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| Though the Son or Word of God Emanates from the Father, He is Not, Like the Emanations of Valentinus, Separable from the Father. Nor is the Holy Ghost Separable from Either. Illustrations from Nature.
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Chapter VIII.—Though
the Son or Word of God Emanates from the Father, He is Not, Like the
Emanations of Valentinus, Separable from the Father. Nor is the
Holy Ghost Separable from Either. Illustrations from Nature.
If any man from this shall think that I am introducing
some προβολή—that
is to say, some prolation7846
| 7846 “The word
προβολή properly means
anything which proceeds or is sent forth from the substance of another,
as the fruit of a tree or the rays of the sun. In Latin, it is
translated by prolatio, emissio, or editio,
or what we now express by the word development. In
Tertullian’s time, Valentinus had given the term a material
signification. Tertullian, therefore, has to apologize for using
it, when writing against Praxeas, the forerunner of the
Sabellians” (Newman’s Arians, ii. 4; reprint, p.
101). | of one thing out of
another, as Valentinus does when he sets forth Æon from Æon,
one after another—then this is my first reply to you: Truth must
not therefore refrain from the use of such a term, and its reality and
meaning, because heresy also employs it. The fact is, heresy has rather
taken it from Truth, in order to mould it into its own
counterfeit. Was the
Word of God put forth or not? Here take your stand with me, and flinch
not. If He was put forth, then acknowledge that the true doctrine has a
prolation;7847
and never mind
heresy, when in any point it mimics the truth. The question now is, in
what sense each side uses a given thing and the word which expresses
it. Valentinus divides and separates his prolations from their Author,
and places them at so great a distance from Him, that the Æon does
not know the Father: he longs, indeed, to know Him, but cannot;
nay, he is almost swallowed up and dissolved into the rest of
matter.7848
| 7848 See Adv.
Valentin. cc. xiv. xv. | With us, however,
the Son alone knows the Father,7849
and has
Himself unfolded “the Father’s bosom.”7850
He has also heard and seen all things with
the Father; and what He has been commanded by the Father, that also
does He speak.7851
And it is not His
own will, but the Father’s, which He has accomplished,7852
which He had known most intimately, even
from the beginning. “For what man knoweth the things which be in
God, but the Spirit which is in Him?”7853
But the Word was formed by the Spirit, and (if I may so express myself)
the Spirit is the body of the Word. The Word, therefore, is both always
in the Father, as He says, “I am in the Father;”7854
and is always with God, according to what is
written, “And the Word was with God;”7855
and never separate from the Father, or other
than the Father, since “I and the Father are one.”7856
This will be the prolation, taught by the
truth,7857
| 7857 Literally, the
προβολή, “of the
truth.” | the guardian of the
Unity, wherein we declare that the Son is a prolation from the Father,
without being separated from Him. For God sent forth the Word, as
the Paraclete also declares, just as the root puts forth the tree, and
the fountain the river, and the sun the ray.7858
| 7858 [Compare cap.
iv. supra.] |
For these are προβολαί,
or emanations, of the substances from which they proceed. I
should not hesitate, indeed, to call the tree the son or offspring of
the root, and the river of the fountain, and the ray of the sun;
because every original source is a parent, and everything which issues
from the origin is an offspring. Much more is (this true of) the
Word of God, who has actually received as His own peculiar designation
the name of Son. But still the tree is not severed from the
root, nor the river from the fountain, nor the ray from the sun; nor,
indeed, is the Word separated from God. Following, therefore, the
form of these analogies, I confess that I call God and His
Word—the Father and His Son—two. For the root and
the tree are distinctly two things, but correlatively joined; the
fountain and the river are also two forms, but indivisible; so likewise
the sun and the ray are two forms, but coherent ones. Everything which
proceeds from something else must needs be second to that from which it
proceeds, without being on that account separated. Where,
however, there is a second, there must be two; and where there is a
third, there must be three. Now the Spirit indeed is third from God and
the Son; just as the fruit of the tree is third from the root, or as
the stream out of the river is third from the fountain, or as the apex
of the ray is third from the sun. Nothing, however, is alien from that
original source whence it derives its own properties. In like
manner the Trinity, flowing down from the Father through intertwined
and connected steps, does not at all disturb the
Monarchy,7859
| 7859 Or oneness of the
divine empire. | whilst it at the
same time guards the state of the Economy.7860
| 7860 Or dispensation of the
divine tripersonality. See above ch. ii. | E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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