The Answer: Why My Translation Gave Offense and His Did Not

I suppose it is no wonder that I am always blamed for the very points on which I praised him. It is quite right, no doubt. But to come to the matter itself. I said that where grounds of offense appeared in the Greek, he had cleared them away in his Latin translation. And I was not wrong; but he had done this in just the same way as I have done it. For instance, in the Homilies on Isaiah he explains the two seraphim as meaning the Son and the Holy Spirit, and he adds this of his own: “Let no one think that there is a difference of nature in the Trinity when the offices of the Persons are distinguished.” And by this he thinks he has been able to remedy the grounds of offense. In a similar way I sometimes removed, altered, or added a few words, trying to bring the writer’s meaning into closer agreement with the straight path of the faith. What did I do in this that was different from our friend’s system, or contrary to it? What did I do that was not identical with it? [a]

But the difference lies here. I was judging his writings without ill will or a wish to run him down, and so I saw in them not what might lend itself to disparagement but what the translator was aiming at. He, on the other hand, is looking for occasions to slander others, and so he finds fault in my writings with the very things he once wrote himself. And indeed he is right to blame me, since I have declared right what he said, whereas in his judgment it deserves blame. This holds for the doctrine he has set out about the Trinity, namely that the two seraphim are the Son and the Holy Spirit, which is the chief ground of the charge of blasphemy; that is, if he is to be judged by the system he has adopted in dealing with me. But by the system I have adopted in judging his writings, leaving slander aside, he is not to be held guilty for what he added on his own account to explain the author’s meaning.