Scotus Academicus, Tomus tertius: De adorando divinae Trinitatis mysterio

The first Person among the divine Persons is set forth by three most excellent titles of glory, according to a threefold consideration of him; for he can be regarded either according to his primacy, and insofar as he draws his origin from no other, and is called the Innascible, or the Unbegotten; or by respect to the Son, whom he alone produces, and is named the Father; or finally by his relation to the two Persons produced together, to whom he communicates the Deity from his infinite fecundity, and is called their principle; of which certain things are to be touched upon in the three following Questions.

Note 1. The name of Father, attributed to God in the sacred Letters, is taken three ways: first indeed generally, for the productive principle of creatures, according to that text of Deuteronomy 32. Is He not your Father who possessed you, and made, and created you? In which way the name of Father is common to the three divine Persons, no less than the power of creating and its exercise. Second, more specially, for God justifying and adopting to Himself the rational creature as a Son by the benefit of sanctifying grace, of which Paul to the Romans 8.: You have received the Spirit of adoption of sons, in which we cry, Abba, Father, etc. And in this way also it is common to the three Persons, just as the will and the power of creating and justifying are; it is however appropriated to the Holy Spirit, because this sanctifying grace is conferred, and justification is made through love; but the Holy Spirit is love by virtue of His procession. Third, finally, it is taken notionally, for the generative principle of the consubstantial Son, of the same nature with His principle; in which way the name of Father is said to belong properly to the first Person alone, to the other divine Persons, however, only analogically.

Note 2. The adverb properly is wont to be employed in three ways at most: first indeed, to signify the same thing as truly, and not fictitiously, in which way Christ, Ioan. 15., says: I am the true vine, and My Father is the husbandman. Second, to designate a proper, and not metaphorical, mode of speech, in which way Christ is called Savior, etc. Third, finally, insofar as that is called proper which is not common to several, but belongs to one alone; thus Paternity is said to be proper to the first Person, Filiation to the second, and passive Spiration to the third. It is in this last way, however, that we employ the word properly in the present Question.

Note 3. That although in this mortal life we cannot attribute to God any name so proper that it signifies and makes known to us what He is in Himself; nevertheless it is permitted to borrow some names from created things, by which we may signify divine realities according to a certain likeness and proportion which they have with those creatures, for signifying which these words were first imposed; For the infinity of our intelligence, says Hilary, lib. 1. De Trinit., compels us to seek certain forms from lower things as indices of higher ones, so that, admonished by the familiarity of well-known things, we might be led from the consciousness of our sense to the apprehension of an unfamiliar meaning. Whence it comes about that the mode of signifying of those words, insofar as they are attributed to God, is always improper, unless we have first cut away from words of this sort all the passions of the senses and the remaining imperfections which accompany the entity or the operation of creatures signified through those words. These things having been premised, two things remain to be established: first, that the reality signified by the name of Father properly belongs to the first divine Person alone; second, that this august name befits Him far more excellently than any creature.

First conclusion. — The first Person among the divine Persons is properly called Father. This is of faith, and is gathered from the innumerable texts of Sacred Scripture in which the incarnate Word calls the Person, from whom He draws His eternal origin, and receives life and divine being, His Father, as has been intimated above at greater length, especially from that text of Matth. 28.: Baptizing them in the name of the Father, etc. Whence St. Cyril, in the dialogue De Trinitate, cap. 2.: He commanded to baptize in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, namely because He gathered together, and set forth to us, in place of others, the most distinct names constituting the proper existence of each thing signified. It is likewise established from those things which we said in proving that the divine Persons are constituted through true relations of origin: but these are none other than Paternity, Filiation, and passive Spiration; therefore the relation of Paternity truly and properly belongs to God; and so the first Person is truly called Father.

