Chapter I:
Chapter I: Containing the Introductory Preface
The necessity of this doctrine.
§ 2. We shall deal with the introductory preface in six theses, to each of which we shall add an exposition, an antithesis, and an answering of questions. Finally, when we have dealt with all these, we shall add a general statement of the profitable use of the article. (I) Let this, then, be our first thesis: All who are to be saved must know and believe the mystery of the Trinity.
The exposition: (a) We exclude not only denial but also ignorance of the Trinity from humans who are to be saved. Some things revealed in the Word are arranged in such a way that they can be unknown without affecting one’s salvation, though one cannot deny them without endangering the same. However, not only the denial but also the ignorance of the Trinity is damnable. (b) We do not require from all members of the Church an equal level of understanding, because the light of spiritual knowledge and of faith in some is quite bright and in others quite dim. (c) We do not require a perfect, full apprehension and intuitive knowledge of this mystery from those who are going to be saved, because we cannot be brought to that in this life (Exod. 33:20; 1 Cor. 13:9). In this sense Cyprian (De bapt. Christi, sermon 1) is correct when he states that the Trinity is known only to itself. However, we are asserting no more than this: that for the catholic faith, which is necessary for all who are to be saved, there must be not a confused and implicit but a distinct and explicit knowledge and confession of the three persons of the Godhead.
§ 3. We demonstrate this: (1) From the definition of God handed over in the Scriptures. Whoever does not know God as He has revealed Himself in His Word is straying away from the true God. Whoever does not know or denies the definition of God given in the Scriptures does not know or denies God Himself. But whoever does not know the mystery of the Trinity does not know God as He has revealed Himself in His Word nor does he know the definition of God given in the Scriptures. Therefore he is straying away from the true God and does not know God Himself. The major premise is one of obvious truth. For whoever does not know God as He has revealed Himself in His Word is making up for himself an idol in his heart. Scripture bears witness to this as it accuses as idolaters those who think up a method of divine worship besides and outside that which God Himself has prescribed in His Word. For one cannot deny that a person who denies the definition1 of a thing denies the thing itself, because a definition is a word of being. The truth of the minor premise will become clear from the following.
§ 4. (2) From the intimate and indissoluble union of the persons of the Trinity. There is no one of these persons outside another, nor can we know, worship, or call upon one of them without also at the same time knowing, worshiping, or invoking the others too. The reason is that the measure and norm of knowing is the measure and norm of the nature of each thing to be known. But now the persons of the Trinity are related to each other in such a way that one of them is not outside another because of the consubstantiality and mutual interpenetration of the persons. John 14:11: “I in the Father, and the Father in Me.” Therefore it is also true that we cannot know, worship, or invoke one of them without at the same time knowing, worshiping, and invoking the others.
§ 5. (3) From the clear, emphatic statement of the Savior: “No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him” (Matt. 11:[27]). Therefore no one can know the Father outside of the revelation of the Son given in the Word. John 5:23, however, is especially evident: “The Father works all things through the Son that all may honor the Son even as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him.” From this it is easy to conclude: Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father. Whoever does not know the Son of God does not honor Him. Whoever denies that He is true God does not honor Him even as he honors the Father, that is, he does not attribute to Him the same and equal honor with the Father. Therefore whoever does not know the Son of God does not know the Father and consequently does not know, worship, invoke, honor the true God. From this foundation, John states: “No one who denies the Son has the Father” (1 John 2:23) and “Whoever does not abide in the doctrine of Christ does not have God” (2 John 9).
§ 6. (4) From the description of the heathen outside the Church. From the light of nature, the heathen could have known that God is one and the same, good, just, and an avenger of wickedness. However, because they could not have known through the light of nature—but only in the light of grace—the mystery of the Trinity revealed in the Word, therefore Scripture takes away from them the salutary knowledge of God and attributes to them only pure ignorance with respect to saving knowledge. Eph. 2:12: “At that time you were without God.” And the reason is given earlier: “you were without Christ,” without the knowledge of Christ. From this is born the following proposition: Whoever lacks a knowledge of Christ, the Son of God and our mediator, is without God—that is, he does not know the true God. (Cf. Acts 17:30; Rom. 10:14; Gal. 4:8.) From this foundation, 1 John 5:11–12 infers: “God has given us eternal life and this life is in His Son. … He who does not have the Son of God does not have life.” To sum up, whoever does not know the Son does not have the Son; therefore he does not have life and, as a consequence, does not have the salutary and saving knowledge of God, of which, in fact, eternal life consists (John 17:3).
§ 7. (5) From the condition of this mystery. If we are ignorant of or deny the mystery of the Trinity, we are ignorant of or deny the entire economy [
i.e., administration] of salvation. Surely, then, faith in and the confession of the Trinity are necessary. I prove the antecedent. After the fall of the first-formed, all humans are born under the yoke of sin and in slavery to the devil and are by nature the children of wrath (Eph. 2:3). No one can be freed from this wrath of God except through Christ, who is grasped by true faith. John 3:36: “Whoever does not believe in the Son, the wrath of God remains upon him.” The reason is in the light of day, because no one can provide sufficient satisfaction for his sins, placate the infinite wrath of God, and free himself from the control of Satan. Therefore unless he applies the obedient satisfaction of Christ to himself by faith, he is compelled to remain beneath the weight of sin, the wrath of God, and damnation (because the three follow each other mutually). Whoever does not know the Son, however, does not and cannot believe in the Son. Whoever denies the Son’s divinity cannot seek satisfaction for his sins with Him, since infinite virtue is required for this. Therefore. (Cf. Dr. Meisner, Consid. theol. Phot., p. 280.)
§ 8. (6) From the witness of the devout ancients. Athanasius, Symb.: “The catholic faith is this, that we worship the one God in Trinity and the Trinity in unity. Unless one keeps this faith whole and inviolate, he cannot be saved.” Nazianzen, toward the end of Orat. 2 de pace: “When all have known the Trinity, He is to some their illumination and to others their punishment.”
Antithesis.
§ 9. (I) The Photinians, who stand in the tracks of the heathen, the Turks, and the Jews, directly deny that the knowledge of this mystery is necessary for eternal salvation. In his book Quod evang. se Photin. adjungere debeant, p. 28, Socinus says that, like ignorance and denial, so also the confession of the Trinity is of itself not damnable, and consequently he places our opinion of the triune [unitrinus] God among those errors “that of themselves do not take away eternal salvation, though they readily hinder a person from knowing the way that leads thereto and from traveling upon it.” Socinus again, Ad Radec., epistle 2, p. 82: “God and Christ indeed are the foundation of our salvation, not according as we know their essence and substance but according as we hold to the will of God as it has been revealed through Christ.” Schmalz, Contra Ravensp., p. 25: “True faith in God and Christ can exist without the opinion of the Trinity.” The Catech. Racov., p. 25, on the question “What things related to the essence of God are entirely necessary for salvation?” responds: “That God exists, that He is only one, that He is eternal, that He is perfectly righteous, perfectly wise, and perfectly powerful.” Therefore it is denying that there are other necessary things; otherwise, it would have added more. Ostorodt writes: “In addition to these (six listed main points), we know of nothing else that must necessarily be known as far as the essence of God is concerned” (Instit., c. 3, p. 28).
§ 10. (II) Others deny that the knowledge of this mystery is necessary for eternal salvation indirectly: (1) The Papists, when some of them (a) deny that the mystery of the Trinity can be proved sufficiently from the Holy Scriptures, as we shall see later. Yet if one is unable to prove from the Scriptures the mystery of the Trinity, it will not be a fundamental article of faith that all must know for their salvation, since we have proved fully elsewhere that all things necessary for faith and morals are contained in the Scriptures.
(b) Some of them attribute salvation to the heathen—something we showed in our immediately preceding treatise in the chapter on the natural knowledge of God [1625 Exegesis, Commonplace II (On the Nature of God), § 81]. Yet if the more sound heathen have been saved, it is not necessary to know and believe the dogma of the Trinity for salvation, since from the light of nature the heathen have been unable to aspire to the knowledge thereof.
(c) They deny it when they approve of implicit faith, which is mere ignorance. Thomas ([ST,] 2a2ae, q. 7, art. 7) and Biel (3, Sent., dist. 25, q. 1) list only three things that all Christians, even the laity and the simple, are bound to believe “explicitly and in particular,” namely, “that God exists, that He is the Repayer, and that He is the Redeemer.” In other matters, they claim that “implicit faith” is sufficient for them. Although they add that “one must also believe explicitly the article of the Trinity, since the article of the incarnation presupposes it,” nevertheless what they have given with one hand they take away with the other when they add: “It is enough if they believe in the Trinity in a confused or general way but not distinctly, so that the personal property of each person is known.” What of the fact that that charcoal burner, whose faith they commend and set before the laity for their imitation, neither distinctly nor confusedly believed in the Trinity but simply professed that “he believed what the Church believed and the Church believed what he believed”? (See Pighius, Hierarch. eccles., c. 5; Hosius, De auctor. Script., bk. 3; Espence, on 2 Timothy 3; etc.)
(2) Some of the Calvinists, namely, those who attribute salvation to the more sound heathen, Zwingli and his disciples, as we have shown in its own place.
Questions concerning the necessity of this doctrine.
§ 11. (I) The question arises: Was it necessary for salvation, even in the Old Testament, to believe the mystery of the Trinity? We affirm this on the basis of the reasons we have provided, reasons that are clearly general and that regard all true believers, not only under the New Testament but also under the Old. Later, we shall provide the foundations for our confession concerning the Trinity not only from the New Testament but also from the Old. Meanwhile, we admit that there is a greater light and brilliance of this doctrine in the New Testament than in the Old. So here, too, that saying of Luther (which he was accustomed to say often) applies, that the New Testament seemed to him like the sun from which the Old Testament, like the moon, would borrow its light. Here we press the oracle of David, Ps. [81:9]: “You shall have no strange or foreign god.” The Greek and Vulgate editions have rendered this “a recent god.” Socinus attacks this explanation in vain (Defens. anim., p. 301), because a strange god is a recent god and a recent god is a strange god. In Judg. 5:8 alien gods are clearly called “new” or “recent gods.” However, the Photinians sin grievously against this precept in claiming that “Christ became God in the New Testament.” Socinus (Defens. anim., p. 302) writes as follows: “Warned as we have been by the oracles of the new covenant, we consider and worship Christ as our God. Nevertheless not only do we say that when the psalm was composed He was unknown to the people of God as the God who should be worshiped, but we also do not hesitate to say that He actually did not exist at that time.”
