Tractatus de Deo Trino secundum personas

«By the common faith handed down by the Fathers before the Council of Nicaea, at the beginning of the fourth century the Church professed one God and one divine nature in three distinct persons; in accordance with which faith, as a most clear definition against the new heresy, the creed was established in the Council of Nicaea, that the Son is consubstantial with the Father».

I. What was the universal and constant faith of the Church at the time when Arius first put forward his doctrine appears both from the manner in which the heresy was denounced to the Church and the denunciation was received, and from the fraudulent arts by which the heretics strove to conceal it.

1°. When Arius first openly disclosed his opinion, Alexander, Bishop of Alexandria, wrote to Alexander of Constantinople (as it is inscribed in Theodoret)¹, and from the Council

held at Alexandria he gave letters to the Bishops of the whole world, by which he denounced the heretic to the whole Church and set forth his novelty against the faith handed down according to the genuine sense of Arius, lest he himself with his as yet few confederates be able to conceal the heresy by fraud and varnished words, and so creep into ecclesiastical communion somewhere. For Alexander and his Council did not at all doubt that, once Arius' sense was known—he who denied the one nature of the Word with the Father—he would be condemned as impious by all the Bishops everywhere in the world. «Having much to say,» he says in the ep. to Alexander (in Theodoret. H. E. I. I. c. 3.), «I refrain, because I think it troublesome to admonish at greater length unanimous teachers. For you yourselves, taught by God, are not ignorant that this teaching which has lately risen up against ecclesiastical piety is the doctrine of Ebion and Artemas, and the emulation of Paul of Samosata, who in the synod and judgment of the Bishops who are everywhere was cast out of the Church». It is asked, that Arius and his few followers, «calumniating the whole apostolic glory,» by denying the divinity of Christ «confirm the impious opinion of the Jews and Gentiles concerning Christ» ibid. p. 525. In the second letter to all the Bishops Alexander writes with his Council: «many heresies indeed also before these have arisen, which, more audacious than was right, lapsed into madness. But these, striving by all their little opinions to overturn the divinity of the Word, as being in a certain way nearer to Antichrist, justified those; wherefore they were condemned and cut off from the Church. We indeed grieve that these, who themselves were once imbued with the doctrine of the Church, have now fallen away from it» (Opp. Athanas. T. I. p. 399). «Who ever,» he exclaims, «heard such things: or who, hearing now, would not be astonished and stop his ears, lest the filth of such words contaminate his hearing?» ibid. p. 398.

The Bishops rendered the universal consensus manifest even before the Council of Nicaea by letters written to Alexander, as he himself testifies in the ep. to his namesake of Constantinople², since only very few—and those themselves under ambiguous words dissimulating the heresy—favored Arius; but above all the consensus appeared most clearly in the Council itself. «The Bishops, who had assembled, more or less three hundred,» says Athanasius, «mildly and most courteously asked them to give an account of their doctrine and pious proofs. When they began to speak, they were judged worthy of condemnation, and they themselves quarreled among themselves, and seeing the inextricable absurdity of their heresy remained silent... Therefore, with the words invented by them abolished, the Bishops set forth against them the sound and ecclesiastical faith (the creed), to which when all subscribed, the Eusebians also subscribed» Athan. de decret. Nic. n. 3. One should rightly note with Rufinus that among these condemners of the novelty there were especially those not few Bishops who at the time of the persecution had been Confessors for the same Christian faith. «Since in the same Council there was a great number of Confessor priests, all opposed Arius' novelties. But men cunning in questions, and for that reason adverse to the simplicity of the faith, favored him» Ruf. H. E. 1. I. c. 2.

2°. Arius himself, and much more afterward the Arians, were compelled to conceal their heresy in those words and expressions which in their obvious sense would present the Son as true God and by that very fact one in nature with the Father, lest, once their genuine opinion was laid bare, they be straightway regarded as impious by all. Arius indeed himself, e. g. in the letter to Eusebius of Nicomedia, both perverts the doctrine of Alexander in absurd ways, as if by teaching the eternity of the Son he had denied that He is begotten, and presents his own opinion as if, admitting the Son to be true and eternal God, he had only taught that the Father is the principle of the Son. «But we,» he says, «have taught and do teach that the Son is not unbegotten, nor in any way a part of the unbegotten, nor from some subject (οὐδὲ ἐξ ὑποκειμένου τινός), but that by will and counsel, before times and before ages, He existed as full God (Θεὸν πλήρη, μονογενῆ, ἄτρεπτον), only-begotten, immutable; and that before He was begotten or created or defined or founded, He was not; for He was not unbegotten. We are harassed because we said that the Son has a principle, but that God is without principle. Therefore we are harassed also because we said that the Son is from non-existent things (ἐξ οὐκ ὄντων); but this we said insofar as He is neither a part of God nor from some subject» (in Theodoret.

H. E. 1. I. c. 5). With the same fraud in the profession of faith offered to Constantine, Athanasius relates that Arius «concealed his own words of impiety» (ep. ad Episc. Aegypti n. 18; cf. Socrates H. E. 1. I. c. 26). It is evident that all these expressions: «the Son is full God, He is begotten before the ages, He is immutable, the Father is without principle and is the principle of the Son», are taken from the doctrine of the whole Church, which even then was so universal and ratified that the heretic himself was compelled to speak in the same way, and to subject to this public profession—to be understood by that very fact in its obvious sense—twisted meanings which could come into no one's mind except to one attempting by sophistical arts to wrench the clearest words to a signification contrary to that which they necessarily have from the common sense of all in any sincere speech, and much more in the public daily profession of faith of the whole Christian people.

With the same frauds the Arians were also compelled to act afterward, namely that they should use words by which the peoples would think the divinity of the Son was being asserted, and should then subject to them an alien sense intelligible to none but sophists; but those ecclesiastical expressions which could by no art be twisted into another sense, they said they rejected not because they denied the true divinity of the Son, but for other fabricated reasons, for instance that the words were not found in the Scriptures, that they could be understood in a Sabellian sense, that they could indicate a division or multiplication of the divine nature, and (as Cyril of Alexandria, Thesaur. 1. IX. T. V. P. I. p. 68, reports from Eunomius) a «section of the nature into duality». And yet frauds of this kind evidently show that the common faith and profession of all the Churches, when this new plague was brought in, was this: that the Son is true God no less than the Father, and by that very fact the Father and the Son and (by parity of reason) the Holy Spirit are three who are one God. Concerning this dissimulation of the Arians St. Athanasius complains. «If they trust and think this faith (of Arius) to be ecclesiastical, let them openly declare their opinion. For no one puts a lit lamp under a bushel but on a lampstand, that it may shine to all who enter. If therefore they can defend it, let them write the things cited above (the genuine words of Arius), and exhibit their heresy naked to all as a lamp; let them openly accuse Alexander, the Bishop of blessed memory, because he unjustly cast out Arius saying these things; let them complain of the Nicene Synod, which, having rejected the impiety, signed and published the pious faith. But that they will not do this, I hold for certain; for neither are they so ignorant of the evils which they have devised and strive to spread, but they know well that, although at the beginning they stole away the more simple by a vain artifice, their opinion is straightway to be extinguished as the lamp of the impious, and that they are to be marked with ignominy everywhere as enemies of the truth. Hence it is that.... they hide their lamp under a bushel, that it may be thought to shine, and lest, if it appeared, being known and reprobated, it be extinguished» Ath. ep. ad Episc. Aegypti n. 18. The Christian people, namely, under the words which the Arians were compelled to retain, understood the sense which had up to then been believed and preached by the whole Church. «And by the fraud of this impiety it is brought about even up to now,» says St. Hilary, «that under the priests of Antichrist the people of Christ does not perish, while they think that to be of the faith which is of the voice. They hear God Christ; they think it is what is said; they hear Son of God; they think that in the nativity of God the truth of God is present; they hear before times; they think that that which always is is itself before times. The ears of the common people are holier than the hearts of the priests» Hilar. contr. Auxent. n. 6. By these arts not only the common people but sometimes even catholic Bishops were led—understanding the formulas of the Arians in the obvious sense of the words—to admit communion with them; this is established from the history of the creeds, which, very many of them, were published by the Arians within a few years and again rejected (vid. Hieronym. dialog. cum Luciferian. n. 17-19). Cf. Maranum de Div. D. N. Iesu Christi 1. II. c. 6.

II. In keeping with the common faith, in direct opposition to the heresy of the Arians—who taught that the Son explicitly (and by necessary consequence the Holy Spirit) is not of the divine substance and nature but of another, different nature, and accordingly is not true God nor in the proper sense a Son begotten by the Father but created—the Nicene Fathers defined: «we believe in one God, the Father almighty.... and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, born of the Father only-begotten, that is, from the substance of the Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made, consubstantial with the Father, through whom all things were made.... and in the Holy Spirit. But those who say: there was a time when He was not, and before He was born He was not, and that He was made from non-existent things, or who say that He is from another substance or essence, or that the Son of God is created, or convertible, or mutable; these the catholic and apostolic Church anathematizes» ³.

Here is defined the true generation of the Son from the Father by communication of nature, in opposition to the production of the Son by free creation asserted by the Arians; and indeed the nature which is in the Father and through which the Father is God is taught to be communicated in such a way that the same nature is in the Son, and through the same the Son is God; accordingly there is taught not the production of another nature, which is only specifically the same as the nature of the Father, as happens in human generations, but the communication of that very non-multipliable nature by which the Father is God, so that by that same numerically one nature the Son is God; therefore the Father and the Son are not two Gods but one God. These things are manifest from the very words of the creed and still more from the history of its definition.

a) When the Nicene Fathers, as Athanasius relates (de decret. Nic. n. 19.), first wanted to write: «that the Son is not from non-existent things but from God», this expression «the Son from God» seemed ambiguous. For the Fathers, understanding the Son in the proper sense, with the efficient cause excluded, took that from God for the generating principle; the Arians, on the contrary, taking this very from God for the efficient cause, understood the Son in the improper sense, and therefore thought that this statement did not harm their opinion at all. Once this fraud was noticed, the Fathers added the declaration: «the Son is begotten of the Father, that is, from the substance of the Father» ἐκ τῆς οὐσίας τοῦ Πατρός. The substance of the Father is indeed nothing other than the Father, as Athanasius notes ibid. n. 22, but the mode of signifying is different; for the principle "by which" of generation is expressly expressed when it is said that the Father begot the Son from His substance, but did not create Him from non-existent things. In the declaration of generation properly so called, in such a way that the Arians could no longer pervert the sense, it was contained that the substance, or οὐσίαν, of the Father, the generating principle, is the same communicated to the Son.

Hence b) the Bishops in the Council, in order also to declare explicitly the nature communicated to the Son by the Father, «said that it must be written that the Word is the true power and image of the Father, and is like the Father without any discrepancy in all things, and immutable, and always, and inseparably in Him (the Father); for the Word never did not exist, but always existed, existing eternally with the Father, as the splendor of light». All these things indeed seemed to signify sufficiently the divine nature in the Son; nevertheless the Arians trusted that they could still be twisted into an alien sense: «they were caught again murmuring among themselves and hinting with their eyes that these words—like, always, in power, and in Him—are common to us with the Son».

Up to this point, namely, the Council had not expressly named the same nature of the Son which is the Father's, but had described it in its characters and properties with names to which the heretics thought an improper sense could be subjected.

To avert this fraud the Bishops were compelled to express the very one nature of the Father and the Son, in such a way that the real distinction of persons was at the same time preserved. They had already said that the Son is begotten from the substance of the Father; by that very fact, therefore, it was said that the same substance is communicated from the Father into the Son; but the Father is one and the Son is another. This identity of substance in the Son from the Father, and at the same time the distinction of the two who have one divine οὐσίαν, they seemed to express most excellently by this token: the Son is ὁμοούσιος (consubstantial) with the Father. «When the Bishops noticed their dissimulation in this matter too, they were themselves compelled again to gather the sense from the Scriptures, and to signify more clearly the same things they had said before, and to write that the Son is consubstantial with the Father, so that the Son might be signified to be not only similar, but by the similitude from the Father one and the same» ⁴.

How certainly the Council by that «from the substance of the Father» willed to have expressed nature not only as it is in the Father, but the same nature as to be communicated in the Father and communicated in the Son, is clear also from the other declaration, where those are condemned who say that the Son is «from another substance or essence». No Arian ever said that the Son is from another substance or essence as from a producing principle than the Father; indeed in this they placed the distinction of the Son from the other creatures, that while the others were made by the Son, the Son Himself alone was produced by the Father—yet not by true generation nor accordingly by communication of the «paternal substance or essence», but by a free operation, which they fraudulently called generation ⁵, so that they might retain the biblical names of Father and only-begotten Son and more easily deceive the catholics. Because therefore they denied that the Son is in the proper sense begotten by the Father by communication of the paternal essence, or that He is «from the substance or essence of the Father» as from the principle "by which" of generation; therefore they said that He is «from another substance or essence», namely from a created essence as from a constituting principle, but not from the communicated essence of the Father. Wherefore in the condemnation of this heresy, just as that «from the substance of the Father» immediately designates the nature as it is in the Father, and co-signifies the same nature as it is in the begotten Son; so the other, that the Son «is not from another substance or essence» ⁶, immediately signifies that the nature of the Son is not another but the very nature of the Father. «And He is from the substance of the Father, and the Son Himself is Son by substance»; «the Word is from the substance of God (the Father), nor is He Himself of a diverse nature» (ἑτεροουσίας); «unless perhaps the impious dare again to contend that the substance of the Son is another, and that the light which is from the Father in the Son is another thing, so that the light indeed in the Son is one with the Father, but He Himself according to substance is alien as being a creature; but this is manifestly the sense of Caiaphas and Samosatenus, which the Church condemned» Athan. l. c. n. 22. 23. 24.

Moreover, as to the matter itself, surely nothing else is said by this declaration, «that the Son is ὁμοούσιον with the Father», than if it be said: the Son of God the Father, begotten by the Father, the Father is God and the Son is God, the Father and the Son are one—provided these are understood in the proper sense: «this is that ὁμοούσιον which the ancient faith had brought forth» Aug. contr. Maxim. l. II. c. 14. n. 3. But the excellence of that formula consists in this very thing, that it most clearly enunciates the rationale of filiation, generation, deity, unity as constituted in the communication of the divine essence from the Father into the Son. From then on ὁμοούσιον remained the most certain token of the catholic faith against the contrary heresies denying either the unity of nature in distinct persons, or the distinct persons in the unity of nature. (Vide the Fathers in Petav. l. IV. c. 5. n. 4. sqq.).

« Absurd is the calumny that the Nicene Fathers and the holy Doctors who followed them up to St. Augustine did not acknowledge the numerical unity or unity of singularity in the divine nature, but taught a distinction in nature just as in the persons. For the faith and profession of one nature numerically one in distinct persons is demonstrated both from the common principle, which the Nicene Fathers and the Arians themselves supposed as certain and beyond controversy, and from the state of the question among Catholics declared in the Alexandrian synod under Athanasius, and from the express doctrine of the Fathers who vindicated the faith defined in the Nicene Council against heretics ».

That the Nicene Council and the Fathers who followed the faith of the same Council taught not one but three divine natures numerically distinct, only specifically one, and thus introduced tritheism, were asserted by Curcellaeus, Cudworthus, Clericus (cf. Maran. op. cit. l. IV. c. 29); the same opinion of specific unity was attributed to the Fathers by Peter Faydit and after him a certain monk in Germany, Placidus Stürmer (cf. Wirceburgens. T. II. n. 357); but what surpasses all wonder, in our age Antonius Günther tells us that the holy Gregory of Nazianzus (perhaps he meant to say Nyssenus) and Basil expressly taught the specific unity of the divine nature (Propaedeutica ad specul. theol. T. II. p. 365. 366).

But although consubstantiality (τὸ ὁμοούσιον) can be predicated in an analogous sense even of creatures, and in them it does not stand for a numerical but for a specific unity of nature in distinct hypostases; yet in God it cannot stand for anything other than the numerical unity of the divine nature in distinct persons.

For by itself it signifies a unity of nature in several distinct things, without determining the mode of the unity, whether numerical or specific. But since in creatures this unity cannot exist except by a multiplication of nature in many, while in God a multiplication of nature is repugnant, hence from the very intrinsic nature of the subject of which it is predicated, τὸ ὁμοούσιον is determined to the supposition of numerical or specific unity. This is the same rationale of all names which are transferred from creatures to designate divine perfections, namely that in this transfer one must exclude all the imperfections which the same names connote in creatures (Tract. de Deo). Whoever therefore teaches that the Son is consubstantial with God the Father, either retains the fundamental dogma of the whole of revelation, indeed the concept evident to the light of reason itself, of the non-multiplicable unity of God, and then by the very predication of consubstantiality enunciates one nature numerically one in distinct persons; or, with the dogma and the rational concept itself of the unity of God overturned, falls into polytheism. But to suppose this latter of the Nicene and subsequent Fathers is most absurd; and certainly no Christian could with better right suspect polytheism in the words of the Council « the Son is consubstantial with the Father » than in the words of Christ the Lord himself: « I and the Father are one ». Therefore in the very watchword of consubstantiality the numerical unity of nature in distinct persons is evidently enunciated.

I. This is shown from the very manner of disputing of the Arians against the profession of consubstantiality. They supposed two things as most certain and admitted by all Catholics: first, that God in the proper sense is only one; second, that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are three distinct persons; but to these indubitable principles they added a third, which the Catholics wholly denied, that generation properly so called, and consequently consubstantiality of distinct things, can exist only by division and propagation or, what comes to the same, by multiplication of nature. Hence they argued that by the profession of τοῦ ὁμοουσίου one must fall into one or the other error, both of which the Catholics also condemned: either, namely, retaining the unity of the divine nature, one must with the Sabellians deny the distinction of the Father and the Son; or, retaining the distinction of the hypostases, one must affirm a splitting and multiplication of the divine nature, as happens in human generations. So Arius already argued in the letter to his Bishop Alexander, and so afterwards Eunomius and others frequently objected: « if anyone contentious should urge that the Son is consubstantial, one deity surely, admitting a division, becomes a duality » (γέγονεν εἰς δυάδα) apud s. Cyrill. Thesaur. l. IX. T. V. P. I. p. 68.

