Three poems on the Holy Trinity
by Gregory of Nazianzus
Translated by Peter Gilbert, in On God and Man: The Theological Poetry of St Gregory of Nazianzus (Popular Patristics Series #21), pages 37-47. Yonkers, NY: St Vladimir's Seminary Press.
On the Father
I know we are as though making a great voyage on a raft,
or hastening towards the starry sky upon small wings,
when, with such poems, mind has moved to exhibit the Godhead
(which transcends the power of heavenly beings to worship as is due),
or the great Godhead's statutes, and the universe's helm.
Nevertheless, since God is often not as pleased by the gift
of the worse majority, as by that of the beloved few,
for this reason I take courage to break forth into speech. But flee
from afar, whoever is a sinner; my speech is directed
either to the pure, or to them that are being purified. But
infidels, like wild beasts, when on the high-peaked mountain
Christ shone forth and wrote the law for Moses upon tables,
were immediately overcome beneath the broken crags.
So much for the likes of these; thus also the Word expelled
the worst ones of our company, who had a heart opposed to God.
But as for me, I will set down this preface on sundry leaves, a voice
instilling an uncouth people with fear, uttered of old
by witnesses of words, men of godly minds,
Moses and Isaiah (I'll speak to those who have knowledge),
who gave the law, the one new-formed, the other when it was broken.
"Let the heavens give ear, and let the earth receive my words."
O Spirit of God, may you then waken my mind and tongue
as a loud-shouting clarion of truth, so that all
may rejoice, who are united in spirit to the entire Godhead.
There is one God, without beginning or cause, not limited
by anything existing before, or afterward to be,
encompassing the aeons, and infinite; the noble,
great, only-begotten Son's great Father; who had, in the
Son, no suffering of anything fleshly, since he is mind. One other
is God, not other in Godhead, God's Word, who is
his living paternal seal, the sole
Son of him who has no origin, and most Unique from the Unique, equal
in might, so that, while the one remains the whole parent, the Son
is world-maker, lawgiver, the Father's strength and intellect.
There is one Spirit, God from God who is good. Be gone all of you
whom the Spirit has not sealed so as to show forth his Godhead,
but are either rotten to the core, or have a vile tongue:
half-shining, invidious, clever self-taught people,
a covered-up fountain, a lamp in a murky crevice.
On the Son
First of all we shall sing the Son, honoring that blood
that is our passions' cleansing. For we must come to the
mortal's aid with those of heaven, due to
that tongue that wars against the divine: foul-minded, suicidal.
Before the great Father, nothing was. For he holds within himself
everything, and nothing higher than the Father exists. He who has sprung
from the Father is the great God's Word: eternal Son,
the archetype's image, a nature equal to his parent.
For the Son so great is the Father's glory, and from him he shone forth,
as only the Father and he that shone forth from the Father understand.
For no one has come close to the Godhead; but this much
is clear to everyone, just as it is to me:
I have no right to foist on the Godhead a birthday,
an emission, or some loathsome cutting. For though I do not reproduce
dispassionately, since I'm composite, not at all subject to passion
is he who is wholly incomposite, unbodied. When things'
natures are remote, what wonder if their beginnings differ, too?
If time came before me, time is not before
the Word, whose begetter is atemporal. When the beginningless
Father was there, leaving nothing superior to his divinity,
then also was there the Fathers' Son, having in the Father a timeless beginning,
like the sun's great circle of overwhelming clear light.
And, while all ideas fall short of the great God,
so that nothing interposes between Father and Son,
eternally existing, we should distinguish the Lord the
Son from the Lord the Father. If something came prior to God,
whether time, or will, that would divide the Godhead, I think.
To be God, to be begetter, he must be the great begetter. And if the greatest
thing concerning the Father is that his treasured divinity has no origin,
it's no less a thing for the honored offspring of the great Father
to have such a root. So don't exclude God from God.
For you've not known the Child distanced from the Father. The terms
"unbegotten" and "begotten of the Father" do not make
two kinds of Godhead. Someone has alleged about this that
each is foreign to the other, but the nature is inseparable, if you ask me.
Then, though the Word is begotten, he is not fleshly,
since his Father, it will be admitted, is fleshless (and no man's mind
is ever so corrupt as to think otherwise).
And so you have God the Son, his parent's worthy pride and joy.
But if, rendering offerings to the great Father's Godhead
worthlessly, and gravening in your heart a hollow fear,
you'd deny this thing, and would hurl Christ out amongst creatures,
you insult, O nitwit, the divinity of them both:
you filch the Son's, who's not God if created.
For all that once was not is but a creature, even if a thing
perdures, and stands as fixed, through God's great reasons.
And why, bold sir, when your starting point was this,
that, through Christ's sufferings, you may become god hereafter,
do you then make him go in chains, and call him your co-slave,
honoring him with gifts for slavery, instead of for being God?
If the great God formed him later, as a fine tool
(as a smith forges a hammer for the sake of a cart),
so that, by his Firstborn's hand, God might make me,
then far worthier than the celestial Christ would be
the creature, if for its sake the Word exists,
not it for Christ. Who would maintain such a thing?
But if it's that, to rescue you from your passions, he took on a body,
would you therefore set a yardstick on his great-famed Godhead?
Has he sinned, in pitying you? To me, rather, he's the more amazing.
For he didn't shave off any bit of Godhead, and still he saved me,
stooping as a doctor over my foul-smelling passions.
He was a man, but God. David's offspring, but Adam's
Maker. A bearer of flesh, but, even so, beyond all body.
From a mother, but she a virgin. Comprehensible, but immeasurable.
And a manger received him, while a star led
the Magi, who so came bearing gifts, and fell on bended knee.
As a man he entered the arena, but he prevailed, as indomitable,
over the tempter in three bouts. Food was set before him,
but he fed thousands, and changed the water into wine.
