[ Onomata ]

 THE various titles of the Second Divine Person are at once equivalent and complementary to each other. Son, Word, Image, all imply relation, and suggest and teach that attribute of supereffluence which is one of the perfections of the Divine Being. (vid. Father Almighty .)

 "The Son of God, as may be learnt from the divine oracles themselves, is Himself the Word of God, and the Wisdom, and the Image, and the Hand, and the Power; for God's Offspring is one, and of the generation from the Father these titles are tokens. For if you say the Son, you have declared what is from the Father by nature; and if you imagine the Word, you are thinking again of what is from Him, and what is inseparable; and, speaking of Wisdom, again you mean nothing less, what is not from without, but from Him and in Him; and if you name the Power and the Hand, again you speak of what is proper to substance; and, speaking of the Image, you signify the Son; for what else is like God but the Offspring from Him? Doubtless the things which came to be through the Word, these are founded in Wisdom ; and what are laid in Wisdom, these are all made by the Hand, and came to be through the Son." Decr. § 17.

 As Sonship is implied in "Image" (art. Son ), so it is implied in "Word" and "Wisdom." For instance, "Especially is it absurd to name the Word, yet deny Him to be Son, for, if the Word be not from God, reasonably might they deny Him to be Son; but if He is from God, how see they not that what exists from anything is son of him from whom it is?" Orat. iv. 15. Again, [ aei theos en kai huios esti, logos on ]. Orat. iii. 29 init. [ huios tis e ho logos ]; de Decr. 17. And still more pointedly, [ ei me huios, oude logos ], Orat. iv. 24 fin. And so "Image" is implied in Sonship: "being Son of God, He must be like Him," ii. § 17. It is implied in "Word:" [ en tei idiai eikoni, hetis estin ho logos autou ]. § 82, also 34 fin. On the contrary, the very root of heretical error was the denial that these titles implied each other.

 All the titles of the Son of God are consistent with each other, and variously represent one and the same Person. "Son" and "Word" denote His derivation; "Word" and "Image," His Likeness; "Word" and "Wisdom," His immateriality; "Wisdom" and "Hand," His co-existence. "What else is Like God, but His Offspring from Him?" de Decr. § 17. "If He is not Son, neither is He Image." Orat. ii. § 2. "How is there Word and Wisdom, unless there be a proper Offspring of His substance?" ii. § 22. vid. also Orat. i. § 20, 21, and at great length Orat. iv. § 20, etc. vid. also Naz. Orat. 30. 20. Basil. contr. Eunom. i. 18. Hilar. de Trin. vii. 11. August. in Joann. xlviii. 6, and in Psalm. 44, (45,) 5.

 It is sometimes erroneously supposed that such illustrations as these are intended to explain how the Sacred Mystery in question is possible, whereas they are merely intended to show that the words we use concerning it are not self-contradictory, which is the objection most commonly brought against them. To say that the doctrine of the Son's generation does not trench upon the Father's perfection and immutability, or negative the Son's eternity, seems at first sight inconsistent with what the words Father and Son mean, till another image is adduced, such as the sun and radiance, in which that alleged inconsistency can be conceived to exist in fact. Here one image corrects another; and the accumulation of images is not, as is often thought, the restless and fruitless effort of the mind to enter into the Mystery, but is a safeguard against any one image, nay, any collection of images, being supposed adequate . If it be said that the language used concerning the sun and its radiance is but popular, not philosophical, so again the Catholic language concerning the Holy Trinity may, nay, must be economical, not exact, conveying the truth, not in the tongues of angels, but under human modes of thought and speech. vid. supr. articles Illustrations, p. 174, and Economical Language, p. 94.

 It is usual with the Fathers to use the two terms "Son" and "Word" to guard and complete the ordinary sense of each other. Their doctrine is that our Lord is both, in a certain transcendent, prototypical, and singular sense; that in that high sense they are coincident with one another; that they are applied to human things by an accommodation, as far as these are shadows of Him to whom properly they really belong; that, being but partially realised on earth, the ideas gained from the earthly types are but imperfect; that in consequence, if any one of them is used exclusively of Him, it tends to introduce wrong ideas respecting Him; but that their respective imperfections, as lying on different sides, when used together correct each other. The term Son, used by itself, was abused into Arianism, and the term Word into Sabellianism; the term Son might be accused of introducing material notions, and the term Word of suggesting imperfection and transitoriness. Each of them corrected the other. "Scripture," says Athan., "joining the two, has said 'Son,' that the natural and true Offspring of the Substance may be preached; but, that no one may understand a human offspring, therefore, signifying His substance a second time, it calls Him Word, and Wisdom, and Radiance." Orat. i. § 28.