But this multiplication would have been conceded by the Catholics if they had had a specific unity of nature in mind; and then who does not see with how easy a task they could have been convicted of error from all the documents of revelation and ineluctable arguments? Upon this demonstration of the unity of the divine nature, therefore, the whole force of the Arian disputation against the Catholics ought to have rested, and the Fathers' denial of it ought to appear in the history of the controversy. But the contrary of all these things happened. Both Catholics and Arians assume as a common principle, indubitable on both sides, that God is one, and consequently that the divine nature is one not in species but in number. And just as the Arians from this principle deny the true generation of the Son from the substance of the Father and consubstantiality, because they simultaneously assume the false principle that what is consubstantial cannot exist except by multiplication of nature: so the Catholics first demonstrate from revelation the true generation and true divinity of the Son, and then, assuming the principle of the non-multiplicable unity of nature, infer that generation and consubstantiality in divine things are not, as in human things, through multiplication, but through communication of one numerically single nature from the Father to the Son. « They wrote (the Nicene Fathers) that the Son is consubstantial with the Father, to signify that the Son is not only similar but by that likeness one and the same (what the Father is), μὴ μόνον ὅμοιον ἀλλὰ ταὐτὸν τῇ ὁμοιώσει... For in corporeal things, indeed, those which are similar to one another can stand apart and be far distant from each other, as among men sons stand to their begetters, as it is written of Adam and Seth, born of him, that he was like him according to his own form. But since the generation of the Son of God from the Father is plainly different from the nature of men, and he is not only similar but indivisible from the substance of the Father, and he and the Father are one, as he himself said, and the Word is always in the Father and the Father in the Word, as splendor stands to light — for this is what that expression too signifies — therefore this synod, seeing this, rightly wrote ὁμοούσιον.... All called the Son splendor, to declare that he is properly and without division from the substance, and his unity with the Father... But far from here be every thought of corporeal things; rather, having surpassed the imagination of all the senses, let us think with pure understanding and mind alone of the genuine Son of the Father and properly the Word of God and the splendor of light without any discrepancy. For just as he is called and is begotten and Son not in a human manner but as befits God, so also when we hear the word ὁμοούσιος we must not follow human senses, nor are partitions and divisions of the divinity to be fashioned, but thinking as of incorporeal things let us not divide the unity of nature and the identity of light » (τὴν ἑνότητα τῆς φύσεως καὶ τὴν ταὐτότητα τοῦ φωτὸς μὴ διαιρῶμεν) Athan. de decret. Nicaen. n. 20. 23. 24. See Petav. l. IV. c. 5; Maran. de Divin. D. N. I. C. l. IV. c. 30.

II. The history of the controversy over the names ὑπόστασις, οὐσία, πρόσωπον, settled by Athanasius in the Alexandrian synod, is rightly wont to be adduced by theologians as an evident demonstration of how indubitably all Catholics understood, in the definition of consubstantiality, the numerical unity of the divine nature in three distinct persons.

In order that this controversy may be understood, some things must be noted about the philosophical use of these names and their transfer into theological use for the declaration of the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity. The philosophers called οὐσία or essence that which is expressed by the definition of each thing (τὸ τί ἦν εἶναι). Now essence can be viewed in two ways: either abstractly, while it is considered as communicable to many individuals and universal, as a species is; or as this determinate singular essence really existing. Viewed in the first way, Aristotle called it δευτέραν οὐσίαν (the Scholastics said of second intention), because universals formally as universals neither exist nor can exist really; viewed in the other way, he called it πρώτην οὐσίαν (of first intention), as really existing in the nature of things or at least able to exist; whence this first essence can fittingly be called, and in the course of time was also called, ὑπόστασις or substance, by which word according to its etymology real existence ¹ is expressed.

Now in the transfer of these terms to express the one Godhead common to three distinct persons, and to designate the three distinct persons whose one is the Godhead, the Eastern Fathers and with them Meletius of Antioch were moved by this consideration, that a singular determinate hypostasis or substance, if it is whole and exists connaturally, in creatures is subsisting in itself, not common to several, but as this one distinct from others having the same common nature; therefore they called the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, really distinct, whose one is the Godhead, three hypostases, while the Godhead common to the three they called οὐσία, although in divine things they saw this commonness to be far other than in creatures. They taught therefore one οὐσία, three hypostases. But the three really distinct among themselves they were unwilling to call πρόσωπα or persons without an added declaration, lest suspicion of the error of Sabellius arise, who placed in one divine hypostasis three persons according to diverse manifestations and operations ad extra, and said that the same hypostasis had borne the person of the Father in the Old Testament, the person of the Son in the Incarnation, the person of the Holy Spirit in the sanctification and governance of the Church. Against this, on the other hand, the Western Fathers, who rendered ὑπόστασις in Latin as substantia, and agreeing with them Paulinus, the other Bishop of Antioch, considered that the Godhead is one singular determinate non-multiplicable essence, and therefore to express this singularity they called it one hypostasis, or substance, while the three distinct among themselves they named persons not in the Sabellian sense but in exactly the same sense in which the Easterners said three hypostases. Hence it came about that the former, when they heard one hypostasis and three persons, suspected Sabellianism; but the latter, when three hypostases were named, feared the danger of Arianism — namely that three diverse natures were counted — or of tritheism from the number of three equal divine natures. « A thing indeed to be laughed at, says Gregory of Nazianzus, or rather to be wept over; what seemed a diversity of faith was an altercation about the sound of a word. Hence afterwards Sabellianism was reproached on account of three persons, and Arianism on account of three hypostases, which were figments born of too great eagerness to dispute » Gregor. Naz. or. 21. n. 35.

Moreover, that the dispute was not about dogma but only about words, Athanasius made manifest to the very disputants in this way. First he asked the assertors of three hypostases whether they said the hypostases were of diverse essence, as are gold, silver, bronze, which was the opinion of Arius; or whether they said the hypostases were separate, as among men are the hypostases of parents and children, and so « would think three principles and three Gods ». They indeed answered that they said three hypostases because not only in name but in reality itself the three are distinct; « and yet, they said, they had not said three Gods or three principles, nor did they at all tolerate those who would say or think such things, but they acknowledged the holy Trinity, yet one Godhead and one principle and the Son consubstantial with the Father ». Then others were asked whether they said one hypostasis, denying with Sabellius that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three really distinct; they answered: « that they had never so thought; but we say hypostasis, they said, judging that to say hypostasis is the same as to say essence; and we believe one hypostasis for this reason, that the Son is from the substance of the Father and on account of the identity of nature (διὰ τὴν ταὐτότητα τῆς φύσεως); for we believe one Godhead and one nature of it, not one indeed of the Father and another foreign to it of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ». Athanasius concludes: « with these also those consented who, because they had said three hypostases, were accused; and those very ones saying one essence proved the doctrine of these, as they had interpreted it » Ath. ep. synod. ad Antiochenos n. 5. 6. cf. Gregor. Naz. or. 21. n. 35; or. 42. (al. 32) n. 16. et alios citatos penes Petav. l. IV. c. 4. n. 10 seqq.

Here now let the following be noted. a) Hypostasis always signifies a singular substance (individual, at least insofar as the individual is opposed to the universal), nor can one hypostasis signify a merely specific unity. Hence those who, not content with saying one οὐσία, wanted one hypostasis of the three persons to be asserted, by this very name affirmed one numerical and singular nature of the three persons. But with this explanation of the name hypostasis given, all Catholics agreed that the hypostasis, or singular non-multiplicable substance, of the three persons is one.

b) Where there is only a specific unity of nature in several persons, necessarily just as many numerically distinct natures must be counted as there are persons. Because those saying one οὐσία and three hypostases came under suspicion, lest perhaps they said one οὐσία specifically and counted three numerically distinct singular natures, therefore this manner of speaking seemed suspect of tritheism to those who said one hypostasis to express one singular nature not multiplied in three persons ². But those former too declared that they admitted exactly the same unity of singularity of nature, and that three natures or three deities could in no way be said, although there are three persons of one Godhead.

c) Among men, without doubt, children are consubstantial with their parents by a specific unity of nature, and therefore there are several men. But all the Catholics of both sides denied that such a unity of the divine nature and consubstantiality of persons could be admitted without falling into tritheism, and therefore they expressly affirmed in the three persons an identity (ταὐτότητα) of nature in such a way that the three are one God. It is evident, therefore, that among Catholics, even those who disagreed in the manner of speaking about hypostasis and persons, there was no one who did not profess the Nicene faith in this sense, that the essence, nature, substance, or Godhead of the three distinct persons is one numerically, not however one only specifically.

III. All the Fathers, defenders of the Nicene faith, taught with express words and the amplest declarations one numerically single nature in the three distinct persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The many things that could be brought forth we shall compress into few.

a) They say that the mystery is above the grasp of human reason, because the same supreme reality is both countable according to the notion of the hypostases and one, not multiplicable, according to the notion of the Godhead or nature. But there would be nothing mysterious in the fact that the nature of the three is specifically one: «for what would there be to admire, says St. Maximus (cent. II. de charit.), if, as there is unity and division of man with man, so there were unity and division of the Son with the Father?» And surely this — both the ground of the mystery and the exclusion of number in the nature of the three hypostases — can in no way be understood except of the unity of singularity.

«The ineffable depth of the mystery cannot be declared by any speech: how the same reality is both countable and flees number; and it is discerned in distinction and understood in the monad, and is distinguished by hypostasis and is not divided by subject (τῷ ὑποκειμένῳ, i.e., the nature which is conceived to underlie the distinct hypostases, or better, is identified with them). Moreover, He is another whose are the Word and the Spirit; but where you have conceived distinction in these, in turn the unity of nature admits no partition» Gregory of Nyssa, or. catech. c. 3. T. II. p. 481; Basil, de Spiritu Sancto c. 18, etc. These things are proclaimed still more expressly, if possible, when the heresy of the Tritheites had already become known. Among many others, Sophronius vindicates this unity in the synodal epistle read in Council VI, Act. XI. «We announce three as one, whose is the Godhead — or, which is more accurate and manifest to say, the three are and are known to be the Godhead; for this very thing both is one and is believed to be three..... and neither is one, inasmuch as it is one, taken as three, nor are three, inasmuch as they are three, said to be one, which is surely marvelous and full of all wonder. For the same reality both is countable and flees number: countable indeed by the three hypostases, fleeing number by the unicity of the Godhead (τῇ ἑνότητι τῆς θεότητος).... The Holy Trinity is therefore numbered not by essences or natures and diverse godheads or three dominions — far be it — as the Arians rave, and as the new Tritheites rage most vainly, saying three essences and three natures and three dominions and three godheads... But we know neither three Gods, nor three natures, nor three essences, nor three godheads, neither of one origin nor of another, neither of one species nor of diverse species; but neither do we know Gods or natures or essences or godheads at all, nor do we admit those who know such things; but him who receives, or thinks, or knows these things we strike with anathemas» (Hard. Concil. T. III. p. 1202. 1263).

b) From the explicit teaching of the same Fathers about creatures, where there is specific unity of nature, this is said to be unity only by consideration of reason; in the things themselves there are not one singular nature but many natures distinct in number. On the contrary, they say, the divine nature is one singular — not by consideration of reason only but really — in the three distinct persons, in such a way that it is the same to say that the nature of the Father is identical with the nature of the Son or of the Holy Spirit as to say that it is identical with itself. «For us there is one God, because there is one Godhead..... But what, they will perhaps say, is not the Godhead one also among the pagans, as those among them who philosophize more perfectly teach, and among us is not the whole genus one humanity; nevertheless there are many gods and not one, just as there are also (many) men? But in these the community has unity considered only by reason, while the singulars are for the most part divided among themselves... Ours is not so, and "this is not the portion of Jacob," says my theologian (Jer. X. 10); but each one of them (each divine person) has unity with the other no less than with itself, by identity of essence and power» (τῷ ταὐτῷ τῆς οὐσίας καὶ τῆς δυνάμεως) Gregory of Nazianzus, or. 31. (al. 37.) n. 14-16. Athanasius uses the same argument in de decret. Nicaen. n. 20 and elsewhere; Cyril, dialog. VI. de Trin. T. V. P. I. p. 592; Maximus, de charit. cent. II.; but most brilliantly John Damascene, Fid. orthod. l. I. c. 8. c) In this sense the μονάς and ταυτότης of nature, by which the three persons are one God, is everywhere commended by Athanasius, Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus, Cyril and others; and with this monad denied, one must fall into polytheism. «One God the Father, one God also the Son, and not two Gods, because the Son has identity (ταυτότητα) with the Father; for I behold not one Godhead in the Father and another in the Son, nor another nature in that one and another in this one. That therefore the property of the persons may become clear to you, number the Father distinctly and the Son distinctly; but lest you be torn apart into polytheism, confess one essence in both» Basil, cont. Sabell. n. 3. (T. II. p. 191). «Since by the confession of all the Godhead is one, it cannot be that the Holy Trinity is not referred to the identity (ταυτότητα) of nature» Cyril, in Io. (T. IV. p. 20). In the profession of faith which is found appended to the synodal epistle of the Council of Sardica (in Theodoret, H. E. l. II. c. 6; cf. on this profession the Ballerini, Opp. s. Leonis T. III. p. XXXIX.), it is said most effectively: «but we have received and learned this catholic tradition and faith and profession, that there is one substance (ὑπόστασιν) — which the heretics themselves call οὐσίαν — of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit; and if they ask what is the substance (ὑποστάσεως) of the Son, we profess that it is the same which is proclaimed the only one of the Father» (ὁμολογοῦμεν, εἶναι αὐτὴν ἣν μόνη τοῦ Πατρὸς ὁμολογουμένη).

d) It is the common declaration of the Fathers that the catholic doctrine is the truth in the middle between the opposite errors: on the one hand those of the Sabellians and the Jews, on the other those of the Arians and the pagans. For the catholic faith approves in the Jews and Sabellians that they profess one divine nature; in the Arians and the pagans themselves it does not disapprove the doctrine, inasmuch as they distinguish several persons; but in the former it condemns the denial of several distinct persons, and in the latter not only the assertion of diverse natures but also the multiplication of nature, from which there would follow only a specific unity. But the Sabellians and the Jews taught that the divine nature is one in number and not multiplicable; this same unity, therefore, the Fathers held as settled. Indeed, since the Sabellians denied that there are several distinct persons because, from the principle common to all heretics erring in the doctrine either of the Holy Trinity or of the Incarnation, they thought that there are always as many persons as there are singular natures, and that by this very fact, with the divine persons multiplied, the nature is understood to be multiplied and so the unity of God taken away; the unity of nature asserted by them would have had to be disapproved no less than the unity of person, if the Fathers had had in mind numerical multiplication and only specific unity of nature. But in fact the Fathers agreed with those heretics and with the Jews that the divine nature is altogether one and singular, yet denied that the unity also of person or hypostasis follows from this. «Truth, cast between two opinions, comes forth..... let the unity of nature remain from the Jewish persuasion, and from the gentile error only the distinction according to hypostases, and so the impious opinion on both sides is healed» Gregory of Nyssa, or. catech. c. 3. «One God is the Holy Trinity, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit; for the nature of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit is one, but not one person... For it is true that the Sabellians believe one nature of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit; but it is false that they do not believe that there are three persons. It is also true that the Arians say three persons of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit; but it is false that they strive to persuade that these three persons have three natures» Fulgentius, ep. 8. (or the book to Donatus) c. II. 12. Parallels are had in Athanasius, contr. Arian. or. III. n. 15; or. IV. n. 10; Gregory of Nazianzus, or. 21. n. 13; Basil, contr. Sabell. n. 3; Isidore of Pelusium, l. II. ep. 143. p. 190; Faustinus, contr. Arian. c. 1. Bibl. Max. PP. T. V. p. 640.

e) Finally, not only Augustine — whom some have dared to say was the first to set forth clearly the singularity of nature in the three persons — but all the Fathers, defenders of the Nicene synod, of whom we now treat, also declared the manner in which the numerical unity of the divine nature in three really distinct persons is to be conceived. For they teach, according to the Scriptures and the catholic understanding handed down from the Apostles, that the Father is distinguished from the Son, and both from the Holy Spirit, by no other reason and by no other thing, than solely by that which is formally signified by the names Father, Son, Holy Spirit. But by these names are formally signified things relative to one another, not things absolute. Whatever is said of God besides this formal notion of things relative to one another — Godhead, essence, nature, absolute perfection, etc. — is altogether one, admitting no multiplication or real distinction. Therefore the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, inasmuch as they are God, are altogether one, one supreme reality, one God; but inasmuch as they are referred to one another — the Father formally as Father of the Son, the Son formally as Son of the Father, the Holy Spirit formally as spirated or proceeding from the Father and the Son — they are another and another, three distinct persons, yet of one singular essence or nature. The distinction of the three, therefore, consists solely in mutual relations, and not in nature or in any absolute perfection. Hence, since the mutually distinct persons, having the same nature, are and are called persons or hypostases, the divine persons are understood to be constituted by relations. But this whole doctrine of the distinction of the persons — that it is solely through mutual relations and in no way through one nature really common to the three — not only most explicitly enunciates the numerical unity of the divine nature in three distinct persons, that it is; but it also explains how it is, namely, insofar as the reason of the mystery implicit in the word of God can be explained by men.

To the Pneumatomachian asking: «what then is lacking to the Spirit, that it may be the Son? for unless something were lacking, it would be the Son», Gregory of Nazianzus answers: «we do not say that something is lacking — for God is not lacking in anything — but the difference of manifestation (τῆς ἐκφάνσεως), so to speak, or of relation to one another, has also made for them diverse names. For nothing is lacking to the Son that he may be the Father; for filiation is not a defect, and yet for that reason he is not the Father; otherwise by the same reasoning something would also be lacking to the Father that he may be the Son, for the Father is not the Son; but surely these things in no way indicate a defect or a submission according to essence. But these very things — not to be begotten, and to be begotten, and to proceed — designate another Father, another Son, another called by the name of the Holy Spirit, so that the unconfused distinction of the three hypostases may be preserved in one nature and dignity of the Godhead. For neither is the Son the Father, for there is one Father; yet the Son is what the Father is; nor is the Spirit the Son, because it is from God, for there is one only-begotten; yet the Spirit is what the Son is: the three are one by the Godhead, the one is three by the properties»³ Nazianz. or. 31. (al. 37.) n. 9. See the parallel declarations of several Fathers in Petavius, l. IV. c. 10.

Scholion. When the same Fathers, who defend the divine nature as one in number in the three persons by so manifold an argument, seem to draw the explanation of the mystery from the unity of the human nature in several men, this comparison or declaration is not everywhere instituted by them in the same sense, but in a threefold diverse manner.

1°. Most frequently they do not have as their immediate purpose to declare what sort of thing the unity of the divine nature is, but to set forth the universal notion of nature and of hypostasis, which they then apply analogically to the divine nature and hypostasis, and from which they show why and how one must distinguish by reason between nature and hypostasis. For all the heretics — the Monarchians as much as the Arians and the Tritheites — distinguishing nothing between the notion according to which nature is said and the notion according to which hypostasis is said, by this very fact affirmed that there are always as many distinct natures as there are hypostases. Whence either, insisting on the revealed truth that God is one and the divine nature one, they likewise affirmed that the hypostasis is one, the same being designated by the three names Father, Son, Holy Spirit according to diverse manifestations ad extra; or, conversely, retaining the revealed truth of three distinct hypostases, they also asserted three natures. But this latter they did in a twofold way: either so that they wished at the same time to save the dogma of the unity of God — and then, admitting one divine hypostasis as also one nature, they reduced the hypostasis and nature of the Son and of the Holy Spirit to the order of creatures; or so that they preserved the dogma of the divinity of the Son and of the Holy Spirit — and then, from that very philosophical principle common to them all, it had to be conceded that there are three distinct divine natures, and hence a unity of nature only collective or specific. Since, therefore, all the mutually opposed heresies set out from that one principle, the Fathers saw how important it is to declare the diverse notion of nature and of hypostasis in such a way that from the unity of nature the unity of hypostasis does not follow, or conversely from the trinity of hypostases the multiplication of nature.

