The Incomprehensibility of Divine Generation

But he treats the Son as if he were an insensate instrument. How will he not suffer a great fall and, with arms crossed, opposing such wild slanders, he must withdraw, knowing that he might not become a defendant before the divine Judge and the hearing of an unappealable grace?

Concerning those things of which the heretics say: 'When was the Son begotten and when did the Spirit proceed?' and the rest. Even with so many and so clear proofs, and the Scripture warning 'not to allow diverse and strange teachings' and to flee 'empty vanities,' the heterodox ones attempt to establish their religion from the writings, being at a loss; as if they were drinking here and there the word being scattered to each, having composed various sophisms poorly and having studied them much, putting forward those in which these things are: 'Therefore, all things, he says, are not from God?'

To which it must be answered: but the Son is not from Him by way of begetting, nor the Spirit by way of procession, according to the Spirit of God; nor is He of such operations, or so viewed as to be worthy of being established. Then: 'When, therefore, was the Son begotten and the Spirit proceeded?' Then, when the Father was not begotten. For indeed He is from Him, but not with Him. And just as it is unlawful to seek in a place, since neither the begetter nor the begotten is circumscribed—so also not in time. For the Son is God and the Word of the Father, but He is for the doing. Likewise also the Spirit.

How, he says, was He begotten? This—even if it was written concerning the Son: 'From the womb before the Morning Star I brought you forth' (Luke 1:42), and concerning the Holy Spirit: 'A Spirit proceeds from me,' and if David sings: 'By the word of the Lord the heavens were established, and by the spirit of His mouth all their powers' (Psalm 33:6), and if Job says: 'A divine spirit made me, and the breath of the Pantokrator teaches me' (Job 33:4), and if the Lord teaches: 'The spirit of truth, which proceeds from the Father' (John 16:13), and if Paul writes that it is the very Spirit of God as being their own to men—yet all this exceeds the mind, for the same Apostle writes to the Corinthians: 'Thanks be to God, who always triumphs over us in Christ and made the fragrance of the knowledge manifest through us' (2 Corinthians 2:14), as if not all knowledge is ours because of the uncontainable God, but something like a veil.

As if they were being carried by a breeze. And again, regarding Him: 'we see through a mirror and in an enigma' (1 Cor 13:12). And most appropriately. 'For the glory of the Lord hides the Word' (2 Cor 4:7), according to the divine explicit, a Word surpassing all created perception, unutterable and infinite.

Not only because of the uncontainable. But because the eternal and prior to all creation, if it were not revealed by the Scriptures, was unknown to creation. And again, to the same people, the second point is called to this: 'we shall not boast in the immeasurable, but according to the measure of the rule, which God has distributed to us, to reach even unto you' (2 Cor 10:8). And in the first epistle he says: 'If anyone thinks he has learned something, he has not yet learned to know as God should know' (1 John 4:7).

What is the difference between generation and procession? Since the manner is unknown, so too is the difference, if indeed it is permitted for one to hear or speak this, for it is daring to assign a cause to the Cause, which yields a cause and an intellect above all. But to marvel at the divine and to consider the concept concerning Him to be a fearful awe is safe.

'Therefore, wanting, says he, did God generate, or not wanting?' But we must forewarn of their aim and thus answer. The aim, then, is that they might make an antithesis from one word to the other, against the pure. For, intending to strike at 'not wanting he generated'—and no one answers this to them—they say: 'So then, what God does not want, remains generating the Son, with the necessity of nature surrounding him unheedingly.'

Or, if the 'wanting he generated' is given to them, they lead to this: 'So then the generation of the Son has escaped from the paternal will, providing existence to him creatively.' But this answer proves unstable. For the God who generates and the Father precedes both the will and the non-will and every concept, as does the Son, the 'radiance of His glory'; and nothing is a middle between Him and that from which He is conceived.

Similarly also the 'image of God.' And again, the Son is an existence not beginning and not ceasing, whether through the will or non-will. He therefore generated in accordance with will and intellect by nature. But even this proposal of theirs is amidst absurdities. For it presumes that to want is a passion of desire, while not to want is to act.