It is proved moreover: the name of Father truly and properly befits the first Person, if that which is signified through this name truly and properly belongs to it: but it is so. It is proved: that which is properly signified by the name of Father is that the Person to whom it is attributed produces another through a true generation, by which it is the origin of a living being from a living being in likeness of nature: but the first divine Person produces the second in this way, as has been proved: therefore, etc. It is confirmed from the fact that Christ Himself professes that He had it among His commands and commissions to make known to men the proper name of His principle; for thus, near the end of His life, He addresses the Father, Ioann. 17.: I have manifested Your name to men, etc.; namely the name of Father, as the holy Fathers Augustine, tract. 106. on John, Chrysostom, Homil. 80., understand. And deservedly indeed, for earlier Christ, Ioann. 16., had said: The hour comes when I will no longer speak to you in proverbs, but I will announce to you plainly of My Father: whence Cyril, book 10. Thesauri cap. 6.: I have manifested Your name to men, because namely You are the true Father, and You have a true Son. John also says, 1. cap. 5.: That we may be in His true Son.

He proves, secondly, by St. Athanasius, Orat. 2., that the name of Father belongs to God primarily, and that from Him its property has passed into the human race; and so it is to be attributed to God more properly than to men, in that no man is simpliciter to be called Father, because there is no one who is not the son of another parent, and none who cannot lack a son, and so his own paternity:

But, he says, in the Divinity it does not happen thus; for neither is the Father from another Father, nor is the Son from an effluxion of the Father, or begotten of the unbegotten Father: whence he concludes that in the Divinity alone the Father is properly Father, and the Son properly Son; and in these alone does this consist, that the Father is always Father, and the Son is always Son.

With him agrees Faustinus, lib. 2. Contra Arianos: He alone, he says, is properly the true Father, who is Father without beginning and end; for He did not at some time begin to be Father; but He is always Father, always having a Son begotten of Himself.

You will say. The holy Fathers deny that the name of Father and Son belongs to God: therefore no Conclusion. The antecedent is proved: first indeed from St. Dionysius, who in the book De Theologia mystica, cap. 5., about the middle, says that God is neither spirit, as we know it, nor is there a notion of Son or of Father, nor any of those things which are known to us or to any nature. Likewise St. Basil, in the Tractate De vera, et pia fide, about the middle, says: The word Father, if we take it in God with its full signification, as it is in use among us, we act impiously; therefore, etc.

I deny the antecedent. And to its proof I say that it is not the opinion of the praised Fathers that the name and notion of Father should be judged to be removed from God, but only that they do not belong to God in the way in which it is attributed to creatures: that this may appear more evidently, to the aforesaid authorities I respond singly: St. Dionysius denies that God is Father in the way in which he had earlier said in the same place that He is not Knowledge, nor Truth, nor Kingdom, nor Wisdom; nor One, nor Unity, nor Divinity, nor Goodness; namely in the way in which the weak and infirm feebleness of our mind is wont to conceive these things; but that He possesses all these in a certain supereminent way; since indeed he says at the end of the chapter: And may that perfect and singular cause of all things surpass every affirmation, and may the excellence of Him, who is wholly set apart from all things, and greatly exceeds all things, be superior to every negation. To St. Basil similarly I say that he does not exclude the notion of Father from God; since indeed in lib. 5. Contra Eunomium he affirms that God truly generates, and truly brings forth the Word: and in lib. 2. he had said, speaking of the words Generation, Father, and Son, that he who dares to neglect these words destroys at the same time the whole power of the Gospel: and so he wills only that the signification of passion be cut away, which is found in created generations; and that only the production of a similar being in nature be retained, where the discourse is of divine generation: whence after the words cited in the objection he adds: Since necessarily together with it there are at the same time the affection, and the effluxion of genitive seed, and ignorance, and weakness, and such things as are set forth in creatures in the very name of Father.

Second conclusion. — The name and notion of Father belongs to God far more excellently than to creatures.