Therefore we condemn: (1) Those who, according to Dr. Chemnitz, blasphemously said that “the Trinity was first invented at the Councils of Nicaea and Constantinople, because before that time the Church devoutly believed that God is one” (part 1, Loc., c. 2, de Trin., p. 80). The Photinians already a long time ago blasphemously said these things, and as a result of this, they rage wildly and bitterly against the Nicene fathers. Pisecius writes: “All the architects of the Nicene faith were savages who lacked solid learning” (Cont. Camp., p. 63). Yet the repeated confession of the ancient faith and the assertion thereof against new foes are one thing, while the introduction of new articles of faith into the Church is something else.
(2) We condemn the Spirit-fighting [
] Anabaptists, who say that the doctrine of the divinity of the Holy Spirit was unknown in the church of the fathers under the Old Testament but was first revealed through the apostles after the ascension of Christ, something they try to establish from Acts 19:2. Yet the Holy Spirit is the third person of the Godhead, regarding whose true divinity we have clear and outstanding testimonies in the Old Testament no less than we have concerning the deity of the Son.
§ 12. (II) The question arises: Can the Photinians preserve their hypothesis and still assert, or do they actually assert from the heart, that our confession regarding the Trinity is not an error worthy of damnation? We respond negatively: (1) Because elsewhere they declare that dogma of ours not only a “severe error” (Socinus, Quod evangel., p. 28) but also a “blasphemous and horrible dogma” (Theodosius Schimberg, Praefat. refut. Carol. praefixa, folio 11; Socinus, Animadv. assert. 6) and an “anti-Christian lie” (Schmalz, Cont. Frantz., p. 10; Socinus, Animadv. assert. 1).
(2) Because they say that the Papists are not Christians because of the fact that “they claim that the person in Christ is not human but divine; because they believe that it is absurd that immortal God became man and died, that He is one essence in number and exists in three persons,” etc. (Schmalz, Refut. nov. monst. Smiglecii). However, we have these dogmas in common with the Papists.
(3) Idolatry is committed not only with regard to manner and means when one does not worship the true God divinely, that is, according to the manner divinely prescribed in the Word, but also and especially with regard to the object, when he who is not the true God is worshiped divinely. From all this, we draw the following conclusion: A dogma that is severely erroneous, blasphemous, anti-Christian, and idolatrous, such that one who embraces it ceases to be a Christian, is deservedly considered a damnable error. But according to the hypothesis of the Photinians, our dogma of the Trinity is of that sort. Therefore.
I add this too: (4) Whoever denies that Christ is a truly human person is shamefully and damnably in error in his knowledge of Christ the Savior. Our hypothesis of the Trinity denies that Christ is a human person [according to the Photinians]. Therefore. Both propositions do exist according to Schmalz (Contra Frantz., p. 281).
The second prefatory thesis.
§ 13. Prefatory thesis (II). We must not only teach the mystery of the Trinity thetically in the Church but also argue antithetically against those who attack it. The first part of this thesis follows freely from the first thesis, which we have just confirmed. For since faith in and confession of the Trinity are necessary for salvation and, on the other hand, are innate or inherent in no one by nature after the fall, therefore it is necessary that this doctrine be set forth in the Church from the Word of God and that it be carefully explained and taught to the uninstructed, so that they may be led to the true knowledge of the true God and through that to eternal life (Job 17:3; 20:29).
The second part of the thesis we should not take in this sense: (1) That all preachers in each and every sermon should censure the errors of the Photinians and list and teach their arguments, even to those who do not even know the name “Photinians.” (2) That one should discuss this mystery in detail and rashly by going beyond the limits. Instead, it should be discussed in our public writings, in Christian schools, and according to circumstances, if a special necessity of some church demands this, even in sermons against the very destructive errors of the Antitrinitarians who are directly subverting the very foundation of faith. For this is required by: (a) The highest necessity. Adversaries of the truth are attacking this Acropolis of Christian doctrine with great effort. Therefore we must go out to meet their frenzy and not permit ourselves to be found more slothful in affirming the truth than they are active in attacking it. Cassian, De incarn., bk. 1: “When the ailment begins anew, the medicine must never cease. Rather, the greater the illness, the more constant a cure is required.” (b) The authority of divine command. Those to whom is committed the responsibility of teaching in the churches and schools have been divinely commanded not only to teach but also “to refute those who contradict” (Titus 1:9), “to correct the opponents” (2 Tim. 2:25), and “to silence those who upset” (Titus 1:11). This is something that has been confirmed elsewhere by the example of those who rebuilt the temple at Jerusalem (Neh. 4:17) and by the example of shepherds, physicians, farmers, and gardeners. (c) Manifold usefulness. In this way, the teachers of the Church fulfill the parts of their responsibility, seducers become self-condemned (Titus 3:11), the misled are called back to the way of truth, and those who persist in the orthodox faith are strengthened therein and are fortified against errors that are plausible to their corrupt reason.
Antithesis.
§ 14. To some it seems best to treat these kinds of people not with debates but with proscriptions, prisons, book burnings, and mere condemnations, because their blasphemies already have been long condemned in the oldest councils of the early Church. Marcianus, Nemo 4, c. de summ. trinit. et fid. cathol.: “In the future no one, clergy or soldier or of some other condition, will try to treat the Christian faith publicly in crowds that gather together and listen as he seeks from this an opportunity for an uprising or treachery. For he does an injustice in the judgment of the respectable synod who hurries to repeat matters already judged and correctly disposed of and to debate them publicly.” The same ordinance is found in the Acta of the Council of Chalcedon (act. 3). We respond. We do not deny that that severity against the leaders of the heretics (whom our Luther calls “duxios” [“little generals”]) is sometimes not only applied by a Christian magistrate usefully but also should necessarily be exercised, namely, when they try to sprinkle the poison of their teachings on the orthodox churches committed to their care and trust. However, those means alone do not appear sufficient to uproot their heresy. Consequently, both to inform the seducers and to confirm ourselves and others in the truth, it is necessary that we set forth from the Word of God the foundations of our doctrine and add an explanation of the arguments against it. For faith is not an uncertain opinion that fluctuates in both directions but is an unchanging, definite, and unmoving knowledge through which the mind of a devout man is strengthened in the knowledge and confession of the truth in such a way that it does not refuse to approach the peril of death on its behalf.
As far as the ordinance of Marcianus is concerned, it was opposed to the rashness of revolutionaries and the seditious attempts of agitators, for it forbids “contending over the faith,” that is, arguing contentiously, and “seeking an opportunity for tumult and treachery from debate,” as is added clearly in the aforementioned passage. As a result, the gloss adds: “because this is always presumed, unless it takes place to learn in the schools or to convict the heretics,” for this is the best purpose. Consequently, from l. Quoniam 23, c. de episc. et cleric., the gloss concludes “that one may argue publicly about the catholic faith to reprove the corrupt opinion of heretics.” Therefore the emperor is forbidding debates of this sort not simply, but in a certain respect. To be sure, we would wish that the authority of those things that have been defined in orthodox fashion from the clear Scriptures in the councils of the early Church—especially the ecumenical councils—would be so great among all people that nothing in them would be called into doubt. However, since heretical depravity stubbornly rejects both the consensus of the Church catholic and the authority of even the most ancient councils, the heretics ought to be convicted completely from the Scriptures, which they say they accept.
The mystery of the Trinity should be proved from the Word of God.
§ 15. Thesis (III). The mystery of the Trinity should and also can be proved not from the streams of the fathers nor from the murky pools of the Scholastics but from the utterly clear springs of the Holy Scriptures. After confirming the “that” [
] in our former theses—that the mystery of the Trinity must be taught and believed—we come to the question of the “wherefore” [
]: from what source [principium] the doctrine of this mystery must be sought. Here we say clearly that it is solely and uniquely from the Word of God.
(1) We do not deny that the unanimous agreement of the early Catholic Church concerning this mystery—a consensus that the most ancient writers of the Church confirm, even those who lived before the Council of Nicaea—has and also should have great weight among the devout and wise, since anyone understands that that public and solemn confession of the Church closest to apostolic times has been preserved with a perpetual succession up to these times. And the condemnation of the Antitrinitarians, Samosatenes, Arians, etc., in the famous and old councils of the entire Christian world provide the greatest prejudice against the new refurbishers of the condemned heresies. Concerning this matter we have an outstanding passage in Basil, Cont. Eunomium, bk. 1, who says:
Why do you say that we should not attribute too much to those who have gone before; and that we should respect the multitude both of those who are Christians now and of those who were born from the time when the Gospel began to be proclaimed; that we should not reflect upon the dignity of those who shone with all kinds of spiritual gifts; but that with the eyes of our mind closed to everything and the memory of all the saints cast out of our mind, each of us must now subject his empty and purged heart to your inductions and sophisms?
Yet since those enemies of God [
] are indifferent toward that consensus (Schmalz, Cont. Frantz., disp. 1, p. 1: “The authority of the Church catholic to which Frantz appeals is arranged in such a way that no error from its testimony can be demonstrated.”) and especially since our faith should not ultimately be bound to the authority of the Church but to the immovable firmness of Holy Scripture, therefore the primary and chief foundation of our faith cannot be set on that consensus of the Church.
§ 16. (2) We also do not deny that the consensus of the early Church can and should be set against those insane cries of our adversaries who are not afraid to accuse us of novelty in our confession of the Trinity and even to declare that “it has been brought into the Church by the Roman Antichrist,” as we read in the German Racovian Catechism (Preface to the Wittenberg Academy, p. 2, fac. b). With the same impudence, the ministers of Transylvania (bk. 2, c. 6) confess that the fathers who lived before the Council of Nicaea—Ignatius, Justin, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Cyprian, etc.—belong to them. Although they admit that the rest are against them, they still cite the testimonies of Hilary, Chrysostom, Ambrose, Cyril, Jerome, and Augustine against us to show that the fathers contradicted themselves. At Alba Julia in 1568, the booklet De mediatoris Jesu Christi hominis divinitate was printed, which includes, at the beginning of c. 8 (written by Origen), a list of the authors who agreed with the Photinian dogma on the article of the Trinity “either directly or indirectly, either totally or in part.” Schmalz, Contra Frantz., p. 10: “Soon that absolutely absurd and at the same time utterly false idea about the essence of God will be hissed off the stage, and that judgment about the dogma of the Trinity will be like it is today among the Evangelicals regarding the papist Mass, purgatory, and other nonsense of this sort—that these all have one author, the Antichrist.” Theodosius Schimberg, Prefat. refutat. Carolii praefixa, f. 11: “It is clear that the dogma of the Trinity and the divinity of the Son are not true articles of faith because they are impossible for the mind. Therefore they are, in reality, blasphemous dogmas from the depths of hell foisted upon the churches of the Gentiles through the son of perdition by the power of Satan.” On f. 12 he adds: “The Trinity is the idol of the Antichrist.” (See 2 Thessalonians 2.)
