IX.
The same position we hold respecting the Spirit, who has
that unity with the Son which the Son has with the Father.
Wherefore let the hypostasis of the Father be discriminated by the
appellation of God; but let not the Son be cut off from this
appellation, for He is of God. Again, let the person of the Son
also be discriminated by the appellation of Lord; only let not God be
dissociated from that, for He is Lord as being the Father of the
Lord. And as it is proper to the Son to exercise lordship, for He
it is that made (all things)
by Himself, and now rules the things that were made, while at the same
time the Father has a prior possession of that property, inasmuch as He
is the Father of Him who is Lord; so we speak of the Trinity as One
God, and yet not as if we made the one by a synthesis of three:
for the subsistence that is constituted by synthesis is something
altogether partitive and imperfect.309
| 309
μέρος
γὰρ ἅπαν
ἀτελὲς τὸ
συνθεσεως
ὑφιστάμενον. |
But just as the designation
Father is
the expression of originality and generation, so the designation Son is
the expression of the image and
offspring of the
Father. Hence,
if one were to ask how there is but One
God, if there is also a
God of
God, we would reply that that is a term proper to the idea of original
causation,
310
so
far as the
Father
is the one First Cause.
311
And if one were also to put the
question, how there is but One
Lord, if the
Father also is Lord, we
might answer that again by saying that He is so in so far as He is the
Father of the Lord; and this difficulty shall meet us no
longer.
E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
