[7846] "The word probole properly means anything which proceeds or is sent forth from the substance of another, as the fruit of a tree or the rays of the sun. In Latin, it is translated by prolatio, emissio, or editio, or what we now express by the word development. In Tertullian's time, Valentinus had given the term a material signification. Tertullian, therefore, has to apologize for using it, when writing against Praxeas, the forerunner of the Sabellians" (Newman's Arians, ii. 4; reprint, p. 101).
[7847] probole.
[7848] See Adv. Valentin. cc. xiv. xv.
[7849] Matt. xi. 27.
[7850] John i. 18.
[7851] John viii. 26.
[7852] John vi. 38.
[7853] 1 Cor. ii. 11.
[7854] John xiv. 11.
[7855] John i. 1.
[7856] John x. 30.
[7857] Literally, the probole, "of the truth."
[7858] [Compare cap. iv. supra.]
[7859] Or oneness of the divine empire.
[7860] Or dispensation of the divine tripersonality. See above ch. ii.
Chapter IX.--The Catholic Rule of Faith Expounded in Some of Its Points. Especially in the Unconfused Distinction of the Several Persons of the Blessed Trinity.
Bear always in mind that this is the rule of faith which I profess; by it I testify that the Father, and the Son, and the Spirit are inseparable from each other, and so will you know in what sense this is said. Now, observe, my assertion is that the Father is one, and the Son one, and the Spirit one, and that They are distinct from Each Other. This statement is taken in a wrong sense by every uneducated as well as every perversely disposed person, as if it predicated a diversity, in such a sense as to imply a separation among the Father, and the Son, and the Spirit. I am, moreover, obliged to say this, when (extolling the Monarchy at the expense of the Economy) they contend for the identity of the Father and Son and Spirit, that it is not by way of diversity that the Son differs from the Father, but by distribution: it is not by division that He is different, but by distinction; because the Father is not the same as the Son, since they differ one from the other in the mode of their being. [7861] For the Father is the entire substance, but the Son is a derivation and portion of the whole, [7862] as He Himself acknowledges: "My Father is greater than I." [7863] In the Psalm His inferiority is described as being "a little lower than the angels." [7864] Thus the Father is distinct from the Son, being greater than the Son, inasmuch as He who begets is one, and He who is begotten is another; He, too, who sends is one, and He who is sent is another; and He, again, who makes is one, and He through whom the thing is made is another. Happily the Lord Himself employs this expression of the person of the Paraclete, so as to signify not a division or severance, but a disposition (of mutual relations in the Godhead); for He says, "I will pray the Father, and He shall send you another Comforter...even the Spirit of truth," [7865] thus making the Paraclete distinct from Himself, even as we say that the Son is also distinct from the Father; so that He showed a third degree in the Paraclete, as we believe the second degree is in the Son, by reason of the order observed in the Economy. Besides, does not the very fact that they have the distinct names of Father and Son amount to a declaration that they are distinct in personality? [7866] For, of course, all things will be what their names represent them to be; and what they are and ever will be, that will they be called; and the distinction indicated by the names does not at all admit of any confusion, because there is none in the things which they designate. "Yes is yes, and no is no; for what is more than these, cometh of evil." [7867]
[7861] "Modulo," in the sense of dispensation or economy. See Oehler and Rigault. on The Apology, c. xxi.
[7862] "In his representation of the distinction (of the Persons of the Blessed Trinity), Tertullian sometimes uses expressions which in aftertimes, when controversy had introduced greater precision of language, were studiously avoided by the orthodox. Thus he calls the Father the whole substance, the Son a derivation from or portion of the whole." (Bp. Kaye, On Tertullian, p. 505). After Arius, the language of theology received greater precision; but as it is, there is no doubt of the orthodoxy of Tertullian's doctrine, since he so firmly and ably teaches the Son's consubstantiality with the Father--equal to Him and inseparable from him. [In other words, Tertullian could not employ a technical phraseology afterwards adopted to give precision to the same orthodox ideas.]
[7863] John xiv. 28.
[7864] Ps. viii. 5.
[7865] John xiv. 16.
[7866] Aliud ab alio.
[7867] Matt. v. 37.
Chapter X.--The Very Names of Father and Son Prove the Personal Distinction of the Two. They Cannot Possibly Be Identical, Nor is Their Identity Necessary to Preserve the Divine Monarchy.