In this declaration they kept before their eyes above all the revealed truth that God is one, and that three distinct persons — Father, Son, Holy Spirit — are one God. To this dogma, then, the philosophical notion of nature and of hypostasis had to be applied and adapted; but the revealed mystery was not, as was done by the heretics, to be subjected and accommodated to the philosophical notion drawn from the order of creatures. Now in creatures, whence the philosophical notions were first formed, that which is contained in the definition — i.e., the essence or nature — is common to many and inheres in many according to the same notion; but the singular persons having the same nature are not something common to several, but one is another and another, distinct as this one is distinct from another of the same nature. According to this analogy, therefore, the holy Doctors, looking to the one Godhead of the three distinct persons, universally defined that nature is that which is common to several (τὸ κοινόν); hypostasis is that which is one distinct from another of the same nature (τὸ μερικόν), the proper (τὸ ἴδιον), not common to several, and in this sense of incommunicability the individual (τὸ ἄτομον). Where, however, they expressly teach that in the transference of the notions from creatures to God, common and individual are to be understood not in the same but only in an analogous sense; for we have seen their most frequent declarations that the unity of nature in creatures is formed only by abstraction of the mind, and therefore the community of nature is not real but only by reason and consideration of the mind; whereas in God the nature is singular, really one, common to the three; and for this reason also the distinct and the individual in God are not, as in creatures, by something absolute (for whatever is absolute in God is altogether one and common to the three), but by the mutual relations designated by the personal names Father, Son, Holy Spirit.

When, therefore, they teach that, just as in men there is one human nature common to several and yet there are several hypostases mutually distinct, so also in God there is one common nature and there are three mutually distinct hypostases of one nature; this definition does not pertain to asserting in God the same unity and the same distinction as that which exists among several men, but to declaring the distinction of reason between nature and hypostasis. Because, namely, nature is said according to that which is revealed as one, i.e., according to the absolute; hypostasis, however, is said according to those things which have been revealed as really distinct, i.e., according to the relative; therefore from revelation itself is refuted the fundamental principle of the heretics, by which they assert that there are always as many natures as there are hypostases. See the Fathers who declare this definition of nature and of hypostasis and the distinction of both, in Petavius, l. IV. c. 7. Cf. our Tract. de Incarnat. sect. III. c. 3.

2°. Nature taken abstractly, e.g., humanity, as it is contained in the definition and the universal notion, is altogether one and admits no multiplication; for indeed, if humanity is taken in this way, two humanities cannot be conceived. But in this way, formally as universal, it cannot exist objectively; for whatever exists is singular, and the singular humanities are as many as there are men, to all of whom one universal notion and definition applies. Hence nothing prevents the non-multiplicable unity of the abstract and universal nature from being taken up to explain the non-multiplicable unity of the divine nature, provided that great difference is not lost from sight: that the divine nature is this one determinate singular nature, really and necessarily existing in three distinct hypostases; whereas that universal notion of the created nature, e.g., of humanity, formally under the universal notion under which it has non-multiplicable unity, does not exist outside the mind's consideration and in the thing itself. In this way some Fathers declared the unity of the divine nature in the three distinct persons; and surely I do not think that a closer analogy can be found by the human mind for some explanation of the mystery. St. Cyril proves that, once the consubstantiality of the Father and of the Son is admitted, two natures cannot be numbered, because then a distinction between one nature and the other would have to be admitted; but the distinction of a nature from a divine nature could not be anything but diversity, and so the Father and the Son would no longer be consubstantial — just as, once a distinction between one universal nature and another is admitted in creatures, by that very fact the diversity of natures is posited. For another and another universal human nature cannot be understood, but another human nature and another non-human one, e.g., bestial; and so only diverse natures are distinguished, which have diverse definitions. «If the nature of the Father is one, and again another nature of the Son besides that one, will it not be necessary to devise a reason which divides and separates the two natures unequal between themselves? For it is not permitted, even in men having one and the same reason of consubstantiality, to say another and another essence, and to attribute to the individuals existing some particular definition with respect to those things which are common to many. For if we do this and introduce some necessary difference between one essence and another (if we number humanity taken in the abstract as another and another), the universal will vanish into nothing» Cyril, dial. I. de Trin. T. V. P. I. p. 409. cf. in Io. T. IV. p. 798; Damascene, Fid. orthod. l. III. c. 6.

3°. The Platonists — whom some of the Scholastics, namely the Scotists, followed — posited that the universal, which is conceived by the mind and enunciated by the definition, has objective real existence under the formal notion of universal. Whence it followed that human nature, inasmuch as it is universal — i.e., the essence itself, once precision has been made from all the particular and individuating notes which are conceived as affecting and circumscribing it — is one in number in all men, really existing no otherwise than as it is conceived by the mind under the formal notion of universal as one, non-multiplicable and common to all men. Just as, therefore, the abstract concept of man is not another if it is said of Peter and if it is said of Paul, and there are not two notions but this universal notion is altogether one; so, given that objective existence of the universals, Peter and Paul do not have two humanities distinct in number but one humanity, precisely as it is humanity; and they are not two men but one man, precisely as only the notion of man is considered. Moreover, that universal essence, or that precise notion of man, is affected by many individuating notes, by which it comes about that there is Peter and there is Paul; and by these notes the hypostases are constituted and differ mutually. Peter and Paul, therefore, are not distinguished from each other inasmuch as they are men; but inasmuch as the one is that hypostasis Peter, the other this other hypostasis Paul. In this philosophy, to be sure, the distinction between the infinite divine essence and the finite nature remains intact: because the divine essence, most simple and admitting no composition, is affected by no accidents and by no absolute individuating notes; whereas the human nature would be one in number in several hypostases, just as is the unity of the divine nature in the three persons. Whence he who, following this philosophy, would say that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are one God, just as Peter, Paul and Barnabas are one man — he would not deny the unity of God and the singularity of the divine nature in the three distinct persons; indeed he would expressly affirm it; but he would draw the illustration and understanding of the revealed truth from false philosophical principles, and so the error would be not theological but philosophical.

Now St. Gregory of Nyssa seems to have followed these philosophical principles somewhere. To those objecting that from the consubstantiality of the three persons it follows that there are three Gods, just as there are three men, Nyssenus answers: that "three men" is said by an abuse of speech; from the principles of science one ought to say three hypostases and one man, because they have one humanity, and therefore, inasmuch as they are men, they are neither distinguished from one another nor ought to be numbered; whence much more does the most simple divine nature, one in three, constitute not three Gods, but God is one. How clearly Nyssenus asserted the numerical unity of the divine nature, we saw above; he does not, therefore, deny this unity, nor does he assert a unity of God such as the unity of three men is in point of fact, but such as the unity of human nature is asserted in those philosophical principles, which is a real and numerical unity. «We say, therefore, he says, that it is a certain abuse of custom that we name in the plural, through the very name of nature, those who are not distinct by nature, and say: many men; to which it is similar if someone should say: many human natures..... Many indeed have obtained the same nature, but one is man in all.... But the notion of the hypostases, through the properties which are considered in each one, admits distribution and is considered by computation in number; but nature is one, unified with itself, and is an altogether undivided unity (μονάς), which is neither increased by addition nor diminished by subtraction; but, remaining one, which it is, even if it is seen to be in many, it is indivisible, continuous, whole, and is not divided along with the singulars that participate in it... so that it would have been much more correct to correct the erring custom in us and no longer to extend the name of nature to the multitude, than, serving custom, to retain the error.... Therefore one God is to be confessed by us according to the testimony of Scripture: hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God, the Lord is one: even if the name of the Godhead pertains to the whole holy Trinity» Gregory of Nyssa, l. ad Ablavium T. II. p. 449; l. de commun. notion. T. I. p. 915 ff. The author of the dialog. de Trin. (among the Opp. of Athanasius) and Theodore Abucara, opusc. II, have things not very dissimilar, derived from Nyssenus.

«The same faith, which the Council of Nicaea and the Fathers afterwards confirmed, had been handed down from the Apostles in the universal profession and preaching of the Church. For the Fathers and Martyrs of the earlier age, against errors mutually opposed to one another and repugnant to the dogma of the Church, vindicated no less the unity of the Godhead than the distinction of persons, with the same sense albeit not always with the same formulas and modes of explanation, by which the dogma was afterwards defined by the Nicene and subsequent Fathers. When, however, those older Fathers, in view of the character of the heresies of their age, insisted chiefly on the real distinction of persons, they supposed the unity of nature as conceded by their adversaries; yet they cannot be regarded as having extended the distinction of hypostases to the nature itself, although for the most part they did not clearly set forth the mode of distinction.»

Two things we shall accomplish in this thesis: first, we shall consider the explicit doctrine of the pre-Nicene Fathers on the unity of the Godhead in distinct persons, who are one God; then we shall look at the manner in which at times they urge the distinction alone more vehemently, on the supposition of unity as conceded and affirmed by the adversaries themselves, and we shall show that even now, from certain general principles alone, the Fathers had before their eyes not a distinction of nature but of persons, and that in these very persons they regarded not so much the mode of distinction as they vindicated its reality against heretics.

I. St. Athanasius speaks thus of the apostolic tradition of the Nicene faith against the novelty of the Arians. «We indeed demonstrate that this doctrine has passed from Fathers to Fathers; but you, O new Jews and disciples of Caiphas, what Fathers can you produce for your words? Certainly you will never bring forward anyone prudent and wise; for all abhor you except the one devil... who even now persuades you to calumniate the ecumenical synod, because, namely, it defined not your own things but those which from the beginning were handed down to us by those who from the beginning themselves saw, and were ministers of the word; for the faith which the synod confessed in writing is itself the faith of the Catholic Church»

Athan. de decret. Nic. n. 27. St. Augustine, in his books on the Trinity, lays as a bulwark the consensus of all the preceding Fathers. «All whom I have been able to read, who before me wrote of the Trinity which is God, the Catholic expositors of the divine books, old and new, intended to teach according to the Scriptures that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, by an inseparable equality of one and the same substance, intimate the divine unity, and therefore are not three Gods but one God, although the Father begot the Son, and therefore the Son is not He who is the Father.... and the Holy Spirit is neither the Father nor the Son.... This also is my faith, since this is the Catholic faith» August. Trin. l. n. 7.

1°. Certainly in the second century, just as the Church condemned the monarchian heretics who denied the distinction of persons, so in like manner it proscribed the contrary heresy of those who, in whatever form of doctrine, together with the distinction of persons would also introduce a distinction of nature in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. For in a distinction of nature of this kind one of the two is necessarily contained: either that there are three Gods, or that the Son and the Holy Spirit are not God; and both of these were already in the third century condemned even by a public and solemn judgment as repugnant to the revealed and handed-down faith. Most explicit, therefore, was the profession of the Church, that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are three really distinct persons, yet that these three and each of the three are one true God, besides whom there is no other. Athanasius relates that Pope Dionysius, in the middle of the third century, first wrote against the Sabellians; then from his letter he recites these words. «Moreover it will be fitting to say also against those who divide the most august preaching of the Church of God (τὸ σεμνότατον κήρυγμα τῆς Ἐκκλησίας τοῦ Θεοῦ, the most august mystery preached by the Church of God), the monarchy, I say, and cut it asunder and distribute it into three powers and separated hypostases and three deities.... who are diametrically, so to speak, opposed to the opinion of Sabellius. For his impiety consists in this, that he says the Son is the Father and conversely; but these in some way preach three Gods, when they divide the holy unity (τὴν ἁγίαν μονάδα, the holy unicity) into three hypostases mutually alien and wholly separated. For the divine Word must needs be united to the God of all things, and the Holy Spirit must remain and live in God, and finally it is altogether necessary that the divine Trinity be reduced and gathered into one as into a certain summit, I mean the omnipotent God of all things¹. For the doctrine of the mad Marcion, which cuts and divides the monarchy into three principles, is diabolical, not that of true disciples of Christ and of those to whom the discipline of the Savior is pleasing. For these well know that the Trinity indeed is preached in divine Scripture, but that three Gods are taught in neither the Old nor the New Testament.

No less again are they to be blamed, who think that the Son is a made thing (ποίημα), and that the Lord is created (γεγονέναι τὸν Κύριον)... If the Son was made, there was a time when He was not (ἦν, ὅτε οὐκ ἦν): but He always was, if He is in the Father, as He Himself declares, and if Christ is the Word and wisdom and power; for that Christ is these things the divine letters teach, as you know; these, however, are the same powers of God, and therefore if the Son was made, there was a time when these were not: there was therefore a time when God was without these, which is most absurd²... Therefore neither ought the admirable and divine unity (τὴν θαυμαστὴν καὶ θείαν μονάδα) to be divided into three deities, nor ought the dignity and supreme greatness of the Lord to be overthrown by the opinion that He was made; but we must believe in God the Father almighty and in Jesus Christ His Son and in the Holy Spirit, and that the Word is united to the God of all things. For He says: I and the Father are one; and I am in the Father and the Father is in me. Thus, namely, both the divine Trinity and the holy preaching of the monarchy will be preserved whole» s. Dionys. apud Athanas. de decret. Nic. n. 26.

«The most august preaching of the Church of God», i.e. the public and common profession and doctrine, on the testimony of the Pontiff, was reduced to these points: that a) three are distinct, the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, and therefore Sabellius was condemned; that b) God is one, and therefore the divine nature, although it is in three persons distinct from one another, is nevertheless an indivisible and non-multipliable unity (μονάς), and hence the three are the God of all things, who is preached as one God in the Old and New Testament. Whence in whatever way three deities, three principles, are spoken of — not only as the Marcionites and other Gnostics had long before taught, but also as then the monarchians and afterwards the Arians brought the calumny against the Church, and as in a later age the tritheists taught — all these errors the most august preaching of the Church excludes. c) By this very preaching the Church confesses the Son and the Holy Spirit to be true God just as the Father, and therefore those are condemned who would say that the Word, and consequently also those who would say that the Holy Spirit, is a creature.

Before Dionysius, the very same faith of the one Godhead in distinct persons, at the beginning of the third century, is shown both by the deeds and by the doctrine of the Pontiffs Zephyrinus and Callistus, however distortedly they are reported by the calumniator of these Saints in the work which the editor Miller entitled «Origen's Philosophumena».

a) Just as Dionysius condemned the Sabellians, who confounded the persons, no less than the others, who divided the unity of nature; so also Callistus cast out Sabellius himself «from the Church, because he did not think rightly» (Philos. p. 288); on the other hand, however, he required the profession that the Father and the Son are one indivisible spirit, not one thing and another, but one and the same. Because the author of that history (φιλοσοφουμένων) and those coalescing with him into a sect refused this profession, Callistus publicly denounced them as enemies of the unity of God (δημοσίᾳ ἡμῖν ὀνειδίζοντα εἰπεῖν ἄθεοί ἐστε, Philos. p. 285. 289). b) The doctrine of SS. Zephyrinus and Callistus on the unity of the Father and the Son their adversary himself exhibits thus. Zephyrinus, at the urging of Callistus, who afterwards succeeded him in the pontificate, publicly preached: «I know one God, Christ Jesus, and besides this one no other (namely, no other God), who (Jesus Christ God) was born and suffered». At the same time, however, Callistus declared: «not the Father died but the Son» (Philos. p. 285) ³. Another Father, another Son is therefore preached against Sabellius; but just as Christ the Lord called the Father «the only true God» (supra th. III. Coroll. 2), so also the Son is the same one God, besides whom there is no other God. Further, the doctrine of Callistus, now Pontiff, is set forth: that the Father and the Son «are one indivisible spirit, that the Father is not one spirit and the Son another spirit, but one and the same spirit; and that He who was incarnate in the Virgin is not a spirit other than the Father, but one and the same spirit; and that this is what is meant by what was said: do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father in me: For, he says, I shall not call two Gods the Father and the Son, but one». The adversary indeed, reporting these things, concludes that in this way one person of the Father and of the Son is taught, because he could not or would not understand the distinction according to persons, if there is no distinction according to nature; nevertheless he himself admits that Callistus did not want to say that the Father had suffered, nor that there is one person, «in order, he says, to escape the blasphemy against the Father» (Philos. p. 289.) ⁴. He repeats the same calumny, as if Callistus had distinguished the Father from the Son by name alone, because he taught: «The Father and the Son are one in essence; for God is not a spirit other than the Word, nor is the Word a spirit other than God, and this Word is one God and was incarnate» (Philos. p. 329).

In the third century, therefore, just as the distinction of persons against the Sabellians, so no less the undivided unity of the divine nature was declared most explicitly by the Roman Pontiffs Zephyrinus, Callistus, and Dionysius as the common and handed-down faith of the Church and vindicated against contrary errors.⁵

2°. When the dogma of the unity of God had to be reconciled with the distinction of persons, and to be explained against the Gnostics, sometimes also against the pagans, or to be defended against the objections of the monarchians, the Fathers of the second and third centuries proposed both parts of the dogma — not only the distinction, namely, but also the unity — with the same clarity, as the common faith.

Irenaeus very frequently, especially in Bks. III and IV, sets forth the doctrine. The God who revealed Himself in the Old Testament is one God, besides whom there is no other; but that one God is the Father and the Son in distinct persons. «Who is the God of the living, except He who is God, above whom there is no other God?... The living God, therefore, who was adored by the prophets, this is the God of the living and His Word, who also spoke to Moses, who also confuted the Sadducees... Christ Himself, therefore, together with the Father is the God of the living, who spoke to Moses, and who was manifested to the Fathers». Bk. IV, c. 5, n. 2. He often repeats that the fabricator of the world, or demiurge, is not some being inferior to the supreme God, as the Gnostics thought, but is the one supreme God Himself. Then he calls the one supreme God the creator now the Father, now the Word of the Father, now the Father through the Word and through Wisdom, i.e. through the Holy Spirit. The Father, indeed, is said to have created all things through the Word and Wisdom, not as if these three were one thing and another, but rather the Father and the Word and Wisdom are not distinguished, inasmuch as they are God the creator, but are altogether one; and hence it comes to the same whether one says: God creates through the Word and Wisdom, or it is said: God creates through Himself. This indeed is the same explanation of the unity of the three that we have heard from other Fathers teaching that one person is no less one with another according to the Godhead than with itself. «According to magnitude, says Irenaeus, it is not possible to know God; for it is impossible that the Father be measured.... Since God is so great, and He it is who through Himself constituted and chose and adorned and contains all things, and among all things also this world... Not, therefore, did angels make us, nor could angels make the image of God, nor any other besides the Word of the Lord, nor a Power far removed from the Father of all things. For God had no need of these to make what He Himself had predetermined in Himself to be made, as if He did not have His own hands. For His Word and Wisdom, the Son and the Spirit, are always present to Him, through whom and in whom He freely and willingly made all things, to whom also He speaks, saying: let us make man in our image and likeness, Himself taking from Himself the substance of creatures (by His omnipotence creating), and the exemplar of the things made and the figure of the world's adornments (the archetypal ideas)... And that the Word, that is the Son, was always with the Father, we have shown by many things. That Wisdom also, which is the Spirit, was with Him before every constitution, He says through Solomon: God founded the earth by Wisdom... One God, therefore, who made and fitted all things by the Word and Wisdom; this, however, is the demiurge» Iren. Bk. IV, c. 20, n. 1-4: «Only one God, the fabricator... this is the Father, this is God, this is the founder, this is the maker, this is the fabricator, who made these things through Himself, that is, through His Word and through His Wisdom» Bk. II, c. 30, n. 9.