However, that utterly false blasphemy is curbed powerfully by the unanimous consensus of the most ancient writers of the Church in declaring the dogma of the Trinity, an agreement that is so obvious that not even Socinus himself has dared to hope for support from them. For he certainly writes with extreme uncertainty when he says (Adv. Bell. et Wiek., f. 477): “It will never be shown from the writings of our people that they say or think that the ante-Nicene authors who are still extant were of our opinion (If they did not believe with the Photinians and did not condemn the doctrine of the Trinity, surely they approved it.), though we are all of the persuasion that they were opposed no less—in fact, even more—to the opinion of our adversaries than they were to ours, unless we take the words ‘our opinion’ to mean simply that which we perceive regarding that one God, namely, that He is none other than the Father of Jesus Christ. For we believe firmly that this was the same opinion of those fathers—if not of them all, surely then the greatest part of them (See how the heretical tongue falters!), though otherwise they disagree with us insofar as they want Christ or the Son of God to have existed of the substance of the Father Himself before the creation of the world and to have appeared quite often to the fathers in the Old Testament. In fact, they want that one God, His Father, to have created the world itself and all other things thereafter through Him and through Him to have revealed to humans whatever He wanted them to know.” (The ante-Nicene fathers contradict not only the Photinians but also the Arians. That is, they not only bear witness that the Son existed in the Old Testament before His incarnation and that all things were created through Him, but they also assert that He was begotten from eternity of the essence of the Father and is one God with the Father, as we have shown by citing their testimonies in our treatise On God the Father and His Eternal Son [1610 Loci Theologici, locus 5], § 152, to which we can add more of the same from Ignatius, Epist. ad Trallian., ad Philipp., ad Smyrn.; Irenaeus, Adv. haeres., bk. 3, c. 16, p. 176; Justin, Apol. 2. pro Christ., pp. 43, 47, as also in Dial. cum Tryph., p. 207, and 
, p. 306; Severus, patriarch of Alexandria, De rit. bapt. et synaxeos, p. 80; Athenagoras, Apolog.; Clement of Alexandria, Protrept. ad gent.; Cyprian, De idol. vanit.; Origen, homily 8 on Exodus.)
Moreover, as Socinus does not dare to claim for himself the support of the fathers who lived before the Council of Nicaea, so all the less confident is he of obtaining anything from those who lived after that council, for he adds (p. 479): “About the fathers who lived after it we are not saying anything, since in some way we argue against them—though we can draw out many things from them, and especially from Hilary, that are not at all in harmony with today’s commonly accepted opinion regarding Christ and the persons of the Godhead, (He dares with intolerable shamelessness to claim for himself the support of Hilary, though Hilary openly wrote twelve books supporting the dogma of the Trinity. Socinus sees that this fact opposes him strongly, so he adds:) points that are by no means weakened by the testimonies that our adversaries cite from them. After all, nothing prevents them from contradicting themselves, as generally happens to those who defend false doctrines.” (But who will allow himself to be persuaded that the devout ancients wanted to subvert in other passages the very thing that they strove to confirm openly with entire books against their detractors?)
With even greater audacity—or should I say shamelessness?—he writes (Defens. animadv., p. 368): “Before the days of Constantine the Great, and even for some time earlier, there clearly was no agreement about the triune [trinus] God whom Christians everywhere worshiped and invoked. Rather, it is evident that such a God was at that time unknown to most Christians and to the most important of them, for this can be understood from the writings of all the Christians who lived before that time (provided they are not corrupted nor fictitious), in which the one God is everywhere said to be only the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” However, he soon loses confidence in this assertion of his and adds (p. 369): “We can concede to our adversary that all Christians worshiped the triune God since apostolic times. Nevertheless it does not necessarily follow that this causes that to be a mark of true Christians,” etc. In the same place he adds the unbearably false charge: “Most of the ancients were Tritheists.”
§ 17. (3) We also do not deny that with grateful minds we can and should use the labors of the fathers in correctly explaining the words of Scripture, in devoutly discussing them, and in urging them skillfully against the Antitrinitarians, because from the apostle’s precept, it is fitting for the devout “not to despise prophesying, but to test everything and to hold fast that which is good” (1 Thess. 5:20–21). The situation itself reveals that the Photinians today are using many arguments that the Arians and other heretics used formerly, but which, several centuries ago, Epiphanius, Athanasius, Cyril, Augustine, and other champions of Christ knocked down and hammered to pieces with the sledges of the heretics. Therefore who would want to deny that we can equip ourselves with the same weapons against our foes today and that we can have for ourselves the same hope of gaining victory with those weapons?
(4) The Scholastics also at times supply some powerful and useful distinctions. We do not deny that these can be used fruitfully in this debate. Meanwhile, it should be immediately obvious to anyone at first glance that they have added many curious and superfluous questions to the simplicity of faith, have sought the answers to them from the principles of philosophy, and quite often have left the subject more tangled than simplified, not to mention those mutual contradictions with which they oppose each other. (See Erasmus, Enchir. mil. Christ. and Annot. on 1 Timothy 1; Luis Vives, on Augustine’s De c. D., bk. 2, c. 13 and bk. 19, c. 12, and here and there elsewhere; Flacius, De diss., p. 103).
§ 18. The aim of our thesis, however, is this: that we must look for confirmation of this mystery from the only and proper principle of theology, that is, from the Word of God. This we prove: (a) From the perfection of Scripture. There is no dogma of the Chris-tian faith that all must know to be saved that cannot and ought not be proved sufficiently from Holy Scripture, as we have demonstrated elsewhere. But the dogma of the Trinity is such a dogma. Therefore.
(b) From the condition of this mystery. Whatever is discussed concerning this mystery from the fathers or from the Scholastics or from natural reason, these points do not yet provide a firm, stable, unmoved foundation for faith. However, when we add the voice of God as it sounds in the Scriptures, then finally do we submit to divine revelation. Chemnitz says (part 1, Loci, p. 79):
Because the things said about the trinity of persons in the holy Godhead are marvelous and are placed far beyond the grasp of any creature, we must seek out the testimonies of divine revelation, which are so firm, certain, and clear that the conscience can safely submit to them in this great mystery. For the human mind assents with great difficulty to those secret matters that are set so far beyond our ability to see and, in fact, are contrary to every judgment of reason. The mind readily begins to be carried about with speculations unless testimonies of this kind are always in view, testimonies that call our minds back within the just bounds and limits that God has prescribed.
(c) From the command of God. As in the other articles of faith, so also in this one, which concerns the foundation of salvation, we are sent back “to the Law and to the testimony” (Isa. 8:20; Luke 16:29; 2 Pet. 1:19). The heavenly Father sends us to listen to His Son, Christ (Deut. 18:18; Matt. 3:17; 17:5). Christ sends us back to the Scriptures (John 5:39) and bears witness through His apostle that Holy Writ “is able to instruct us sufficiently for salvation” (2 Tim. 3:15). Therefore it will also be able to instruct us about this mystery, which we must know for our salvation.
(d) From the constant observation of the Church. For just as in the doctrine of life and morals the constant voice of our spiritual mother, the Church, is “Whatever He says to you, do” (John 2:5); so also in the doctrine of faith her constant voice is “Whatever He says to you, believe this.” Justin, Cohort. ad Graec., p. 29: “It is in all ways proper to know that by no means can anything about God be learned otherwise and elsewhere than from the prophets alone.” Consequently, in the most ancient councils of the early Church, held in opposition to the enemies of the Trinity, they did not determine the articles of faith on the basis of their own choice (as later happened in anti-Christian councils), but they drew their conclusions from the Scriptures. Athanasius, Epistol. ad Epict.: “The faith that the fathers explained in the council from the Holy Scriptures is sufficient to destroy all wickedness.” Emperor Constantine said to the fathers assembled at the Council of Nicaea: “We have the books of the evangelists and apostles and the oracles of the early prophets that teach us clearly what decision we must reach on a divine subject and that we should take the answers to our questions from those divinely inspired words” (Gelasius of Cyzicus, Act. Conc. Nic., c. 5; Tripart., bk. 2, c. 5). Accordingly, Nicholas of Cusa writes: “They used to put the holy Gospels in the center of where they congregated, and formerly a council made decisions according to the testimonies of the Scriptures” (De concord. cath. verit., bk. 2, c. 6).
Antithesis.
§ 19. (I) The Photinians accuse us of being moved only by the authority of the Church, that is, by human authority, to believe the Trinity, though they think that dogma lacks divine authority, that is, the authority of Scripture. Socinus, Defens. animadv. contra Eutrop., c. 3, p. 51: “There is no divine witness at all concerning the dogma of the Trinity. In fact, countless divine testimonies oppose it very clearly.” Ostorodt, Contra Tradel., part 2, c. 1, p. 87: “Not even a single passage of Scripture can be shown from which the Trinity could be discerned even vaguely.” What we must think about this accusation, however, will become clear from the following.
(II) Some of the Papists allege that the mystery of the Trinity cannot be proved from the Holy Scriptures. Emanuel a Vega, Oppugnat. Dei Samosateniani, p. 10: “The Trinity does not stand unless tradition is admitted.” Also: “I believe that there are three persons of the same nature and majesty from no other source than that from which we have learned that this writing which we have is the Gospel of Matthew or of Mark,” that is, as he himself explains, from the Church. Eck, in his Loci, and Pistorius, in Epit. colloq. Emmerting., assert that “the Trinity cannot be proved from Holy Writ but is the tradition of the Church.” Possevino, Biblioth., bk. 8, p. 418: “If the Lutherans have published anything solid about the Trinity, they have been plowing with our heifer, that is, they have been taking from our councils and fathers (whom they first accused blasphemously) as they have been compelled to seek all their weapons from trustworthy armorers.” Lindanus, Panopl., bk. 3, c. 5, p. 104: “There are some kinds of dogmas that either are not included in Scripture or, if they are included, are hidden there so secretly and, in fact, are so concealed that they could not be exposed and uncovered except by people of the keenest talent and of sharp judgment. An example of the latter is that the Spirit proceeds from the Son, that the Son is of the same substance with the Father, that St. James mentioned the sacrament of extreme unction,” etc. In Contra Tradel., part 2, c. 1, p. 86, Ostorodt appeals to this confession of the Papists: “The Papists in their public writings have frankly confessed that the plurality of persons in God cannot be demonstrated from the Word.” Schmalz, Contra Frantz., disp. 1, p. 1: “The Papists themselves, Cardinal Hosius and the Jesuit Wiekus, have admitted that the dogma of the Trinity cannot be proved from Holy Writ alone.”