So it is either the Father or the Son, and the day is not the same as the night; nor is the Father the same as the Son, in such a way that Both of them should be One, and One or the Other should be Both,--an opinion which the most conceited "Monarchians" maintain. He Himself, they say, made Himself a Son to Himself. [7868] Now a Father makes a Son, and a Son makes a Father; [7869] and they who thus become reciprocally related out of each other to each other cannot in any way by themselves simply become so related to themselves, that the Father can make Himself a Son to Himself, and the Son render Himself a Father to Himself. And the relations which God establishes, them does He also guard. A father must needs have a son, in order to be a father; so likewise a son, to be a son, must have a father. It is, however, one thing to have, and another thing to be. For instance, in order to be a husband, I must have a wife; I can never myself be my own wife. In like manner, in order to be a father, I have a son, for I never can be a son to myself; and in order to be a son, I have a father, it being impossible for me ever to be my own father. And it is these relations which make me (what I am), when I come to possess them: I shall then be a father, when I have a son; and a son, when I have a father. Now, if I am to be to myself any one of these relations, I no longer have what I am myself to be: neither a father, because I am to be my own father; nor a son, because I shall be my own son. Moreover, inasmuch as I ought to have one of these relations in order to be the other; so, if I am to be both together, I shall fail to be one while I possess not the other. For if I must be myself my son, who am also a father, I now cease to have a son, since I am my own son. But by reason of not having a son, since I am my own son, how can I be a father? For I ought to have a son, in order to be a father. Therefore I am not a son, because I have not a father, who makes a son. In like manner, if I am myself my father, who am also a son, I no longer have a father, but am myself my father. By not having a father, however, since I am my own father, how can I be a son? For I ought to have a father, in order to be a son. I cannot therefore be a father, because I have not a son, who makes a father. Now all this must be the device of the devil--this excluding and severing one from the other--since by including both together in one under pretence of the Monarchy, he causes neither to be held and acknowledged, so that He is not the Father, since indeed He has not the Son; neither is He the Son, since in like manner He has not the Father: for while He is the Father, He will not be the Son. In this way they hold the Monarchy, but they hold neither the Father nor the Son. Well, but "with God nothing is impossible." [7870] True enough; who can be ignorant of it? Who also can be unaware that "the things which are impossible with men are possible with God?" [7871] "The foolish things also of the world hath God chosen to confound the things which are wise." [7872] We have read it all. Therefore, they argue, it was not difficult for God to make Himself both a Father and a Son, contrary to the condition of things among men. For a barren woman to have a child against nature was no difficulty with God; nor was it for a virgin to conceive. Of course nothing is "too hard for the Lord." [7873] But if we choose to apply this principle so extravagantly and harshly in our capricious imaginations, we may then make out God to have done anything we please, on the ground that it was not impossible for Him to do it. We must not, however, because He is able to do all things suppose that He has actually done what He has not done. But we must inquire whether He has really done it. God could, if He had liked, have furnished man with wings to fly with, just as He gave wings to kites. We must not, however, run to the conclusion that He did this because He was able to do it. He might also have extinguished Praxeas and all other heretics at once; it does not follow, however, that He did, simply because He was able. For it was necessary that there should be both kites and heretics; it was necessary also that the Father should be crucified. [7874] In one sense there will be something difficult even for God--namely, that which He has not done--not because He could not, but because He would not, do it. For with God, to be willing is to be able, and to be unwilling is to be unable; all that He has willed, however, He has both been able to accomplish, and has displayed His ability. Since, therefore, if God had wished to make Himself a Son to Himself, He had it in His power to do so; and since, if He had it in His power, He effected His purpose, you will then make good your proof of His power and His will (to do even this) when you shall have proved to us that He actually did it.
[7868] [Kaye, p. 507, note 3.]
[7869] As correlatives, one implying the existence of the other.
[7870] Matt. xix. 26.
[7871] Luke xviii. 27.
[7872] 1 Cor. i. 27.
[7873] Gen. xviii. 14.
[7874] An ironical reference to a great paradox in the Praxean heresy.
Chapter XI.--The Identity of the Father and the Son, as Praxeas Held It, Shown to Be Full of Perplexity and Absurdity. Many Scriptures Quoted in Proof of the Distinction of the Divine Persons of the Trinity.
