Title I: On the Supreme Trinity and the Catholic Faith

Latin source headnote (Abbas Siculus): It treats of the Trinity and its works; of faith and the articles of faith. In §3 it treats here of the ecclesiastical sacraments.

Innocent III, at the general council, chapter I.

We firmly believe and simply confess that there is one God alone, true, eternal, immeasurable and immutable, incomprehensible, omnipotent and ineffable: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; three persons indeed, but one essence, substance, or nature, altogether simple; the Father from no one, the Son however from the Father alone, and the Holy Spirit equally from both; without beginning, always, and without end; the Father begetting, the Son being born, and the Holy Spirit proceeding; consubstantial, coequal, co-omnipotent, and coeternal; the one principle of all things; creator of all things visible and invisible, spiritual and corporeal; who by his almighty power at once from the beginning of time created from nothing both creatures, the spiritual and the corporeal, namely the angelic and the mundane, and thereafter the human creature, constituted as though common from spirit and body. For the devil and the other demons were indeed created good in nature by God, but they themselves through themselves became evil. Man, however, sinned at the suggestion of the devil.

§1. This Holy Trinity, undivided according to its common essence and distinguished according to personal properties, first through Moses and the holy Prophets and his other servants, according to the most orderly disposition of times, gave saving doctrine to the human race.

§2. And at last the only-begotten Son of God, Jesus Christ, incarnate in common by the whole Trinity, conceived from Mary ever-Virgin with the cooperation of the Holy Spirit, having become true man, composed of a rational soul and human flesh, one person in two natures, demonstrated the way of life more clearly. Although according to his divinity he is immortal and impassible, the very same, according to his humanity, became passible and mortal. He also, for the salvation of the human race, suffered and died on the wood of the cross, descended to the lower regions, rose from the dead, and ascended into heaven; but he descended in soul and rose in flesh, and ascended equally in both, to come at the end of the age, to judge the living and the dead, and to render to each according to his works, to the reprobate as well as to the elect. All of them will rise with their own bodies, which they now bear, so that they may receive according to their works, whether these were good or evil: the former, with the devil, perpetual punishment; the latter, with Christ, everlasting glory.

§3. There is, moreover, one universal Church of the faithful, outside which no one at all is saved, in which Jesus Christ himself is the priest and the sacrifice. His body and blood are truly contained in the sacrament of the altar under the species of bread and wine, the bread having been transubstantiated into the body and the wine into the blood by divine power, so that, for the accomplishing of the mystery of unity, we ourselves may receive from what is his that which he himself received from what is ours. And certainly no one can confect this sacrament except a priest who has been duly ordained, according to the keys of the Church that Jesus Christ himself granted to the Apostles and their successors.

§4. The sacrament of baptism, which at the invocation of God and of the undivided Trinity—namely, of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—is consecrated in water, avails for salvation when duly conferred upon infants as well as adults, by anyone, in the form of the Church. And if, after receiving baptism, anyone has fallen into sin, he can always be restored through true penance.

§5. Not only virgins and the continent, but also the married, pleasing God through right faith and good work, merit to attain eternal blessedness.

Latin source headnote (Abbas Siculus): The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, by a true union—not a collective union or one based upon likeness—are one essence, substance, or nature. This substance is not begetting, begotten, or proceeding, because those acts are attributed not to the substance but to the persons; nor on this account is a quaternity inferred in the Trinity. Those holding the contrary are to be deemed heretics unless they recover from their error and submit themselves to the correction of the Apostolic See.

The same, at the same council.

We therefore condemn and reprove the little book or treatise that Abbot Joachim published against Master Peter Lombard concerning the unity or essence of the Trinity, calling him a heretic and a madman because in his Sentences he said: “For a certain supreme reality is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and it is neither begetting, nor begotten, nor proceeding.” From this [Joachim] asserts that [Peter] established in God not so much a trinity as a quaternity: namely, the three persons and that common essence as though it were a fourth. He openly declares that there is no reality that is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; and that there is no essence, substance, or nature, although he grants that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are one essence, one substance, and one nature.