Against this thoughtlessness of some Papists, however, we set forth the judgment of other, more sound Papists. Campianus, Rat., 9: “Was the ‘Trinity of persons’ not in the Bible just because those words do not exist?” In De Christo, bk. 1, from c. 4 to c. 9 inclusively, Bellarmine labors to affirm the divinity of Christ from Holy Writ. In bk. 2, c. 6, he cites six classes of arguments from Scripture in favor of the Trinity of persons in the Godhead. In De concil., bk. 2, c. 12, § Sic etiam, he writes: “When the Council of Nicaea defined that Christ is of the same substance with the Father, it drew that conclusion from the Scriptures, in which the content clearly indicates that God is one, that the Father is God, and that the Son is God, from which it necessarily follows that the Father and the Son are of the same substance and divinity.” Gregory of Valencia, Becanus, etc., make the same claim.
The mystery of the Trinity can be proved also from the Old Testament.
§ 20. Thesis (IV). The mystery of the Trinity can and should be confirmed not only from the New Testament but also from the Old. (1) We are not saying that the testimonies of the Trinity in the Old and New Testaments have the same clarity and distinctness, because the clearer revelation of this mystery was reserved for the New Testament. Paul Weidner says (Loc. fid. praecip., p. 82): “The Jewish people were especially prone to idolatry. Therefore, lest they fall into the error of those who worshiped many gods, divine Providence cautiously caused the secret of the divine Trinity to be given to them not explicitly but implicitly. On the other hand, because the Messiah had to explode idolatry completely and bring the whole world back to the worship of the one God, the mystery of the Trinity (which was going to have its coverings removed and be revealed explicitly and openly) was reserved for the day of the Messiah, so that the shadows might vanish under the rising light. This is something that every school of the Kabbalists also testifies plainly, asserting that the secrets of the divine Trinity had to lay hidden until the time of the Messiah,” etc.
(2) We also do not mean that in a dispute against a stubborn adversary one should begin with the more obscure words of the Old Testament. Instead, we are only stating that one can and should provide testimonies from the Old Testament to support the doctrine of the Trinity, because from the beginning God has always revealed Himself in such a way—and the Church at all times has known, invoked, and praised God in such a way—that in one undivided essence there are three distinct persons.
§ 21. We prove this thesis: (1) From our first thesis. For if all who intend to be saved must know and believe the doctrine of the Trinity, surely traces thereof must exist in the sacred writings of the Old Testament; otherwise the perfection of Scripture will be undermined. (2) From the evidence of the matter. We shall show in its own place that the doctrine of the Trinity has definite and clear testimonies not only in the New Testament but also in the Old. (3) From divine prohibition. Ps. 81:[9]: “There will be no strange god (the Vulgate renders this “recent god”) among you nor will you bow down to a foreign god.” Yet if the mystery of the Trinity had been completely unknown in the Old Testament, surely a “recent god” would be introduced in the New Testament through the worship of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Isa. 43:10: “Before Me no god was formed nor will there be any after Me.” Yet if the Son of God became God in the New Testament, as the Photinians would have it, and if He began to receive divine worship in the New Testament, then surely another god was formed after God the Father.
Antithesis.
§ 22. The Photinians deny this shamelessly. Socinus, Defens. anim. contra Eutropium, c. 7, p. 216: “Our adversaries themselves confess in many places that the mystery of several persons in God was unknown among the common folk of Israel before the coming of Christ.” He is confusing the difference between more obscure knowledge and ignorance of every kind. We attribute the former to the people of Israel with respect to the revelation of the New Testament; the latter we remove from them. Johann Sommer, Refutat. Petri Carolini, bk. 1, c. 2: “Those who do not doubt that they can find silver in flint think that they must search for the doctrine of the Trinity in the books of the Old Testament. For in that entire doctrine, not one point will be discovered to show that even a suspicion of this opinion existed among the Jews before Christ.” Schmalz, preface to the reader of his Refutat. doct. Frantz.:
Who will show to an intelligent person the dogma of the Trinity from the Old Testament? Who will show the pre-eternity of the Son? Surely the ancient Jews exercised faith in all those Scriptures of theirs, and were they totally ignorant of those portents? Furthermore, not a few learned men—and these, outstanding theologians—have felt that the dogma of the Trinity and other matters were in no way revealed in the Old Testament but were reserved for the time of the new covenant.
[The mystery of the Trinity cannot be proved from natural reason.]
§ 23. Thesis (V). The mystery of the Trinity cannot and should not be proved from natural reason, especially a priori. (1) We must distinguish between the confirmation of a dogma and the illustration of a dogma that has already been confirmed and proved. Reasonings drawn from the light of nature and applied to the mystery of the Trinity must not be proposed as confirmations but as illustrations of whatever sort.
(2) The Scholastics differentiate between preceding and following rational arguments [rationes], or a priori and a posteriori. Thomas says: “We introduce rational argument to a subject in two ways: first, to prove a root sufficiently; and second, to show that consequent situations are in harmony with the root already posited. In this latter way, the Trinity is proved from rational arguments, for once the Trinity has been posited, the rational arguments agree with it” ([ST,] part 1, q. 32, art. 1). Luis Vives, De verit. fid. Christ., bk. 2, p. 101: “Before Christ disclosed this truth (concerning the Trinity) no truth or rational arguments would have come to the mind of any humans. However, after we received the truth from our heavenly Teacher, or rather, from God, the rational arguments began to show and open themselves to us.” However, these illustrations of rational arguments, regardless of their type, bear hardly any weight in this mystery, as shall become clear later.
§ 24. The first part of the thesis is confirmed: (1) By the condition of this mystery. Whatever dogma is set above the comprehension of human reason, human reason cannot be elevated to understand it on the basis of reason’s own principles; otherwise it would not be above reason. But the dogma of the Trinity is this kind of dogma, as is concluded from Matt. 11:[27]; 16:17; John 1:18; 1 Cor. 2:11; etc.
(2) By the removal of the way of knowing. From the light of nature, we are led to the knowledge of God through His creatures in no other way except according as God is the beginning and cause of those creatures. But He is not their beginning and cause except through His own divine might, which is common to all three persons. Therefore we cannot come to know Him through His creatures except by knowing those things that are common to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Therefore we cannot reach the point of understanding the distinction of persons through creatures from the light of nature. The question about the one and triune God is not whether God exists or what attributes belong to God with respect to creatures as He is the cause of them, but what God is according to Himself. But man cannot rise to this by the power of his reason. Basil, Contra Eunom., bk. 1: “Common notion suggests to us that God exists but not what God is.” Consequently, no one—even of the more sound heathen, even if he carefully cultivated his reason and carefully examined the book of nature—could have learned the mystery of the Trinity from principles born in us through innate knowledge nor from an inspection of creation through acquired knowledge.
(3) By clear inference from less to greater. If, through the fall of the first-formed, such darkness is brought into our minds that we cannot penetrate to a perfect knowledge even of natural and earthly things, all the less shall we be able to penetrate by the light and keenness of the natural mind to the knowledge of that greater mystery in divine matters: that God is one in essence and three in persons. However, consider Eccl. 8:17: “I have known that, of all the works of God, man can discover no reason for those things that occur under the sun and that the more he struggles to seek it out, the less he discovers.” Wisdom 9:16: “Hardly do we guess rightly at what is on earth, and with labor do we find the things that are before us, but the things that are in heaven, who has searched them out?”
(4) By a consideration of the reasonings that are reported. The more powerful reasonings formed by the ancients or by the more recent writers are these: First, from the perfection of God, which is urged by Scotus (1, Sent., 2) and Raimundus de Sabunda (Theol. nat., c. 46ff.): “Whatever speaks perfection must be attributed to the supremely Perfect. But begetting speaks perfection.” (See our locus On the Three Elohim [1610 Loci Theologici, locus 4], § 65.)
Second, from the understanding of God. John of Damascus, Orth. fid., bk. 1, c. 6: “God is not Wordless, but having a Word, He will not have Him impersonally,2 so that He may not have a beginning or end, for there was never a ‘when’ when God was Wordless.” C. 7: “It is necessary that the Word also have Spirit, for even our word does not lack spirit,” etc. Some more recent author amplifies this reasoning of the Damascene in this way:
God has the most excellent intellect; therefore its object must be most perfect. Nothing is more perfect than God; therefore nothing will be the object of God’s intellect other than God Himself. Therefore the intellect of God has been reflected in Himself from eternity. Furthermore, every intellect understands through the image of the object; therefore because God has understood Himself perfectly from eternity, He has conceived and borne in Himself the absolutely perfect image of Himself, which is His Son. However, because intellect is inherent in the essence of God, will shall also be inherent in it, and because that will is utterly perfect and thus requires an utterly perfect object, therefore it is reflected in itself and rests in God Himself as the infinite good. Hence it must produce the greatest pleasure and love. So, then, when the eternal Father conceives and with His absolutely perfect will desires His own image, namely, His Son, the most perfect love and fullest pleasure must proceed from the Father to the Son and from the Son to the Father as from an image to the archetype. Thus through the joined intellect and will of both, a third way of existing (or a third person) is posited in the divine essence, and we call it the Holy Spirit.
Third, from the communication of the good. “It belongs to the supreme and infinite good to communicate itself supremely and infinitely. But God is the supreme good. Therefore He communicates Himself supremely and infinitely. But in His production3 God has not revealed Himself infinitely and supremely, but particularly with respect to some good things.”
Fourth, from an analogical comparison. “One nature is found in one hypostasis, as in any angel; plural natures in plural hypostases, as in many angels; plural natures in one substance, as in man, where two natures, soul and flesh—one spiritual, one corporeal—come together into one human hypostasis. It seems true, then, that there is also one nature, namely, the divine, in plural hypostases in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”
Fifth, from the constant operation of the pure, sheer act. “God is pure, sheer act; therefore He has acted from eternity, but He has not produced anything outside Himself through creation. Therefore He has done this within Himself through begetting the Son, through breathing the Holy Spirit.” Luis Vives, De verit. relig., bk. 2, p. 102: “All the schools of the wise have confirmed that God is pure act, for in whatever being power [potestas]4 may be, it indicates a sort of imperfection in it, which is far from the excellence of the divine essence. But if He is pure act, He has never ceased; therefore He has acted as long as He has existed (for in leisure and cessation power quickly finds a place). Accordingly, therefore, He has been doing something from all eternity, since He is indeed eternal. Moreover, in God there is nature—might and power, to be sure—and there is also a capability [facultas]. Through this nature, He acts according to His inner and proper might and power. There is also free will in the same God, through which He acts when and where He wills,” etc.