This is most certain among the holy Fathers, and they confirm it by various reasons. First indeed, from the fact that every paternity of creatures draws its origin from the divine Paternity: whence Cyril of Alexandria, lib. 1. in Ioannem c. 8., writes thus: God does not have the name of Paternity from us; but we rather seem to have received it from Him; for faithful is the word of Paul crying to the Ephesians 3.: From Him every Paternity in the heavens and on earth is named. St. Jerome subscribes to him, saying on the same words of the Apostle:

Just as God imparts to others the name of His essence and substance, so that they also are so called, etc., so also He has bestowed on all the name of Paternity from Himself; as therefore He alone, being good, makes others good, and He alone, being immortal, bestows immortality, and He alone, being true, imparts the name of truth; so the Father alone, who is the Creator of all, and the cause of all things, grants to the other substances that they be called fathers.

Second, they deduce the excellence of the divine Paternity above the created from the fact that the divine Father acknowledges no other Father, nor begets another Son as a Son; thus St. Athanasius Epist. ad Serapionem:

He alone, he says, alone and one Father is the Father of the alone and one Son, and it is in the Deity alone that this being Father and being Son is constituted, and it always is: for among men, if anyone is called Father, he was the son of another: and if anyone is the Son of this one, he in turn is called the Father of another, so much so that among men the appellation of Father and Son is not properly preserved.

Third, that Paternity belongs to God quidditatively and substantially, not however only accidentally, as to creatures; wherefore St. Cyril, lib. 12. Thesauri cap. 5., professes that the Son proceeds from the Father essentially.

Fourth and finally, they infer this pre-eminence from the fact that the eternal Father regards the most perfect Son, produced by the most excellent generation, and most perfectly assimilated to Himself: whence St. Gregory of Nazianzus, Orat. 23., thus briefly touches all these and other pre-eminences of the divine Paternity:

Let us believe Him to be Father, Father much more truly than those who among us hold that name; then because He is Father in a proper and singular way: then because He alone is Father, for not with the conjunction and congress of a woman: then because He is the Father of the sole one, namely of the Only-begotten; then because He is Father alone, for He Himself was not a Son before He was Father; then because He is Father in whole, and of the whole, > which certainly cannot be affirmed of us; then because He is Father from the beginning, for neither did He begin to be Father later.

Gather from these things. God is far more excellently said to be the Father of His Son, than He is said to be the Father of creatures. First, because God is called the Father of creatures not naturally and necessarily, but contingently and freely. Second, not through a conjoined principle, and an immanent and generative action ad intra, but through a factive and creative action ad extra. Third, not from eternity, but in time. Fourth, Paternity in God is nothing real, but a mere extrinsic denomination. Fifth and finally, He does not infuse into creatures a likeness in nature, nor does He assimilate them perfectly to Himself in substance, but only either in a likeness of vestige, which belongs to irrational things, with respect to which He is sometimes called Father; thus Job 38.: Who is the Father of rain? or in a likeness of image, which is found in every rational creature, according to which all men can say: Our Father, who art in the heavens; or finally in a likeness of grace, by which reason the appellation of Father is frequent, both in the Old and in the New Testament. Nor does it matter that St. Basil, lib. 2. Contra Eunomium, about the middle, says: God is our Father, not by abuse or transference, but properly, primarily, and truly so called; with these words Basil wished to indicate nothing other than that God is our principle in a more excellent way than the parents from whom we take our origin: both because He alone creates the soul, and forms the parts and organs of the body: and because He supplies to us all things necessary for life: and finally because by His sweet providence He disposes, protects, and preserves all things: whence Christ justly, Matth. 23., warned the disciples: Call no one your father on earth, for one is your Father, who is in the heavens.

