XII. For to us there is but One God, the
Father, of Whom are all things, and One Lord Jesus Christ, by Whom are
all things; and One Holy Ghost, in Whom are all things; 2 Cor. viii. 6. yet these words, of, by, in, whom, do not
denote a difference of nature (for if this were the case, the three
prepositions, or the order of the three names would never be altered),
but they characterize the personalities of a nature which is one and
unconfused. And this is proved by the fact that They are again
collected into one, if you will read—not carelessly—this
other passage of the same Apostle, “Of Him and through Him and to
Him are all things; to Him be glory forever, Amen.” Rom. xi. 36. The Father is Father, and is
Unoriginate, for He is of no one; the Son is Son, and is not
unoriginate, for He is of the Father. But if you take the word
Origin in a temporal sense, He too is Unoriginate, for He is the Maker
of Time, and is not subject to Time. The Holy Ghost is truly
Spirit, coming forth from the Father indeed, but not after the manner
of the Son, for it is not by Generation but by Procession (since I must
coin a word for the sake of clearness The Coining is simply of the adverbial form;
the Substantive is found in earlier writings. S. Gregory himself
uses it Orat. Theol. V. He uses other words also, as ἔκπεμψις,
πρόοδος, and the verbs
προέρχεσθαι,
προϊέναι.
As to the question of the Double
Procession (Filioque) see Introd. to Orat. Theol. V. Dr. Swete
(Doctr. of H. S. p. 118) says, “It is instructive to notice how
at this period the two great Sees of Rome and Constantinople seem to
have agreed in abstaining from a minuter definition of the
Procession. Both in East and West the relations of the Spirit to
the Son were being examined by individual theologians; but S. Gregory
and S. Damasus appear to have alike refrained from entering upon a
question which did not touch the essentials of the Faith.”
He adds in a note “This is the more remarkable because Damasus
was of Spanish origin.”);
for neither did the Father cease to be Unbegotten because of His
begetting something, nor the Son to be begotten because He is of the
Unbegotten (how could that be?), nor is the Spirit changed into Father
or Son because He proceeds, or because He is God—though the
ungodly do not believe it. For Personality is unchangeable; else
how could Personality remain, if it were changeable, and could be
removed from one to another? But they who make
“Unbegotten” and “Begotten” natures of
equivocal gods would perhaps make Adam and Seth differ in nature, since
the former was not born of flesh (for he was created), but the latter
was born of Adam and Eve. There is then One God in Three, and
These Three are One, as we have said.