Scotus Academicus, Tomus tertius: De adorando divinae Trinitatis mysterio

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.