Against Praxeas 12

If the number of the Trinity still scandalizes you, as though it were not joined in simple unity, I ask: how does one who is one and single speak in the plural, “Let us make man in our image and likeness,” when he ought to have said, “Let me make man in my image and likeness,” as being one and single? And in what follows too, “Behold, Adam has become like one of us,” he deceives or jests, if, being one and alone and single, he spoke in the plural. Or was he speaking to the angels, as the Jews interpret it, since they too do not acknowledge the Son? Or was it because he himself was Father, Son, and Spirit that he presented himself as plural and spoke to himself in the plural? No; it was because there was already attached to him a second person, his Word, and a third, the Spirit in the Word, that he spoke in the plural, “let us make,” and “our,” and “us.” For with whom was he making man, and to whom was he making him like? With the Son, who was to put on man, and the Spirit, who was to sanctify man, he was speaking, as with ministers and witnesses, from the unity of the Trinity. In fact the Scripture that follows distinguishes between the persons: “And God made man; in the image of God he made him.” Why not “his own,” if the one who was making was one, and there was no one in whose image he was making him? But there was one in whose image he was making him, namely the Son's, who, being to become man more surely and truly, had caused the man who was then to be formed from clay to be called his image, the image and likeness of the true man. But in the earlier works of the world too, how is it written? First, indeed, when the Son had not yet appeared: “And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light”: the Word himself, that is, the true light, which enlightens man coming into this world, and through him the light of the world too. From then on, however, with Christ the Word assisting and ministering, God willed a thing to be made, and God made it: “And God said, ‘Let there be a firmament,’ and God made the firmament”; “and God said, ‘Let there be lights,’ and God made the greater and the lesser light.” And the rest, surely, the same one made who made the former, that is, the Word of God, “through whom all things were made and without whom nothing was made.” And if he too is God, according to John, “The Word was God,” you have two: one who says that it should be made, another who makes it. And how you should understand “another” I have already declared: in the sense of person, not of substance; for distinction, not for division. For though I everywhere hold one substance in three cohering, yet I must, by the necessity of the sense, call him who commands and him who makes different. For he would not command if he were himself making it while he commanded it to be made through the one he was then commanding; or else, if he were one, he would be about to command himself, or to make it without a command, since he would not have waited to command himself.