THE IMAGE OR WORD OF GOD
that uprightness being compared with uprightness, and greatness with greatness, it becomes manifest that the Image, and that which is made in that image [i.e., the soul], correspond in one of these respects; while the Image, and that Being of whom He is the Image, correspond in both. For it is He of whom you have heard holy David sing in a Psalm: Great is our Lord, and of great power (Ps. cxlvii. 5); and again, The Lord is upright... and there is no unrighteousness in Him (Ps. xcii. 15). Of that great and righteous God He is the Image, so that He is great, and He is righteous; and it is from Him that the soul, that is made in His image, has its likeness.
3. But I inquire: Has He who is the Image of God nothing more than the soul which is made in His likeness, for we ascribe to it also to be great and to be righteous? Assuredly, there is a very great difference. The one has received those qualities in a measure: the other has them according to His equality [with the Father]. Is there not still another difference? There is this: Upon the one either creation or condescending goodness has conferred them: but they belong to the other by His generation. And there is no doubt that this is a sign of far higher dignity. No one can fail to see that the one receives these qualities only by the bounty of God; but the Other has from God His very Nature and Substance, which is a condition far more exalted. For the Image of God is consubstantial with Him; and all that He appears to communicate to the same Image of Him is Essential to Both, not accidental. Notice also still another particular in which He who is the Image of God is immeasurably superior. To be great and to be righteous; who does not know that those two qualities are distinct in their nature? Yet in Him they are but one. And even more: they are one with Him. Not only is it with Him the same thing to be righteous and to be great, but His greatness and His righteousness are no other than His Being. It is not thus with the soul. Its greatness and its righteousness are both distinct from itself and distinct from each other. For if, as I have said above, the soul is great because it is capable of things eternal, and righteous because it yearns for the goodness everlasting, then the soul which does not desire nor seek for the things which are above, but those which are upon the earth, is not upright, but is bent downwards, and so ceases to be always great, though it remains always capable of eternal existence. For even if the soul should never receive it, it will always retain this capability; and thus the saying of the Scripture is realized, Surely man passeth as an image (Ps. xxxviii. 7, Douay), yet only in part, so that the immeasurable superiority of the Word, as possessing these qualities in their completeness, may clearly appear. For how is it possible that the Word should fall from being righteous and great, since He is Himself greatness and righteousness? Man, on the contrary, possesses these qualities in part, lest if he were wholly deprived of them, no hope of salvation should remain to him. For if [the soul] should cease to be great, it would cease also to be capable of salvation, inasmuch as it is from this capacity, as I have said, that its greatness is derived. How, then, could it possibly hope for that which it was not capable of receiving?
4. It is, then, by the greatness which it still retains, even after having lost its righteousness, that man passes through this world in the image [of the Word]; only he limps (so to speak) on one foot as he walks, and he has become an alienated son. For of such it was, I think, that these words were spoken: The children that are strangers have lied unto me, strange children have faded away, and have halted from their paths (Ps. xviii. 46, Douay). With great fitness are they styled strange children; for they are children, because they have re tained that which made them great; and yet they are strange, because of the loss of their original righteousness. Nor would he have said have halted^ but 'have fallen/ or something like that, if they had divested themselves entirely of the image in which men were made. So then, now, man passes through the world in the image of the Word so far as relates to greatness; but as relates to righteousness, he, so to speak, halts; he is troubled and despoiled of that image; and the Scripture speaks thus of him: Every man walketh in a vain shew; surely they are disquieted in vain. Altogether in vain, for it goes on to say: He heapeth up riches, and knoweth not who shall gather them (Ps. xxxix. 6). And why is he ignorant, except that he bends down towards things low and earthly, and treasures up for himself nothing but earth? He does not know in the least for whom he is gathering those things which he confides to the earth, whether for the moths to devour, or for thieves to break through and steal, for robbers to pillage, or for fire to destroy. And therefore it is in the person of that unhappy man who contorts himself towards the ground, and broods over none but earthly things, that the melancholy declaration is made in the Psalms: I am troubled; J am bmved down greatly; I go mourning all the day long (Ps. xxxviii. 6). He has experience in himself of the truth in that saying of the Wise Man: God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions (Eccles. vii. 29). And at once the voice of ridicule is addressed to him: Ban* down, that we may go over (Is. li. 23).
