no need of arguments or other proofs for the apprehension of what is sought. But since it is too high for the comprehension of the things sought, and we reason from certain proofs about the things that escape our knowledge, it is altogether necessary that we be led by the operations to the investigation of the divine nature. If, then, we see that the operations performed by the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit differ from one another, we shall conjecture from the difference of the operations that the natures which operate are also different. For it is not possible that things separated according to the principle of nature should be brought together with one another in the form of their operations — fire does not cool, nor does ice make warm — but by the difference of their natures the operations that come from them are also distinguished from one another. But if we understand the operation of Father and Son and Holy Spirit to be one, differing or varying in nothing, then we must, from the identity of the operation, infer the unity of the nature.

The Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit alike sanctify, and give life, and enlighten, and comfort, and do all such things. And let no one assign in a special way the sanctifying authority to the operation of the Spirit, having heard the Saviour in the Gospel saying to the Father concerning the disciples, "Father, sanctify them in your name." And in the same way all the rest is performed equally upon the worthy by the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit: every grace and power, the guidance, the life, the comfort, the change to immortality, the passage into freedom, and whatever other good descends to us. But the dispensation above us also, both in the intelligible creation and in the sensible — if one must, from the things known to us, conjecture also about the things that lie above us — this too is not set outside the operation and power of the Holy Spirit, each receiving a share of the benefit according to its own worth and need. For even if the ordering and governance of the things above our nature is unseen by our perception, yet from the sequence one would more reasonably conclude, through the things known to us, that the power of the Spirit is active among them too, than that it is excluded from the dispensation among the higher beings. For he who says the latter puts forward a bare and unsupported blasphemy, establishing the absurdity by no reasoning; but he who holds that the things above us also are dispensed, together with Father and Son, by the power of the Spirit, supports his assertion about these things by the clear proof drawn from his own life. Therefore the identity of the operation in the case of Father and Son and Holy Spirit clearly shows the unchangeableness of the nature. So that, even if the name of Godhead signifies nature, the community of essence requires that this appellation be properly applied to the Holy Spirit as well.

But I do not know how those who would establish everything bring the appellation of Godhead to the indication of nature, as though they had not heard from the Scripture that a nature does not come into being by appointment. But Moses was appointed god of the Egyptians, when he who gave the oracle spoke to him thus: "I have given you as a god to Pharaoh." Therefore the appellation indicates some authority, whether of oversight or of operation. But the divine nature, in all the names conceived of it, remains, as it is in itself, unsignified, as our argument holds. For learning of a benefactor, and a judge, the good and the just, and whatever other such names, we have been taught differences of operations; but of the nature of the one who operates we are no more able to gain knowledge through the comprehension of the operations. For when one gives an account of each of these names, and of the nature itself about which the names are spoken, he will not give the same account of both. And of things whose account is different, the nature is also different. Therefore the essence is one thing, of which no defining account has yet been found; and the signification of the names spoken of it is another, the names being given from some operation or worth.

We find, then, that there is no difference in the operations, from the fellowship of the names; but of any variation according to nature we grasp no clear demonstration, since, as has been said, the identity of the operations indicates the community of the nature. Whether, therefore, Godhead is a name of operation, then, just as we say there is one operation of Father and Son and Holy Spirit, so we say there is one Godhead; or whether, according to the opinions of the many, the name of Godhead is indicative of nature, then, because we find no variation in the nature, we not unreasonably define the holy Trinity to be of one Godhead.