Athenagoras, in the second century, to the pagans themselves, in his apology or embassy on behalf of the Christians, sets forth indeed no other doctrine concerning the one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, than the common profession of the Christians. First, by philosophical arguments and also by the confession of the philosophers, he shows that God cannot be anything but one simple spirit without any composition, and the creator of the world. This one God the books of the prophets teach: «I am God, the first and the last; and besides me there is no God» Legat. n. 7-9. Then he declares more distinctly what kind of one God the Christians believe; we are not atheists, who hold one unbegotten and eternal God, by whom all things were made through His Word. For we believe also in the Son of God, not such as the sons of the gods that the poets invent, «but the Son of God is the Word of the Father in idea and power (Λόγος Πατρὸς ἐν ἰδέᾳ καὶ ἐνεργείᾳ, i.e. the expression of the paternal intellect and the eternal exemplar, according to which all things were created): for from Him (the Son) and through Him all things were made, since the Father and the Son are one. Since, however, the Son is in the Father and the Father in the Son by the unity and essence of spirit (ἑνότητι καὶ δυνάμει Πνεύματος ⁶ i.e. the Father is in the Son, and the Son in the Father, because the Father and the Son are one substantive spiritual power). The Son of God is the mind and Word (νοῦς καὶ λόγος) of the Father». Besides the Father and the Son, Christians believe also in the Holy Spirit proceeding from God, as a ray proceeds from the sun, as splendor from fire. «Who, therefore, would not marvel, when he hears that those are called atheists who teach God the Father and God the Son and the Holy Spirit, and show both their essence in unity and their distinction in order » ⁷ ibid. n. 10. 12. 24.

The Noetians (in Hippolytus, Against Noetus, and in Epiphanius, haeres. 57) prove by many testimonies of Scripture these two things: that the true God is one, and that Christ is true God; whence they infer that by the names Father, Son, Holy Spirit, not one and another but the same is signified, and hence that He who is the Father was incarnate and suffered under the name of the Son (hence they are called Patripassians). Now the Catholics (the presbyters of Smyrna and Hippolytus) agreed with the Noetians in both antecedents, that there is only one God, and that Christ is true God; but at the same time they taught that not only Christ the Son, but the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, three distinct persons of one essence, are this one true God. The distinction — not otherwise than Dionysius of Alexandria later, dealing against the same heresy of the Patripassians (Athanas. de sententia Dionys. n. 9. seq.), — Hippolytus demonstrates chiefly by considering Christ, the incarnate Word. Hence all the texts brought forward by the Noetians to demonstrate the unity of the Father and the Son, which they extend to a unity of person, Hippolytus explains by looking to the incarnate Son in human nature, so that the personal distinction between the Father and the Son may be the more evident. For since this Word-man is one person, and since this person is evidently distinguished as the Son sent by the Father who sends ⁸, the Father necessarily must be believed to be one person and the Word another. Then, according to the doctrine of Christ, the distinction of the third person, the Holy Spirit, is no less certain. By this very fact, however, that God is one, as even the Noetians rightly affirm, the distinction is not in the Godhead or in the nature of the persons. «It is necessary, therefore, that even unwillingly he (Noetus) confess the Father God almighty, and Christ Jesus the Son of God, God made man, to whom the Father subjected all things except Himself and the Holy Spirit, and so that these are three. But if he wishes to know how one God is demonstrated, let him know that the power of this one is one (the essence, ὅτι μία δύναμις τούτου). And as far indeed as concerns power, one is God; as far as concerns the economy (as to the origin and distinction of one person from another, cf. Tertull. contr. Prax. c. 3), the manifestation is threefold (the same power is in the three, and manifests itself to us). These things, therefore, brethren, are shown by us to be said consistently; for God is one» Hippol. contr. Noet. n. 8 (Galland. II. p. 459). «God alone, being, having nothing coeval with Himself, willed to create the world..... The Word indeed creates, Wisdom adorns... And thus another stood by Him. When I say another, I do not say two Gods, but as light from light, or as water from a fountain, or as a ray from the sun. For one is the power which is from the whole; the whole, however, is the Father, from whom is the power, the Word ⁹ (i.e. the Father and the Word are one power, and therefore one God; but the Father is called the whole, as the fountain and principle from which the Word proceeds, and therefore the Father and the Word, who are one power, are distinguished as principle and principled). This (the Word) is mind, which, coming forth (through the incarnation), is shown in the world as the Son of God (Παῖς Θεοῦ, Christ the man)... This economy John hands down to us in the Gospel, and this Word he himself confesses to be God, saying thus: in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God was the Word. If the Word was with God and was God; what then, will someone say, does John teach two Gods? Two Gods indeed I shall not say, but one, but two persons and a third economy, the grace of the Holy Spirit ¹⁰. The Father indeed one, but two persons, because also the Son, the third, however, the Holy Spirit... Otherwise we cannot understand the one God (as He has been revealed), unless we truly believe in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit» ibid. n. 10-14. The whole doctrine of Hippolytus Epiphanius embraced and illustrated, haeres. 57. T. I. p. 480. seq.

In like manner Tertullian agrees with Praxeas in preaching the unity of God, provided that the latter would also confess the distinction of persons, who by the unity of substance are one God. «We believe, he says, indeed in one God, under this dispensation, however, which we call the economy..... This heresy thinks itself to possess the pure truth, while it thinks the one God is to be believed in no other way than if it say that the same and identical one is both Father and Son and Holy Spirit, as if even so He were not one in all things, while all things are from one, namely by the unity of substance» contr. Prax. c. 2. «The work of the Gospel, the substance of the New Testament..... that thenceforth three are believed to constitute one God, so that in a new way one might be believed through the Son and the Holy Spirit, so that now God might be openly known in His own proper names and persons, who also of old, preached through the Son and the Holy Spirit, was not acknowledged» ib. c. 31.

The orthodox bishops, in the Second Council of Antioch or writing before it to Paul of Samosata before he was deposed ¹¹, prove by many arguments from the Old and New Testament, first of all, that the Son of God is true God; then they protest that the Father and the Son are not two Gods, as the Samosatene charged against the Catholics, but one and the same God. Since the Samosatene taught that Christ is called God for this reason, that the Word, the divine power, as the efficiency of God, dwelt in the man Jesus; and hence from eternity only by foreknowledge, and in time indeed actually could

On the whole, the explanation of Hippolytus is the same as that of Callistus, insofar as the latter's opinion can be gathered from the relation of the calumniator. How then shall we persuade ourselves that this author of the book τῶν φιλοσοφουμένων, whose opinion concerning the Trinity is no less repugnant to the doctrine of Hippolytus than to that of Callistus, and who was likewise the bitterest adversary of the holy Pontiffs and the head of a sect at least schismatic or even heretical against the Roman Church, was St. Hippolytus himself, a man celebrated in the tradition of the same Roman Church with pious veneration and the highest praises? The Son is proclaimed God, but in a sense far different from that in which the Father is God, lest two Gods be introduced; the Fathers condemn this doctrine, because the Son is that very true God who appeared in the V. T. and is proclaimed God in all the Scriptures. Therefore, they say, the whole Church from the Apostles onward professes that the Son is by essence and hypostasis eternal God, and yet that the Father and the Son are not two Gods but one God. «It seemed good to us, they say, to set forth in writing the faith which we received from the beginning and hold as handed down in the holy Catholic Church even to the present day from the doctrine of the Apostles... We profess and proclaim that the Son is the Wisdom and the power of God, existing before the ages, God not by foreknowledge but by essence and hypostasis, the Son of God. But whoever refuses to believe and profess that the Son of God is God before the constitution of the world, saying that two Gods are announced if the Son of God is proclaimed God, him we judge alien to the ecclesiastical rule (τοῦ ἐκκλησιαστικοῦ κανόνος), and all the catholic Churches agree with us» Collect. Concil. Mansi I. p. 1033; Opp. Dionys. Alex. ed. de Magistris p. 280. seq.; Routh. Reliquiae sacr. III. p. 289.

Not less luminous is the declaration of the creed divinely handed down to St. Gregory Thaumaturgus, who «eminently stood out» among the bishops fighting against the Samosatene (Euseb. H. E. VII. c. 28). «One God, the Father of the living Word, of the subsisting Wisdom (σοφίας ὑφεστώσης)... One Lord, alone from the alone, God from God... invisible from invisible... One Holy Spirit, having subsistence from God and shining forth through the Son, namely to men ¹²;]; the perfect image of the perfect Son; life, the cause of the living; holy fountain, sanctity, the author of sanctification; in whom (the Holy Spirit) God the Father is manifested, who is above all things and in all things, and God the Son, who is through all things; a perfect Trinity, which in glory and eternity and kingdom is neither divided nor estranged... the unchangeable and invariable, ever the same Trinity» (Galland. III. p. 385. 447).

3°. That this faith in one God, who is a Trinity in persons, belonged always not to some deeper and more hidden theology alone but to the profession common to all the faithful, can be established from the creed which was expounded in the catecheses; from the very form of baptism; from the doxology, by which from the apostolic age there was rendered one adoration, one «glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit», or «glory to the Father and to the Son with the Holy Spirit». For that this formula of glorification and of public profession proceeded from apostolic tradition, St. Basil shows at length, «which those who from the beginning prescribed and handed down to posterity confirmed through long custom in the Churches, with a use always advancing together with time» Bas. de Spiritu Sancto n. 71.

But it becomes most clear from the confessions of the martyrs what was the common understanding of this mystery in the primitive Church. They confess before the tyrants one only God, who is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; and while they proclaim one God, the creator of all things, and His Son Christ, when the question is put by the judges whether this Christ is another God, the constant answer is that there is one God, besides whom there is no other God. This confession of the martyrs we see to be the same in the various Churches, and for this faith they underwent torments and death. «True God, I glorify you with the eternal and heavenly Jesus Christ, your beloved Son, with whom to you and to the Holy Spirit be glory both now and in the future ages» St. Polycarpus at Smyrna in the year 166 (Ruinart Act. MM. ed. Veron. p. 31. n. 12; p. 36. n. 14). «I confess Christ with the Father and the Holy Spirit to be God, and it is worthy that I give back my soul to him, who is both my creator and my redeemer» St. Epipodius at Lugdunum in the year 178 (ib. p. 65. n. 6). «I confess the Lord Christ, the Son of the most high Father, the only one of the only one; I profess that he himself with the Father and the Holy Spirit is the one only God... I sacrifice to the one and living God, who is blessed for ever» St. Vincentius at Valentia in Spain in the year 304 (ib. p. 325 n. 5). «I adore the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit; I adore the holy Trinity, besides which there is no God... I now sacrifice myself to Christ, my God... Let us adore the inseparable Trinity, which Trinity is the unity of the Godhead... I sacrifice and immolate myself to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit» St. Euplus at Catana in the year 304 (ib. p. 362). «Lord God almighty, Jesus Christ... I give thanks to you, Lord Jesus Christ... to you I offer my sacrifice, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit live and reign, God, for ever and ever» St. Afra of Augusta

Vindelicorum, in the year 303 or 304 (ib. p. 401. n. 3). «Tarachus (the martyr) said: I serve and sacrifice to my God... More and more I desire to trust in the name of God and of his Christ. Maximus (the governor) said: unjust and accursed one, how do you serve two Gods, whom you confess by word, and now deny the Gods? Tarachus said: I confess plainly him who is the true God (ἐγὼ Θεὸν ὁμολογῶ τὸν ὄντως ὄντα). Maximus said: now you have confessed Christ and God (καὶ πρὶν καὶ Χριστόν τινα ἔφης εἶναι Θεόν). Tarachus said: and rightly (οὕτως ἔχει), for this is the Son of God, the hope of Christians, for whom we suffer and are saved» St. Tarachus in Cilicia in the year 304 (ib. p. 377). «Polemon (the judge) said: which God do you worship? Pionius (the martyr) answered: the almighty God, who made heaven and earth... whom we have known through his Word, Jesus Christ... To Sabina Polemon turned his words: which God do you worship? She answered: the almighty God, whom we have known through his Word, Jesus Christ. After this, with Asclepiades standing near at hand, Polemon said: which God do you worship? He answered (Asclepiades): Christ. Polemon: what then, is he another? He answered: no, but he himself, whom they too confessed a little while before... The judges said again: which God do you worship? Pionius answered: him who made heaven and adorned it with stars, who established the earth... Then they (the judges): do you mean him who was crucified? And Pionius: I mean him whom the Father sent for the salvation of the world» ¹³ with his companions at Smyrna in the year 250 (ib. p. 122 sqq.). In both the interrogations of Tarachus and of Pionius the pagans try to convince the holy martyrs that many Gods are worshipped by them, because they called both the Father and Christ almighty God; but the Christians confess that the Father and the Son are one and the same God, not one God and another; and so, although the Father is one and the Son another, they are not distinguished by Godhead but are one God.

From what has been set forth — both the explanations of the Fathers and the testimonies of the martyrs — it is evident that the universal faith and understanding of the dogma of the Church was the same from the Apostles onward, and that it was defended in the Council of Nicaea and afterwards more diligently and with settled and fixed dogmatic formulas, so that the dogma might be preserved intact in direct opposition to the new errors.

II. If you compare Petavius's book I de Trin. c. 3-5 with his own Prolegomena to the very books on the Trinity, it will not be so readily possible to form a clear and distinct notion of what, in the end, according to Petavius's opinion concerning the unity of nature and the consubstantiality of the three divine persons, not a few Fathers who flourished before the Nicene definition believed as a certain and settled doctrine; for the opinions of the Fathers, taken in the way in which they are understood by Petavius in book I, will seem to be repugnant to those things which he himself demonstrates in the Prolegomena concerning the faith of the same Fathers. Many later theologians, and among these Natalis Alexander, Maranus, Lumper, Moehler (in the work «Athanasius Magnus») and, among the Anglicans, George Bull, interpreted the more difficult locutions of the ancient Fathers not as Petavius in book I, but in another sense, which agrees with Petavius's own Prolegomena; and that this interpretation of theirs is true they demonstrated from the very principles of the Fathers, so that concerning the full agreement of the doctrine before the Nicene synod with the profession of the synod and of the subsequent Fathers with regard to the one Godhead of the three distinct persons, the matter seemed to be clear at least among Catholic theologians. Now, however, certain new interpretations are brought forward, in which a manifest error in understanding the revealed dogma, attributed to the Fathers, is covered over with the name of imperfect understanding; and this theory is defended from the principles concerning the progress of the Catholic intellect, which, in our opinion at least, are extended beyond just limits.

On the one hand these theologians confess that the faith and the profession of the dogma was the same in the ante-Nicene Fathers as afterwards; on the other hand, however, they affirm that the manner of conceiving and explaining the dogma itself was «deficient». Moreover, they find the defect not only in the use of arguments, of comparisons, of obscure expression, but in this: that most of the ante-Nicene Fathers thought the nature of the Son to be another and inferior nature than the nature of the Father is, and accordingly they indeed judged the same also concerning the nature of the Holy Spirit. Those ancient Fathers, they say, all believed the Son of God to be God, but they had not yet understood consubstantiality with the Father in the sense of the Council of Nicaea; indeed they seemed to tend toward asserting the nature of the Son as a participation in the nature of the Father, inferior «in quantity». «For as long as the ratio by which a person is related to a person is not distinguished from the ratio by which the nature in the Son is related to the nature in the Father, so long is the personal subordination (that one person has origin from another) necessarily transferred also to the essence, nor does it admit the knowledge of absolute consubstantiality; which happened to the apologists and to most of the ante-Nicene Fathers» Dr. Kuhn de Trin. § 12. p. 123. These recent theologians do not approve that we strive, by a comparison made with the declarations and formulas of the subsequent Fathers, to reduce the harsher modes of speech of the ante-Nicene Fathers to the same sense as regards the matter itself, admitting only the distinction and the progress from a more obscure and confused manner of conceiving to clearer and more distinct definitions; but they press those harsher locutions of the ancients as expressing an inferior degree and therefore a diversity of nature in the Son of God in comparison with the Father, God of all things. «The anxious zeal, they say, with which many theologians everywhere defend the more ancient Fathers, and the arbitrariness with which they reduce their opinions to the explanations of the later Fathers, is not to be imitated but rather deserves reproach». For the rest, as to the doctrine of the ante-Nicene Fathers, they bid us be secure on the basis of a principle frequently repeated in our age, which I confess I do not understand what it means, when the question concerns not the mind and will of men but doctrine and the opinion objectively considered in itself. For they say, as it were for a sufficient apology for the sound doctrine of those Fathers: «What makes a heretic is not an incomplete or even false theory, but an incomplete and perverse faith pertinaciously retained». Again, however, the same theologians not infrequently speak in such a way that they seem to concede that the Fathers in question did indeed hold the very matter of the unity of nature in distinct persons, but were only unable to express clearly and distinctly enough what they conceived with the understanding of faith. But if it is so, why should not the opinions of those ancients be reconciled with the doctrine of their successors and with the Catholic explanation of the mystery? Certainly the whole explanation of the doctrine of the ante-Nicene Fathers proposed by these learned men, so that (as they say) they may show in the understanding of the dogma of the Holy Trinity a progress from the imperfect to the more perfect, seems to me to tend toward introducing the opinion that the Fathers themselves, most of them, from the Apostles down to the fourth century, had nothing settled and fixed concerning the sense in which Christ the Son of God is and is called God, and the sense in which the three, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, are one God; indeed it seems to follow from the interpretations of these theologians that the real unity of the singularity of God, and therefore the consubstantiality of the persons, which two dogmas are «the substance of the New Testament», was still unknown in the first centuries at least to most of the Doctors, and so much the more to the other faithful.

But that such a progress cannot be admitted, if the question is universally about the Catholic understanding and not only about the error of one or another ancient Doctor, is most certain both from the proper nature of this dogma of which we speak, and from the manner in which the subsequent Fathers testified their agreement with the more ancient Fathers, and from the express and common doctrine of the ante-Nicene Fathers and martyrs.

1°. It is a question of a principal truth, expressly recorded in the Scriptures by the Apostles themselves, necessarily declared to the faithful in the preaching of the Apostles, to be explicitly believed by all the faithful, to be professed in the very initiation of baptism and daily in the creed, and to be sealed even with blood before tyrants. This truth is: that there is one God, besides whom there is no other God; that the three distinct persons, the Father,

the Son, and the Holy Spirit are this one God, not, however, three Gods; namely, that the incarnate Word of the Father, Christ, is true God, and therefore not another God but one God with the Father and the Holy Spirit. But it is repugnant to the whole nature of the Church, divinely constituted and fortified by the promises of Christ for the custody of the deposit of faith, that a truth comprehended in revelation in the manner we have said, explicitly handed down by the Apostles, to be explicitly believed by all the faithful always and everywhere, should at some time not be, according to its genuine sense, in the Catholic understanding of the Church. Therefore, in the understanding and explanation of truths of this kind, such a progress as these theologians assume cannot be admitted from the very general principles of tradition and of the economy of the Christian faith. For the nature of the dogmas which were explicitly, in themselves, handed down by the Apostles to the Churches, always expressly proposed to the faithful «by instant preaching» as to be explicitly known and believed by all, is far different from that of certain other truths, which either were revealed only implicitly in others, or were proposed by some common use and observance of discipline rather than by express doctrine, or at any rate were received by simple faith but were not inculcated by instant preaching. In these latter matters we do not deny that a progress of explanation can sometimes take place through the authentic magisterium under the direction of the Holy Spirit, in almost the same way in which those theologians assert progress in the explanation of the dogma of the Holy Trinity (see Tractat. de Traditione). From the general principles, therefore, it is concluded that it could in no way happen that the Catholic Fathers, considered in common, did not understand and teach, as regards the matter itself, the same unity of the Godhead and the same distinction of the three persons which was defined in the Council of Nicaea and afterwards vindicated in many ways. From this, however, it did not follow that the manner of speaking, whether about the unity or about the distinction, received into use was always equally determinate, in no way ambiguous, and excluding the very possibility of a false and heretical sense, of which kind we see the ecclesiastical formulas to be that were afterwards established and declared in many ways against heretical errors.