5. But how have we arrived at this point? Was it not thus, that we wished to show that greatness and righteousness (which are the two excellences that we had determined to be in the Image of God) are not one in the soul and with the soul, as we have shown it to be of faith that they are one in the Word and with the Word. And as to righteousness, it is quite plain from what has been said, that it is distinct both from the soul itself and from the greatness of the soul, since even when it no longer exists, the soul endures, and is still great. But in what way shall it be shown that the greatness of the soul is distinct from the soul itself? For this cannot be done in the same manner in which the distinction between the soul and its righteousness was demonstrated; the soul cannot be deprived of its greatness as it may be of its righteousness. Yet the greatness of the soul is not the soul itself; for although the soul is not found without its greatness, yet the greatness itself is found also without (extra, beyond) the soul. Do you ask where? In the Angels. For the Angels are great in the same manner as the soul, namely, by the capacity they have for things eternal. It has been shown clearly that the soul is distinct from its righteousness, because it may be deprived of that righteousness; why, then, should it not be distinct from its greatness, which it cannot claim to be exclusively its own? If, then, the one of these qualities is not in every soul, and the other is not found in the soul alone, it is plain that both the one and the other is distinct from the soul. Also, no form is that of which it is the form. Now, the greatness of the soul is its form. For it cannot be said not to be the form of the soul because it is inseparable from it. All differences of substance are of this nature, not only those which are so proper to one thing that they cannot belong to any other, but also certain others which are common to many natures. The soul, then, is not [the same as] its greatness, even as the blackness of a crow is not the crow, nor the whiteness of snow the snow, nor the faculty of reason or of risibility is the man who possesses them; and yet you will never find a crow without blackness, snow without whiteness, nor a man without the faculty of reason or of risibility. Thus also the soul and the greatness of the soul, although inseparable, are distinct from each other. How can they be otherwise than distinct, when the one is in the subject [in which it inheres], and the other is the subject and the substance? The only Nature which is supreme and uncreate, that is, God the Holy Trinity, possesses for Itself alone this pure, and unique simplicity of Essence, that there is not found in it one thing and another thing, here and there, one time and another time. For it abides in its own Self, It is all that It has, and what It is; It exists always, and in a manner unchanging and unchanged. All that in other natures is separated or different, is in it united and rendered alike, so that in It, number does not cause plurality, nor diversity change. It contains all places, and not being contained in any, sets in due order all things, each in its place. Beneath it pass all times; it is not subject to them. The future it does not await; it does not hold anything in remembrance as past, nor experience any as being present.
6. Let us withdraw ourselves, beloved, let us withdraw ourselves from those teachers of novelties, not dialecticians, but heretics, who, in their extreme impiety, argue that the greatness in which God is great, the goodness in which He is good, the wisdom in which He is wise, and the righteousness in which He is righteous, and lastly, the Divinity in which He is God, is not God. ' He is God/ they say, 4 by His Divinity, but the Divinity is not God. Perhaps it does not condescend to be God, because it is so great that it makes God to be what He is.' But if It is not God, what is It? For either It is God, or something which is not God, or It is nothing at all. Now, you do not allow that It is God; you do not pretend, I suppose, that It is nothing; then you confess that It is so necessary to God, that without It He could not be God, but that by It He is [that which He is]. If, then, there be something which is not God, either it will be less than He, or greater than He, or equal. But how can it be less than He, seeing that it is by it He is God? It remains, then, that you should allow it to be either greater than He, or equal. But if it be greater, then It and not God is the Supreme Good; while if it be equal, there are two, each of which is the Supreme Good; and either conclusion is contrary to the Catholic Faith. We are of the same opinion respecting the greatness, the goodness, the righteousness, the wisdom of God, as respecting His Divinity, and I hold that they are all one in God and with God. For He is good from no other source or reason than that which makes Him great; nor is He otherwise righteous and wise than He is great and good; nor, in fact, is there any other source or reason for any of His attributes than there is for His Divinity. He is in His own Self the Source of all.