He got baptized, but he washed sins clean, but he was proclaimed
by the Spirit, in a voice of thunder, to be the Son of the One Uncaused.
As a man he took rest, and as God he put to rest the sea.
His knees were wearied, but he bolstered the strength and knees of the lame.
He prayed, but who was it who heard the petitions of the feeble?
He was the sacrifice, but the high priest: making an offering, but himself God.
He dedicated his blood to God, and cleansed the entire world.
A cross carried him up, while the bolts nailed fast sin.
But what's it for me to say these things? He had company with the dead,
but he rose with the dead, and the dead, the bygone, he raised up:
there a mortal's poverty, here the incorporeal's wealth.
Don't you dishonor, then, his divinity on account of his human things,
but, for the divine's sake, hold in renown the earthly form
into which, thoughtful towards you, he formed himself, the incorruptible Son.
On the Holy Spirit
Soul, why delay? Sing also the Spirit's glory,
and don't separate in speech what the nature did not leave out.
Let us quake before the great Spirit, who is my God, who's made me know God,
who is God there above, and who forms God here:
almighty, imparting manifold gifts, him whom the holy choir hymns,
who brings life to those in heaven and on earth, and is enthroned on high,
coming from the Father, the divine force, self-commandeered;
he is not a Child (for there is one worthy Child of the One who's best),
nor is he outside the unseen Godhead, but of identical honor.
Now, if someone seeks to understand the heavenly Spirit's divinity
through the pages of divinely-inspired Law,
he shall see many ways, close-packed, collected into one,
if he has yearned, and gathered something of the
Holy Ghost with his heart, and if his piercing mind has perceived.
But if he seeks a plain assertion of his beloved divinity,
let him know this, he seeks unsensibly. For it wouldn't have been right,
when Christ's own hadn't yet appeared to most of humankind,
to lay on feeble hearts a weight of doubt.
For, with beginners, it's not the time
for more consummate language. Who shows a fire's whole glow
to still-dim eyes, or gorges them with light insatiable?
It's better if, bit by bit, you bring on the fiery glowings,
lest you even hurt some way the springs of a sweeter light.
For, as of old the Scriptures displayed the whole deity
of the royal Father, and Christ's great fame began to dawn,
disclosed to men of little understanding,
so also, later when the Son's shone more distinctly,
the brightness of the Spirit's deity glowed.
Now to them he gave a small illumination, while most he left to us,
even distributing himself to us later in tongues of fire
betokening divinity, after the Savior had gone up from the earth.
For I, too, have known God to be as fire to the wicked, and as light to the good.
There, I have gathered up the Godhead for you. But if you're left speechless,
hearing how a Son and one who's not Son share one Godhead,
as though being swayed two ways, by two good arguments,
God himself, I trust, shall come forth next to give a reason.
From the one first father sprang a wife and Seth,
she a half-slice, he a second child by marriage bonds,
one not by birth, the other by birth, but both being equally human.
Remembering these, don't you belittle any within the Godhead,
putting this one above, this one below. One is the nature, immeasurable,
uncreated, a-temporal, excellent, free, and co-venerable,
one God in three refulgences, making the world go round.
By these I am awakened, another new young man, when in the font
death gets buried, and I come back racing to the light.
For the threefold Godhead made me rise out a light-bearer.
No, beloved cleansing, I won't falsify you. If, having been washed
in the divinity, I should divide the bright divinity,
it would have been better if ... but I shudder to complete an evil sentence,
by my hope in the divine gift, and in the baths.
If he has fully cleansed the whole of me, the whole God then is
venerable, so I feel. But whatever man's a sinner can assert the inequality,
cutting himself asunder from God's gift, his own divinity.
And if we hear some words about either the Child or the good
Spirit, in divine words and from God-bearing
men, as, that they hold a second place to God the Father,
I charge you so to understand this, by words of wisdom's untold depths:
that it refers to the unoriginated root, it doesn't split
the Godhead, so that you've got one sole power, not worshipped severally.
From unity is the Trinity, and from Trinity again the unity
not as a source, a spring, a mighty river, sharing a single current,
in three separate manners traverse the earth;
nor as a torch, taken from a pyre, converges again into one;
nor like a word, both going out from the mind and remaining in it;
nor like some shimmering of dancing sunbeams off the waters,
a restless gleaming, wavering on the walls,
approaching, then fleeing, then drawing near.
For God's nature is not restless, nor flowing,
nor again coalescing; but what is God's is steadfast.
But you might make a pure offering privately, thinking thus.
In threefold lights the one nature is established,
not a numberless unity, since it subsists in three excellencies,
nor a Threesome worshipped severally, since the nature is inseparable.
In the Godhead is the unity, but they whose Godhead it is are three in number.
Each is the one God, if you should talk of them singly.
Again, there is one God, without beginning, whence comes the wealth of Godhead
whenever the word refers to all three, so that, on the
one hand, it might reverently proclaim to men the threefold lights, and
on the other hand, that by it we might extol the strong-shining Monarchy,
and not content ourselves with a pluralist marketplace of gods.
For, by me, polyarchy and an utter brawling anarchy are
one and the same. Division is strife, and hastens to
dissolution. For this reason, polyarchy is far from the Godhead, as I take it.
Some might call them "three gods" if he had divided them
by times, intellect, power, or will,
where none, without brawling, would be identical even with
itself.
But one is the might of my Trinity, one the knowledge,
one the glory, one the power. So, again, the unity cannot dissolve,
being greatly honored in the one harmony of divinity.
So much radiance has the Trinity revealed to my eyes,
from the wings and the veil within the divine temple,
beneath which God's royal nature lies hid. And if something extra is
for the angelic choirs, let the Trinity know what this extra is.
