De docta ignorantia

Just as the generation of unity from unity is one repetition of unity, so the procession from both is the repetition of that repetition of unity, or if you prefer to say it, the uniting of unity itself and of the equality of unity. But procession is so called as it were a certain extension from one into another, just as, when two things are equal, then a certain equality extends as it were from one into the other, which in some way joins and connects them.

Rightly, therefore, is connexion said to proceed from unity and from the equality of unity: for connexion is not of one only, but unity proceeds from unity into the equality, and from the equality of unity into unity. Rightly therefore is it said to proceed from both, because it extends as it were from one into the other.

But we do not say that connexion is begotten either from unity or from the equality of unity, since it comes about neither from unity by repetition nor by multiplication; and although the equality of unity is begotten from unity and connexion proceeds from both, yet unity and the equality of unity and the connexion proceeding from both are one and the same, just as if of the same thing it were said: 'this, it, the same'. The 'it' itself that is said is referred to the first; but what is said, 'the same', connects and joins the referred to the first.

If therefore from this pronoun, which is it, there were formed this noun, which is itness, so that we could thus say: unity, itness, identity, itness would indeed make a relation to unity, but identity would designate the connexion of itness and unity, they would agree closely enough with the Trinity.

But that our most holy doctors called unity the Father, equality the Son, connexion the Holy Spirit, they did this on account of a certain likeness to these perishable things.

For in father and son there is a certain community of nature, which is one, so that the nature itself is equal in son and father. 'For there is nothing more or less of humanity in the son than in the father, and between them there is a certain connexion.'

For natural love connects one with the other, and this on account of the likeness of the same nature which is in them, which descends from the father into the son; and for this very reason he loves the son more than another agreeing with him in humanity.

From such a likeness indeed, and a most distant one, the father has been called unity, the son equality, but connexion the Holy Spirit, only in respect of creatures, as we shall also show below in its place. And this is in my judgment, according to the Pythagorean investigation of the Trinity in unity and of unity in Trinity ever to be adored, the most manifest investigation.