Note 1. The word Ingenitus was first devised by Aetius, the master of Eunomius, as Saint Athanasius reports in Dialogo 2. De Trinit. The Arians made use of this very word, that they might the more easily impugn the consubstantiality of the divine Word, and attack the Catholics, by asking whether there are several unbegotten, or only one; so that if they answered that there is a single unbegotten one, the Arians would forthwith infer that the Son is not the Unbegotten, but the Father alone; and thereupon they would count the Son among things made and created: but if the Catholics replied that there are two or three unbegotten, namely the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the Arians would thence gather that three Gods are affirmed by the Catholics: for the Arians held it as certain that the nature of God consists in this, that He is unbegotten. Hence Saint Epiphanius observes, in haeresi 76., that more than forty arguments drawn from the name Ingenitus were hurled by Aetius himself against the Catholics. For this reason Gregory Nazianzen, in Oratione 37., calls the word Ingenitus a battering-ram, and the wall of refuge of those heretics: Nyssenus, however, in lib. 1. Contra Eunomium, calls it the bulwark from which Eunomius made his assault upon the Catholic Dogma. Hence some holy Fathers held the name Ingenitus in abhorrence, and thought that it should be rejected from theological disputations; thus Saint Athanasius in Oratione 2. Contra

Arianos, about the middle, says: The introduction of this word is vain, since it contains nothing else in itself but mere prestidigitation.

Note 2. This same word Ingenitus has several significations, but chiefly four, as Saint Athanasius observes in Oratione 2. Contra Arianos. First, insofar as it is applied to the unmade, that is, to what does not exist, but can exist: thus, he says, that is called Ingenitus which has not yet been made, as wood which has not yet gone into the form of a boat. Second, for that which is applied to a thing which neither exists nor can exist: thus, he says, a triangle can in no way become a quadrangle. Third, insofar as it is applied to the unproduced, and thus that is said to be Ingenitus which already is, but was not born from anyone, nor has a Father by any reason of its origin: and in this acceptation it marks that the one and only Father is Ingenitus. Fourth and finally, that is called Ingenitus which was not made, but is everlasting and incorruptible: and thus both the Son and the Holy Spirit, as well as the Father, can be called Ingeniti; indeed, in this acceptation Maximus of Turin, in his homily on the Creed, pronounces the Deity unbegotten and innascible, saying: In God the nature of the Innascible is shown, in the Father the truth of the Only-begotten, in the Almighty the fullness of power; for He is Almighty through the unbegotten Deity, and Father through His omnipotence. Here, however, we use the word Ingenitus in the third acceptation, which acceptation, that it may appear more evidently,

Note 3. The name Ingenitus, insofar as it is attributed to the eternal Father, must be taken privatively, insofar namely as it denies all production, and signifies the same as unproduced and unproducible. For if by this word only generation, or nativity properly taken, were denied, the Holy Spirit would equally be called Ingenitus, as well as the Father; since both are incapable of nativity and generation: but if any production whatsoever were denied, yet only negatively, not however privatively, that is, by signifying a pure negation of producibility, the notion of Ingenitus would equally belong to the Deity, as to the Father; for the Deity is altogether incapable of real production; wherefore, in order that being unbegotten, or unproducible, be proper to the eternal Father alone, the name Ingenitus must be taken privatively: not indeed insofar as privation says the lack of some positive thing which can, or ought to, be in the Father, but insofar as ingenitus denies the production which is not repugnant to belong to Him, not insofar as He is the Father, but insofar as He is a divine Person: so that this privation may be said to be like that which is called by the philosophers privation according to genus, not according to species; by which reasoning the mole is said to be deprived of sight, because insofar as it is an animal, seeing is not repugnant to it, although it is repugnant to it as it is a mole: thus, if it be lawful thus to argue from baser things to divine ones for the sake of explanation, since the divine Father is a divine Person, and since in the genus of divine Persons it is not repugnant to be produced, because in fact the Son and the Holy Spirit are produced, hence it comes about that production is not repugnant to the Father insofar as He is a divine Person, but only insofar as He is the Father; and so the notion of ingenitus must be taken privatively in Him. Whether, however, this notion is to be attributed to Him as a Personal property, will be disclosed

The single conclusion. — The name and notion of Ingenitus, insofar as it excludes all production privatively, is truly a property of the divine Father.