2°. Therefore if anything among the antecedent Fathers, considered in common, were ambiguous, admitting in itself several senses, it would necessarily have to be understood according to the explanations of the subsequent Fathers, who themselves proclaim their agreement with their predecessors, and profess to teach nothing other, though in other and stricter words, than what was handed down from the elders from the apostolic age. Thus Athanasius, with regard to the doctrine of consubstantiality, compares the Fathers of the third century with the Nicene Fathers. «It is not fitting to pit those against these; for they are all Fathers, nor would it be holy to discriminate among them, as if some had taught well and others, on the contrary, badly; for they all fell asleep in Christ... Nor did those three hundred write any opinion of their own, nor, trusting in themselves, did they rely on words not written before; but they too, proceeding from the Fathers (their predecessors), made use of their words» Athanas. de Synod. n. 43. If, however, the question is about the opinions of certain individual Fathers, certainly they are neither infallible, nor does the perpetuity and constancy of the universal tradition in itself, or the demonstration of it, depend on the integrity of their doctrine. Nevertheless, in a Christian dogma of this kind, such as is the profession of the one and triune God, dissent from the Catholic understanding and a twisting to a perverse sense cannot be admitted even in individual Fathers, unless it be evidently demonstrated that their doctrine can in no probable way be reconciled with the Catholic opinion. The reason for this lies in the very principles of the Fathers, in their union with the Church, in the authority and veneration with which they were regarded as lights by the Church herself, in the connection by which the Fathers of different ages, the later ones, cohere with the earlier; and especially with regard to the present question the reason is most clear in the very nature of the dogma, which could not be unknown to Catholic doctors, and certainly could not have been called into question within the confines of the Church without other Pastors and Doctors immediately crying out. This matter is established most luminously by the fact itself. When Dionysius of Alexandria, in order to express the real distinction of the Father and the Son against the Sabellians more effectively, had used certain modes of speech by which a distinction and diversity of nature seemed to be signified, he was immediately accused before the successor of Peter, Dionysius the Roman Pontiff, who on this occasion set forth the common faith, as concerning the distinction of persons so concerning the unity of nature, with that clarity which we saw above; to this definition the Alexandrian most fully assented and protested that he had always been in the same faith. (See S. Athanas. I. de sentent. Dionysii 11. 15. 17. 18. 20; de decret. Nicaen. n. 26). But about Dionysius there will be a place to speak elsewhere. The same agreement, solicitude, and clarity of understanding in guarding the deposit appears no less manifestly in the condemnation of all heretics, however subtly they disputed and covered their error with ecclesiastical words. The reason which, especially in dogmas of this kind of public and common profession, persuades that the agreement of the Fathers is always to be presumed, and that the dissent of some can be conceded only on evident demonstration, is embraced by Augustine, speaking of another dogma even less obvious than the profession of the Holy Trinity: «because, he says, they too (the Eastern Fathers) are certainly Christians, and the faith of both parts of the world is this one faith, because this faith is the Christian faith» Aug. contr. Iul. I. n. 14. (See Tract. de Tradit. th. XV.).

3°. If we now look at the doctrine itself, as it stands proposed in the monuments still left to us from before the Nicene times, the different Doctors are not so much to be distinguished among themselves as rather a twofold series of opinions is to be compared in all, or at least in most, of those Fathers.

a) All hold as a most certain fundamental principle that there is one God, besides whom there is no other; that he, considered absolutely or under the aspect of Godhead and essence, is one in such a way as the Jews and the Monarchians teach and rightly prove from the Scriptures; moreover, that it is altogether unlawful to render divine worship to anyone but the one true God. No less certain do they hold that Christ the Son of God, and likewise the third person, the Holy Spirit, is true God, to be adored with divine worship; that Christ the Son, distinct from the Father, is that one true God who appeared in the V. T. and revealed himself as the one God. It is clear, therefore, that by all those Fathers both the multiplication and the partition of the Godhead or of the divine nature is held, from Christian principles, to be absurd. Hence it is certain that the declarations of the real distinction between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit can never be understood by them in such a sense that the distinction reaches even to the one, most simple, and non-multiplicable divine essence.

b) Concerning the distinction of persons there is a twofold, different manner of arguing among those Doctors. When they simultaneously refute the opposite errors, on the one side of those asserting, along with the unity of nature, also the unity of person, on the other side of those distributing in any way whatsoever also the nature along with the distinction of persons, as we saw in the case of the Pontiffs Callistus and Dionysius; or what comes to almost the same thing, when the Fathers, vindicating the distinction of persons, simultaneously repel the calumny of the adversaries, as if nature were multiplied by this very thing, as Irenaeus often, and not rarely Tertullianus and others; in this disputation, I say, they join and defend with equal clarity the unity of nature and the distinction of persons. But frequently, on the supposition of the unity of the Godhead, they have before their eyes only the real distinction of the Father and the Son, which the heretics denied. Since here it was in no way the purpose of the Fathers to declare how the distinction is, but only its reality, whether it is, and since concerning the unity of nature they agreed without controversy with their Monarchian adversaries; it is no wonder that they often use those modes of speech which, considered in themselves, could signify not only a distinction of persons but even of natures, and which in another disputation, where the Godhead of the Son and the unity of nature would have to be vindicated, they themselves would not have used, and which we can still less conveniently use in a later age, since the formulas and definitions directly opposed to the errors both of the Monarchians and of the Triusians are now settled and fixed, formulas which necessity itself brought forth only gradually, that the dogma of unity and of distinction, always believed, might be fortified against heretics, and the frauds might be detected by which they concealed their error.

The origin of this more distinct and more constant terminology is attested by the history of the Council of Nicaea described by us above (th. IX), indeed by the whole history of the Arians and of the Pneumatomachi, as they were refuted and condemned both by the Fathers separately and in the Councils. What therefore St. Jerome says about those ancient doctors, Apol. contr. Rufin. 1. II. n. 17: «it can happen that they either simply erred, or wrote in another sense, or their writings were gradually corrupted by unskilled copyists; or at least that, before Arius was born in Alexandria like the noonday demon, they spoke certain things innocently and less cautiously, and such things as cannot escape the calumny of perverse men» — all this is to be conceded, if the speech is about the possibility of the matter and about the individual doctors considered separately, not indeed as considered in agreement. But if the question is about the fact, the first and the third ought not to be admitted without great proof; the second and the fourth are found to be most true upon inspection of the writings of those Fathers who have always been held orthodox.

« When the holy Fathers, whether before the controversy with the Arians or still after the Council of Nicaea, speak 1° of the relation of the Son to the Father as of an inferior to a superior; 2° of the voluntary generation of the Son; 3° of the operation of the Son ad extra as of one ministering to God the Father, and of his generation for the work of creation; 4° of the mission and apparitions of the Son even in the Old Testament, as of one visible and circumscribed in place before the invisible and immense Father: all those expressions among the orthodox Fathers can, and, considering their principles and declarations, must be understood of the real distinction of the Son proceeding by generation from the Father as from his principle, not however of a mode of distinction according to diversity of nature: in most of them, moreover, there is at the same time a regard to the human nature to be assumed or assumed by the Son, or to an apparition in a place through a subject creature ».

It cannot be denied that among the ante-Nicene Fathers there occur ways of speaking about the Son — and either expressly or by consequence about the Holy Spirit — in comparison with the Father, which taken by themselves and apart could signify, and in their obvious sense really would signify, the Son as distinct from the Father by nature and inferior. Nay, twofold expressions of this kind occur not rarely among the Fathers even after the Nicene Council, among those very men who most zealously vindicated the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father against the Arians. Whence in regard to these later ones no prudent man doubts that those harsher formulae are to be explained in an orthodox sense. But this very fact is already a most weighty presumption that the same expressions were used also by the earlier Fathers in this catholic sense alone. Yet we are not confined to this comparison alone with the Fathers of the later age; but, as we have already indicated among the general principles, of which mention was made at the end of the preceding thesis, those ante-Nicene Fathers themselves hand down a most explicit doctrine concerning the unity of the divine nature, which cannot be multiplied, and concerning the Son, who with the Father is one true God. Wherefore all those things which they bring forward concerning the distinction of the Father and the Son cannot have that sense by which the fundamental principle itself would be overturned; they cannot, I say, be understood of a distinction — and so much the less of a diversity of nature — but are necessarily understood only of the distinction of the Father and the Son, formally as the Father is the principle and the Son proceeds from the principle, i.e. of the distinction of persons, the unity of the Godhead or divine nature remaining safe and intact. Nor indeed are those more difficult expressions of such a kind that they do not admit the catholic sense, provided one attends to what the Fathers suppose to be conceded by the adversaries, namely the unity of the Godhead, and what they intend to obtain as denied by the same adversaries, namely the real distinction of the subsisting Son from the subsisting Father.

All those expressions revolve around four heads of catholic doctrine taken from the Scriptures themselves: that 1° God the Father is the principle, God the Son is begotten from the Father; 2° the Father begot the Son not by a material generation and after the manner of brute nature, but by an internal intellectual act and to that extent as a willing Father begot him; that 3° God the Father created all things and works ad extra through his Word, that is, through the Son; that 4° the Son, sent by the Father in the Incarnation and as it were in the preludes of the Incarnation, already manifested the Father in the theophanies of the Old Testament.

1. To the profession of generation and procession belongs this, that they call the Father superior to the Son, namely according to origin and personal ἀξίωμα; or that they teach the Son as derived from the Father as from a fullness, inasmuch as the Father is the principle and source of the Trinity.

1°. Sometimes by them the Father is proclaimed « God of the universe, » and under him the Son is numbered « in the second place » and « in the third » the Holy Spirit, and further, besides the « God of the universe, » the Son is called « another God ». Thus Justin: « I shall strive to persuade you (Jews) that there is another who is also called God and Lord under the creator of the universe, who is also called Angel, because he announces to men whatever the creator of the universe wills to announce to them, above whom there is no other God... Referring to the Scriptures I shall endeavor to persuade you that this very one who is said to have appeared to Abraham and Jacob and Moses, and is taught in the Scripture to be God, is another than the God who created all things — another, I say, in number but not in mind (ἀριθμῷ λέγω, ἀλλὰ οὐ γνώμῃ) » Justin, Dialog. with Tryph. n. 56. « We are not atheists, who worship the maker of this universe... But that we worship him, our teacher of these things, born for this office, Jesus Christ.... knowing him to be the Son of the very true God himself, and holding him in the second place and the prophetic Spirit in the third order, we shall show that we worship rationally » ¹ Id. Apol. I. n. 13.

It would already be incredible in itself that Justin did not understand what is evident in all the Scriptures — that there is one only true God, who created all things and manifested himself to the patriarchs and to Moses — and that he wished to persuade the Jew Trypho that there are two Gods, one the creator of all things, the other distinct in deity, who in the Old Testament revealed himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Moreover Justin expressly laid also this foundation of the unity of God. « Neither (he says) will there ever be another God, O Trypho, nor has there been another from the beginning besides him who created and disposed this universe. Nor do we hold that there is one God for us and another for you, but that very one who led your fathers out of the land of Egypt... Nor do we hope in any other — for there is no other — but in him in whom you also hope, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob » ibid. n. 11. Therefore Justin at the same time affirms three things as most certain in the Christian faith: first, that there is only one God, who created all things and who, the same God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, manifested himself to the patriarchs and to Moses; then, second, that the Father is another, who created all things through his Word, and that the Son is another, who, sent, manifested himself to the patriarchs; whence, third, the Father and the Son are one true God, creator of all things and God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

These things being established, the partitive « another, » when the Son is called « another God, » cannot be understood of a distinction of one deity and another, but is necessarily understood of a distinction of person, so that the Father is another and the Son another, who nevertheless are one God. Whence also the enumeration « under the God who created all things » and the counting « in the second place » and « in the third order » can indicate not a subordination of nature but only of persons, by reason of the principle and of the one proceeding from the principle ². See also Tertullian, contr. Prax. c. 3.

In the same sense the name « God above all » is sometimes used hypostatically to designate the Father, inasmuch as he is the principle of the Son and with the Son the principle of the Holy Spirit; and we see this to have been done not only by those ancient Fathers but also after the Council of Nicaea by those who more insistently than the rest defended the one nature of the Three, as by Athanasius (Apolog. ad Constant. n. 17.); Basil (ep. 38. n. 4.); Gregory of Nyssa (contr. Apollin. n. 77. Galland. VI. p. 575.). Basil l. c. describes the personal characters for the present matter thus: « The Son proceeds from the Father alone in the manner of the Only-begotten (μόνος μονογενῶς); the Holy Spirit depends on the Son (by procession τοῦ υἱοῦ μὲν ἤρτηται), with whom he is inseparably thought, and has his subsistence, hanging (in origin) on the Father as principle (τῆς τε τοῦ πατρὸς ἐξηρτημένον ἔχει τὸ εἶναι); but he who is the God above all things alone has the peculiar mark of his hypostasis, that he is the Father and that he subsists from no principle » ³ Basil. T. III. p. 117. (See Tract. de Incarnat. th. IX. n. II.).

To the same point could be reduced, absolutely speaking, Origen's distinction in Io. tom. 2. n. 2. 3. (Opp. T. IV. p. 50. 51.). « The Father (he says) is called God with the article (ὁ Θεός), but the Word, which was with God and which was God, is called without the article Θεός; and this for this reason, that the Father may be signified as αὐτόθεος, i.e. God without a principle from which he proceeds, and the Son may be understood in his personal property as the one who has the divinity communicated from the Father ». He explains this distinction between the name ὁ Θεός and Θεός by another example. The Word is called ὁ Λόγος with the article, but in creatures reason is λόγος without the article, because the Word (ὁ Λόγος) is the exemplar and source of every reason which in creatures is λόγος as a certain participation of him who is ὁ Λόγος, reason absolutely perfect. « Both therefore hold the place of a source — the Father indeed of divinity (inasmuch as it is communicated to the Son), the Son but of reason (participated in creatures) ». The comparison is not between the communication of divinity from the Father and of created reason from the Word as to mode, as if it were the same on both sides; but the comparison is of an only analogous communication. This doctrine — that the deity in the Father is not communicated by another and therefore the Father is called ὁ Θεός and αὐτόθεος, while in the Son the deity is communicated from the Father by generation and therefore he is called Θεός — Origen opposes to a twofold or threefold error: first, generally, of those who, predicating God of the Father and of the Son, think that two Gods are introduced; then of those who, to avoid this error of ditheism, either deny the personal distinction of the Son from the Father, or, granting the distinction, deny the divinity of the Son. « From these things (he says) that can now be solved which disturbs many, who, wishing to be lovers of God, fear lest two Gods be proclaimed, and on that account fall into false and impious dogmas — either so as to deny the property of the Son as other than the property of the Father, confessing him to be God whom they themselves call Son only in name (since they do not believe him really distinct from the Father); or so as to deny the divinity of the Son, granting his property and substance according to circumscription to be other than the Father's » ⁴ Origen. l. c.

Likewise, it pertains not to distinction of nature but to indicating the generation of the Son from the Father, and at the same time to declaring the dominion of the incarnate Son according to his humanity, that — not only before the Council of Nicaea, as Tertullian contra Prax. c. 13., but also the subsequent Fathers, from the very biblical usage of speech (cf. I. Cor. VIII. 6; XII. 4-6; Eph. IV. 5. 6. etc.) — they observe that in the enumeration together the Father is called God, the Son however Lord, namely in the hypostatic signification of these names, although in the absolute signification the Son is the same God as the Father, and the Father the same Lord as the Son. « The doctrine of piety, that we know one God, the unbegotten Father, and one Lord, the begotten Son, who is indeed called God when he is spoken of by himself and apart, but Lord when he is named together with the Father — the former on account of nature (because there is one deity), the latter on account of the unity of principle » (διὰ τὴν μοναρχίαν) Gregor. Naz. or. 25. al. 23. 1. 15. cf. Hilar. Trin. l. VIII. n. 35-37; Basil. ep. 8. al. 141. n. 3; Chrysost. in 1. Cor. hom. 20. n. 3; de Incomprehens. hom. 5. n. 1. 2.; Theodoret. in 1. Cor. VIII. 6.

2°. Another way of speaking pertaining to the notion of the principle and of the one proceeding from the principle needs explanation when they use words which, considered by themselves, could signify a partition of the divine nature or a communication of a nature not the same as that which is the Father's, but another inferior one. Tertullian calls the Father « the whole substance, » the Son « the derivation of the whole and a portion, » and says that the Son, compared with the Father, is « by measure other from the other » contr. Prax. c. 9.

But in truth both the immediate context of this passage and the whole doctrine defended by Tertullian in the entire book against Praxeas and elsewhere — of one substance and deity in three substantial persons, which are distinguished among themselves only by the relations of origin — is so clear that he could not have called the Father « the whole substance » as compared with the Son except by reason of principle, nor could he have understood the Son in any other sense as « the derivation of the whole » except that the « whole, » namely the very same deity which is the Father's, is derived by generation into the Son; or that he said « derivation of the whole » as a derivation from the whole, by which name of the whole the Father must be understood as the primordial principle (ἀρχὴ προκαταρκτική) and source of the Trinity. But the name « portion » is an apposite synonym, signifying the same as « derivation of the whole »; for portion is the same as partition, signifying not a division but, on account of the perfection of the thing in question, only a communication ⁵. Tertullian himself elsewhere (contr. Marc. l. III. c. 6.) explains this sense, that the Father is the fullness, the Son the portion inasmuch as he is « partaker of the fullness ». Nor does anything stand in the way of the fact that contra Prax. c. 9. he confirms that account of « the whole and the portion » with the words of Christ: « The Father is greater than I » Io. XIV. 28. For very many Fathers, even after the Council of Nicaea and in the dispute against the Arians, interpreted this saying of the Son considered according to divinity: that the Father is called greater than the Son not indeed by reason of nature, which those Doctors in their interpretation had the purpose of defending as one in the Father and in the Son, but by reason of origin and according to the ἀξίωμα of paternity, that the Father is the principle of the Son. (See the Fathers in Petav. l. II. c. 2. n. 1-9). With this interpretation of the words of Christ admitted, Tertullian could rightly appeal to them not only to demonstrate, for his principal purpose, the very thing of the distinction of the Father and the Son, but he could also derive from them his own peculiar way of speaking. He himself declares l. c., in what sense the Father is said to be greater than the Son: « while the one who begets (he says) is another, the one who is begotten is another; while the one who sends is another, the one who is sent is another; while the one who makes is another, the one through whom it is made is another ». With a wholly parallel expression he signifies the relation of origin between the Son and the Holy Spirit, calling the Son « the substantial sum, » the Holy Spirit « the portion » (contr. Marc. IV. c. 18). When then he says that the Son is « by measure other from the Father, » by the name of measure he means nothing else but the mode of subsisting or the formal reason of the Son, by which the Son, begotten, is other than the Father begetting. Just as he here calls the personal formal reason a measure and, inasmuch as it is regarded in the Son, below c. 14 calls it « the measure of derivation, » so above c. 2. he had said that the Father, the Son, the Spirit are three in degree, form, kind, but of one substance, and of one state and one power, « because one God, from whom those degrees and forms and kinds are assigned in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ».

