Chapter 2: Whether The Father Or The Holy Spirit Could Have Become
Distinction I | 5 Spirit was clothed with flesh lest one be the Son in divinity, another in humanity, and lest the same [person] be father and son, if God the Father were born of man.—ON ECCLESIASTICAL DOGMAS. Hence in On Ecclesiastical Dogmas: "Neither the Father took on flesh, nor the Holy Spirit, but the Son alone, so that he who was Son of God in divinity should become son of man in humanity, lest the name of son pass to another, who would not be son by birth. And so the Son of God was made son of man, born according to the truth of nature Son of God from God, and according to the truth of nature son of man from man. In this way, the truth of the begotten would have the name of son, not by adoption, nor by title, but by being born in each birth, and the one Son would be true God and true man. Therefore we do not affirm two Christs, nor two sons, but the one Son who is God and man, whom we on that account call the onlybegotten, abiding in two substances, according to the conferral of the truth of nature on him, with the natures being neither confused nor mixed, as the Timotheans' would have it, but united in partnership." See, you have why the Son took on flesh, and not the Father or the Holy Spirit.
Chapter 2
WHETHER THE FATHER OR THE HOLY SPIRIT COULD HAVE BECOME
INCARNATE OR COULD DO SO NOW. But if it is asked whether the Father or the Holy Spirit could have become incarnate, or could even do so now, it may be answered affirmatively: that the Father or the Holy Spirit could formerly and can now take on flesh and become man. For just as the Son was made man, so the Father or the Holy Spirit could and can be.
Chapter 3
1. WHETHER THE SON, WHO ALONE TOOK ON FLESH, DID SOMETHING THAT
THE FATHER OR THE HOLY SPIRIT DID NOT DO. But perhaps some will say:
Since the works of the Trinity are undivided,' if the Son took on flesh, so did the Father and the Holy Spirit, because, if the Son took on flesh, but the Father or the Holy Spirit did not, then the Father or the Holy Spirit does not do all that the Son does; but Father, and Son, and the Spirit of both "work all things together, equally, and in accord."
2. RESPONSE. To which we say that the Son does nothing without the Father and the Holy Spirit, but the operation of these three is one, undivided, and in no way dissimilar, and yet the Son took on flesh, and not the *Followers of Timothy, Monophysite archbishop of Alexandria.
°Gennadius, Liber seu diffinitio ecclesiasticorum dogmatum, ¢2.
'Augustine, Enchiridion, c38.
Augustine, De Trinitate, bk 13 c11 n15.