It is proved first from the Council of Antioch 1., in the Profession of Faith, where it is decreed that there is one unbegotten God without principle, where the name of God supposits for the person of the Father, according to the usage of Sacred Scripture. Moreover, the Nicene Fathers in lib. 2. set before the Disputator these things to be believed, and not to be scrutinized: One unbegotten God and Father: one begotten of Him, the only-begotten Son, God the Word. Just as there is not another unbegotten God with God and the Father, so neither is the Son co-begotten, nor prior, nor posterior: whence Saint Athanasius in the Epist. ad Serapionem, as Saint Thomas reports in Opusculo primo, Contra errores Graecorum, cap. 8., says: The Catholic Church gathered at Nicaea faithfully attributed being without principle and being unbegotten to God the Father alone, and commanded under anathema that it be believed thus by the whole world.

The holy Fathers prove this very thing; for first, Athanasius in the Quaestionibus de Natura Dei q. 5. says, It is the property of the Father to be unbegotten, of the Son indeed to be begotten, of the Holy Spirit to proceed: Nazianzen inculcates this very thing many times, but especially in Orat. 23., where he says: This is the property of the Father, that He is unbegotten: likewise Gregory of Nyssa, in lib. De Differentia essentiae, et hypostasis, says: It is an excellent mark, and a sign of the Father alone, that He subsists from no cause: Augustine also agrees, lib. 15. De Trinit. cap. 2., where he says: The Father alone is not from another, therefore He alone is called unbegotten; not indeed in the Scriptures, but in the custom of disputants: the rest of the Fathers, as many as wrote about the adorable Trinity, bring forward the same.

This same truth is proved by theological reason: the divine Father has this not only as proper and singular, that through generative fecundity He is the principle of the Son, and through spiration, together with the Son, is the principle of the Holy Spirit, but also that among the divine Persons He alone exists without another principle from which He is really produced, in the manner in which the other two Persons are produced: but this notion of non-production is called by the name Ingenitus: therefore it truly belongs to the eternal Father as a property. Then, in the divine Trinity there is one unproduced Person only, namely the Father: therefore the notion of the unproduced is proper to Him alone. The antecedent is clear from what was said in the third Question of the first Disputation; where we proved that it is impossible for several divine Persons to be unbegotten, or unproduced.

You will say 1. The holy Fathers judged that the word ingenitus should be proscribed, because it is not expressed in the Sacred Scriptures, and offers heretics an occasion of deceiving and blaspheming: moreover, because the word Father sufficiently signifies whatever the name ingenitus can express: therefore this name is not to be ascribed to the eternal Father as a singular property. The antecedent is proved, as to all its parts, from Saint Basil, lib. 1. Contra Eunomium: I, he says, would rightly judge that the appellation of unbegotten, or innascible, although it supremely agrees with our thoughts, yet since I find it nowhere in the Scriptures, and since it is the first element of the blasphemy of those men, ought to be consigned to silence: especially since the word Father itself can signify what the word unbegotten can.

I answer. Indeed, the word ingenitus was exploded by some holy Fathers for these reasons; nevertheless, rightly interpreted and accepted, they used it to signify the distinction of the eternal Father from the two other divine Persons, as Saint Basil himself also uses it in lib. 2. Contra Eunomium, where he teaches that the Begotten and the Unbegotten are certain specific properties of the Son and of the divine Father: nor does it matter that this word is not expressed in the divine letters, for in them the word Trinity is also not read; and yet the divine Trinity of Persons is not therefore to be denied: whence Sixtus I., in Decretal Epist. 1., after the middle, says: That the Father is properly set down as unbegotten in the divine letters, they can neither read nor prove; but because Christian faith itself demands this very thing, He is believed unbegotten without any doubt; with whom Fulgentius agrees, in reply to the seventh objection of the Arians: The Father, he says, is nowhere read as unbegotten in the Canonical Scriptures, and yet, according to the truth of the faith, He is preached as unbegotten.

You will say 2. Ingenitus, according to the genuine signification of the word, signifies the same as uncreated: but not only the Father, but also the Son and the Holy Spirit are truly uncreated: therefore they are also unbegotten.