We have already seen above p. 154 an entirely similar way of speaking in s. Hippolytus, who in that context, where he most of all confesses the Father and the Son to be one God and one essential power, to declare the distinction of persons and the notion of the principle and of the one proceeding from the principle calls the Father « the whole » and the Word « the Power from the whole ».

3°. We will refer here the opinion of Clement of Alexandria, Strom. VII. p. 702 (ed. Paris. 1641), where it is said that « the nature of the Son is most close (or most united) to the sole Almighty » ἡ τοῦ υἱοῦ φύσις, ἡ τῷ μόνῳ παντοκράτορι προσεχεστάτη.

First of all, in this very context the Son of God is described with attributes proper to the one true God. After the cited words Clement goes on to say that this nature of the Son is the highest excellence (ἡ μεγίστη ὑπεροχή), which with unwearied and inexhaustible power works all things and looks into hidden thoughts. « The Son of God is not divided, not separated (from the Father), not passing from place to place, existing everywhere, nowhere circumscribed, wholly mind, wholly paternal light, wholly eye, seeing all things, hearing all things, knowing all things, searching powers with power » etc. Then throughout his writings Clement celebrates the one deity, not multipliable, of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. « God is the cause of all things; therefore nothing is hated by God, but neither by the Word, for both are one, namely God (ἓν γὰρ ἄμφω, Θεός); for he said: in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was in God (ἐν τῷ Θεῷ), and God was the Word... God is both good and just... But God is one, and above the one and above the monad itself. For that reason the particle Thou (in the words: Thou, Father, in me and I in Thee), having a demonstrative emphasis, designates God, who alone essentially is, was, and will be (see Tract. de Deo th. XXII. n. II.)... For he who set these indeed at the right hand, those however at the left (good and just), inasmuch as the Father is conceived as being good, is called by that alone which he is, namely good (Matth. XIX. 17); inasmuch as the Son, however, existing as his Word, is in the Father, he is called just, from the relation to one another » Clem. Paedagog. l. I. c. 8. Therefore God is one and above unity, to which namely the addition of another unity intrinsically repugnates (Tract. de Deo l. c.), and the same one God is the Father and the Son, who are distinguished among themselves by relation to one another, not however by deity, as being one; whence while goodness is appropriated to the Father and justice to the Son the judge, he who is called good and just is the same one God. See also the doxology taken from ecclesiastical usage at the end of book III of Clement's Paedagogus. There is the prayer: « be gracious to thy little children, Son and Father, both one, O Lord! » and praise and thanksgiving is expected to be borne in heaven « to the Father and the Son alone, to the Son and the Father with the Holy Spirit, through all things one (πάντα ἑνί), through all things good, beautiful, wise, just, to whom be glory both now and forever, Amen ».

This doctrine being presupposed, it is manifest that in that saying: « the nature of the Son most close to the Almighty, » there cannot be a comparison between the nature of the Father and of the Son considered absolutely, but a relation of person to person must necessarily be understood. Wherefore « the nature of the Son » is understood as the nature formally as identified with the Son, and thus « the nature of the Son » signifies the same as the Son or the person

of the Son (see Tract. de Incarnat. th. XXXV. cf. Petav. Trin. l. IV. c. 2. n. 3. 4). But in this hypostatic signification « the nature of the Son most close (most united προσεχεστάτη) to the Almighty (the Father) » can rightly be said for a twofold reason.

a) In comparison ad extra with creatures, the nature of the Son is the closest to the Father, because the Son is by generation the consubstantial image of the Father, the splendor (ἀπαύγασμα) of His glory, and the figure (χαρακτήρ) of His substance (Heb. I. 3); creatures, angels and men are images of the image through creation. Thus the Fathers frequently speak (Petav. VI. 5), and Clement himself in Protrept. p. 62: « His Word is the image of God, and the genuine Son of His mind, the archetypal light of light; but man is the image of the Word ». This is the proper sense in which Clement calls the Son the nature closest to the Father; for in the context he compares men, angels, and the Son by reason of their nearness to the Father: « On earth the most excellent is man of the greatest piety toward God; in heaven the most excellent is the angel, who by his place more closely and already more purely partakes of the eternal and blessed life ». Then he progresses from creatures to Him who is above heaven and earth and therefore above all creatures: « For truly the most perfect and most holy and most principal and commanding and royal and most beneficent nature of the Son, which is closest to the almighty alone ».

b) Even in the comparison ad intra according to the origin of the persons — since the Son proceeds from the Father alone, the Spirit from the Father and the Son or from the Father through the Son — the Son can be said, in preference to the Holy Spirit, to be « προσεχέστατος » to the Father. Thus St. Gregory of Nyssa: « Confessing, he says, the indifference of nature, we do not deny the difference by reason of principle and of that which is from the principle, in which alone we understand one to be distinguished from the other, because we believe one to be the principle, the other to be from the principle. And in this, that it is from the principle, we again understand another difference: for one (the Son) is proximately from the first, the other (the Holy Spirit) is through the proximate from the first (τὸ μὲν προσεχῶς ἐκ τοῦ πρώτου, τὸ δὲ διὰ τοῦ προσεχοῦς ἐκ τοῦ πρώτου), so that the character of the Only-begotten (τὸ μονογενές, who is the only one from the Father alone) may remain undoubted in the Son, and it may not be doubted that the Holy Spirit is from the Father with the Son as the medium (καὶ τὸ ἐκ τοῦ προσεχοῦς αὐτὸν εἶναι τῆς τοῦ υἱοῦ μεσιτείας) — which order of the medium (of the Son between the Father and the Holy Spirit) both preserves the character of the Only-begotten for the Son and does not separate the Holy Spirit from His natural relation to the Father » Nyssen, l. Quod non tres Dii ad Ablav. T. II. p. 459. (cf. Petav. VII. 11.).

II. Further, there is to be examined here a doctrine which recurs not only among the earlier Fathers (as e. g. in Hippolytus contr. Noet. n. 15.), but also often in the disputations against the Arians. The Fathers concede this proposition: the Father begot the Son by will. Most of them were brought to treat this question of voluntary generation by the perpetual sophism of the adversaries. The Arians asked whether the Father begot the Son willing or unwilling. If Catholics affirmed the latter, they said that it would follow that the Father begot the Son coerced or unwilling, or that the generation is not such as befits a spirit, but after the manner of a natural procession, such as is found in bodies lacking cognition and will — both of which are repugnant in God. If the other were conceded, namely that the Son was begotten by the Father by will, they inferred by this very fact that the Son was made, when previously He was not, and that He is not consubstantial with the Father.

The Fathers answer in different ways according to their diverse purpose; for sometimes they concede in one sense, sometimes they deny in another, that the Son was begotten by the Father by will. In order to exclude the absurd calumny, as if the Son were said to be begotten against the Father's will or after the manner of a brute nature, they say that the Son was assuredly begotten with the will — where they signify not the free efficient will, which the Arians had in mind, but the natural concomitant will, namely that from the very notion of the infinite spirit the generation of the Word is indeed through the intellect and with the will of the Father; just as God is God by will, not because the will is the efficient cause of God, but because God, existing from His own inner perfection, certainly wills to be God, nor is He unwillingly God ⁶. « Since the Son was taught to subsist not from will, as the rest of things, lest He have His essence according to will only and not also according to nature, occasion seemed to be given to the heretics to ascribe to God the Father a necessity of begetting the Son from Himself (i. e. they would falsely charge that this follows from the Catholics' view), as if, with the law of nature compelling Him, He had brought Him forth unwillingly. But this is not the condition of passions in God the Father.... Before all times the Father, willing impassibly from the essence of His nature, gave to the Son the essence of natural nativity (al. the nativity of the natural essence) » s. Hilar. de Synod. n. 69. « Because the Son is from nature and not from will, is He therefore also apart from the will of the Father, and with the Father unwilling? By no means, but rather the Father wills the Son... For as He did not begin to be good from will, yet neither is He good against His judgment and will; for what He is, He Himself wills to be... so since the Son is proper to His nature, He is not apart from His will. Let the Son therefore be willed and beloved by the Father, and in this manner let one piously think that God wills and does not will the contrary » s. Athanas. contr. Arian. orat. III. n. 66.

But in the direct attack on the Arian dogma, by which they said that the Son was made or begotten by the free will of the Father, the holy Doctors deny that the Son was begotten by the will of the Father. Nor, however, does it follow from this that the Father begot the Son unwillingly; for what proceeds from the internal exigency and necessity of a perfect spiritual nature is neither from the free choice of the will nor against the will, but from a principle of nature that is intelligent and willing, that is, with a concomitant will. « Therefore I would call Him neither unwilling nor willing.... For just as the good Father is not from will or from necessity (unwilling and coerced) but above both, that is, by nature; so the Father does not beget from will or necessity » Ambros. de Fid. l. IV. c. 9. n. 103. See Augustin. Trin. XV. c. 20. n. 38.

What the Fathers frequently answer to the Arians in this manner, in order to defend the equality of the Son with the Father, is also to be understood in a right sense. If the Son is less than the Father, they say, either the Father could not beget one equal to Himself, and He is not omnipotent: or He would not, and He is not good but envious (Basilius, Gregor. Nyssenus, Augustinus). The true notion of the Son and the true generation through the communication of nature is presupposed; whence omnipotence and goodness, from which they deduce the fullness of the communicated nature, cannot be understood as efficient, as in the order toward creatures, but must be understood as the intimate perfection of the fecundity and communicability of nature, inasmuch as it is identified with the Father. For since the Arians said that the Son was made by the omnipotence and goodness of God, the Fathers inflected omnipotence and goodness as befits not effecting but generation; and in this sense paternal omnipotence and goodness, formally as paternal and hypostatic, is the power of fecundity and the goodness of the communication of nature, by which the Son is begotten. Wherefore that statement: « if the Father could not or would not beget a Son equal to Himself, He is either not omnipotent or not good, » is reduced to this other one: if He could not or would not, there is not in the Father the highest perfection of the communicability of nature. It is evident, however, that arguments of this kind are not adduced by the Fathers as a demonstration of the fact, whether the thing is; but, the revelation of the truth being presupposed, they are proposed as arguments ad hominem, or for some declaration of the manner in which the thing is.

III. Another head of doctrine, in which we said that ambiguous and sometimes more obscure locutions of the ancient Fathers occur, is this: that the Father creates and operates through the Word. Although the operation ad extra in God is not really anything other than the divine essence itself, with the respect to and connotation of the external term, and by this very fact the operation of the three persons is so one without distinction, just as the divine essence is one and undivided; nevertheless the essence, and consequently the operation, is communicated from the Father to the Son, and from the Father and the Son to the Holy Spirit, in whom the communication of nature, as it were, comes to rest and is completed, nor is any further procession given than that of the Word through the intellect and of the Holy Spirit through the will, that is, through love. This order of communication and of relations is expressed by the biblical and ecclesiastical locution by which the Father is said to operate through the Son in the Holy Spirit. But if not the relation of the persons but the nature is regarded, the locution: God made all things through the Word and the Holy Spirit, is equivalent to the other: God made all things through Himself. (See Irenaeus above, p. 152).

Now 1°. this same relation of origin of the Son from the Father is expressed when not only the ante-Nicene Fathers but very frequently also the subsequent ones say that the Son ministers to the Father in the creation of the world and in the works ad extra. There is noted by Petavius among the sayings of the ancients which seem to diverge from the rule of faith also this, that Irenaeus (l. IV. c. 17. al. c. 7. n. 4. et l. III. c. 8. n. 3.) said that the Son ministers to the Father (Petav. l. I. c. 3. n. 7.), in which manner also Theophilus Antiochenus (ad Autolyc. l. II. n. 10), Clemens Alex. (Strom. VII. p. 703.) and others speak.

But Irenaeus himself in the cited place declares that the ministry of the Word and of the Holy Spirit, to which all angels are subject, is altogether different from the ministry of a creature. « God does not need the ministry (of angels) for the fabrication of the things that were made, but He has a copious and ineffable ministry. For His offspring and His formation, that is, the Son and the Holy Spirit, the Word and Wisdom, minister to Him for all things, to which all angels serve and are subject ». In the same sense we have heard Irenaeus (p. 151) teaching that God had no need of angels as ministers for creation: for He has His own hands, the Word and Wisdom (the Holy Spirit), and thus not through created ministers but through Himself, i. e. through the Word and Wisdom, He made all things.

The Fathers after the Council of Nicaea, disputing against the Arians themselves, speak no differently. Thus St. Basil: « The Word is that which in the beginning was with God, and was God; but the Spirit of the mouth of God is the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father. And so you understand three things: the Lord commanding, the Word creating, and the Spirit confirming ». He declares that by these things the unity of action in the three persons is not only not excluded but even included: « let no one believe that I posit three original (ἀρχικάς, i. e. not proceeding from another as from a principle) hypostases, or that the operation of the Son is imperfect. For the principle of all things that exist is one, creating through the Son and perfecting in the Spirit ». Finally the holy Doctor explains the manner in which, just as the nature is one, so the operation of the three should be understood as one, and in the internal relations themselves he shows the reason why the commanding Father and the ministering Son are distinguished. « The Word, he says, full of the Father's goods, shining forth from the Father (τοῦ Πατρὸς ἀπαύγασμα), does all things in the likeness of Him who begot Him. For His essence in no way differs from the Father, nor does His power differ. But those whose power is equal also have an entirely equal operation; for Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. And so all things were made through Him, and all things were created through Him and in Him, not because He fulfills an instrumental and servile ministry, but because as a creator (δημιουργικῶς) He perfects the paternal will... Wherefore, that which is said to be a commandment — let us not understand an imperious speech uttered through vocal organs, prescribing to the Son as to a subject what He ought to do; but, as befits God, let us think of a communication of will, like the irradiation of a certain form in a mirror, flowing from the Father into the Son eternally »⁷ Basil. de Spiritu Sancto n. 19. 20. 38.

Excellent, and in the same sense, the Fathers of the Council of Antioch speak against Paul of Samosata: « The Son, who is always with the Father, we believe fulfilled the paternal will in the creation of the universe. For He (Pater) Himself said and they were made: He Himself commanded and they were created. But he who commands, commands another, whom we are persuaded is none other than the only-begotten Son of God, God... inasmuch as He truly is and operates, as being at once the Word and God, through whom the Father makes all things, not as through an instrument nor as through a knowledge not subsisting by itself: for the Father begot the Son as a living act subsisting by itself, operating all things in all » γεννήσαντος μὲν τοῦ Πατρὸς τὸν Υἱὸν ὡς ἐνεργὸν καὶ ἐνυπόστατον, ἐνεργοῦντα τὰ πάντα ἐν πᾶσι (Mansi Conc. T. I. p. 1035.). Thus also Athenagoras (Legat. n. 10.) says that the Son came forth, so that He might be the idea and act of all created things, ἰδέα καὶ ἐνέργεια. And Augustinus frequently calls the Son Himself « a commandment not given from time, but a commandment born »; « for the Father's command that all things be made, he says, is nothing other than the Word, through which all things were made » Aug. serm. 120. n. 6; l. contr. serm. Arian. c. 3; Trin. l. I. c. 12. n. 26.; contr. Faust. l. II. c. 5.; in Io. tract. XXI. n. 4.

2°. A certain singular manner of speaking of those ancient Fathers about the generation of the Son in relation to the work of creation requires a somewhat more diligent consideration. For they seem to say that the Word was brought forth or begotten by God the Father for the creation of the world, and that in such a way that this generation of the Word seems to have been free for the Father, and the co-eternity of the Word with the Father is not sufficiently understood. Thus Theophilus Antiochenus speaks. « Nothing is coeval with God, but since He Himself is a place for Himself, and needs nothing and is older than the ages, He willed to make man, to whom He might make Himself known... Having therefore God His own Word implanted in His own bowels (τὸν ἑαυτοῦ λόγον ἐνδιάθετον ἐν τοῖς ἰδίοις σπλάγχνοις), He begot it together with His Wisdom⁸ bringing it forth before this universe. This Word He had as the minister of His works, and through it He founded all things... The prophets did not yet exist, when the world was being founded, but the Wisdom of God was in Him and His holy Word, which is always with Him » Theoph. ad Autolyc. l. II. n. 10.

A little later, more clearly, he calls it « the Word of God, which is also His Son — not as the poets feign the sons of the gods, but as the truth declares — the Word which always exists implanted in the heart of God (τὸν λόγον τὸν ὄντα διὰ παντὸς ἐνδιάθετον ἐν καρδίᾳ Θεοῦ). For before anything was made, that Word had a consort of counsels (σύμβουλον), inasmuch as it is His mind and His intelligence. But when God willed to make what He had determined, He begot this Word as uttered (προφορικόν), the firstborn of every creature — not that He Himself would become empty of the Word, but begetting the Word and always conversing with His Word (in Himself). These things the holy Scriptures teach us, and all who were inspired by the Holy Spirit, among whom John, saying thus: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God. With these words he shows that in the beginning God alone was, and the Word in Him. Then he adds: and the Word was God, all things were made through Him. The Word therefore, since it is God and begotten from God, the Father of all sends it, when it has seemed good to Him, into some place, etc. » ibid. n. 22.

The same doctrine, and for the most part in almost the same formulas of speech, other Fathers set forth: Iustinus dial. cum Tryph. n. 61; Tatianus contr. Graec. n. 5; Athenagoras Legat. n. 10; Hippolytus contr. Noet. n. 10; Tertullianus contra Prax. c. 5. 6; Novatianus c. 31.

Evidently in these passages the Word is regarded in two ways: a) in itself and in its internal relation to the Father, as it is described in the first two verses of the Gospel of John; b) in its relation ad extra, i. e. inasmuch as in the Word there is considered either the idea and counsel of creation communicated from eternity by the Father to the Son, or the very manifestation in time and the operation ad extra and the mission from the Father, as it is exhibited in the third verse of the same Gospel.

In the former consideration the eternity of the Word and the unity of essence with the Father are described most explicitly; for it is the Word, of which John says: In the beginning it was, and it was God, which is the mind and intelligence of the Father (νοῦς καὶ φρόνησις), which therefore is necessarily always the Word implanted in God the Father. But lest it be held as an absolute attribute of God, the distinction of the Word from Him whose Word it is is expressed no less explicitly. It is the Word which, on John's testimony, was with God, which is the counselor or consort of the Father's counsels, which is begotten by the Father with an eternal generation; for it is said to be from eternity in the bowels, in the heart of the Father, so that it is the Son of the Father, as John calls « the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father ». The Word therefore ἐνδιάθετον for these Fathers is not an absolute attribute of wisdom, as the Sabellians and afterwards also the Arians interpreted λόγον ἐνδιάθετον (Petav. VI. c. 3. n. 3; c. 4. n. 2.); but it is the hypostatic Word, the Son distinct from the Father. It is, however, called ἐνδιάθετον in comparison to λόγον προφορικόν, not because the Fathers, like the Arians, thought the uttered Word προφορικόν to be different from the implanted Word; but one and the same Word, which considered in itself and in its relation to the Father is the implanted Word, they called uttered, inasmuch as it operates and is manifested ad extra. For in this latter consideration, already from the manner in which they describe the Word in the heart of the Father and the Word brought forth to the divine works, it manifestly appears that not one thing and another but one Word is exhibited under a diverse aspect. Indeed they explicitly enunciate this unity of the Word: « The Father, when He willed, begot as uttered this Word which He always had implanted in His heart ».

