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There is, accordingly, a good which is alone simple, and therefore
alone unchangeable, and this is God. By this Good have all others
been created, but not simple, and therefore not unchangeable.
"Created," I say, that is, made, not begotten. For that which
is begotten of the simple Good is simple as itself, and the same as
itself. These two we call the Father and the Son; and both together
with the Holy Spirit are one God; and to this Spirit the epithet
Holy is in Scripture, as it were, appropriated. And He is another
than the Father and the Son, for He is neither the Father nor the
Son. I say "another," not "another thing," because He is
equally with them the simple Good, unchangeable and co-eternal. And
this Trinity is one God; and none the less simple because a
Trinity. For we do not say that the nature of the good is simple,
because the Father alone possesses it, or the Son alone, or the
Holy Ghost alone; nor do we say, with the Sabellian heretics, that
it is only nominally a Trinity, and has no real distinction of
persons; but we say it is simple, because it is what it has, with the
exception of the relation of the persons to one another. For, in
regard to this relation, it is true that the Father has a Son, and
yet is not Himself the Son; and the Son has a Father, and is not
Himself the Father. But, as regards Himself, irrespective of
relation to the other, each is what He has; thus, He is in Himself
living, for He has life, and is Himself the Life which He has.
It is for this reason, then, that the nature of the Trinity is
called simple, because it has not anything which it can lose, and
because it is not one thing and its contents another, as a cup and the
liquor, or a body and its color, or the air and the light or heat of
it, or a mind and its wisdom. For none of these is what it has: the
cup is not liquor, nor the body color, nor the air light and heat,
nor the mind wisdom. And hence they can be deprived of what they
have, and can be turned or changed into other qualities and states, so
that the cup may be emptied of the liquid of which it is full, the body
be discolored, the air darken, the mind grow silly. The
incorruptible body which is promised to the saints in the resurrection
cannot, indeed, lose its quality of incorruption, but the bodily
substance and the quality of incorruption are not the same thing. For
the quality of incorruption resides entire in each several part, not
greater in one and less in another; for no part is more incorruptible
than another. The body, indeed, is itself greater in whole than in
part; and one part of it is larger, another smaller, yet is not the
larger more incorruptible than the smaller. The body, then, which is
not in each of its parts a whole body, is one thing;
incorruptibility, which is throughout complete, is another thing;,
for every part of the incorruptible body, however unequal to the rest
otherwise, is equally incorrupt. For the hand, e.g., is not more
incorrupt than the finger because it is larger than the finger; so,
though finger and hand are unequal, their incorruptibility is equal.
Thus, although incorruptibility is inseparable from an incorruptible
body, yet the substance of the body is one thing, the quality of
incorruption another. And therefore the body is not what it has. The
soul itself, too, though it be always wise (as it will be eternally
when it is redeemed), will be so by participating in the unchangeable
wisdom, which it is not; for though the air be never robbed of the
light that is shed abroad in it, it is not on that account the same
thing as the light. I do not mean that the soul is air, as has been
supposed by some who could not conceive a spiritual nature; but, with
much dissimilarity, the two things have a kind of likeness, which
makes it suitable to say that the immaterial soul is illumined with the
immaterial light of the simple wisdom of God, as the material air is
irradiated with material light, and that, as the air, when deprived
of this light, grows dark, (for material darkness is nothing else
than air wanting light,) so the soul, deprived of the light of
wisdom, grows dark.
According to this, then, those things which are essentially and truly
divine are called simple, because in them quality and substance are
identical, and because they are divine, or wise, or blessed in
themselves, and without extraneous supplement. In Holy Scripture,
it is true, the Spirit of wisdom is called "manifold" because it
contains many things in it; but what it contains it also is, and it
being one is all these things. For neither are there many wisdoms,
but one, in which are untold and infinite treasures of things
intellectual, wherein are all invisible and unchangeable reasons of
things visible and changeable which were created by it. For God made
nothing unwittingly; not even a human workman can be said to do so.
But if He knew all that He made, He made only those things which
He had known. Whence flows a very striking but true conclusion, that
this world could not be known to us unless it existed, but could not
have existed unless it had been known to God.
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