 Vid. also iv. § 8. Euseb. contr. Marc. ii. 4, p. 54. Isid. Pel. Ep. iv. 141. So S. Cyril says that we learn "from His being called Son that He is from Him, [ to ex autou ]; from His being called Wisdom and Word, that He is in Him," [ to en autoi ]. Thesaur. iv. p. 31. However, S. Athanasius observes, that properly speaking the one term implies the other, i.e. in its fulness. "Since the Son's Being is from the Father, therefore It is in the Father." Orat. iii. § 3. "If not Son, not Word either; and if not Word, not Son. For what is from the Father is Son; and what is from the Father, but the Word?" etc. Orat. iv. § 24 fin. On the other hand, the heretics accused Catholics of inconsistency, or of a union of opposite errors, because they accepted all the Scripture images together. But Vigilius of Thapsus says, that "error bears testimony to truth, and the discordant opinions of misbelievers blend into concordance in the rule of orthodoxy." contr. Eutych. ii. init. "Grande miraculum, ut expugnatione sui veritas confirmetur." ibid. 3. vid. also i. init. and Eulogius, ap. Phot. 225, p. 759.

 Every illustration, as being incomplete on one or other side of it, taken by itself, tends to heresy. The title Son by itself suggests a second God, as the title Word a mere attribute, and the title Minister a creature. All heresies are partial views of the truth, and are wrong, not so much in what they say, as in what they deny. The truth, on the other hand, is a positive and comprehensive doctrine, and in consequence necessarily mysterious and open to misconception. When Athan. implies that the Eternal Father is in the Son, though remaining what He is, as a man is in his child, he is intent only upon the point of the Son's connaturality and co-equality, which the Arians denied. In like manner he says in a later Discourse, "In the Son the Father's Godhead is beheld. The Emperor's countenance and form are in his image, and the countenance of his image is in the Emperor. For the Emperor's likeness in his image is a definitive likeness, [ aparallaktos ], so that he who looks upon the image, in it sees the Emperor, and again he who sees the Emperor recognises that he is in the image. The image then might say, 'I and the Emperor are one.'" Orat. iii. § 5. And thus the Auctor de Trin. refers to "Peter, Paul, and Timothy having three subsistencies and one humanity." i. p. 918. S. Cyril even seems to deny that each individual man may be considered a separate substance, except as the Three Persons are such, Dial. i. p. 409; and S. Gregory Nyssen is led to say that, strictly speaking, the abstract man, which is predicated of separate individuals, is still one, and this with a view of illustrating the Divine Unity. ad Ablab. t. 2, p. 449. vid. Petav. de Trin. iv. 9.

 The title "Word" implies the ineffable mode of the Son's generation, as distinct from material parallels, vid. Gregory Nyssen, contr. Eunom. iii. p. 107. Chrysostom in Joan. Hom. 2, § 4. Cyril Alex. Thesaur. 5, p. 37. Also it implies that there is but One Son. vid. Orat. i. § 16. "As the Origin is one substance, so its Word and Wisdom are one, substantial and subsisting." Athan. Orat. iv. 1 fin.

 Vid. passim. All these titles, "Word, Wisdom, Light," etc., serve to guard the title "Son" from any notions of parts or dimensions, e.g. "He is not composed of parts, but being impassible and single, He is impassibly and indivisibly Father of the Son ... for ... the Word and Wisdom is neither creature, nor part of Him whose Word He is, nor an offspring passibly begotten." Orat. i. § 28.

 As the Arians took the title Son in that part of its earthly sense in which it did not apply to our Lord, so they misinterpreted the title Word also; which denoted the Son's immateriality and indivisible presence in the Father, but did not express His perfection. vid. Orat. ii. § 34 36. "As our word belongs to us and is from us, and not a work external to us, so also the Word of God is proper to Him and from Him, and is not made, yet not as the word of man, else one must consider God as man. Men have many words," etc. Orat. ii. § 36. vid. art. Word .

 The name of Image was of great importance in correcting heterodox opinions as to the words Son and Word, which were propagated in the Ante-Nicene times, and in keeping their economical sense in the right direction. A son who had a beginning, and a word which was spoken and over, were in no sense an "Image" of the Eternal and All-perfect God.