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| How the Word Beginning (Principium) is Spoken Relatively in the Trinity.
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Chapter 13.—How
the Word Beginning (Principium) is Spoken Relatively in the
Trinity.
14. The Father is called so,
therefore, relatively, and He is also relatively said to be the
Beginning, and whatever else there may be of the kind; but He is
called the Father in relation to the Son, the Beginning in relation
to all things, which are from Him. So the Son is relatively so
called; He is called also relatively the Word and the Image. And in
all these appellations He is referred to the Father, but the Father
is called by none of them. And the Son is also called the
Beginning; for when it was said to Him, “Who art Thou?” He
replied, “Even the Beginning, who also speak to you.”590
But is He,
pray, the Beginning of the Father? For He intended to show Himself
to be the Creator when He said that He was the Beginning, as the
Father also is the beginning of the creature in that all things are
from Him. For creator, too, is spoken relatively to creature, as
master to servant. And so when we say, both that the Father is the
Beginning, and that the Son is the Beginning, we do not speak of
two beginnings of the creature; since both the Father and the Son
together is one beginning in respect to the creature, as one
Creator, as one God. But if whatever remains within itself and
produces or works anything is a beginning to that thing which it
produces or works; then we cannot deny that the Holy Spirit also is
rightly called the Beginning, since we do not separate Him from the
appellation of Creator: and it is written of Him that He works; and
assuredly, in working, He remains within Himself; for He Himself is
not changed and turned into any of the things which He works. And
see what it is that He works: “But the manifestation of the
Spirit,” he says, “is given to every man to profit withal. For
to one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another the
word of knowledge by the same Spirit; to another faith by the same
Spirit; to another the gifts of healing by the same Spirit; to
another the working of miracles; to another prophecy; to another
the discerning of spirits; to another divers kinds of tongues; to
another the interpretation of tongues: but all these worketh that
one and the self-same Spirit, dividing to every man severally as He
will;” certainly as God—for who can work such great things but
God?—but “it is the same God which worketh all in all.”591
For if we
are asked point by point concerning the Holy Spirit, we answer most
truly that He is God; and with the Father and the Son together He
is one God. Therefore, God is spoken of as one Beginning in respect
to the creature, not as two or three beginnings.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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