Dist. 9
by St. Bonaventure
Source text: Public Domain Mark 1.0. English translation/apparatus/encoding: CC BY-NC 4.0, Wroot Press.
https://bonaventure.wrootpress.com/browse/1/d/9/q/bon-sent-I-d9-littera
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### Distinction IX.

*On the distinction of the three persons.*

Now let us approach the distinction of the three persons. "Let us therefore hold, as Augustine teaches in the book *On Faith to Peter*, that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are by nature one God, yet that the Father himself is not the one who is the Son, nor the Son the one who is the Father, nor the Holy Spirit the one who is the Father or the Son. For there is one essence of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, in which the Father is not one thing, the Son another, the Holy Spirit another, although personally the Father is one, the Son another, the Holy Spirit another".

### Chap. I.

*On the coeternity of the Father and the Son.*

For the Son is begotten of the Father, and therefore another, yet the Father did not exist before the Son; for the three persons are coeternal to one another. But against this the heretic says, as Ambrose reports in the first book *On the Trinity*: "Everything that is born has a beginning; and therefore, because he is the Son, he has a beginning and began to be; which has been said in this way from the mouth of heretics." "For Arius himself, as Augustine recalls in the sixth book *On the Trinity*, is said to have said: If he is a Son, he has been born; if he has been born, there was [a time] when the Son was not."

He who says this "does not understand that even *to be born* is, with respect to God, to be eternal, so that the Son is coeternal with the Father, just as the splendor which is begotten from fire and is diffused is coeval with it, and would be coeternal if the fire were eternal."

Likewise: "If the Son of God, says Augustine, is the power and wisdom of God, and God never was without power and wisdom, then the Son is coeternal with God the Father. For the Apostle says: *that Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God*; therefore either he did not exist when the Son did not exist, or at some time God did not have power and wisdom, which it is mad to say." For it is established that he always had wisdom; therefore he always had a Son.

To the same Arian question Ambrose responds in this manner: "I, I say, confess that the Son has been born; what remains of impiety I shud-

der at." For it is written in the Old Testament, that I may speak of one out of many: *Before me there was no other God, and after me there shall be none.* Who, then, says this? The Father or the Son? If the Son, *before me*, he says, *there was no other God*; if the Father, *after me*, he says, *there shall be none*: this one has no prior, that one no posterior. For mutually in themselves both the Father is known in the Son and the Son in the Father. For when you say "Father," you have also designated his Son, because no one is his own father; when you name the Son, you also confess the Father, because no one is his own son. Therefore neither can the Son be without the Father, nor the Father without the Son: therefore always the Father, and always the Son also is."

Likewise: "Tell me, I say, heretic, was there a time when omnipotent God was not Father and yet was God? For if he began to be Father, then God first existed and afterwards was made Father. How then is God unchangeable? For if he was first God and afterwards Father, he was certainly changed by the accession of generation." "But may God turn away this madness."

### Chap. III.

*On the ineffable and intelligible mode of generation.*

"But you ask of me, says Ambrose, how, if he is a Son, he does not have a Father prior to him? I in turn ask of you, when or how do you think the Son was generated? For to me it is impossible to know the secret of generation. The mind fails, the voice is silent — not mine only, but the Angels' too; it is above the powers and above the Angels and above the Cherubim and above the Seraphim and above all sense, because it is written: *The peace of Christ is above all sense.* And if the peace of Christ is above all sense, how is so great a generation not above all sense?" "You therefore, put your hand to your mouth; it is not permitted to scrutinize heavenly mysteries. It is permitted to know that he was born; it is not permitted to discuss how he was born. To deny that is not permitted me; to inquire into this is fearful." For that generation is ineffable; whence Isaiah: *Who shall declare his generation?*

Yet some, presuming on their own wit, say that that generation can be understood, and other things of this sort, clinging to that authority of Jerome on *Ecclesiastes*: "In the sacred Scriptures *quis* ('who') is very often put not for the impossible but for the difficult, as there: *Who shall declare his generation*?" But Jerome did not say this on the ground that the eternal generation of the Son could be fully understood or explained by any mortal, but because something can be understood or said of it. Yet some take this as said of the temporal generation of Christ.

*Whether it ought to be said: God is always being begotten, or has always been begotten.*

Here it can be asked, since the generation of the Son from the Father has neither beginning nor end, because it is eternal, whether it ought to be said: the Son is always being begotten, or has always been begotten, or shall always be begotten. About this Gregory on *Job* says: "The Lord God Jesus, in that he is the power and wisdom of God, was born from the Father before time; or rather, because he neither began to be born nor ceased, let us say more truly *always born*; we cannot, however, say *always being born*, lest he seem to be imperfect. But indeed, so that he may be designated both eternal and perfect, let us say both *always* and *born*, in that *born* pertains to perfection and *always* to eternity; although by this very thing, that we say 'perfect,' we deviate much from the expression of that truth, because what has not been made cannot properly be called perfect"; but stammering, as we can, we re-echo the lofty things of God. "And the Lord, condescending to the words of our infirmity, says: *Be perfect, even as your heavenly Father is perfect*." Upon that place also of the Psalm: *Today I have begotten thee*, Augustine speaks thus of this generation of the Son: "Although by this, that he says *today*, that day too can be understood on which Christ was born according to man; yet because *today* signifies presence, and in eternity nothing is past, as though it had ceased to be, nor future, as though it were not yet, but only present, because whatever is eternal always is; yet it is taken more divinely of the eternal generation of the wisdom of God." Behold, by these words Augustine shows that the generation of the Son always is, and neither passes away nor is to come, because it is eternal. For he said *I have begotten* lest it be thought new, that is, lest it should seem to have begun; he said *today* lest the generation should seem past. "From these words of the Prophet therefore, as John Chrysostom says, nothing else is manifested than that from the very essence of the Father the Son is always begotten."