The Fathers therefore distinguish by the name of generation two very different things: the eternal generation, by which the Son in Himself is a person distinct from the Father, like a counselor in the bowels and in the heart of the Father; and then the manifestation of the Son ad extra, which is neither from eternity nor necessary but free, and which, as a mission of the begotten One, is called the generation ad extra. Hence Theophilus does not say simply: « when He willed, He begot the Word, » but: « He begot the Word as uttered, » namely so that what was from eternity the begotten implanted Word should now also be uttered, that is, manifested ad extra. Most clearly Hippolytus in the cited place says that this generation ad extra is a showing forth of the Word, so that what was previously visible to the Father alone might become knowable to creatures: « when He willed and as He willed, He showed His Word (ἔδειξεν τὸν λόγον αὐτοῦ) at the times defined by Him, through which He made all things.... But of the things that were made He was begetting the Word as leader and counselor and maker; which Word, since He had it in Himself, and it was invisible to the created world (i. e. to creatures not yet existing), He made visible, sending forth the first voice, and begetting light from light He sent forth to the creature the Lord; His own proper intellect, previously visible to Himself alone but invisible to the created world, this He made visible, so that the world, seeing Him when He appeared, might be saved »⁹.

No less lucidly does Methodius define this manner of generation, Conv. Virgin. or. VIII. n. 9 (Galland. T. II. p. 719): « Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee. For it must be observed that he pronounced him to be indeed his own Son, indefinitely and without any determination of time: for he says to him, thou art, not thou hast been made... But what he adds, this day have I begotten thee, means this: him who preexisted in the heavens before the ages I willed to beget also for the world, that is, to make known him who was previously unknown (ἔστι τὸ πρότερον ἀγνοούμενον γνωρίσαι).

So also Tertullian, contr. Prax. c. 5-7, considers the Word first as begotten from eternity by God the Father ad intra, and in this way calls it the Reason; then as manifested ad extra, and in this way names it the Speech, both of which, he says, the Greeks comprehend under the name τοῦ λόγου (cf. Aug. l. 44. 83. q. 63). To the eternal generation he refers Prov. VIII. 22-26: « before he made anything, before the hills I was brought forth »; to the generation ad extra he applies the sentences of v. 27 sq.: « with him I was composing all things » etc.

But since there he refutes Praxeas, who admitted the Reason or the Wisdom or the inborn Word in no other way than as absolute wisdom, and acknowledged as the uttered Word only a transient and vocal word; therefore Tertullian contends that the very Reason of the Father, or the inborn Word, begotten in the mind of the Father from eternity, becomes in time the uttered Word, or the Speech. Moreover, he calls this generation of the Speech ad extra a perfect nativity — not indeed in comparison with the generation ad intra, as if he had thought the latter imperfect; but by regarding the nativity formally as that of the Speech, i.e. of the Word manifested ad extra, in which same sense Theophilus speaks of the generation of the Word, formally as it is uttered. This nativity of the Speech, therefore, Tertullian calls perfect, inasmuch as, in opposition to the transient and vocal word of the Praxeans, it is the manifestation of the substantial and personal Word. « As soon as God willed to bring forth into their substances and species those things which he had disposed within himself with the reason and Speech of Wisdom, he first brought forth the Speech itself, that through it all things might be made, through which they had been thought out and disposed, indeed already made, as far as in the mind of God... This is the perfect nativity of the Speech, while it proceeds from God, created (begotten) by him first for the thought in the name of Wisdom: the Lord created me the beginning of his ways; then generated (ad extra formally as the Speech, or as the uttered Word) for the effect: when he prepared the heaven, I was present with him » ib. c. 7¹⁰

Nor are there lacking among the Fathers after the Council of Nicaea those who in the same way distinguish the generation ad intra from eternity and the generation ad extra in time. Thus Gregory, who is thought to be of Illiberis (among the Opp. Gregor. Naz. or. 49. n. 5): « The Son is from nothing other than the Father, because he is always with the Father; and therefore he is called the Wisdom of God, so that the Father may never be believed to be without Wisdom, i.e. without his Son. This is that ineffable Wisdom which at the beginning of the ways of God is described by Solomon (Prov. VIII. 22) as either created or begotten or made; yet he says it was so created as to show that it was always with God... For God did not so create his Wisdom as if he had at some time been without Wisdom; but when he says the beginning of his ways, he points out the beginning of the motion of some work, so that the Wisdom of God has this beginning, that it proceeded from God to create all things both heavenly and earthly, not in the way (perhaps: in that manner) it began to be. Thus Wisdom was created, indeed begotten, not for itself, because it always was, but for those things which had to be made from it ». Zeno of Verona has things nearly twin to these, l. II. tract. IV. et V. (See the Ballerini in Opp. s. Zenonis dissertat. II. c. 1.).

IV. The last manner of conceiving and speaking which, we said, among the pre-Nicene Fathers stands in need of explanation pertains to the visible apparitions of the Word and to the manifestation of the Father through the Son. For they seem to have thought that God the Father, by reason of his eminence and his immensity, could never appear by himself, but that the Son could appear, and in these his apparitions be in a certain way circumscribed by place; and so that the Father is by his nature invisible, but the Son either is or can become visible, and that thus the invisible Father is manifested to men by the Son, in his person and through his person made visible. From this doctrine Petavius and now again certain recent authors conclude that those ancient doctors thought the Son lower in nature than the Father, or at least that they had not yet understood the unity of nature in distinct persons.

The sum of the doctrine is the same in Justin, Apolog. I. n. 63; Dialog. n. 60. 127; Irenaeus, l. IV. c. 6. n. 3. 5-7; c. 20. n. 4. 5. 11; Theophilus of Antioch, ad Autolyc. l. II. n. 22; Clement of Alexandria (ed. Paris. 1641) Paedag. l. 1. c. 7. p. 110. 111; Strom. l. IV. p. 537; V. p. 562; VI. p. 643. 644; VII. p. 733; Tertullian, contra Prax. c. 14-16; Novatian, de Trin. c. 25. 26.

Now indeed 1° none of them says that the Son is or can become visible in his own divine nature, as if this were of a lower order, or that the Son according to the divine nature is not equally immense and everywhere present as the Father. They only teach that the Son can become and has become visible chiefly in the assumed human nature, in which God the Son is at the same time true man, and also in the Old Testament « through a subject creature », namely through various manifestations showing the presence of the Son as a person sent by the Father and hence as a distinct person.

Irenaeus sets forth these manifestations of the Word in many ways and often. « The Word indeed spoke to Moses, appearing in sight, as if one speaks to his friend. But Moses desired to see manifestly him who spoke with him, and it was said to him: for no man sees my face and lives; signifying both things, that man is incapable (powerless) of seeing God, and that through the wisdom of God in the last times man will see him in his coming which is according to man (i.e. the incarnate Word)... Therefore the prophets did not see the very face of God manifestly, but the dispensations and mysteries through which man would begin to see God... Therefore if neither Moses saw God, nor Elias, nor Ezechiel, but the things seen by these were likenesses of the clarity of the Lord and prophecies of future things (of the incarnation); it is manifest that the Father indeed is invisible, of whom also the Lord said: No one has ever seen God. But his Word, as he himself willed, and for the benefit of the beholders, showed the clarity of the Father and set forth the dispensations » Iren. IV. c. 20. n. 9 sq. The doctrine was announced to the Gentiles, « that the Word, invisible indeed naturally, was made palpable and visible among men » ibid. c. 24. n. 2.

Likewise Justin says that the Son of God is called Angel and Apostle, because he is sent by the Father; and therefore that he who appeared in the Old Testament is indeed true God, yet is not the Father but the Son, « who, since he is the Word, the firstborn of God, is also God, and appeared earlier indeed to Moses and the other prophets through the species of fire and through an incorporeal image (i.e. in various manifestations, which were not a true physical body), but now in the times of your empire (of the Caesars) was made man from a Virgin according to the will of the Father » Apol. I. 63; Dialog. n. 127.

Tertullian indeed urges against Praxeas that God is said to be invisible, and again that God was seen by the patriarchs and prophets, in order to show from this the distinction of persons — of the Father who is invisible, and

of the Son who was made visible. But first of all he declares that « God was seen according to the capacity of men, not according to the fullness of majesty »; then he concedes that « the Son also, in his own name, is invisible to that extent, inasmuch as he is the Speech and spirit of God from the condition of his substance »; nevertheless he goes on, « the Son was visible before the flesh in the way in which he speaks to Aaron and Miriam ». This way is this, that to the patriarchs and prophets and to Moses himself, before he spoke to him « mouth to mouth in species, that is, in truth », God, that is, the Son of God, was always seen « in a mirror and in an enigma and in vision and in dream ». Indeed he thinks even the vision of Moses face to face is probably to be explained in almost the same way, « because the Speech and the spirit cannot be seen except in an imaginary form ». But the Son made flesh was already properly visible himself, although not in the divine but in the human nature: he is not the Father, but « another, whom the flesh made more fully visible, him also seen of old in an enigma; namely the Speech, who also was made flesh, another whom no one ever saw (in the divine nature) except the Father, namely whose Speech he is » Tertull. contr. Prax. c. 14. 15.

Hence 2° when those ancient doctors seem to exclude immensity from the Son, who appears visible, and to attribute circumscription to him, as Theophilus l. c., Tertullian c. 16, and Novatian l. c.; this circumscription could not be understood by them according to the divine nature of the Son, but there they have before their eyes first the human nature, according to which indeed the Son is not everywhere, and while he was on earth, according to the same human nature he was not in heaven; whence both Christ and the Apostles speak of the descent from heaven, and in the most proper sense of the ascent into heaven. Moreover, those ancient Fathers regarded the theophanies of the O.T. as certain preludes to the Incarnation and to the apparition of God in the flesh; and therefore they held both those phenomena of fire, cloud, human figure etc., and the actions of eating, motion from place to place etc. in the theophanies as shadows of the human nature to be assumed; indeed the very anthropomorphic locutions which occur in the O.T. about God they not rarely interpreted as pre-significations of the future humanity. According to this manner of considering, therefore, they denied immensity and affirmed circumscription and local motion of the Son not in himself and in his divine nature, but inasmuch as he appeared in those circumscribed phenomena and figures of the humanity to be assumed: « whom the Father willed to be born man from the Virgin, who was also made fire at one time to converse with Moses in the bush » Iustin. Dial. n. 127. So also Theophilus l. c. says most expressly that the Word, inasmuch as it is the Wisdom and Virtue of the Father, always remains « implanted in the heart of God », but inasmuch as it is uttered (προφορικόν), namely manifested in visible manifestations, so it came into paradise and spoke to Adam, and is sent by the Father, when it seemed good, into some place. Tertullian explains most distinctly this whole manner of conceiving the theophanies. « From the beginning the Speech was with God and the Speech was God, to whom was given by the Father all power in heaven and in earth... He himself always descended to human colloquies, from Adam to the patriarchs and prophets, in vision, in dream, in mirror, in enigma; always from the beginning preparing his order (of the Incarnation), which he was to pursue to the end (in the fullness of time), so he was always learning¹¹; and God could not converse on earth with men as another (another person) than the Speech, who was to be flesh. But he was learning, in order to lay for us the foundation of faith, that we might more easily believe that the Son of God descended into the world, if we knew that something of the sort had been done before also... Thus he knew human affections even then, being about to take up also the very substances of man, flesh and soul: questioning Adam as if not knowing, where art thou, Adam? repenting that he had made man, as if not foreknowing... who was also about to undergo human passions, and thirst and hunger and tears and nativity itself and death itself, for this reason made a little less than the angels by the Father » Tertull. contr. Prax. c. 16.

3°. The manner of the comparison of the Son with the Father must be noted; for in this comparison is chiefly situated the difficulty of finding among those ancients the orthodox sense. On the one hand they indeed teach that the Son appeared and administered the whole ancient economy as God the creator of the universe, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who names himself « I am who am »; on the other hand they say that the Son was sent in the Old Testament as the Angel of the Lord and the revealer of the Father sending him; indeed they seem even to teach that the Father, by reason of his eminence and immensity, could not appear by himself and in his own person¹². Here there are two difficulties: first, that they seem to consider an operation of the Son which is not the Father's, by which very thing a double nature would be established; then, that they seem expressly to judge the nature of the Son lower, the nature of the Father more sublime, and only the Father immense.

But as to the first, they do not posit a diverse operation, but the operation and manifestation of the Father through the Son. Moreover, the foundation of why not the Father but the Son appeared in the O.T. and was incarnate to establish the New Testament, they exhibit in the personal characters themselves: because the Father is the principle of the Son, the Son as the perfect image is from the Father as from a principle. Because namely the Son ad intra and in relation to the Father is the full manifestation of the Father as the consubstantial image of the Father, as the splendor (ἀπαύγασμα) of glory and the figure (χαρακτὴρ, the expression) of his substance, therefore also every manifestation ad extra in order to creatures is through the Son. But because the Son is consubstantial and one with the Father, therefore the Son manifesting himself in himself manifests also the Father, as he himself said: « he who sees me, sees also the Father... I am in the Father and the Father is in me » Io. XIV. 9. 10. Irenaeus explains the matter. « The Father indeed, invisible and indeterminable as far as concerns us, his own Word knows; and since he is ineffable, he himself narrates him to us. Again, however, the Father alone knows his own Word... And on this account the Son reveals the knowledge of the Father through his manifestation. For the knowledge of the Father is the manifestation of the Son; for all things are manifested through the Word... Therefore to all the Father revealed himself, making his Word visible to all, and again the Word was showing to all the Father and the Son; when he was seen by all... For invisible is the Father of the Son, but visible is the Son of the Father » Iren. l. IV. c. 6. n. 3-6.

In the same sense Clement of Alex. says: « the face of God is the Word, by which God is illuminated (for us as an object of knowledge) and known » Paedag. I. c. 7. p. 110; Strom. V. p. 562. More expressly afterwards Gregory Naz. or. 30 (al. 36.) n. 20, among the other names which he enumerates there, says the Son is called the Word, « because he so relates to the Father as the word relates to the mind... Perhaps also one might say that (the Son relates to the Father) as the definition relates to the defined (ὡς ὅρος πρὸς τὸ ὁριζόμενον); for the definition also is called λόγος. For Christ says: he who knows the Son — for this is what that saying means, he who sees the Son knows also the Father. And the concise and easy showing forth of the nature of the Father is the Son. For everything begotten is the tacit definition of the begetter » (γέννημα γὰρ πᾶν τοῦ γεννήσαντος ἑαυτοῦ λόγος).

As to the second: when they say that the Father could not appear by reason of immensity and eminence, those ancients are not concerned with the question of what sort the apparition and incarnation of God could be in another hypothetical order; namely, they have before their eyes only the apparitions as they are described as having been made in the present order, or at least as they were thought by them to be described in the sacred letters. But thus he who appears in the O.T. is understood to be sent or, as they themselves speak, sent into some place. But the mission of a divine person includes two things: as a root indeed the procession ad intra from another person, which is the sender, and the respect ad extra to some effect, or to a special personal habitude, as happens in the hypostatic union. Hence they easily saw that the mission of the Son into some place in no way harmed his divine nature and immensity. For just as the divinity and immensity, so also this mission is revealed, and hence both are necessarily true. For the generation of the Son from the Father and the personal habitude of the same Son to the circumscribed nature, which was made proper to him and by which he is man, and so his mission in the New Testament, are certain from revelation; for the Old Testament, moreover, from the appellation of the Angel of the Lord, who is at the same time the Lord God, and from other indications they deduced the personal habitude of the Son to those manifestations in the theophanies, by which the Son of God, about to be man, preluded his incarnation. Whence circumscription and local motion do not fall upon the Son sent by reason of the divine nature but by reason of the term which the mission regards; namely, circumscription and motion in place is understood by reason of the human nature, and as regards the phenomena through which he appeared present in the Old Testament. But on the contrary the Father could not appear in this way as sent, because there is no person from whom he proceeds, and hence none by whom he is sent. Therefore from their constant doctrine, just as Christ the Son is sent by the Father, so also the Angel of the Lord and the Lord God sent by the Lord God cannot be the Father.

Up to this point their argumentation is clear enough; but some of the ancients (as Justin and Tertullian) urged further the mission, as it regards the external term, and seem in the heat of the disputation against the Monarchians to affirm that, by the very fact that the Father cannot be sent, neither can he put on a personal habitude to an external term, so that, if the Father appeared in a place, circumscription and local motion would already fall upon the divine nature itself, which, as no one denies, evidently repugnates.

Now I say: in this doctrine a) the error of a distinction of nature, which is wont to be objected to those ancients, is most certainly not found; for the difference that the Son can, the Father cannot, appear in a place, they do not deduce from a diversity of nature and immensity, which they most openly acknowledge to be one in the Father and in the Son, but from a different personal character, by which it comes about that the Father cannot be sent, while the Son can be sent and in fact was sent. b) This distinction — that the first person cannot be sent, while the proceeding persons can be sent — is most true, of which we shall speak elsewhere. c) If the question concerns the fact of the apparition in the flesh, this indeed is proper to the Son who is sent, not common to the Father who sends; and therefore if the theophanies of the Old Testament are conceived as preludes to the Incarnation, these too, together with very many Fathers (th. VI), are to be referred to the Son. d) It is established not only by the fact, but in the personal character itself there is the reason of congruity why the Son rather than the Father appeared through a subject creature — of which congruity we spoke a little earlier. e) Considering the theophanies as they took place in the present order, and the intimate congruity of this order — that the Father sends and the Son is sent — those ancient doctors are not concerned about another possible order, of which revelation does not speak; but they simply teach that, according to the present order, apparitions through a subject creature are proper to the person who is sent, who is the Son, the substantial image of the Father, and therefore that the Father Himself cannot appear visibly. For His apparition would not be through a personal habitude to the creature, as to an external term, which habitude is reserved to the Son; therefore the Father would appear in time and in space according to the divine nature, which is repugnant to the divine eminence and immensity. We readily concede that, from the fact and from the congruity of the Son's apparition through a subject creature, those ancient doctors do not rightly conclude that the Father's apparition, if there were any, would be according to the divine nature itself, and therefore impossible; but certainly on that account a distinction and diversity of nature between the Father and the Son is not yet introduced by those ancients.

From what has been said it is understood how Justin rejects as absurd that the Father, who cannot be comprehended by the whole world, appeared in a small part of the earth; and how he said it would be a consequence that God would seem to have left heaven and to be moved from place, if it were thought that it was God the Father who, appearing on earth as the Lord, rained fire upon Sodom from the Lord out of heaven. In like manner that harsher argumentation of Tertullian is understood. «But of what sort is it, he says, that God the Almighty, that invisible one... He who does not dwell in temples made with hands... for whom heaven is a throne and the earth a footstool, in whom is every place, not Himself in a place, who is the extreme boundary of the universe — that the Most High walked in paradise at evening seeking Adam, and shut the ark after Noah's entry, and rested under the oak with Abraham, and called Moses from the burning bush, and appeared as the fourth in the furnace of the Babylonian king, although He was called the son of man, unless these things had been in image and mirror and riddle? Certainly even these things would not have been believed of the Son of God, if they had not been written; perhaps they would not be believed of the Father even though written» Tertull. contr. Prax. c. 16. These things, of course, are not only not written of the Father, but they could not even be written of Him, granted the principle that a person only insofar as He is sent can assume personal habitudes ad extra, and that in a person not sent, this circumscription and this motion in place would have to be understood according to the divine nature itself.

