1. the holy scripture teaches that there is One God, who in a very simple way is only One*) and yet three persons so called.
*I.e. the unity of its essence is so simple that it excludes all composition of parts and any unification of different things in it; i.e. it is not a unity of parts.
which are most truly different from each other.
It is only undivided in itself, but also excludes all possibility of being able to conclude parts or different things in itself. This unity is called the unity of indivisibility (unitas inckivisibilitatis), which is identical with the concept of simplicity (siraxlicitas). D. Red.
2) Of these persons, any one is the whole God, apart from whom there is no other God.
3 And yet it cannot be said that any person is God by himself.
4 For this would be just as much as saying that there is no God at all; since if one person were excluded, then the whole of God would be excluded, and thus any person would also be excluded.
5 For here the reason, corrupted by original sin, must be caught under the obedience of faith, yes, it must be brought to nothing together with its insight and wisdom.
Another is to say: One person is the whole God; and another: One person alone is the One God.
7 But in which way the person is something different from the Godhead itself, that does not come to the reason to investigate, is also not comprehensible to the angels themselves.
(8) Yes, it is dangerous and one must be careful here not to assume any difference (namely between person and entity), since any person is the whole and essential God.
9) It is a vain and meaningless thought of Scotus *) and his equals, who invented here a so-called formal, or other difference.
10 They do not know what they are saying or claiming by trying to help reason with such subtleties.
11. for however astute these things are
reason does not understand how a formal difference can be something different from what is called a real or an essential difference. *)
For reason does not understand how in one thing there can be nothing different, which is nevertheless three different things.
Therefore metaphysics, as well as all thinking of the whole creature, is to be set aside in what we believe of the Godhead.
14. although it seems no less impossible that among these three, which are nevertheless a single, simple being, one without the other has become a man:
(15) In truth, it is even more impossible that one thing, in which there is nothing different, should be three entirely different things.
16. That the Son of God became man is therefore easier for reason to believe than to believe that he is the same being with the Father and the Holy Spirit.
17) To the objection of the dialectic, **) this
**) I.e. to think the doctrine of the laws and to develop the thoughts logically - formal or pure logic.
D. Red.
If the woman does not rhyme with her laws, one must answer: The woman is silent in the community.
No wonder Arius, the Jew, Mahomet and the whole world deny that Christ is God.
19 For the blind man judges the color, and they estimate the creator, who exists in himself, like the created being, which consists of nothing.
20 Some raise the question whether it should be said: The Father has always begotten or he begets the Son, or the Son has always been born or is always born?
(21) Those who use the first way of speaking pretend that the Son of God must be said to be born at all times, because the past time indicates something perfect, the present time something imperfect.
22 Hilarius and others, on the other hand, dare to claim that the Son is always born of the Father, and that what is alive lives from what is alive and springs from what has no origin (nasci ex innascibili).
(23) But I hold that this is more a linguistic or philosophical than a theological controversy, to which only the flesh or reason is led.
Because it is certain that the art of language and philosophy have no application to the Godhead, which is eternity itself, since there the past, the present and the future are all one and the same.
(25) Therefore, when it is said of the Son in the past time, "he has been born," it is also said of him in the present time, "he will be born," and in the future time, "he will be born.
26. because it is the same Son who was born, is born and will be born from eternity and to all eternity, that is, the eternal God from God.
(27) Just as we quite rightly say of God: God has remained, remains and will remain, in that nothing else is said by this than: God is everlasting or eternal.
28. his past being is always his present being, his future being is always his past being, and his present being is always his past and future, that is, his eternal being.
29) This is also expressed by the name Jehovah, which the Jews call only the holy Tetragrammaton (i.e. the four-letter word) *) and of which they say that it cannot be pronounced, although they themselves do not understand what they say.
30 Aristotle also held that the eternal and infinite being, insofar as it is such, is unknown and incomprehensible.
(31) Yes, he even claims that such an infinite or eternal being, insofar as it is such, cannot even have its being, i.e. exist, and according to reason he seems to be right.