It will be your duty, however, to adduce your proofs out of the Scriptures as plainly as we do, when we prove that He made His Word a Son to Himself. For if He calls Him Son, and if the Son is none other than He who has proceeded from the Father Himself, and if the Word has proceeded from the Father Himself, He will then be the Son, and not Himself from whom He proceeded. For the Father Himself did not proceed from Himself. Now, you who say that the Father is the same as the Son, do really make the same Person both to have sent forth from Himself (and at the same time to have gone out from Himself as) that Being which is God. If it was possible for Him to have done this, He at all events did not do it. You must bring forth the proof which I require of you--one like my own; that is, (you must prove to me) that the Scriptures show the Son and the Father to be the same, just as on our side the Father and the Son are demonstrated to be distinct; I say distinct, but not separate: [7875] for as on my part I produce the words of God Himself, "My heart hath emitted my most excellent Word," [7876] so you in like manner ought to adduce in opposition to me some text where God has said, "My heart hath emitted Myself as my own most excellent Word," in such a sense that He is Himself both the Emitter and the Emitted, both He who sent forth and He who was sent forth, since He is both the Word and God. I bid you also observe, [7877] that on my side I advance the passage where the Father said to the Son, "Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten Thee." [7878] If you want me to believe Him to be both the Father and the Son, show me some other passage where it is declared, "The Lord said unto Himself, I am my own Son, to-day have I begotten myself;" or again, "Before the morning did I beget myself;" [7879] and likewise, "I the Lord possessed Myself the beginning of my ways for my own works; before all the hills, too, did I beget myself;" [7880] and whatever other passages are to the same effect. Why, moreover, could God the Lord of all things, have hesitated to speak thus of Himself, if the fact had been so? Was He afraid of not being believed, if He had in so many words declared Himself to be both the Father and the Son? Of one thing He was at any rate afraid--of lying. Of Himself, too, and of His own truth, was He afraid. Believing Him, therefore, to be the true God, I am sure that He declared nothing to exist in any other way than according to His own dispensation and arrangement, and that He had arranged nothing in any other way than according to His own declaration. On your side, however, you must make Him out to be a liar, and an impostor, and a tamperer with His word, if, when He was Himself a Son to Himself, He assigned the part of His Son to be played by another, when all the Scriptures attest the clear existence of, and distinction in (the Persons of) the Trinity, and indeed furnish us with our Rule of faith, that He who speaks, and He of whom He speaks, and to whom He speaks, cannot possibly seem to be One and the Same. So absurd and misleading a statement would be unworthy of God, that, when it was Himself to whom He was speaking, He speaks rather to another, and not to His very self. Hear, then, other utterances also of the Father concerning the Son by the mouth of Isaiah: "Behold my Son, whom I have chosen; my beloved, in whom I am well pleased: I will put my Spirit upon Him, and He shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles." [7881] Hear also what He says to the Son: "Is it a great thing for Thee, that Thou shouldest be called my Son to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the dispersed of Israel? I have given Thee for a light to the Gentiles, that Thou mayest be their salvation to the end of the earth." [7882] Hear now also the Son's utterances respecting the Father: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He hath anointed me to preach the gospel unto men." [7883] He speaks of Himself likewise to the Father in the Psalm: "Forsake me not until I have declared the might of Thine arm to all the generation that is to come." [7884] Also to the same purport in another Psalm: "O Lord, how are they increased that trouble me!" [7885] But almost all the Psalms which prophesy of [7886] the person of Christ, represent the Son as conversing with the Father--that is, represent Christ (as speaking) to God. Observe also the Spirit speaking of the Father and the Son, in the character of [7887] a third Person: "The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit Thou on my right hand, until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool." [7888] Likewise in the words of Isaiah: "Thus saith the Lord to the Lord [7889] mine Anointed." [7890] Likewise, in the same prophet, He says to the Father respecting the Son: "Lord, who hath believed our report, and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed? We brought a report concerning Him, as if He were a little child, as if He were a root in a dry ground, who had no form nor comeliness." [7891] These are a few testimonies out of many; for we do not pretend to bring up all the passages of Scripture, because we have a tolerably large accumulation of them in the various heads of our subject, as we in our several chapters call them in as our witnesses in the fulness of their dignity and authority. [7892] Still, in these few quotations the distinction of Persons in the Trinity is clearly set forth. For there is the Spirit Himself who speaks, and the Father to whom He speaks, and the Son of whom He speaks. [7893] In the same manner, the other passages also establish each one of several Persons in His special character--addressed as they in some cases are to the Father or to the Son respecting the Son, in other cases to the Son or to the Father concerning the Father, and again in other instances to the (Holy) Spirit.