I answer. To the major, Saint Cyril, lib. 11. Thesauri, cap. unico:

That ingenitus, written in Greek with a single N, signifies not made, nor created, and is predicated of God universally, that is, of each of the divine persons; written, however, with a double NN, it signifies not born, nor being from another, and is accommodated to the Father; namely, that the principle belongs to the Father alone.

With whom Hugo Eterianus agrees, lib. 2. Contra Graecos, cap. 5.:

Ingenitus, he says, since it is written among the Greeks with a single N, insofar as this name signifies uncreated, belongs not only to the divine nature, if it be so said, but truly to the three Persons; for the nature is equally uncreated together with the Persons; when, however, it is written with two NN, ἀγέννητον, it belongs properly to the Father alone, not to the Son, not to the Spirit, nor to any creature.

Note 1. The name principle can be used in a threefold way in divine matters, namely essentially, notionally, and principally. In the first way it signifies the fecundity of the Divinity ad extra, belonging to the three Persons, by which through Omnipotence they produce all creatures. In the second way it designates the fecundity of the same Divinity ad intra, by which the Father produces the Son, and the Father together with the Son produces the Holy Spirit: in the third way it signifies that dignity by which the first Person in divine matters, produced by none, produces the rest. Principle taken essentially belongs to the three Persons undividedly, for the works of the divine Trinity ad extra are undivided; because those divine Persons produce creatures through one will, and one power: principle taken notionally is common to the Father, and the Son, since the Father, and the Son are one principle of the Holy Spirit: whence Saint Augustine in the book Contra Maximinum chapter 17.: The Father, he says, is a principle not from a principle, the Son a principle from a principle, but both together, not two, but one principle: finally, principle used principally is said to be proper to the Father alone.

Note 2. That although Aristotle, in 5. Metaph. text 1., after enumerating all the modes in which Principle is said, affirms that cause is likewise said in as many modes, as if he wished cause to be the same as principle; nevertheless, as Asclepius notes in his Commentary on that passage, the Philosopher does not say this from the truth of the matter, nor from his own opinion, but from the common understanding of the people. For, he says, the signification of principle is broader than that of cause: therefore he mentioned principle in the prior place, and before cause: for whatever is a cause, that very thing is also a principle, yet not conversely must whatever is a principle be a cause. This, however, is the greatest difference between cause and principle, that a principle is that from which another thing, or another, proceeds; but a cause is that which imparts being to another not previously existing: hence cause signifies a greater superiority, and perfection in the one producing, than in the thing produced; and so it denotes in the effect a certain dependence, contingency, and imperfection. For, says Saint Dionysius in De Divinis Nominibus cap. 2., the likeness between effects and causes is not perfect, but effects indeed bear the images which they can of the causes; the causes, however, are hidden from the effects, and are superior by reason of their principle. Hence cause properly taken differs greatly from principle.

Note 3. The name Author sometimes among the Latins signifies the same thing as principle; I said among the Latins, for the Greeks either have none that corresponds to it; or if they have accommodated one properly to it, they by no means use it in divine matters, as Saint Thomas observes in his opuscule cap. 1.; wherefore indeed the Latin Fathers alone transfer this appellation from creatures to divine things. In using it, however, some caution is needed; since an Author is sometimes said to be one in whose power another is, or one who precedes in right, and dignity; thus Tertullian in the book De Fuga cap. 1. calls the foremost, and the teachers of the Church, Authors, witnesses, leaders, and standard-bearers, to whom others are inferior. But when, he says, the Authors themselves, that is, the Deacons, Presbyters, and Bishops themselves flee, how will the layman be able to understand in what sense it was said, Flee from city to city? Therefore when the leaders flee, who among the rank-and-file soldiers will stand fast, sweating to hold their post in the battle line? Therefore the name of Author is to be attributed to any divine Person with respect to another in no other way than to signify the same thing as principle.

First conclusion. — It is proper to the divine Father, that He is principally the principle, and the source of the Divinity communicated to the two divine Persons produced.