But he did not see, or rather did not want to see, the conclusion from this, namely, that according to reason it follows from this: that there is no God nor can there be.
That is why he is so cold everywhere in his treatises on religion and generally a perfect epicure in the skin.
However, he admits that according to the possibility an infinite being can both be and be known, although here again the eternity of the world confuses him.
35 St. Paul says, Rom. 1, 19, right: that the xxxxxxxx, Notum Dei, or the knowledge of a God, that is, His eternal power and divinity, is revealed to the Gentiles.
But such knowledge is obscure and piecemeal - although the knowledge that believers have of God is also only partial or piecemeal in its nature - just as a line touches the whole sphere, but only at one point, and thus does not encompass the whole of the sphere.
(37) Whoever does not want to fall into error through brooding, nor be crushed by the glory of the Majesty, let him touch and grasp in faith the Son of God as He is revealed in the flesh.
38 For it is this radiance of the Father's glory that touches this object or reproach and becomes a returning ray that enlightens every man who comes into this world.
The Word in the Godhead is called the wisdom of the Father or according to St. Paul, 1 Cor. 1, 18, the wisdom and power of God.
2. not in the opinion that the Father in his person is wise or wisdom only through the Word and not also through himself.
3. for every person is the wisdom, power and goodness of God, just as it is the divine essence and substance, and what can only be said of God.
4. faith does not suffer the person of the Father to be without wisdom in itself, or the person of the Son to be without power and might, or the Holy Spirit to be without both.
5 For this would mean that the persons themselves would be without substance, as well as without eternity, immensity, majesty, that is, without Godhead, therefore without anything at all.
Therefore, the rule from St. Augustine is used here: Everything that is said in divine things absolutely (i.e. independently, without reference to the persons) and not relatively (i.e. in relation to the personal differences), that must be understood as something common (to all three persons).
7. whether also already sometimes from the individual persons, only in order to distinguish and to mark them, common things, which one calls attributes *), are said:
8. as, for example, the wisdom and power of God are attributed to the Son, because in His incarnation the wisdom and power of God were revealed;
9) As well as the power and authority is attributed to the person of the Father from the creation, whether it already belongs to all three persons, that is, to the one God, the Creator;
(10) How, finally, goodness and animation are attributed to the Holy Spirit, although the Father and the Son are not excluded from this common work of the Trinity:
(11) Nevertheless, a certain relation (relationship)*) is to be assumed in the Godhead, which, however, is completely different from the relation as it takes place in the created being or in philosophy.
A relation in things does not form a substance, as one expresses it; but it is something that has only the very least entity (Seinheit, i.e. that which makes the relation a being) and does not exist for itself, yes, according to the newer philosophers it is nothing at all.**)
But in divine things the relation is a factual being (res) and an independence (hypostasis), that is, a substance (subsistentia) existing by itself (independently), namely the same, what the Godhead itself is; because the three persons are three independents (hypostases) and three existing for themselves (tres subsistentes). †
†) Here hypostasis and subsistentia is taken as abstractum of suppositum or persona as the divine substance or entity endowed with independence (hypostasis or subsistentia). For if subsistence is added to substance, this is a suppositum, which also, if the substance is a rational being, is called person; which therefore has the ground of its existence not in something else, but exists in and through itself. Thus, for example, human nature in Christ is a substance, but not a suppositum or person, because it does not exist through itself (independently), but in the second person or personality of the divine substance. - Luther wants to say here: In God the relation is not an accidens, as in the creature, but
The relation does not indicate the existence of different things, but different things prove that a relation exists.
(15) It does not follow that the Father is wise in himself; consequently the wisdom of the Father, being in himself and therefore a relation to him, is a thing distinct from him.
16 Just as it is nevertheless rightly said: The Son is a relation or relationship to the Father, consequently He is another independence distinct from the Father, so also from the Holy Spirit.
(17) In sum, by reason and philosophy nothing of these things of the Majesty can be said and believed, but by faith everything can be said and believed correctly.
