[Footnote 1: This sermon was first printed in 1535, at Wittenberg.]
1. This festival requires us to instruct the people in the dogma of
the Holy Trinity, and to strengthen both memory and faith concerning
it. This is the reason why we take up the subject once more. Without
proper instruction and a sound foundation in this regard, other
dogmas cannot be rightly and successfully treated. The other
festivals of the year present the Lord God clothed in his works and
miracles. For instance: on Christmas we celebrate his incarnation; on
Easter his resurrection from the dead; on Whitsunday the gift of the
Holy Spirit and the establishment of the Christian Church. Thus all
the other festivals present the Lord in the guise of a worker of one
thing or another. But this Trinity Festival discloses him to us as he
is in himself. Here we see him apart from whatever guise assumed,
from whatever work done, solely in his divine essence. We must go
beyond and above all reason, leaving behind the evidence of created
things, and hear only God's own testimony concerning himself and his
inner essence; otherwise we shall remain unenlightened.
2. Upon this subject the foolishness of God and the wisdom of the
world conflict. God's declaration that he is one God in three
distinct persons, the world looks upon as wholly unreasonable and
foolish; and the followers of mere reason, when they hear it, regard
every one that teaches or believes it as no more than a fool.
Therefore this article has been assailed continually, from the times
of the apostles and the fathers down to the present day, as history
testifies. Especially the Gospel of St. John has been subjected to
attack, which was written for the special purpose of fortifying this
dogma against the attacks of Cerinthus the heretic, who in the
apostolic age already attempted to prove from Moses the existence of
but one God, which he assigned as reason that our Lord Jesus cannot
be true God on account of the impossibility of God and man being
united in one being. Thus he gave us the prattle of his reason, which
he made the sole standard for heaven to conform to.
3. O shameless reason! How can we poor, miserable mortals grasp this
mystery of the Trinity? we who do not understand the operation of our
own physical powers--speech, laughter, sleep, things whereof we have
daily experience? Yet we would, untaught by the Word of God, guided
merely by our fallible head, pronounce upon the very nature of God.
Is it not supreme blindness for man, when he is unable to explain the
most insignificant physical operation daily witnessed in his own
body, to presume to understand something above and beyond the power
of reason to comprehend, something whereof only God can speak, and to
rashly affirm that Christ is not God?
4. Indeed, if reason were the standard of judgment in such matters, I
also might make a successful venture; but when the conclusions of
even long and mature reflections upon the subject are compared with
Scripture, they will not stand. Therefore we must repeat, even though
a mere stammering should be the result, what the Scriptures say to
us, namely: that Jesus Christ is true God and that the Holy Spirit is
likewise true God, yet there are not three Gods; not three divine
natures, as we may speak of three brothers, three angels, three suns,
three windows. There is one indivisible divine essence, while we
recognize a distinction as to the persons.