This Conclusion comprises two parts, of which the first is proved by the authority of the holy Fathers, who proclaim the divine Father to be a principle without principle. Thus Gregory Nazianzen Orat. 32.: Moreover the name of him who lacks a principle is Father, of the principle Son, of him who is with the principle, the Holy Spirit: thus Phoebadius in the book Contra Arianos: This is, he says of the Father, the principle without principle: thus Cyril of Alexandria in lib. 2. Thesauri cap. 1.: Other, he says, is the Father, other the Son, and other is the principle, other that which is from the principle: thus Augustine De Trinit. cap. 14.: If the begetter, he says, is a principle with respect to that which is begotten, the Father is a principle with respect to the Son, because He begets Him: whence the Master of the Sentences rightly says in 1. dist. 29. cap. 1.: The Father is a principle without principle, the Son a principle from a principle, the Holy Spirit a principle from both. With him Saint Thomas agrees, Opusc. 1. Contra errores Graecorum cap. 32.: It is necessary, he says, to believe the Holy Trinity, namely the Father without principle, the Son indeed a principle from the Father as principle: and the Holy Spirit with the Son as principle, one God.

The second part is proved. First indeed from the Sixth Council of Toledo cap. 1.: We confess, he says, the Father unbegotten, uncreated, the source, and origin of the whole Divinity. The Council of Worms repeats the same in the Profession of Faith.

It is confirmed. By the testimony of the holy Fathers, especially of Dionysius in the book De Divinis Nominibus cap. 2.: In the divine Scriptures we have received, he says, that the Father is, so to speak, the fountain of the Divinity; Jesus however, and the Spirit, if it is lawful so to speak, the buds, or shoots of the fecund Divinity. Athanasius agrees in Contra Gregales Sabellii, where he says of the Father: He alone is the source of the Deity; and near the end: The Father is the root, and source of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Augustine also subscribes, in the fourth book De Trinit. cap. 20., where he thus explains Ioann. 15.: The Spirit of truth, whom I will send to you from the Father; namely, he says, showing that the Father is the principle of the whole Divinity, or, if it is better said, of the Deity. Eugene the Fourth also kept this manner of speaking in the Letters of Union, saying: The Father is the source, and principle of the whole Deity.

You will say 1. Not only the Father, but also the Son, indeed even the Holy Spirit are said to be without principle: therefore the name, and notion of principle principally does not belong to the eternal Father. The antecedent is proved from Zacharias of Mitylene in the book De Mundi opificio: The Father, he says, is without principle, and unbegotten: the Son begotten without principle; the Spirit of God proceeding without principle from the Father: similarly Athanasius in the Quaestionibus qu. 19. asserts, that the three, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, are at once lacking principle, and without principle. And Hippolytus the martyr, Homil. de consummatione mundi, thus addresses the Son: You together with the Father lack a principle. Athanasius also attributes to Him the same appellation of one lacking principle, in his letter to Liberius.

I answer. The holy Fathers are to be understood in such a way, that they wish the divine Persons to be without principle of duration, of creation, and of making: but not without the principle of the emanation of one from another, as Saint Gregory of Nyssa lucidly explains, lib. Contra Eunomium:

When, he says, in the word ἀνάρχου (that is, of one without principle,) nothing else is understood, except that which has from no principle at all that it subsists; this very thing we confess to be proper to the Father alone. When, however, inquiry is made concerning the other significations of principle; since it is the principle also of creation, and of time, and of order; even in these we judge the only-begotten Son to be superior to every principle, so that we believe Him to be above every principle of creation, and the motion of time, and the sequence of order, through whom all things were made; and so Him whom we think not to lack a principle by reason of subsistence, we confess to lack a principle in all the rest: and the Father indeed we call lacking principle, and unbegotten, but the Son lacking principle indeed in the way we have said, yet we do not call Him unbegotten.

Than which nothing is more to the point.

