Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume VI/Gregory Thaumaturgus/Dubious or Spurious Writings/A Sectional Confession of Faith/Section VIII

by Gregory Thaumaturgus

VIII.

Now the person in each declares the independent being and subsistence.^[1] But divinity is the property of the Father; and whenever the divinity of these three is spoken of as one, testimony is borne that the property^[2] of the Father belongs also to the Son and the Spirit: wherefore, if the divinity may be spoken of as one in three persons, the trinity is established, and the unity is not dissevered; and the oneness which is naturally the Father’s is also acknowledged to be the Son’s and the Spirit’s. If one, however, speaks of one person as he may speak of one divinity, it cannot be that the two in the one are as one.^[3] For Paul addresses the Father as one in respect of divinity, and speaks of the Son as one in respect of lordship: “There is one God the Father, of whom are all things, and we for Him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by Him.”^[4] Wherefore if there is one God, and one Lord, and at the same time one person as one divinity in one lordship,^[5] how can credit be given to (this distinction in) the words “of whom” and “by whom,” as has been said before? We speak, accordingly, not as if we separated the lordship from the divinity, nor as estranging the one from the other, but as unifying them in the way warranted by actual fact and truth; and we call the Son God with the property of the Father,^[6] as being His image and offspring; and we call the Father Lord, addressing Him by the name of the One Lord, as being His Origin and Begettor.

Footnotes

1. τὸ εἶναι αὐτὸ καὶ ὑφεστάναι δηλοῖ.
2. By the ἰδιότητα τοῦ Πατρός is meant here the divinity belonging to the Father.—Migne.
3. οὐκ ἐστιν ὡς ἓν τὰ δύο ἐν τῷ ἑνί.
4. 1 Cor. viii. 6.
5. καθ᾽ ὃ θεότης μιᾶς κυριότητος.
6. τῷ ἰδιώματι τοῦ Πατρός.