7. But the heretic says: 'What? Do you deny that He is God by His Divinity?' No; but I maintain that the same Divinity by which He is God is God Himself, that I may not be obliged to allow that there is anything more excellent than God. For I say also that He is great by greatness, but is Himself that greatness, that I may not rank anything as greater than God. And I confess that He is good by goodness, but that this goodness is no other than Himself, that I may not seem to recognise anything as better than He; and so with all other attributes. It is with gladness and confidence that I am going onward in the path of truth, that I adopt the conclusion of him who said: 4 God is great with no other greatness than that which He Himself is; for otherwise that greatness would be greater than God.' This was Augustine, the strongest hammer who has ever crushed heretics.1 If, then, any such thing may be properly said of God, it may more fitly and correctly be asserted that God is greatness, goodness, righteousness, wisdom, than to say God is great, good, righteous, or wise.
8. For this reason it was that in the Council lately held at Rheims by Pope Eugenius, that exposition made by Gilbert, Bishop of Poictiers, in his comment upon the words of Boethius' De Trinitate, which are themselves perfectly sound and orthodox, was deservedly adjudged by the Pope and the other Bishops to be perverse and altogether suspicious. For the Bishop commented upon them thus: 1 The Father is Truth, that is. He is true; the Son is Truth, that is, He is true; the Holy Ghost is Truth, that is, He is true. And these Three together are not three truths, but one Truth; that is to say, One Being who is true/ O explanation obscure and perverse! How much more appropriate and true it would be to say, on the contrary: ' The Father is true, that is, He is Truth; the Son is true, that is, He is Truth; the Holy Ghost is true, that is, He is Truth. And these Three are One Being who is true, that is, They are One Truth.1
Which, indeed, he would have done had he deigned to imitate holy Fulgentius, who says: 1 One only Truth of One God, or rather one Truth which is One God, does not allow the service and the worship which is due to the Creator to be rendered to a creature* {Lib. de Fide Orthod. ad Donate cap. 5). He was a good defender of the faith who spoke so truly of the Truth, who had opinions so pious and Catholic respecting the true and pure simplicity of the Divine Substance, in which there can be nothing which is not Itself, and Itself is God. That book of the Bishop beforenamed contained other passages which differed from the rectitude of the faith, one of which I will quote as an example. For where his author (Boethius) says: 4 When it is said, God, God, God, this refers to the Substance,1 our commentator adds: ' Not what the Substance is, but by what It is/ But God forbid that the Church Catholic should assent to that proposition that there is any substance or anything at all by which God is, and which is not God.
9. But it is not against him personally that I say these things, since he, in the same Council, acquiescing humbly in the opinion of the other Bishops, has condemned with his own mouth both these and other statements which were found worthy of blame; but on account of those persons who are said to be still perusing and transcribing that book, against the apostolical prohibition promulgated at the same place, and who persist obstinately in following that Bishop in opinions which he has himself abandoned, preferring to have him for a master in his error, rather than in the correction of it And we have spoken not only for them, but on your account I have thought it desirable to make this digression, taking occasion from our having to consider the difference between the Image [of the Word] and the soul which has been made in that Image, so that those who perhaps may at some time have drunk of those stolen waters, and have thought them pleasant (Prov. ix. 17), may reject them by the taking of this antidote, and, being purged in the stomach of their soul, may listen to that which remains to be said, according to my promise, of the resemblance of the soul to the Word. Thus they shall draw with joy from purer fountains; not mine, but those of the Saviour, the Bridegroom of the Church, Jesus Christ our Lord, who is above all, God blessed for ever. Amen.