Sixth, by the impression of His traces in His creatures. “An effect reports the nature of its cause. Creatures are the effect of God the Creator. Therefore they report the nature of their Creator. But now they have stated that the likeness and image of the divine Trinity, or certainly some trace, can be noted in all created things.” We shall say more on this subject later. (For a more complete deduction of these rational arguments, see Scotus; Raimundus; Luis Vives, op. cit.; Mornaeus, De verit. relig. Christian., c. 5; Savonarola, De ver. fid., bk. 3, c. 3, p. 181; etc.)
§ 25. However, these rational arguments (1) could not be formed from the light of nature by the heathen, who are ignorant of the divine revelation made in the Word. Instead, they were devised by Christians, to whom the mystery of the Trinity has been revealed in the Word.
(2) If these rational arguments are considered separately and by themselves, they are weak, because they allow many objections, which the writings of the Photinians supply with a large hand.
(3) They are also imperfect because neither all taken simultaneously nor each taken individually proves clearly that which they were employed to prove, namely: (a) That the Son begotten by the Father is a person subsisting of Himself, really distinct from the Father. (b) That the Son is 
with the Father, of one undivided essence with the Father. (c) That the begetting of the Son from the essence of the Father is most simply eternal. (d) That the production that they claim the Father has done from eternity is limited to the Son and the Holy Spirit, that is, that the Father has brought forth no more and no fewer persons than two. (e) That the Father produced the Son through begetting, the Spirit through breathing—that is, that the Father begot the Son from eternity and the Holy Spirit proceeded from the same Father and the Son from eternity.
[4] These mysteries taken at the same time (as they indeed should be taken in this doctrine) exceed every comprehension of human reason and, consequently, cannot be proved by natural reason.
Therefore we have thus shown with four arguments that the mystery of the Trinity cannot be proved from reason, which is also confirmed by the words of Athanasius in his Epist. ad Serap., toward the middle: “The Godhead is taught not by the demonstration of rational arguments but by faith and pious thinking along with religious devotion.”
§ 26. The second part of the thesis, namely, that the mystery of the Trinity should not be proved from natural reason, follows from the first. For if it cannot be proved from reason, we are just playing when we vainly undertake the effort of natural rational arguments. Thomas proves this very thing on the basis of an inconvenient consequence. He says: “Whoever tries to prove the Trinity with natural reason detracts from faith in two ways”: (1) Because “the dignity of faith is that it concerns invisible things that surpass human reason. (2) It detracts from faith as concerns the utility of drawing others to it, for the faithless believe that we employ rational arguments of this kind, though they nevertheless are not cogent arguments” ([ST,] p. 1, q. 32, art. 1).
Antithesis.
§ 27. (I) As in other articles, so in this article the Scholastics—about whom Scotus proclaims, “They have mixed philosophy with theology with great fruit” (Sent., bk. 3, dist. 24, q. 1)—indulge in reasonings of this sort more than is right. In fact, by stirring up and asking their curious, idle, and thorny questions about this mystery, they seriously undermine the simplicity of the Christian faith. Raymundus Lullus thought, “This mystery can be proved solely by the natural power of the intellect without revelation.” Some people support him: Gerson, Alphab. 13, letter H; Henricus, Quodlib., 8, q. 24; and Richard of St. Victor, De trinit., bk. 1, c. 4. Gregory of Valencia, De unit. et trin. proleg., c. 2: “Although reason cannot grasp the truth of this mystery because of its depth, yet it is not able to find any falsehood in it. Therefore all the arguments that are developed against it can be discarded as weak and fallacious—something that is quite clear.”
(II) Keckermann attributes more to reason than to Scripture in demonstrating this mystery, for he arranges his demonstration of the Trinity in this way: “We shall make it clear to the Antitrinitarians that the trinity of persons flows forth from the very essence of God and that God cannot be God without having three different modes of existing, or persons. When we have shown this, we shall also produce testimonies from Holy Writ” (Syst. theol., bk. 1, c. 3). So, then, he is placing a philosophical discourse taken from the properties of an intelligent nature ahead of the divine oracles of the Holy Spirit. Justin is all the more correct: “One must not rectify divine matters with human reasonings for those who are nourished by the Church, but exposition of the words must be made according to the desire of the teaching of the Spirit” (
, p. 294).
Questions.
§ 28. (I) The question arises: What should be decided with respect to the traces [vestigia] of the Trinity that are demonstrated in creatures? Augustine writes (De civ. Dei, bk. 11, c. 28):
They would by no means exist or be contained in any species nor seek or hold an order unless they were made by Him who exists supremely, who is supremely wise and supremely good. Therefore running, as it were, through all things that He made with marvelous stability, let us collect some of His traces, impressed here more, there less. And in ourselves, gazing upon His image, let us recover our senses and rise up like that younger son in the Gospel.
Therefore Augustine is claiming that one sees in the intellectual and rational creature an “image” of the Trinity, but in the rest of the irrational creatures one sees some “trace” of the Trinity. This distinction and the reason for it we explained in greater detail in our locus On the Three Elohim [1610 Loci Theologici, locus 4], §§ 69–70. Many of these traces are reported by the ancients, most of which traces Augustine lists from bk. 9 to bk. 15 of De Trinit.
We employ a certain order in listing them: (1) Some traces are common to all creatures, while some are proper to certain creatures. These are the common ones: God made all things in number, weight, and measure. Every creature reveals in itself a unity and species and order. There are three dispositions of being common to all things: one, true, good. In all creatures there is a beginning, middle, and end; substance, power and operation; being, being able, acting. The entire universe consists of three kinds of creatures. One is of spiritual substances, that is, of angels; the second is of partly spiritual, partly corporeal substances, such as humans; the third is of completely corporeal substances, such as animals, trees, etc.
(2) Creatures are either rational or irrational. Rational ones are either angels or humans. In those rational creatures not only a trace but also an image of the Trinity occurs. The countless multitude of the angels is divided into three hierarchies, and to each hierarchy is assigned three ranks [ordines]. In this tripartite distinction they believe a trace of the Trinity is seen. However, in the individual angels (the intellectual essences) and in the souls of humans (which are endowed with the ability to reason), they have enough to do in pointing out an image of the Trinity. The mind remembers itself, understands itself, loves itself. The mind is like a parent, its knowledge is like its offspring, and love proceeds from the mind itself and from its knowledge. There are three faculties of the human soul: rational, sensitive, vegetative. There are three faculties of the rational soul: intelligence, will, and memory. We exist, we know we exist, and we love our existing and knowing.
(3) Irrational creatures are either animate or inanimate. In animate creatures endowed with a sensitive as well as a vegetative soul, these traces occur. There are three internal senses: common sense, fantasy, and memory. Herbs and flowers have form, odor or fragrance, and strength, might, and effects.
(4) Inanimate creatures are either heavenly or earthly. In most of these they point out a trace of the Trinity. In the sun, three things are considered: that it exists, that it shines, that it heats; that is, the substance of the sun, its rays, and its heat. In the rainbow three distinct colors are joined in such a way that you cannot see in what way they are put together or separated. In fire there is the species of fire, its glow, and its heat. Glow is born of the fire; heat is generated from the fire and its glow. A spring, stream, and river are three things of the same nature, etc. From the root of a tree rises its trunk; from both, a branch.
(5) They look for such traces not only in natural things but also in artificial ones and in disciplines. There are three things we look for in any craftsman for him to accomplish anything: nature, training, practice. We must judge his nature by his talent, his training by his knowledge, his practice by his product. Augustine (De civ. Dei, bk. 11, c. 25) reports here the three-part division of philosophy into physics, logic, and ethics. He says that “physics” denotes the Father, who is the author of all natures; “logic” denotes the Son, who gives intelligence; “ethics” denotes the Holy Spirit, who inspires the love by which one lives well and blessedly. Our Luther’s division is this: In God the Father is grammar; the Son, dialectic; and the Holy Spirit, rhetoric.5 Others observe that among the Hebrews there is a three-letter root, that the name “Jehovah” has three letters, that [in the Targum] it is written with three 
and a – underneath, that the number three is sacred among all peoples.
But what should be decided about these traces and comparisons? We respond with the same thing we said about rational arguments taken from the light of nature: (a) They only illumine, they do not prove. (b) There is more dissimilarity than similarity in them. (c) They are taken a posteriori not a priori; they are not the parents but the offspring of acquiring knowledge; they do not lead to knowledge but are brought out to represent what is known. (See Meisner, Sobr. phil., part 1, sect. 4, c. 9, q. 2.) (d) They should be used soberly and cautiously. (e) They cannot be set against an adversary; they can delight the believer. I shall note a beautiful passage from Hilary about these similarities: “If in our treatment of the nature of God and the nativity we provide some examples of comparisons, no one should think that those contain within themselves an absolutely perfect explanation [ratio]. There is no comparison of earthly things to God, but the weakness of our understanding compels us to search for some spiritual tokens of more important matters from lesser matters, so that, being admonished by the experience of familiar matters, we may be led from the consciousness of our sense to the opinion of an unaccustomed sense. Therefore every comparison should be considered helpful to man rather than apt for God, because it” signifies rather “than explains our understanding. And we should not think it a presumptuous comparison when it equates the natures of flesh and spirit, or of invisible and palpable things, as it protests that it is necessary for the weakness of human understanding and is free of the burden of being an unsatisfactory example” (De trinit., bk. 1, p. 7).
§ 29. (II) The question arises: What should be judged concerning the allegories that are applied to this mystery? Also in these cases the learned men of the ancient Church, especially Origen, and of the more recent men, Berthorius, have spoken in quite great detail. For the sake of amusement, we shall list some of the allegories. In Genesis 15, God, wishing to initiate a covenant with Abraham and to confirm His promise about the blessed seed, ordered Abraham to bring Him in sacrifice “a heifer three years old, a she-goat three years old, and a ram three years old,” through which they think the mystery of the Trinity has been prefigured. (See Weidner, Loc. fid. Christ. praec., treatise 1, p. 147.)
