Chapter V.—The Evolution of the Son or Word of God from the Father by a Divine Procession. Illustrated by the Operation of the Human Thought and Consciousness.

But since they will have the Two to be but One, so that the Father shall be deemed to be the same as the Son, it is only right that the whole question respecting the Son should be examined, as to whether He exists, and who He is and the mode of His existence. Thus shall the truth itself36    Res ipsa. secure its own sanction37    Formam, or shape. from the Scriptures, and the interpretations which guard38    Patrocinantibus. them. There are some who allege that even Genesis opens thus in Hebrew: “In the beginning God made for Himself a Son.”39    See St. Jerome’s Quæstt. Hebr. in Genesim, ii. 507. As there is no ground for this, I am led to other arguments derived from God’s own dispensation,40    “Dispositio” means “mutual relations in the Godhead.” See Bp. Bull’s Def. Fid. Nicen., Oxford translation, p. 516. in which He existed before the creation of the world, up to the generation of the Son. For before all things God was alone—being in Himself and for Himself universe, and space, and all things. Moreover, He was alone, because there was nothing external to Him but Himself.  Yet even not then was He alone; for He had with Him that which He possessed in Himself, that is to say, His own Reason. For God is rational, and Reason was first in Him; and so all things were from Himself.  This Reason is His own Thought (or Consciousness)41    Sensus ipsius. which the Greeks call λόγος, by which term we also designate Word or Discourse42    Sermonem. [He always calls the Logos not Verbum, but Sermo, in this treatise. A masculine word was better to exhibit our author’s thought. So Erasmus translates Logos in his N. Testament, on which see Kaye, p. 516.] and therefore it is now usual with our people, owing to the mere simple interpretation of the term, to say that the Word43    Sermonen. was in the beginning with God; although it would be more suitable to regard Reason as the more ancient; because God had not Word44    Sermonalis. from the beginning, but He had Reason45    Rationalis. even before the beginning; because also Word itself consists of Reason, which it thus proves to have been the prior existence as being its own substance.46    i.e., “Reason is manifestly prior to the Word, which it dictates” (Bp. Kaye, p. 501). Not that this distinction is of any practical moment. For although God had not yet sent out His Word,47    Sermonem. He still had Him within Himself, both in company with and included within His very Reason, as He silently planned and arranged within Himself everything which He was afterwards about to utter48    Dicturus. Another reading is “daturus,” about to give. through His Word. Now, whilst He was thus planning and arranging with His own Reason, He was actually causing that to become Word which He was dealing with in the way of Word or Discourse.49    Sermone. And that you may the more readily understand this, consider first of all, from your own self, who are made “in the image and likeness of God,”50    Gen. i. 26. for what purpose it is that you also possess reason in yourself, who are a rational creature, as being not only made by a rational Artificer, but actually animated out of His substance. Observe, then, that when you are silently conversing with yourself, this very process is carried on within you by your reason, which meets you with a word at every movement of your thought, at every impulse of your conception. Whatever you think, there is a word; whatever you conceive, there is reason.  You must needs speak it in your mind; and while you are speaking, you admit speech as an interlocutor with you, involved in which there is this very reason, whereby, while in thought you are holding converse with your word, you are (by reciprocal action) producing thought by means of that converse with your word. Thus, in a certain sense, the word is a second person within you, through which in thinking you utter speech, and through which also, (by reciprocity of process,) in uttering speech you generate thought. The word is itself a different thing from yourself. Now how much more fully is all this transacted in God, whose image and likeness even you are regarded as being, inasmuch as He has reason within Himself even while He is silent, and involved in that Reason His Word! I may therefore without rashness first lay this down (as a fixed principle) that even then before the creation of the universe God was not alone, since He had within Himself both Reason, and, inherent in Reason, His Word, which He made second to Himself by agitating it within Himself.

CAPUT V.

Sed quia duos unum volunt esse, ut idem Pater et Filius habeatur, oportet et totum de Filio examinari, an sit, et qui sit, et quomodo sit; et ita res ipsa formam suam Scripturis et interpretationibus earum 0159D patrocinantibus vindicabit. Aiunt quidem et Genesim 0160A in hebraico ita incipere: In principio Deus fecit sibi filium. Hoc ut firmum non sit, alia me argumenta deducunt ab ipsa Dei dispositione, qua fuit ante mundi constitutionem, adusque Filii generationem. Ante omnia enim Deus erat solus, ipse sibi et mundus et locus et omnia. Solus autem, quia nihil aliud extrinsecus praeter illum. Caeterum, ne tunc quidem solus; habebat enim secum, quam habebat in semetipso, rationem suam scilicet. Rationalis etiam Deus, et ratio in ipso prius; et ita, ab ipso omnia. Quae ratio, sensus ipsius est. Hanc Graeci λόγον dicunt, quo vocabulo etiam sermonem appellamus. Ideoque jam in usu est nostrorum, per simplicitatem interpretationis, Sermonem dicere in primordio apud Deum fuisse; cum magis rationem 0160B competat antiquiorem haberi; quia non sermonalis a principio, sed rationalis Deus etiam ante principium; et quia ipse quoque sermo ratione consistens, priorem eam ut substantiam suam ostendat. Tamen et sic, nihil interest. Nam etsi Deus nondum sermonem suum miserat, proinde eum cum ipsa et in ipsa ratione intra semetipsum habebat, tacite cogitando et disponendo secum, quae per sermonem mox erat dicturus. Cum ratione enim sua cogitans atque disponens, sermonem eam efficiebat, quam sermone tractabat. Idque quo facilius intelligas, ex te ipso ante recognosce, ut ex imagine et similitudine Dei, (Gen., I, 26) quam habeas et tu in temetipso rationem, qui es animal rationale, a rationali scilicet artifice non tantum factus, sed etiam ex substantia 0160C ipsius animatus. Vide cum tacitus tecum ipse congrederis, ratione hoc ipsum agi intra te, occurrente ea tibi cum sermone ad omnem cogitatus tui motum, et ad omnem sensus tui pulsum. Quodcumque cogitaveris, sermo est; quodcumque senseris, ratio est. Loquaris illud in animo necesse est; et dum loqueris, conlocutorem pateris sermonem, in quo inest haec ipsa ratio, qua cum eo cogitans loquaris, per quem loquens cogitas. Ita secundus quodammodo in te est sermo, per quem loqueris cogitando, et per quem cogitas loquendo. Ipse sermo alius est. Quanto ergo plenius hoc agitur in Deo, cujus tu quoque imago et similitudo censeris, quod habeat in se etiam tacendo rationem, et in ratione sermonem? Possum itaque non temere praestruxisse, et tunc Deum ante 0160D universitatis constitutionem solum non fuisse, habentem 0161A in semetipso proinde rationem, et in ratione sermonem, quem secundum a se faceret agitando se.