You will say 2. A principle is that from which something proceeds, or is produced: but the Deity does not proceed, nor is produced from the Father: therefore the Father is neither its source, nor its principle.

I distinguish the minor. The Deity in the abstract, and insofar as it prescinds from the Persons, does not proceed from the Father, nor is the Father its principle, I concede; the Deity in the concrete, and taken for the divine Persons, which take their origin from the Father, and are produced, I deny: whence I said pointedly in the conclusion, that the Father is the principle of the communicated Divinity, that is, the principle from which the Divinity is communicated to the two produced Persons. But if the Divinity is also communicated through the Son to the Holy Spirit, the Son nevertheless cannot for that reason be called the principle of the whole communicated Divinity, as it is communicated through production, because He is not the reason for communicating the divine nature to Himself, but receives it from the Father.

Second conclusion. — The Father is truly called the Cause, and Author of the Son, but not in the proper signification of either name.

The first part is proved. By the authority of the Greek Fathers, especially of Basil in lib. 1. Contra Eunomium: The very word Father, he says, what else does it signify, except this, that He is the cause, and principle of him who was begotten from Him? Thus also Gregory of Nyssa in the book Ad Ablabium: For, he says, we do not deny the difference which is considered about cause, and caused, by which alone we find the one to be distinguished from the other; namely, from the fact that we believe one indeed to be the cause, the other to be from the cause. Likewise Chrysostom in cap. 1. Epist. ad Hebraeos homil. 2.: For if, he says, the Father is the cause of the Son, much more is He the cause of those things which are declared to have been made through the Son: the Damascene also subscribes in lib. 1. De Fide cap. 11.: One, he says, is the Father without principle, that is, without cause; for He is not from something. One is the Son, and He who is the Son is not without principle, that is, without cause, for He is from the Father. — The same thing is gathered from the Latin Fathers; for Hilary in lib. 12. De Trinit.: Of him who is, he says, the Father is the cause of that which he is. Likewise Augustine in lib. 7. De Trinit. says: The cause He has for being wise is the very cause He has for being: hence, if the Wisdom which He begot is also His cause for being, that Wisdom is itself the cause of His being.

The same thing is proved concerning the name of Author; for Saint Gregory Nazianzen, Orat. 29., affirms that the Father is the cause, and author of the Divinity, which is considered in the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Likewise Saint Athanasius, in Dialogue 2. Contra Anomoeum, after he had said that the Father is the cause, and author of the Son, adds: God is the source of the Holy Spirit, and the author of the same, not receiving Him from without, but letting Him well forth from Himself. — The Latin Fathers affirm the same thing, especially Augustine, lib. 3. Contra Maximinum cap. 11., where he thus reproves him:

But the Son of God has, you say, the Father as author: if for this reason you call God the Father the author of God the Son, because the one begot, the other was begotten, because the latter is of the former, not the former of the latter, I confess, and concede it; if however through the name of Author you wish to make the Son lesser, and the Father greater, and the Son not of the same substance as the Father, I will detest, and reject it.

With him Saint Hilary agrees, 9. De Trinitate: For since, he says, the unbegotten God is the author to the only-begotten God of the perfect nativity of divine beatitude, to be the author of the nativity is the paternal mystery.

That this appellation of Author, and Cause is altogether improper, insofar as it is attributed to the divine Persons producing, is sufficiently clear both from the very notion of Cause, and Author, which implies something inferior in the product, and from Saint Augustine just now cited; whence Saint Cyril, lib. 2. Dialogorum de Trinitate, says: Cause, and caused, it is not lawful even to name; it befits us likewise to say of God rather Father, and begotten Son: which Bessarion lucidly explains in the Oration which he delivered in the Council of Florence: It is to be noted, he says, that the holy Eastern Doctors use the name of cause, and caused even in divine matters in a broad way; not indeed. insofar as it imports limitation, and dependence, but insofar as it signifies the production, and emanation, from a principle, of that which is from the principle. Therefore a divine Person producing is called the cause of the one produced only insofar as it is solely its principle.