In Genesis 18, Abraham meets three men and worships one. In seeing three men, he understood the mystery of the Trinity; by worshiping one, as it were, he recognized one God in three persons. Augustine, Serm. 70. de temp.: “When the three men were seen, no one of them was said to be greater in form or age or power than the others. Why should we not take this here to mean that the equality of the Trinity has been visibly insinuated through a visible creature and that there is one and the same substance in the three persons?” etc. (See also Augustine, De Trinit., bk. 2, c. 11. See our locus [1610 Loci Theologici, locus 4 (On the Three Elohim)], § 15.) Justin writes (Dial. cum Tryph., p. 213): “Moses, the blessed and faithful servant of God, indicates that God was seen by Abraham near the oaks of Mamre along with those who were with Him—the two angels sent for the judgment of the Sodomites by another who always remains above the heavens, who is seen by no one, and who speaks to no one through Himself, whom we know as the Maker and Father of all things.[”]
Three things were contained in the ark: the tables of the Decalogue, the sprouting staff of Aaron, and the golden urn holding the manna. These represent three attributes for God: In the staff is His power, the tables that contained the Law of great wisdom signify the wisdom of God, the sweetness of the manna indicates the goodness of God. Power is attributed to the Father, wisdom to the Son, and goodness to the Holy Spirit.
In his commentary on Isaiah 3, Basil applies to the Trinity the statement of Exod. 23:17, that the Israelites had to appear before God “three times a year,” namely, for three solemn feasts. He says: “God is requiring faith in the Holy Trinity, for as the gloss says, ‘The Son is sacrificed on Passover, the Holy Spirit is given on Pentecost, and the power of the Father, the Creator, is signified by the harvesting of crops.’ ”
In Numbers 15 the Israelites had tassels on the corners of their cloaks by which they would be reminded of God and of His Commandments. Those tassels were made of four threads but doubled, and they had three knots on their upper part and two on their lower. The three upper knots hint at the trinity of persons, the two lower ones at the two Testaments.
In Dan. 5:5 the Trinity is prefigured to Daniel. Three fingers of one hand write on the wall opposite the face of the feasting King Belshazzar, and those three fingers indicate the three persons of the Trinity, about whom it is said: “ ‘Who grasps the mass of the earth with three fingers?’ (Isa. 40:12). That is, He sustains the world by the power of the three persons who are one God, one hand in essence and divine power, which inscribes upon the human mind, stirs up new motions, and causes it to be weighed down with the burden of its sins,” etc.
What should be decided about these allegories? We respond the same way we did concerning comparisons, for as the comparisons are similarities taken from the book of nature, so these are pictures taken from the book of Scripture. (1) If they are congruent, they decorate and illumine things beautifully, but they do not prove. Luther, on Genesis 18, p. 216: “Let us defend our teachers who say that in a secret sense Abraham saw the Trinity—supposing that God appeared to him not in more or fewer persons than three—against the poisonous tongues. Therefore the fathers have dealt with this passage correctly. Yet it is one thing to prove, another to adorn.” (2) If, on the other hand, they are less appropriate and fitting, then the learned hold them in contempt, our adversaries laugh at them, and the weak are offended by them.
§ 30. (III) The question arises: What should be judged concerning the testimonies that are provided from heathen authors to support the mystery of the Trinity? In our locus [1610 Loci Theologici, locus 4 (On the Three Elohim)], § 73, we mentioned some of these from Luis Vives, Mornaeus, Pansa, Ficinus, Scaliger, Georgieviz, etc. There are more in Cyril (Contra Julianum, bk. 8) and in Steuco (De peren. phil., bk. 2), to which we can also add the following: Suidas on “Trismegistus”: Mercurius Trismegistus, that is, thrice greatest, “was a wise Egyptian. He lived earlier than the Pharaoh. He was called ‘thrice greatest’ because he uttered an oracle about the Trinity, saying in these words that in the Trinity is one divinity: ‘He was intellectual light before intellectual light and always existed as the illuminating mind of the mind. He was nothing other than the unity of these and the Spirit that contains all things. Outside of Him there is no God, no angel, nor any other substance. He is the Lord, Father, and God of all things, and all things are under Him and in Him. For His word is perfect and fruitful, and as Creator He put the fallen man in a fertile nature and with fruitful water created richly bearing water.’ ”
Plato followed the philosophy of Trismegistus in his letter to Dionysius, who had questioned him about the nature of God. Plato responds: “I must speak to you regarding the nature of the first cause in riddles,” etc. “This is how the situation is: All things revolve around the king of all things and exist for his sake. He is the cause of all good things, second in regard to the second cause, third in regard to the third cause.”
The Platonic philosopher Plotinus wrote the book 
[On the Three Principal Hypostases], which Augustine mentions. The Platonist Damascius writes: “From earliest beginnings the Egyptians customarily praised the number three.”
Aristotle writes: “The Pythagoreans set the perfection of things in three as beginning, middle, and end” (De coelo et mundo, 1). And from these words of Maro, we conclude that in the sacred affairs of the gods this number was generally used: “God takes pleasure in an uneven number.”
Reuchlin, Annot. ad q. 1. Athanas.: “As pagans struggled over the unity of the deity, they grasped the idea of a plurality existing beyond all gods. For they say that Jupiter, the one most excellent god, produced by himself from his head, without any intercourse, Minerva, who certainly stands ahead of all gods. They say that Jupiter and Minerva later produced Boule, that is, counsel. These two (Minerva and Boule) have equal power with their father and are called by Hesiod in the Theogonia the ‘two prudent offspring of Jupiter.’ ”
Muhammad in the Qur’an, sura 24, introduces God as saying: “Nothing is hidden from us. We preserve a definite mode and measure everywhere. We command the winds and send down from heaven the rains to give life to things. We give life and bring on death. We created man out of dust and mud.” (So, then, whoever does not have an equal among the angels nor the rest of creation speaks about himself in the plural, but what plurality is that?) Sura 25: “For he himself, God and his blessed Spirit, have composed this most truthful book.” (You have a duality of persons, and in divine affairs the Word is added.) Sura 11: “Jesus, the son of Mary, the messenger of God, and his Spirit and the Word of Mary sent from heaven.” (Behold, then: One who sends, the Spirit, and the Word; but in sura 12 the opposite is quickly added.)
So what judgments should we pass about such testimonies? (1) In some of them there are things similar to, but not the same as, Christian doctrine. In their words they are in harmony with us, but they disagree with us in the explanation and meaning of those words. For this reason, Augustine declares concerning them that “in some way or another, and through the veil of vague imagination, they have seen that to which they must press onward” (De civ. Dei, bk. 10, c. 29).
(2) In those things that teach the same, they have drawn them: (a) Partly from their reading of Holy Scripture. Justin Martyr, Paraen. ad gentes; Eusebius, De praeparat. evang.; and Theodoret, De Graec. affect., prove that Plato transferred many things from the books of the Hebrews into his own books. As a result, the philosopher Numenius used to say: “Who is Plato but the Attic Moses?” According to Eusebius, bk. 1, the Jew Aristobulus says to Philometora: “Plato has followed our law in many things, for he clearly seems to have examined carefully individual points in many instances.” After all, the books of Moses had been translated before Alexander and the Persian empires, and from them the philosopher Pythagoras also took many things. In De civ. Dei, bk. 8, c. 11, Augustine points out that Plato learned the Hebrew writings through an interpreter not to write a translation thereof, as Ptolemy did, but to learn by conversation what they contained to the extent that he could grasp them. See Luis Vives, Comm. Aug. on this passage, and the scholia on Gregory of Nazianzen, letter to Nemesius: “Some heathen once objected to the Christians that many things were found in the divinely inspired books that were taken—snatched, in fact—from Plato and other authors. However, they have turned this false charge of ‘kidnapping’ back upon themselves and justly so, for many others and especially Clement of Alexandria, who cites countless passages of Scripture in the books of his Stromata, which passages heathen writers have transferred into their own volumes.” (b) Partly from conversation with the Hebrews. Plato traveled as far as Egypt. See Augustine, op. cit. See our locus [1610 Loci Theologici, locus 4 (On the Three Elohim)], § 74. (c) Partly from the revelation of oracles and sibyls.
(3) The testimonies of the unbelievers regarding the Trinity are more valuable to convince the heathen than to confirm Christians or to refute heretics. Augustine, Contra Faustum, bk. 13, c. 15:
If the Sibyl and Orpheus and some Hermes or other, or if any other seers or theologians or wise men or philosophers are said to have foretold or to have said true things about the Son of God or about God the Father, this certainly is something valuable for overcoming the vanity of pagans but not for embracing the authority of such people when we show that we worship the God about whom they have been unable to hold their tongues. For those were people who partly dared to teach their kinfolk how to worship idols and demons and partly dared not to keep them from doing so.
(4) The verity of the Christian faith of itself certainly does not need those testimonies. Augustine, De civ. Dei, bk. 18, c. 47:
If any foreigner, that is, anyone neither born of Israel nor accepted by that people into the canon of Holy Writ, is read to have prophesied anything about Christ, if it has come or will come to our notice, we can remember it as an addition—not that this is necessary, even if it be lacking, but because it is not out of harmony to believe that there are people in other nations to whom this mystery has been revealed and who were forced to proclaim it.
§ 31. (IV) The question arises: Was Thomas Aquinas correct in saying that one can, on the basis of natural reason, defend the statement that what the Christian faith says about the Trinity is not impossible ([ST,] p. 1, q. 32, art .1)? We respond. Among Christians established on the Word of God and embracing by faith the mystery of the Trinity, this can be obtained through natural reasonings. However, among unbelievers who are ignorant of the Trinity and heretics who stubbornly deny, this can scarcely be maintained. For since they push aside the light of the heavenly Word and presume to pass judgment on this mystery based on the principles of reason, it happens that they declare that mystery absurd and impossible.
The mystery of the Trinity should not be attacked on the basis of reason.