But he acknowledges that a unity of this kind is not true and proper, but is, as it were, collective and based upon likeness: just as many men are called one people and many faithful one Church, according to the saying, “The multitude of believers had one heart and one soul”; and, “He who cleaves to God is one spirit with him.” Likewise: “He who plants and he who waters are one”; and, “We are all one body in Christ.” Again, in the Book of Kings: “My people and your people are one.”

To establish this opinion of his, he especially adduces the statement that Christ makes concerning the faithful in the Gospel: “I will, Father, that they may be one in us, just as we are one, so that they may be perfected into one.” For, as he says, Christ’s faithful are not one—that is, some one reality common to all—but they are one in this manner: that is, one Church because of the unity of the catholic faith, and finally one kingdom because of the union of indissoluble charity. In the same way it is read in the canonical epistle of John the Apostle: “For there are three who give testimony in heaven: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one”; and immediately it is added: “And there are three who give testimony on earth: the spirit, the water, and the blood, and these three are one,” as is found in certain codices.

§1. We, however, with the holy and universal council approving, believe and confess with Peter [Lombard] that there is a certain one supreme reality, incomprehensible indeed and ineffable, which truly is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit: three persons together and each one of them singly. And therefore in God there is only a trinity, not a quaternity, because each of the three persons is that reality—namely, the divine substance, essence, or nature—which alone is the principle of all things, besides which no other can be found.

And that reality is neither begetting, nor begotten, nor proceeding; rather, it is the Father who begets, the Son who is begotten, and the Holy Spirit who proceeds, so that distinctions are in the persons and unity in the nature. Although, therefore, the Father is one [person], the Son another, and the Holy Spirit another, nevertheless not another [thing]; rather, that which the Father is, the Son is, and the Holy Spirit is wholly the same, so that according to the orthodox and catholic faith they are believed to be consubstantial.

For the Father, by begetting the Son from eternity, gave his substance to him, according to what [the Son] himself bears witness: “What the Father gave me is greater than all things.” It cannot be said that he gave him part of his substance and retained part for himself, since the Father’s substance is indivisible, being altogether simple. Nor can it be said that the Father, in begetting, transferred his substance into the Son—as though he gave it to the Son in such a way that he did not retain it for himself—for otherwise it would have ceased to be substance.

It is therefore evident that, without any diminution, the Son by being born received the substance of the Father; and thus the Father and the Son have the same substance, and so the Father and the Son are the same reality, as is also the Holy Spirit proceeding from both.

Therefore, when the Truth prays to the Father for his faithful, saying, “I will that they may be one in us, just as we are one,” this term “one,” when applied to the faithful, is taken so that a union of charity in grace is understood; but when applied to the divine persons, so that a unity of identity in nature is recognized. In the same way the Truth says elsewhere: “Be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect,” as though he were to say more plainly: Be perfect with the perfection of grace, just as your heavenly Father is perfect with the perfection of nature. Each, that is, in its own manner; because between Creator and creature no similarity can be observed so great that a greater dissimilarity must not be observed between them.

§2. If anyone, therefore, presumes to defend or approve the opinion or doctrine of the aforesaid Joachim in this matter, let him be avoided by all as a heretic.

Nevertheless, we do not wish on this account to derogate in any respect from the monastery of Fiore, of which Joachim himself was the founder, because there is there both a regular institution and a salutary observance; especially since Joachim himself ordered all his writings to be submitted to us for the judgment of the Apostolic See, to be approved or even corrected. He dictated a letter that he signed with his own hand, in which he firmly confesses that he holds that faith which the Roman Church holds, which, by the Lord’s ordering, is the mother and teacher of all the faithful.

§3. We also reprove and condemn the most perverse dogma of the impious Amalric, whose mind the father of lies has so blinded that his doctrine is to be judged not so much heretical as insane.