Scotus Academicus, Tomus tertius: De adorando divinae Trinitatis mysterio

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.