After the article of the Trinity, the highest is that of the Incarnation of the Son of God, where a proportion (i.e. relationship) occurred between the finite and the infinite, which was impossible in man.
19. this person, who is both finite and infinite, has become the servant of sinners and the very last and least of all things, which is unbelievable, but serves the highest joy for those who believe it.
(20) This is as much as if you said: He who alone has being and alone has made everything out of nothing, has alone become nothing and has lowered himself below everything.
Nevertheless, the article of the creation of things from nothing is more difficult to believe than the article of the incarnation of the Son of God.
22. through his incarnation, Christ leads us back into the knowledge of the creator, in which knowledge the angels are blessed.
23. which could not have happened unless he himself, through his person, who is the image of God, took away from us sin, which is the kingdom and victory of death.
24. for sin has blinded human nature so that it no longer sees the Creator.
recognized whether she could have noticed his work, especially in the government of all things, from afar.
(25) Yes, even sin itself man does not know and understand and thinks that his blindness is the highest wisdom.
(26) It is truly a terrible and horrible thing that the whole human race, infected by one man's sin, is lost and condemned by the wrath of God.
27. but the greatness of this wrath is far surpassed by the greatness of that mercy by which such an exalted person as the Son of God has become a sacrifice for lost people.
Reason, which knows nothing of God, seems to rightly grumble against God as an unreasonable and cruel tyrant.
Many have sought comfort in reconciling justice with mercy; but apart from faith in the incarnate God, there is no reason and no comfort that can do this.
(30) Those who think that corruption and sin are inherent in nature itself, as it was created from nothing, are not far from blaspheming the Creator Himself, since a similar corruption is not found in the angels, nor in the sun, the stars, and the whole heaven (2c).
(31) Those who hold that the soul is propagated by natural procreation (ex traduce esse) seem to be closest in their opinion to the teaching of Scripture.
They will also more easily assert the propagation of original sin than those who disagree, since, as Augustine says, original sin is also ungodliness.
Augustine confesses that he does not know which opinion of the two has more certainty and truth, and so far no one has been found who would have decided this question.
34 For it is obvious that what Jerome and others who follow him want to conclude from the 33rd Psalm, where it says: "Who formed their hearts one by one", does nothing at all to this matter.
35 We consider the decisions of the pope and his synagogue in this matter to be a violent condemnation and curse.
For he has neither the right nor the ability to establish anything in the doctrine of faith or to do anything else in the church of God.
37 He has no right, because he is not called, neither by God nor by man, but has intruded himself out of his own presumption as an idol and abomination.
38 He does not have the ability to do this, because he is a completely unlearned, stupid animal and a belly that is deaf to the holy scriptures like a donkey to a lyre.
39. nor is the Pythagorean xxxxx xxx, "He said it," by which the pope alone rules, to be tolerated in the church; but he who, as Peter says, teaches the word of God, let him be heard.
40 Therefore the pope is nothing, and everything he says and does is in itself null and void; as law and nature testify at the same time as the word.
(41) It would be better for reason to speak in this matter, and for the poet to say, "Like father, like children.
42 For it is known that children commonly develop not only their facial features, but also their moral and spiritual development.
character of the parents as in the imprint on them.
So that it is nothing if one says: the rational soul, just as it is created, is poured in and, just as it is poured in, is also created at the same time.
44. Who has proved this, or will deny that the same cannot be said of any other soul?
45 They also make the question: How God is not unjust, since he unites a pure soul with the flesh and thus stains it from the outside? even more difficult.
46 Although a Christian can be ignorant in this matter without danger with St. Augustine and the whole Church;
47. So one must also abstain from such a daring assertion, which could turn out to the disgrace of the creator.
48 Since it is certain that God also created the angels from nothing, who live forever without all corruption;
(49) What difficulty should keep God from being able to draw and bring forth a rational soul, as well as from nothing, even from a corrupt seed?
(50) Just as he causes a blighted ear to come forth from a blighted seed, just as blighted things often come forth from blighted things.