4°. Under this heading of the locutions which are referred to the Son, insofar as He is considered as made man, belong those for which Dionysius of Alexandria was accused before the Roman Pontiff of the same name: namely, that to show the distinction of the Father and the Son against the Sabellians he had said that «the Son of God is a work (ποίημα) and a thing made, and not proper by nature but alien from the essence of the Father, as the farmer is in comparison to the vine, and the carpenter to the boat; and indeed since He is a thing made, He did not exist before He was made». That the accusers indeed exhibited his doctrine in this way, Athanasius narrates (de sentent. Dionysii n. 4); and yet not all these seem to have been the words of Dionysius himself; but Dionysius himself confesses that only that comparison with the vine and with the boat was employed by him in passing (ibid. n. 18). He could, however, have used this comparison against the Sabellians in two ways: either only in general, to affirm the reality of the distinction between the Father and the Son, not indeed to declare what sort the distinction is and what is its proper ground; or he could have had regard to the assumed human nature, as Athanasius interprets Dionysius. For since the Son Himself according to the human nature said: «I am the true vine, and My Father is the farmer» (Io. XV. 1), Dionysius could from that demonstrate that the Father is one and the Son another. The rest the accusers seem to have gathered by deducing from this comparison instituted by him: that therefore the Son is a made work, that He is alien from the essence of the Father and not consubstantial, that He was made when previously He was not. Dionysius himself attests that he never thought and said things as they objected, but everything to the contrary (ibid. n. 15. 18. 20). Moreover, he says, even if I had called the Father, in relation to the Word, a maker, this very word, being ambiguous, would have to be interpreted from the context in the sense of begetter: «for as I do not think that the Word is a thing made, and I call God not a maker but His Father, even if I had said in passing that God is a maker (ποιητήν), speaking of the Son, so too there would be room for a defense; for the wise men of the Greeks call themselves makers of their own discourses (ποιητὰς τῶν ἰδίων λόγων), although they are fathers of their own discourses; but divine Scripture calls us makers of the movements of the heart, when it calls us makers of law and judgment and justice» (ibid. n. 21). Athanasius, however, says that all those locutions which Dionysius' accusers objected have an easy explanation, because in them the holy Bishop had regard not to the Word considered in Himself, but to the Word insofar as it was made flesh (ibid. n. 20. 26).

Nay, in this whole cause of the great Dionysius there is more manifestly discerned both the constancy and universality of faith in the one nature of distinct persons before the Nicene Council, and the necessary caution lest we too readily interpret the ambiguous locutions of the Fathers of that age in a sinister sense. For just as Dionysius the Roman on the one hand condemned the Sabellians denying the distinction of hypostases, and on the other hand, on the occasion of the accusation brought against the Alexandrian, rejected any distinction of nature in the three hypostases (supra th. X.); so the Alexandrian first urged the real distinction of the persons against the Sabellians, but then, when certain explanations of this distinction seemed to indicate also a distinction and inferiority of the Son's nature, there was immediately a protest from the other Catholics and the cause was brought to the Pontiff as the chief guardian and vindicator of the faith handed down. Moreover, the Alexandrian in his apologetic writings showed the fullest agreement with the doctrine and definition of the Roman Pontiff, and that by the expressions called into question he had wished to signify nothing other than the distinction of the persons. The very formula afterwards established in the Nicene creed — that the Son is ὁμοούσιος to the Father — whose profession the accusers and the Pontiff himself already then demanded, he not only freely admitted, but also testified that he had always held the thing itself expressed by this token. «In another epistle, he says, I showed the false accusation which they bring against me, as though I were unwilling to say that Christ is consubstantial with God (ὡς οὐ λέγοντος τὸ Χριστὸν ὁμοούσιον εἶναι τῷ Θεῷ); for although I confess that I have nowhere found or read this word in the Sacred Scriptures, yet my arguments, which I subjoined and which they passed over in silence, do not differ from this sense» (ibid. n. 18.)¹³. And indeed the unity of the non-multiplicable nature in three distinct persons could hardly have been expressed more expressly by the Fathers themselves after the Nicene Council than it had been done by Dionysius of Alexandria in agreement with Dionysius the Roman already in the III century: «thus we extend the unity without division (and therefore without multiplication) into the Trinity (of persons), and again we contract the Trinity without diminution (the three persons remaining) into the unity (of nature)» Ibid. n. 17. See the remaining confirmations of orthodox doctrine in Athanasius himself in the cited book de sententia Dionysii, and in the other de decret. Nic. n. 25. Certainly not only the authority of Athanasius, but even more the express words of Dionysius cited by him persuade us that St. Basil rather spoke of certain abrupt statements, when he did not have the books of Dionysius at hand, and judged more from the abuse of the Arians, who gladly appealed to the Bishop of Alexandria, than from the whole complex of the doctrine, when in ep. 9. n. 2. ad Maxim. he wrote that Dionysius had scattered the first seeds of the Arian dogma (cf. de Sp. S. n. 72.).

Scholion I. Since we have so far treated of the doctrine of the ante-Nicene Fathers, the place itself seems to demand mention of the condemnation which is reported to have been proclaimed in the middle of the III century in the Council of Antioch against Paul of Samosata, because either he himself taught, or objected as a consequence of the Catholic doctrine, that the Son is ὁμοούσιος to the Father. How excellent this token is for strictly defining the Catholic dogma is evident from the history of dogmas, and especially from the history of the Arian heresy condemned and vanquished in the IV and V centuries. Nevertheless the signification of the word ὁμοούσιος could be perverted by frauds in two ways: a) so that the imperfection of nature, which the word itself does not signify, but which always accompanies consubstantiality in creatures, should be supposed to be formally signified by the word itself; on which hypothesis one could no longer speak of the divine persons without denying the perfection and unity of the divine nature. For, namely, οὐσία in distinct created hypostases is one only specifically, while really there are as many first substances (οὐσία πρώτη), that is, singular essences, distinct from one another, as created hypostases are distinguished; one is not ὁμοούσιος to another without the singular essence or nature being one in the one and another in the other, distinct in number although of the same kind, and consequently, if the question is about father and son, without the nature being understood as propagated from father to son by some division and multiplication. In this way the Arians and Semiarians frequently made use of it, so that without manifest confession of their impiety they might bring forward some excuse why they wished this token of the Catholic faith to be exterminated. In this same sense Athanasius (de Synod. n. 45.) and Basil (ep. 52. n. 2.) interpret the condemnation of the word ὁμοούσιος which the Semiarians and then also the Arians objected as having been made in the aforesaid Council of Antioch against Paul of Samosata. That is, on the supposition of the truth of the history first brought forward by the Semiarians, they say that the Antiochene Fathers are not to be judged to have denied that the Son is ὁμοούσιος to the Father otherwise than that the divine generation is not by division or multiplication of the substance. b) The heretics, who in no way distinguished the singular essence from the person, could take οὐσία in this word for person, and so (certainly against the most manifest signification of the name) interpret the Son as ὁμοούσιος to the Father, as if the Son were said to be one person with the Father; which signification Epiphanius (Ancorat. n. 6; Haeres. 76. n. 7.) thought could underlie the words συνούσιος and ταὐτούσιος¹⁴. Now those Semiarians, who, writing from their synod of Ancyra in the year 358 to the bishops gathered at Sirmium, are found to have been the first to make mention of the condemned word ὁμοούσιος, narrate (in Hilary de Synod. n. 81.) that the word was used by the Samosatene in this latter sense and therefore rejected by the Fathers, «because by this naming of one essence he proclaimed that the Father and the Son were for himself solitary and unique (one person)». Therefore, if the history of the condemnation is not fabricated, this at least is certain: that the dispute against the Samosatene was not about the appellation ὁμοούσιος in its own proper signification, but about a distorted sense of the word, and that only this sense was proscribed. For in the genuine sense the word had already been used a little before this Council of Antioch by Dionysius the Roman Pontiff, and by the accusers of the Alexandrian of the same name, and by the Alexandrian himself, and indeed by his teacher Origen; and a little later, toward the end of the III century, it was admitted and defended as an established and common theological term by St. Pamphilus the martyr (Apol. pro Origene Opp. Orig. T. IV. Append. p. 33. 34) for the most apt expression of the unity of nature in distinct persons, so much so that Eusebius of Caesarea himself could not deny that it had been used by the Fathers (Socrat. H. E. l. I. c. 8.).

Moreover, it certainly seems most probable that the whole history of this condemnation was aptly composed by the Semiarians. For since they were wont gladly to suppose the Sabellian sense in ὁμοουσίᾳ, by deduction from the chapters of doctrine established against the Samosatene they could infer that ὁμοούσιος had not been admitted by the Antiochene Fathers either. Certainly, in admitting the fact of a condemnation never mentioned in the controversy with the Arians, which concerning this word had already raged for thirty and more years up to the year 358, there are such great difficulties that it cannot be rendered credible without witnesses above every exception; but the whole authority of the witnesses is reduced to those Semiarians, most hostile to the token τοῦ ὁμοουσίου, and therefore most eager to oppose another council to the Nicene Council. The whole authority, I say, rests in them; for Athanasius and Hilary expressly signify that they received the narrative from them, nor is Basil, who mentions this matter in passing, to be judged to have drawn it from the Antiochene Acts themselves, but likewise from the adversaries, or perhaps from the disputation of Athanasius. Reasons will be given by Maranus (De Div. D. N. I. C. l. IV. c. 39.) and Simon de Magistris (in Opp. Dionysii Alex. Praef. n. XVIII. seq.), which render the falsity of the Semiarian assertion at least most probable; and they do not seem to me to have been weakened by the opposing arguments of Frohschammer (Fol. theolog. Tübing. 1850. fasc. I.) and of the distinguished Charles Joseph Hefele (Hist. Concil. T. I. p. 115).

Scholion 2. One or another of the ancients seems — namely Hippolytus, and perhaps Tertullian — to distinguish between the Word and the Son, so that the second person of the Trinity, before the manifestation ad extra and especially before the incarnation and the nativity from the

Virgin was the Word, but not yet the perfect Son; but the perfect Son is understood at last insofar as the Word has been manifested and incarnated. Thus Hippolytus cont. Noët. n. 15. (Galland. II. p. 462.). «Someone will say (a Noëtian), you bring me a strange thing, when you call the Word the Son. John indeed certainly (thus Hippolytus responds) says Word; but he introduces another interpretation. For thus demonstrating this Word of God, as that which was from the beginning and is now sent, afterwards in the Apocalypse he said: and I saw heaven opened.... and He was clothed in a garment sprinkled with blood and His name is the Word of God.... Likewise blessed Paul says: God sending His Son in the likeness of the flesh of sin (Rom. VIII. 3.).... What Son, therefore, did God send through the flesh, except the Word, which He called Son, because it was to be born (a man from the Virgin)? And while it is called Son, it assumes the common name of love toward men. For neither was the Word without flesh, of itself, the perfect Son, although it was the perfect Word, the only-begotten. Nor could the flesh subsist by itself apart from the Word, because it has its subsistence in the Word. Thus, therefore, the perfect one Son of God was manifested. And these indeed are the testimonies concerning the Incarnation of the Word... But you ask concerning the generation of the Word, that the Father begot willing, as He willed.... And yet to narrate His generation according to the flesh has been entrusted to no more than two (the Evangelists Matthew and Luke), and you dare to search out the generation according to the spirit (according to the divinity), which the Father keeps with Himself, about to reveal to the Saints who will be worthy to see His face?»

This passage ought to be considered in comparison with the doctrine of the Monarchians (Noetus, Sabellius, Praxeas), which he impugns. According to their doctrine, the Word in God (Λόγος ἐνδιάθετος) is not a person distinct from him whose Word He is said to be, but an absolute attribute; but the uttered Word (Λόγος προφορικός) is the sounding word of God, «air struck, intelligible to hearing» (in Tertull. cont. Prax. c. 7.), or a transient action in creatures. Therefore the Word did not assume flesh, but the divine person, which is unique just as God is one. This person before the incarnation is called the Father; through the incarnation He made Himself a Son for Himself. But when they were pressed by the Catholics that Christ, the Son of God sent, no less evidently distinguishes Himself as another from the Father who sends, they were compelled to take refuge in the distinction between God and man in Christ, and so at least in their manner of speaking divided Christ, as Nestorius later did, into two persons. «Covered on every side by the distinction of Father and Son... they nevertheless try to interpret it otherwise, in accordance with their own opinion, so as to distinguish both equally in one person (only one person being admitted in God), the Father and the Son, saying that the Son is the flesh, that is, the man, that is, Jesus; but the Father is the spirit, that is, God, that is, Christ. And they who contend that the Father and the Son are one and the same now begin to divide them rather than to unite them... Such a monarchy they perhaps learned from Valentinus, to make two, Jesus and Christ» Tertull. contr. Prax. c. 27. (cf. de Valentino supra p. 81).

Now from the character of the heresy to be impugned it appears why Hippolytus first proves that the Word is incarnate; then indeed insists on so explicit a declaration, that the incarnate Word is one person, the Son of God, the same God, Word and man. But since the adversaries understood the Son insofar as He is the Son of man born of the Virgin, Hippolytus distinguishes the account of the only-begotten Word, begotten of the Father ineffably according to the spirit (according to the divinity), from the account of the son of man born in time of the Virgin according to the flesh; that is, he distinguishes the twofold generation of one and the same person — from God the Father according to the divinity, and from the Virgin mother according to the humanity — and says that from both together the perfect Son is understood, that is, the account of the Son of God and of the Son of man, which belongs to Christ, God and man. What he therefore says — that before the incarnation He was the perfect Word and the only-begotten of the Father, yet not yet the perfect Son — cannot without manifest contradiction be understood as though He were not yet the perfect Son of God, since he expressly says that He was the only-begotten and begotten of the Father according to the spirit; but he signifies that He was not yet the Son of man and begotten of the Virgin according to the flesh. Hence also in the Old Testament, in this sense which the adversaries had before their eyes, he says the Word was called Son, because it was to be born of the Virgin. Which he explains more expressly in n. 4. «The Word was, the Spirit was, the Virtue was. The One assumed in Himself the common name, usual among men, called from the beginning son of man on account of the future; although He was not yet man, as Daniel (VII. 13.) testifies, saying: I saw.... like the son of man.» Moreover, even by the diversity of the name Hippolytus takes care lest he seem to exclude the account of the true Son of God before the incarnation;

For the Son, insofar as He is made man (ib. n. 11), is called παῖς Θεοῦ, the boy of God (see the text above p. 154). Tertullian likewise, just as he sometimes calls the manifestation of the Word ad extra a generation, which presupposes the generation ad intra (above p. 185), so he can be seen to have sometimes considered also the account of the Son corresponding to the generation in the Word, insofar as it has been manifested ad extra. God the Father, he says, thought out and disposed all things to be created in the Word (the Reason, Sophia), and at the beginning of time brought forth the Word (the Speech), and through the Word created all things: «this is the perfect nativity of the Speech (substantial, not of a passing voice, above l. c.), while it proceeds from God, being founded by Him first for thought in the name of Sophia: the Lord founded me as the beginning of His ways; then it was generated for effect: when He prepared the heaven, I was present with Him (Prov. VIII. 22. sq.). Thence making Him equal to Himself¹⁵, from whom by proceeding the Son was made the first-begotten, as begotten before all things, and the only-begotten, as alone begotten of God, properly from the womb of His own heart, according to which the Father Himself also testifies: my heart has uttered a good Word» (Ps. 44. 2.) cont. Prax. c. 7.

If in the words «from the Father by proceeding the Son was made,» the procession is understood as the manifestation, which he had called «generation for effect,» and the Son is taken as predicate, the sense which I have said will have to be accepted. But then neither can that person be understood as made, nor can even the eternal pre-existing person be understood as made Son simply; but the eternal person would have to be understood as made the manifested Son, namely by the account of filiation corresponding to this generation ad extra, which is nothing other than the manifestation of the Son. I say that without contradiction with the express doctrine of Tertullian neither the person made nor made Son simply can be understood, because in countless places he teaches that the Word is begotten from eternity and was always the Son of God. In the following c. 8. he says: «The Speech was always with God, as it is written: and the Speech was with God; and never separated from the Father nor other (another God) than the Father, because I and the Father are one. This will be the probola (generation) of the Truth, the guardian of unity, by which we say that the Son was brought forth from the Father but not separated... Every origin is a parent, and everything that is brought forth from an origin is offspring; much more the Speech of God, which has also properly received the name of Son.» A little below, c. 21: «without doubt the other is shown who was from the beginning, the other with whom He was (Io. I. 1.); that the Speech is other, the God (the Father) other, although the Speech is also God, but as the Son of God, not as the Father... other, however, not as separated, but by disposition¹⁶ other, not by division.» Certainly, therefore, the procession or mission ad extra presupposes this eternal person who is sent, and presupposes that He is, by the internal procession itself, the Son of God; therefore the procession ad extra does not make Him to be the Son, but only to be the manifested Son.

But I do not see why in the cited text c. 7. the procession cannot be understood ad intra, nor do I see why the name Son cannot be the subject, and first-begotten and only-begotten the predicate. Then the sense will be: the Son, by proceeding from the Father, even when heaven was prepared, that is, when all things were created, in comparison with creatures assumes the habitude of first-begotten and only-begotten, because He Himself is from eternity before every creature, and begotten by the Father in a wholly different manner than creatures were made. In this way, however, the passage has nothing of difficulty.

By this distinction of the twofold generation, to which the diverse consideration and appellation of the Son corresponds, the difficulty which is in the words of Tertullian contr. Hermogenem c. 3. can also be solved. Hermogenes defends matter as eternal and uncreated on this ground: that as God was always God, so He was also always Lord; whence he said it was necessary that there always existed something over which He would rule; and this, he said, is matter. Tertullian denies that, because He is always God, He is also always Lord: for the name God signifies the substance of God absolutely and in itself; the name Lord expresses a respect ad extra and connotes an existing creature of which He is Lord. This he illustrates by the example of the other two names, father and judge. «Because both the father is God and the judge is God; yet not therefore father and judge always, because God always. For neither could the father exist before the son, nor the judge before the offense. But there was a time when both the offense and the son did not exist, which would make the judge, and him who is the father, Lord. So also the Lord exists not before those things of which He would be Lord, but will be Lord only at some time; as the Father through the son, as the judge through the offense, so also the Lord through those things which He would have made to serve Him.»

From the whole doctrine of Tertullian, both in his other books and in this very one contra Hermog. c. 18., it is absurd to say: there was a time when the Son, who is the Reason and Wisdom of God, did not yet exist. And therefore if the son is understood in this passage as the second person of the Trinity, He must necessarily be understood not insofar as He is and exists as Son with the Father, but insofar as the Son, and through the Son the Father, is manifested. But since Tertullian here regards God absolutely and without distinction of persons, and regards the relation of God to an external term, and joins the account of father with the account of judge, and the relation of the son to God the father with the relation of the sinner to God the judge, at least a far more probable explanation seems to be — which even Bellarmine prefers to the other (de Christo l. I. c. 10.) — that the son is understood as adoptive, a man or an angel, namely a rational creature approaching from outside, which in time denominated God father.