John of Damascus: On the Holy Trinity: a translation. On the Holy Trinity is a brief, succinct and entertaining treatise by St. John of Damascus. This translation, the first into English to my knowledge, is based on the Greek text found in P.G. 95 pp. 9-18. Some brief and highly general introductory remarks on the translation as well as the contents of the treatise are appropriate, if only to provide some naïve orientation to the reader. Like any translation, especially of an intellectually subtle text, this one has necessitated numerous compromises and approximate substitutes. Where suitable and unconfusing English renderings of the Greek terms could not be found, the translation resorts either to traditional Latinate equivalents or, in the instance of the word hypostasis, simply transliterating the term so as to avoid the ambiguity of the words “substance” and “person.” Sometimes there is no way for the translator to succeed, at least without resorting to awkwardly complex circumlocutions. For example, to render the Greek word aitia I have used “cause,” which is the usual way translators render this term; I do not know how else it could be agreeably rendered. But aitia means something very different from “cause”: aitia is not that from which an event spontaneously and inevitably occurs (the way in which we are accustomed to think of causality), but that to which a thing answers for its being. A general effort has been made to render phrases in a word-for-word manner so as to make the literal Greek text as transparent as possible for the reader. The lengthy sentences with long chains of subordinate clauses are not idiomatic English, but are difficult to avoid; in any event, the treatise is fortunately quite straightforward. It is a hopeless endeavor to try to preserve