§ 32. Thesis (VI). The mystery of the Trinity should not be attacked, and cannot be overthrown, on the basis of natural reason. The blessed Luther (De votis monasticis, c. 5) argues about the light of reason and the nature thereof in divine matters: “Although nature does not by itself extend to the light and works of God, so that its judgment is fallacious in affirmative propositions [in affirmativis], as they say, nevertheless it is sure in negative propositions [in negativis]. For though reason does not grasp what God is, nevertheless it certainly grasps what God is not. Therefore though it does not see what is right and good in the presence of God—namely, faith—nevertheless it clearly knows that infidelity and murder are wrong, which Christ also employs when He says, ‘Every kingdom that is divided against itself is destroyed,’ and Paul, when he says, ‘Does not nature teach that a woman should prophesy with her head covered?’ Therefore whatever is clearly opposed to this reason, it is certain that it is much more opposed to God, for how will that which is opposed to terrestrial truth not be opposed to celestial truth?” etc. There are some who try to prove from this passage of Luther that in the greatest mysteries of faith one should consult the judgment of natural reason and that whatever one finds there that is opposed to reason should straightway be rejected as false. However, they are committing the fallacy of “in a certain manner and simply.”6 For we should not take Luther’s statement absolutely and simply to refer to all things that are taught in theology but only to those that are known by the light of nature, not those of revelation alone and, as they say, of pure faith.
This is clear: (1) From the examples given by Luther, all of which are arranged in such a way that they do not step beyond the sphere of logic. (2) From other passages of his in which he severely and seriously forbids us to pass judgment on the highest mysteries of faith on the basis of reason and forbids us to reject such things that our reason judges are absurd, false, and impossible. In his Disputat. de dicto “Verbum caro factum est,” he writes: “The Sorbonne, the mother of errors, defines badly that the same thing is true in both philosophy and theology, and it wickedly condemns those who have given a contrary definition” (Latin edition of Wittenberg, vol. 1, f. 413). (3) From the absurd consequences. For if we wish to extend this statement of Luther to the mysteries set beyond any grasp of reason, it will follow that we must commit to reason the judgment concerning those things of which it is completely ignorant, that reason is the teacher of our faith, that reason must not be held captive under the obedience of faith. In fact, all the mysteries of faith that are unknown to natural reason will have to be denied and rejected as absurd and impossible, something that will become more clear from the following.
§ 33. Therefore because the latter depends on the prior, we prove both parts of the thesis: (1) From the rules and requirements of a true proof [demonstratio]. A true and effectual proof should be taken not from foreign things but from its own things, lest one commit “a transference to another genus, for it is necessary for the extreme and middle terms to be from the same genus” (Aristotle, [Posterior] Analyt., 1., c. 7, cont. 59). Yet when refuting arguments are provided from natural reason in the highest articles of faith (which transcend every grasp of human reason), these are not taken from their own things nor is there any kinship of terms therein. Therefore the mode of instruction and the rules of true proof are being violated. Those who draw arguments from nature for mysteries—from sense to faith, from eye to oracle—commit a stupidity.
(2) From the imperfection of reason. Our intellect labors under such imperfection and weakness that it is often deceived and errs in matters subjected to its judgment, something that is witnessed by the complaints of the finest philosophers: Aristotle, Metaph., bk. 2, c. 1; and Scaliger, Exerc., exer. 1, sect. 1; exerc. 31, sect. 1; exerc. 307, sect. 12. Therefore it will be all the more dangerous to commit matters of faith to its judgment, so as to deny the truth of the articles of faith as revealed in the Scriptures, because reason cannot rise high enough to understand them.
(3) From the corruption of reason. Human reason labors not only under weakness but also under blindness, darkness, and errors when it judges matters of faith. (Cf. Rom. 1:21; 1 Cor. 1:19; Eph. 4:17.) Not only does it lack the divine power to know completely and perfectly, but it is also corrupted with the opposite inclination to pursue errors and faults. 1 Cor. 2:14: “The natural [animalis] man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.” The apostle’s inference is this: Spiritual matters should be judged in a spiritual way. That is, to perceive and to judge spiritual mysteries, one must have an intellect brightened by the light of the Holy Spirit and standing on Holy Scripture, which contains the voice and judgment of the Holy Spirit, as the one and only norm of judgment. But the natural [
] man, who has nothing excellent in himself except a rational soul and who takes pleasure in his own reasonings, has not yet been brightened by the light of the Holy Spirit but is still cleaving to the darkness innate in his intellect and is not following the norm according to which, alone, he should pass judgment on spiritual matters and mysteries. Therefore he is obviously unsuited to judge spiritual matters. In Rom. 8:6 the “mind of the flesh” [
] (which expression means not only the sensitive affections and appetites but also the most excellent thoughts and reasonings in the unregenerate) not only is not praiseworthy but also is “hostile toward God.” In this expression there is great emphasis, since the substantive placed there is understood as an adjective.
(4) From a comparison of things intelligible and things of faith. Just as the intelligible things must not be judged according to sense perception, so also things of faith must not be judged according to the intellect. One cannot and should not urge the judgment of the senses against the judgment of reason. Therefore one also should not urge the judgment of reason against the judgment of faith. Let us entrust to the artist the things of art, to nature the things of nature, to God the things of God.
(5) From the condition of philosophical axioms. When human reasonings are set forth against the mystery of the Trinity, then the philosophical axioms are being taken as general, though they are specific and contain the truth only in their own sphere. Thus the axiom that “there are as many essences as there are persons” is valid in the whole universe of things but should not be extended to the very Lord of the universe. It is valid in the case of finite essence but should not be applied to the infinite essence of God. It is valid in the sublunary sphere but must not be drawn out to the supercelestial sphere. But it is wretched folly and sophistic deceit to construe a particular as a universal, a determinate as an indeterminate. All arguments that are formed from reason against the mystery of the Trinity assume in the major premise some axiom that is valid in the nature of created things only and hence is particular, and this they apply to the uncreated, infinite essence of God. That is, they assume that axiom as absolutely and simply useful, contrary to the laws of logic itself. For example, “An essence one in number cannot be in distinct hypostases three in number.” The divine nature is an essence one in number. Therefore. The major premise cannot be proved without the introduction of finite created things, but from this it is not yet proved that the uncreated infinite essence is constituted the same way [quod eadem sit ratio]. Therefore the usefulness of the axiom cannot be proved.
(6) From the nature and structure [ratio] of mysteries. It is the nature and structure of the mystery of the Trinity and of all the other mysteries, properly speaking, that they transcend the comprehension of reason, that is, that reason without the revelation of the Word cannot reach to an understanding of them and that, given the revelation of the Word, reason nonetheless cannot and should not decide on those mysteries on the basis of its own principles. (See Eph. 3:8; 1 Cor. 2:7; 1 Tim. 6:16; etc.) Therefore reason ought not oppose its own reasonings to the heavenly truth in those mysteries.
(7) From a comparison of the power and essence of God. As reason cannot and should not pronounce what God can and cannot do—because “God can do more than we understand” (Eph. 3:20)—so also it cannot and should not pronounce what God is and is not, but should follow only the light of the Word in defining these matters. Our intellect is finite; therefore it ought not assume for itself the judgment of how far the infinite power of God reaches and what persons are or are not in the divine essence.
(8) From the apostle’s command: “taking reason captive under the obedience of faith” (2 Cor. 10:5). If we had to listen to reason arguing from its own principles against the mysteries revealed in the Scriptures, surely there would be no need to take it captive, for that which is given the freedom to run about as it wishes in its own reasonings is not to be thrown into the bonds of captivity. However, the apostle requires the latter. The statement of Solomon agrees with it: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own understanding” (Prov. 3:5).
(9) From many deductions to the absurd. If we must listen to reason arguing from its own principles against the mystery of the Trinity, the consequence will be that: (a) The ultimate resolution of our faith should be not in Holy Scripture but in the judgment of our reason, which, in fact, is being allowed judgment on the assertions of Scripture. (b) More will be attributed to the judgment of reason than to the judgment of the Holy Spirit that is revealed and published in Scripture. (c) Different classes of disciplines and bad principles will be confused in a mixture. (d) Human reason will be given such and so great a prerogative that it will be elevated above the intellect of the angels, who themselves desire to peek into the mysteries of the Gospel (1 Pet. [1]:12). (e) All the mysteries of faith will be undermined with one fell swoop, because the structure [ratio] of all of them is the same and equal in that they transcend the comprehension of the human intellect, etc. (See Dr. Meisner, Consid. theol. Photin., p. 311.)
§ 34. (10) From the unanimous witness of the fathers. We have cited many statements in favor of this opinion from the fathers in our locus On the Interpretation of Scripture [1610 Loci Theologici, locus 2], § 170, and to those we add just a few here.
Tatian, Contra gentes: “The matters of our instruction [
] are higher than worldly comprehension.”
Justin, Confut. Graecor. quaest., p. 163: “We must not measure the works of God with our reasonings [
], for the works of God are beyond mind, perception, and reason.” 
p. 304: “Whenever I raise a new doubt while inquiring, then I shout the wonder of the Christians’ mystery, because our affairs are beyond mind, beyond reason, beyond the comprehension of created nature. And whenever some difficulty may occur to you while inquiring about such things, present faith as a ready solution to the things being sought.” p. 297: “How the Trinity exists in unity and unity in the Trinity I would not wish to inquire from others, nor would I be able to convince myself of the explanation of hidden and ineffable things, so that I would dare to express them in muddy language and in the filthy flesh.”
Gregory Nazianzen, Orat. in laudem Neronis:
The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have this in common: that they were not created and that they are joined together by their divinity. They are differentiated from each other by this property: that the Father is not begotten, the Son is begotten, and the Holy Spirit proceeds. However, if you go on to ask how, what will you leave to those who, according to Scripture, are the only ones who know each other mutually and are mutually known by each other or even to those of us to whom this will be divinely revealed in the next life?
Orat. de fide: “This is the cause of error, this is the origin of the Arian heresy, when they do not understand the power of God and do not recognize the disposition of so great a mystery, that they consider God with human conditions.”
In his Serm. de fide ad Armenios, p. 31, Archbishop Proclus of Alexandria calls “the rational syllogisms that the heretics oppose to the articles of faith” “weak spiderwebs” and adds: “The bleary eye does not glimpse the rays of the sun clearly nor does a weak understanding come to the loftiness of faith.” Homil. in transfig. Dom., p. 86: “Why do you defame divine things with human reasonings?”
Chrysostom, homily 5 on 1 Timothy: “Human reason has nothing in common, when compared, with divine matters. Therefore it is blasphemy to want to investigate divine matters with reasonings.”
Augustine, De civ. Dei, bk. 12, c. 17: “Even if reason were unable to refute these arguments, faith would have to laugh at them.” Enchir., c. 4: “We must defend with reason those things that the corporeal senses initiated or that the intelligence of the mind discovered. But what we have not experienced with a corporeal sense and could not or cannot achieve with the mind, we must believe without any doubt through the witnesses by whom that which deserves to be called ‘Holy Scripture’ was composed.”
Bernard, epistle 190: “What is more contrary to reason than to try to transcend reason with reason? And what is more contrary to faith than to be unwilling to believe what you cannot attain by reason?”
