Novatian — On the Trinity 30

In Fine, Notwithstanding the Said Heretics Have Gathered the Origin of Their Error from Consideration of What is Written: Although We Call Christ God, and the Father God, Still Scripture Does Not Set Forth Two Gods, Any More Than Two Lords or Two Teachers. And now, indeed, concerning the Father , and the Son , and the Holy Spirit , let it be sufficient to have briefly said thus much, and to have laid down these points concisely, without carrying them out in a lengthened argument. For they could be presented more diffusely and continued in a more expanded disputation, since the whole of the Old and New Testaments might be adduced in testimony that thus the true faith stands.

But because heretics , ever struggling against the truth , are accustomed to prolong the controversy of pure tradition and Catholic faith , being offended against Christ; because He is, moreover, asserted to be God by the Scriptures also, and this is believed to be so by us; we must rightly — that every heretical calumny may be removed from our faith — contend, concerning the fact that Christ is God also, in such a way as that it may not militate against the truth of Scripture; nor yet against our faith , how there is declared to be one God by the Scriptures , and how it is held and believed by us.

For as well they who say that Jesus Christ Himself is God the Father , as moreover they who would have Him to be only man, have gathered thence the sources and reasons of their error and perversity; because when they perceived that it was written that God is one, they thought that they could not otherwise hold such an opinion than by supposing that it must be believed either that Christ was man only, or really God the Father. And they were accustomed in such a way to connect their sophistries as to endeavour to justify their own error . And thus they who say that Jesus Christ is the Father argue as follows:— If God is one, and Christ is God , Christ is the Father , since God is one. If Christ be not the Father , because Christ is God the Son , there appear to be two Gods introduced, contrary to the Scriptures .

And they who contend that Christ is man only, conclude on the other hand thus:— If the Father is one, and the Son another, but the Father is God and Christ is God , then there is not one God , but two Gods are at once introduced, the Father and the Son ; and if God is one, by consequence Christ must be a man , so that rightly the Father may be one God. Thus indeed the Lord is, as it were, crucified between two thieves, even as He was formerly placed; and thus from either side He receives the sacrilegious reproaches of such heretics as these. But neither the Holy Scriptures nor we suggest to them the reasons of their perdition and blindness, if they either will not, or cannot, see what is evidently written in the midst of the divine documents.