learned and spiritual^ men have conducted discussions in
360 ON FAITH AND THE CREED. [CHAP. IX.
quite a possibility for three objects of some sort, not only severally, but also all together, to obtain one single name ; and that in this way no one may wonder and tliink it absurd that we should call the Father God, the Son God, the Holy Spirit
God, and that nevertheless we should say that there are not three Gods in that Trinity, but one God and one substance.^
18. And, indeed, on this subject of the Father and the Son, learned and spiritual^ men have conducted discussions in many books, in which, so far as men could do with men, they have endeavoured to introduce an intelligible account as to how the Father was not one personally with the Son, and yet the two were one substantially ;^ and as to what the Father was individually (^;rc»/>?'i>), and what the Son : to wit, that the former was the Begetter, the latter the Begotten ; the former not of the Son, the latter of the Father : the former the Beginning of the latter, whence also He is called the Head of Christ,'^ although Christ likewise is the Beginning,^ but not of the Father ; the latter, moreover, the Image ^ of the former, although in no respect dissimilar, and although absolutely and without difference equal {omnino et indifferenter cequalis).
These questions are handled with greater breadth by those who, in less narrow limits than ours are at present, seek to set forth the profession of the Christian faith in its totality.
Accordingly, in so far as He is the Son, of the Father received He it that He u, while that other [the Father] received not this of the Son ; and in so far as He, in unutterable mercy, in a temporal dispensation took upon Himself the [nature of] man Qiomincm),—to wit, the cliangeable creature that was thereby to be changed into something better,—many statements
Many mss., however, insert colamxm after Deuvx in the closing sentence, sed nnum Dtum nnamqve substantiam. The sense then will be = and that nevertlic'lcss we should worship in that Trinity not three Gods, but one God and one substance.
' Spiritnles, for which religiosi = religious, is also sometimes given.
' Non xniHs eanet Pater et Filius, sed unnm easeni = how the Father and the
Son wore not one in person, but were one in essence.
1 Cor. xi. 3.
In reference probably to John viii. 25, where the Vulgate gives principium qui et lo'iuor vobia as the literal equivalent for the Greek rn* «^;t''» •»'' ***
XaXti lf*.7i.
«Cul. i. Vo.
CHAP. IX.] THE SON CONSUBSTANTIAL WITH THE FATHER. 361 concerning Him are discovered in tlie Scriptures, which are so expressed as to have given occasion to error in the impious intellects of heretics, with whom the desire to teach takes precedence of that to understand, so that they have supposed Him to be neither equal with the Father nor of the same substance. Such statements [are meant] as the following:
" Eor the Father is greater than I ;" ^ and, " The head of the woman is the man, the Head of the man is Chiist, and the Head of Christ is God;"' and, "Then shaU He Himself be subject unto Him that put all things under Him ;" ^ and, " I go to my Father and your Father, my God and your God :'"* together with some others of like tenor. Now all these have had a place given them, [certainly] not with the object of signifying an inequality of nature and substance ; fo-r to take them so would be to falsify a different class of statements, such as, "I and my Father are one" (uniun) ;^ and, "He that hath seen me hath seen my Father also;"*^ and,
" The Word was God," '—for He was not made, inasmuch as
" all things were made by Him ;" ^ and, " He thought it not robbery to be equal with God:"^ together with all the other passages of a similar order. But these statements have had a place given them, partly with a view to that administration of His assumption of human nature (administrationcm suscepti hominis), in accordance with which it is said that " He emptied Himself:" not that that Wisdom was changed, since it is absolutely unchangeable ; but that it was His will to make Himself known in such humble fashion to men. Partly then,
I repeat, it is with a view to this administration tliat those thino^s have been thus written which the heretics make the ground of their false allegations ; and partly it was with a view to the consideration that the Son owes to the Father that which He is,^^—thereby also certainly owing this in particular to the Father, to wit, that He is equal to the same Father, or that He is His Peer (cidcm Patri cpqiialis ant j)ar est), whereas the Father owes whatsoever He is to no one.
' John xiv. 28. = 1 Cor. xi. 3. ^ 1 Cor. xv. 28.
John x. 30. ^ John xiv. 9.
* John XX. 17.
' John i. 1. 8 John i. 3. » Phil. ii. 9.
Or it may be = that the Son owes it to the Father that He is.