§ 35. (11) From the confession of our adversaries themselves. For though they do not cease to attack the mystery of the Trinity with arguments drawn from reason, yet their philosophical speculation in many ways is opposed to this practice of theirs: (a) Because they teach that Holy Scripture alone is the norm and rule of faith. Schmalz, Contra Scopper., p. 3: “Scripture alone is the norm of faith, and concerning things to be believed, one must stand only on its divine authority.” Schmalz again, in the preface to Contra Frantz.: “The religion of Christ depends upon its own peculiar foundations; it desires not the work of another nor requires anything on our part.” Pisecius, preface to Resp. ad rationes Campiani Alii: “The verity of divine matters depends not on nature nor on sense nor on natural [physicis] theorems but on God, on the divine laws and oracles.” And later: “In the Christian religion we weigh whatever is of a controversial nature by the firm and solid authority of the divine laws.” Yet if Scripture alone is the rule of things we must believe, if we must stand only on its divine authority in divine matters, then why do they follow the judgment of reason in the divine mysteries?
(b) They say that one must not examine the judgments of God with reason. Socinus, Solut. scrupul., resp. ad 11, p. 40: “The inscrutable judgments of God are not to be measured with the measuring rod of human reason.” Socinus again, Adv. Mennonitas, p. 77:
On its own, human nature is frail and weak in accomplishing those things that are good and acceptable to God. In fact, not only is appetite, which is very powerful in man, often opposed to these things but also partly reason itself. We have a very clear witness of this in the case of Adam and his wife. Before they had sinned, and thus before they had contracted some stain from sin, they still were so frail and weak that they scorned the clear warning of God and, partly driven by the appetite to eat from the tree forbidden to them and partly persuaded by reason, they ate and sinned very grievously.
Socinus, Ad object. Cutteni, p. 92: “In divine matters we attribute little to our natural powers because we know from the apostle’s witness that the natural man does not perceive the things that are of the Spirit of God.” Sommer, Refut. P. Carolini, p. 50 b: “The acts of God must not be examined according to the rules of men.” Yet if we should not examine the acts and judgments of God according to the rules of reason, all the less should we measure the essence of God with the measuring rod of reason.
(c) In religious matters they sometimes remove judgment from reason. Eniedinus, Loc. Script., p. 178: “No one should bring foreign and philosophical contemplations to the simple words and doctrine of the apostles.” The preface-writer to Eniedinus: “In such a difficult subject, we have no need of the reasonings of man but rather of the expressed word, according to the passage: ‘To the Law and the prophets’ and ‘What is written in the Law?’ ” The same, Defens. animadv. contra Eutropium: “The Christian has to believe these things about God, though they may not quite be consistent with reason, for these things are not just considered to have been revealed by God but actually were revealed by Him.” Ostorodt, Instit., c. 29, p. 196: “It would be too dangerous to entrust to human reason and judgment a matter of such great importance (which the heretics believe should be worthy of capital punishment), that concerns a man’s life, in fact, his eternal salvation.” Ostorodt again, Contra Tradel., part 1, c. 7, p. 53: “In his final argument, the good doctor allowed himself to be misled by reason, but here he ought to have postponed natural considerations [physica].” Schmalz, De Christi divinit., pp. 91–92: “In matters of this sort they must stop inquiring into the means that God has employed and must decide that God wanted us to be ignorant of them not without a cause. They must learn to submit to the manifest testimonies of Holy Writ.” Schmalz again, Contra Frantz., p. 165: “Let Frantz show us his opinions from Holy Writ, then we shall accept them as certain, even if they surpass our reason.” Johan. Lycinius Namisloviensis Polonus, in his Paraenes. Polonica et Latina ad ministros evangel. pro ineunda concordia, published in 1597, writes: “I admit that we must restrain our reason with all our might, that is, in those instances when Scripture says in clear words something that is beyond or contrary to our reason. There reason must stop, submit humbly to the words, and not ask how this could have happened.” In the same work he declares this with the example of the creation of all things out of nothing. Yet if we must believe those things that can be demonstrated from Holy Writ, though reason is not be able to comprehend them, surely the mystery of the Trinity, which we are prepared to demonstrate from Holy Writ, must not be attacked with arguments drawn from reason.
(d) Some of them deny the natural knowledge of God, for example, Socinus (Praelect, c. 2, p. 3; Resp. ad object. Cuteni, p. 86) and Ostorodt (Instit., c. 1, p. 10). Yet if reason cannot by its own powers rise to any knowledge of God, why should we wish to attribute judgment to it in the highest mysteries of faith?
(e) They deny that an argument can be drawn from the natural to the supernatural, from the human to the divine. Schmalz, Examen 157 errorum, error 91, p. 27:
Smiglecki urges the idea that Christ cannot be called the Son of God according to the flesh—that is, because of His conception—because to be established as Son, He is required to be of the substance of the Father. I admit this is true in everyday life when someone is the father of someone else naturally. Nevertheless I say that a man can be called the son of someone else if he is begotten of him, and in turn a man can be called someone’s father if he contributes something to his begetting, though what he contributes to the other’s begetting is not of his own substance.
All these things can never be reconciled with that hypothesis to which they hold tightly in this controversy on the mystery of the Trinity.
Antithesis.
§ 36. We correctly and deservedly say about the Photinians the same thing that Tertullian once said about all heretics: “Take away from them whatever they know in common with the heathen so that they must support their questions from the Scriptures alone, and they cannot stand” (De resurr. carnis, c. 3, p. 315). Take away from them what they know in common with the heathen, arrows they draw from the quiver of reason against the mystery of the Trinity, so that they must confirm their assertions from the Scriptures, and they will be unable to stand. After all, what war machines, what battering rams will they use to undermine the doctrine of the Trinity? In a word, the judgment of corrupt reason. In Quod evangelici, p. 28, before he assails the Trinity, Socinus places this argument on the front line: that this dogma conflicts with reason. He says, “As far as common sense is concerned, no one is so dull that he does not see that these ideas conflict with each other: that our God, the Creator of heaven and earth, is only one in number and yet is three, each of which is that God of ours.” p. 29: “The Papists as well as the Evangelicals are forced to admit that the ‘mystery of the Trinity,’ as they call it—that is, the mystery of three persons in one God—surpasses all human comprehension. However, they would speak more accurately if, as some of them perhaps do speak, they were to confess that not only is it beyond but it also is contrary to all human comprehension.” De auctor. Script., p. 54: “Whatever reason and common sense conflict with completely cannot in any way be true.” Catech. Racov., p. 37: “The dogma of the Trinity is opposed to reason.” Theodosius Schimberg, Praefat. refutationi P. Carolini a Joh. Sommero adornatae (published at Ingolstadt in 1582, as the title page indicates): “Third, faith never embraces things impossible for the mind. Consequently, it is obvious that the Trinity and the divinity of the Son are not true articles of faith because they are impossible for the mind. Therefore they actually are blasphemous and terrible dogmas.” Similar statements occur in Schmalz (Refut. Frantz., pp. 60, 137, 165, 372, 471) and in Goslavius (preface to his treatise Contra Kecker.).
In our lectures De Photinianis, we examined the arguments they provide. In De glor. Dei, disp. 10, §§ 13–15, we showed how their extremely familiar theorem, that “mysteries of faith are not contrary to but beyond reason,” should be understood and explained. Here we shall examine the distinction of Socinus in his Defens. animad. adversus Eutropium, c. 3, p. 50, by which he tries to satisfy all the arguments produced in defense of our thesis. He says:
These things are far different: not to grasp something with the mind and to grasp with the mind that something cannot be, or to deny something because you cannot grasp it and to deny something because you grasp that it cannot be. The one is utterly foolish when a nonobscure testimony of God is provided regarding that subject. But the other has so much force that it permits and compels those testimonies of God, though at first glance clear, to be interpreted differently than how the words sound.
We respond. (1) The mysteries of faith are beyond reason not only in the sense and respect that reason without the revelation of the Word cannot aspire to know them but also that even given the revelation of the Word reason nonetheless cannot comprehend them, for in 1 Cor. 2:14 not only the knowing but also even the receiving of spiritual things is denied to the natural man. And if reason should wish to pass judgment on them, it judges that they are foolish.
(2) This is clear from the nature of mysteries, for they are beyond reason, beyond the mind, beyond all comprehension. They are set forth in the light of grace, not in the light of nature. They are taught in the school of the Holy Spirit, not in the school of the wise men of this age. They proceed from the spring of God’s infinite wisdom, not from the little streams of human knowledge.
(3) Consequently, reason should not assume to itself the judgment about mysteries nor examine them according to the rule of its own principles. For if one is ignorant of something, he should neither affirm nor deny anything about it but should submit it to the higher school of the Holy Spirit, where it is taught.
(4) If it would assume to itself judgment about them and presume to pronounce something about them on the basis of its own principles, it would be acting in a perverse and preposterous order, for what is beyond reason must not be judged according to the laws of reason, and what is beyond nature must not be evaluated on the basis of the laws of nature.
(5) Therefore the parts of Socinus’s distinction are not diametrically opposed but rather subordinated. One follows from the other and, in fact, includes the other. Since the mysteries of faith must not be denied just because you cannot apprehend them with reason nor grasp them with the mind (as Socinus concedes), therefore they also must not be denied just because you perceive that they cannot be, that is, because they appear to be impossible when evaluated by the principles of reason. For what is paradoxical and impossible in the judgment of reason is not, without further ado, paradoxical and impossible with God. (See Gen. 18:14; Zech. 8:6; Matt. 19:26; Luke 1:[37]; 18:[27].)
(6) Briefly, if the mysteries are beyond reason, they cannot be grasped by the mind and reason, as Socinus concedes. If they cannot be grasped by reason, reason ought not assume judgment on them as to whether or not such things can be. But if it does assume judgment to itself, it forms the “contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge” (1 Tim. 6:20) and thus spins threads out of sand.
§ 37. The practical use is one of exhorting, that with devout zeal we should learn thoroughly the mystery of the Trinity from the proper principles of theology, that is, from Holy Scripture, and not allow ourselves to be moved away from the confession of the Trinity by plausible arguments of human reason.
1 Contra Preuss and Cotta, who read “defensionem.”
2
, “anhypostatic.”
3 That is, creation.
4 That is, passive potential.
5 The trivium of medieval and early modern schools.
6
Fallacia
That is, taking something that was stated only in a certain manner or respect and applying it simply or absolutely. Cf. Scherzer, p. 83.