17. The name Father has thus been revealed to men; the question arises, What is this Father’s own name? Yet surely the name of God has never been unknown. Moses heard it from the bush, Genesis announces it at the beginning of the history of creation, the Law has proclaimed and the prophets extolled it, the history of the world has made mankind familiar with it; the very heathen have worshipped it under a veil of falsehood. Men have never been left in ignorance of the name of God. And yet they were, in very truth, in ignorance. For no man knows God unless He confess Him as Father, Father of the Only-begotten Son, and confess also the Son a Son by no partition or extension or procession, but born of Him, as Son of Father, ineffably and incomprehensibly, and retaining the fulness of that Godhead from which and in which He was born as true and infinite and perfect God. This is what the fulness of the Godhead means. If any of these things be lacking, there will not be that fulness which was pleased to dwell in Him. This is the message of the Son, His revelation to men in their ignorance. The Father is glorified through the Son when men recognise that He is Father of a Son so Divine.

17. Dei nomen ante Christum hominibus ignotum.---Manifestato itaque hominibus nomine Patris, haec postulat: sed quo nomine? Numquid nomen Dei ignorabatur? 0086A Hoc Moyses de rubo audivit, hoc Genesis in exordio creati orbis nuntiavit, hoc lex exposuit, prophetae praetulerunt, homines in his mundi operibus senserunt, gentes etiam mentiendo veneratae sunt; non ergo ignorabatur Dei nomen. Sed plane ignorabatur. Nam Deum nemo noscit, nisi confiteatur et Patrem patrem unigeniti filii, et Filium non de portione, aut dilatatione, aut emissione; sed ex eo natum inenarrabiliter, incomprehensibiliter, ut filium a patre, plenitudinem divinitatis ex qua et in qua natus 60 est obtinentem, verum et infinitum et perfectum Deum; haec enim Dei est plenitudo. Nam si horum aliquid deerit, jam non erit plenitudo, quam in eo habitare complacuit (Coloss. I, 19). Hoc a Filio praedicatur, hoc ignorantibus manifestatur; sic clarificatur 0086B per Filium Pater, cum pater filii talis agnoscitur.