Origen, however, on *Jeremiah* says that the Son is always being generated from the Father, in these words: "Our Saviour is the wisdom of God; but wisdom is the splendor of the eternal light: therefore our Saviour is the splendor of brightness. The splendor, however, is not born once and ceases, but as often as the light has risen from which the splendor arises, so often does the splendor of brightness also arise: so therefore the Saviour is always being born. Whence he says in the book of the *Wise One*: *Before all the hills the Lord begets me*, not, as some badly read, *has begotten*." By these words Origen plainly shows that it can rightly be said and must be said: *The Son is always being born*, which seems contrary to that word of Gregory set forth above, namely: "We cannot say: he is always being born."

But lest such great authors should seem to contradict one another in so great a matter, let us interpret those words of Gregory benignly. "The Lord Jesus, he says, was born from the Father before time; or rather, because he neither began to be born nor ceased, let us say more truly: *always born*." But how is this said more truly, namely that the Son was always born, than that, namely that he was born of the Father before time? For the sincere and catholic faith holds and preaches the former as it does the latter. Why then does he say "Let us say more truly," since both are equally true, unless because he wished it to be understood that this is said for the greater evidence and expression of the truth than that? For by these words every approach of calumniating wiles is closed to the heretics, by which the generation of Christ according to his deity is shown to be without beginning and without end, and perfect. But the truth is not manifested so plainly when it is said: *The Son was generated of the Father before time*, or *The Son is always being born of the Father.* And therefore Gregory says, "we cannot say, he is always being born"; not, I say, so suitably, not so congruously to the explanation of the truth; yet it can be said, if rightly understood. "For the Son is always being born of the Father," as Origen says; not that that generation is daily repeated, but because it always is. He is always therefore being born, that is, his nativity is eternal.

Hilary also says that the Son is born from the Father, in the seventh book *On the Trinity* in these words: "Living God is also the power of an eternal living nature; and what is born from him with the sacrament of his own knowledge cannot have been other than living. For when he says: *As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father*, he taught that life is in himself through the living Father." Behold here you have that the Son is born from the Father. Likewise in the same book: "When Christ says: *As the Father has life in himself, so also to the Son he has given to have life in himself*, he has testified that all his living things are from the Living One. But what is born living from a living one has the perfection of nativity without novelty of nature. For it is not new that what is generated from the living into the living, since it is not from nothing; and the life which takes its nativity from life must, through the unity of nature and the sacrament of perfect nativity, both live in the Living One and have living life in itself." Behold here also you have that a living Son is generated from a living one. Likewise in the same book: "In God whatever is, lives; for God is life, and from life nothing can be except living; and the nativity is not by derivation but by power. And so, while everything which is, lives, and while everything which is born from him is power, the Son has nativity, not transformation." And here he says that he is born. Likewise in the ninth book *On the Trinity*: "The Father gives to the Son to be as much as he himself is, to whom by the sacrament of nativity he imparts the image of unbegotten being, whom he generates from himself in his own form." Here he says that the Father generates the Son.

Let us say therefore that the Son was born from the Father before time and is always being born from the Father, but more congruously *always born*; and let us confess that he is from eternity and coeternal with the Father, that is, with the author. For the Father by generation is the author of the Son, as shall be shown in what follows. As therefore the Father is eternal, so also the Son is eternal, but the Father is without author, the Son not so, because the Father is unbegotten, the Son begotten. And as Hilary says in the twelfth book *On the Trinity*: "It is one thing to be eternal without author, another to be coeternal to the Father, that is, to the author. But where the Father is author, there nativity also is; because as nativity is from the author, so also from an eternal author nativity is eternal. But everything which always is, is also eternal; yet not everything which is eternal is also unbegotten; because what is born from eternity has eternal being, in that it has been born. But what has not been born, is unborn together with eternity; and what is born from eternity, if it is not eternally born, the Father will no longer be also the eternal author. If therefore anything is lacking from eternity to him who is born of the eternal Father, it is not doubtful that the same thing is lacking to the author, because if it is infinite for the begetter to beget, for the begotten also it is infinite to be born. For neither reason nor sense admits any middle between the nativity of God the Son and the generation of God the Father, because both in generation there is nativity, and in nativity there is generation, since without either neither exists: therefore each is without interval of itself."

### Chap. V.

*On the objections of the heretics striving to prove that the Son is not coeternal with the Father.*

"But the heretic will say: Everything which has been born was not always, because it was born in order that it might be. No one doubts that those things which in human affairs have been born at some time were not. But it is one thing to be born from that which always was not, another to have been born from that which always is. There neither was he always who is father, nor is he always father; and he who is not always father has not always begotten. But where he is always father, there always is the son. But if it is always proper to God the Father that he is always Father, it must also always be proper to the Son that he is always Son. How then will it fall under our understanding, that he was not always to whom it is proper always to be that which has been born? Therefore we confess God the only-begotten as begotten, but begotten before time, neither being before being born nor born before being; because to be born what one already was is no longer to be born, but to change oneself in being born. But this exceeds human sense and the understanding of the world. Reason of human intelligence does not grasp this, but [it does grasp] of faithful prudence pro-

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