Whether the Son is the “contributory cause” of the Gospel.
Whether the Son is the “contributory cause” of the Gospel.
§ 31. Therefore even though God the Father manifested the Gospel through His Son in the Holy Spirit, nevertheless far be it from us to declare with Bucanus (Loci, ch. 20, p. 189) that the “contributory cause” [συναίτιον]5 of the Gospel is the Son of God. In fact, He is not the contributory cause, but along with the Father and the Holy Spirit He is the proper cause [κύριον αἴτιον] of this revelation. “That which does it in God is one deity common to the three,” as the rule of Nazianzen states (Orat. 2 de theol.), which was constructed from Christ’s statement (John 5:19): “For whatever the Father does, these things the Son does likewise.” As the essence of the Father and the Son is one, so also there is one power to act which They show equally and undividedly in Their works toward externals, though the order and distinction of the persons is preserved.
What will Bucanus give to us as the reason for setting up the Son of God as the contributory cause of this revelation since he does not make distinct mention of the Holy Spirit, whom, on the basis of his own hypothesis, he also ought to have established as the contributory cause for this work? For the fact that he is speaking about the Son of God as He is revealed in the flesh or, what is the same, about Christ considered according to His human nature cannot be overturned. For in this respect, in the question immediately following, he assigns Christ to the instrumental cause, or to those [causes] through which the Gospel has been revealed to the world. That is more tolerable than the prior idea. Indeed, God is said to have spoken to us in His Son (Heb. 1:1). Yet this must be taken carefully because Christ the man is not someone other [ἄλλος] than Christ our God but is one and the same person, and since in the manifestation of the Gospel Christ acts not merely as man but according to both natures.