beyond Himself. To become a creator at a certain moment in time—to act in creation as much involves change as the act of generation. If you admit, as you must, that God cancreate without change, you must admit equally that He can generate. You have admitted a "motus" which is not "mutatio" (de Gen. 30, 1035, A, B). But this proceeding forth of God in the action of creation is only not a "change" in the Divine Essence, because it has its origin and ground there. It has been the eternal being of God to proceed forth, to move, to live. This eternal motion, eternal transition in God, it is, that we, speaking in the necessarily inadequate terms of human discourse, call the "eternal generation of the Son" (de Gen. 1, 1019 D; de Gen. 29, 1034 B; adv. Arium, i. 43, 1074 A, B. The "esse" of God is equivalent to "moveri," "et moveri ipsum quod est esse"). This "generatio" is expressed as the eternal utterance of the Divine Will, moving eternally into actuality; the will of God not for one instant failing of its absolutely self-adequate effect. "Every act of will is the progeny of that which wills." Thus of the Father's will, the Word or Son is the summary or universal effect.
As the Son is thus conceived of as the eternal object of the Divine will, so He is the eternal and adequate object of Divine self-knowledge. As the Father eternally wills, so He eternally knows Himself in the Son. The Divine knowledge, like the Divine will, must have its adequate object. God knows Himself in the Son; for the Son is the expression of His own being. The Son is thus the "forma" of God and His limitation. This thought constantly recurs. It is not that God is limited from outside, but that the infinite and the indeterminate in expressing Himself limits or conditions Himself. He knows Himself in the Logos or determinate, definite Utterance; and thus the unconditioned, the absolute, the Father, limits or conditions Himself in that eternal utterance by which He knows Himself. Knowledge is thus conceived of as limitation or form; it is an eternal abiding relation of subject and object. Once for all the Father knows Himself as what He is in the Son.
It is only stating this same principle in broader terms to say that the Son is to the Father as effect to cause (adv. Arium, iv. 3, 1115 A), that is to say, He is the revelation of all the Father is. What the Father is, the Son expresses, exhibits, manifests. As outward intelligence and life express our inner being, so the Father, the inner Being, is expressed in the Son. The Father is the esse, the vivens, the Son the vita, the actualized life (i. 32, 42). Substance can only be known by its manifestations in life (iii. 11, 1107 B). The Father is the "motio," the Son the "motus." What the Father is inwardly ("in abscondito") the Son is outwardly ("foris").
The passages in which the distinction between the ἐνδιάθετος and the προφορικὸς Λόγος are implied are not many nor emphatic in Victorinus, as, e.g., in Tertullian. The Son is eternally Son and self-subsistent. That "effulgentia" "Filietas" is out of all time, absolute (i. 27, 1060 D). "Catholica disciplina dicit et semper fuisse Patrem et semper Filium" (in Phil. 1210 A). Yet Victorinus admits a sense in which he may be called "maxime filius" in Humanity (1061 A), and speaks of Him as getting the name of Son, the "Name above every Name," only in His Incarnate exaltation (1210 C, D, "ita ut tantum nomen, aecesserit, res eadem fuerit"). His thought expresses itself thus naturally in the doctrine of the generation of the Son and His co-essential equality with the Father. But it does not so easily adapt itself to formulae which express the Being, Procession, and Substantiality of the Holy Ghost. He intends to be perfectly orthodox. He accepts the faith, even though he finds it difficult to formulate. He teaches emphatically that the Holy Ghost proceeds "from the Father and the Son." He is subsequent in order to the Son. But as "Spirit of the Father" there is a sense in which He precedes the Son; that is, as that which God is—Spirit—He is that in which the Father begets the Son. He conveys the Father's Life to the Son.
The distinction of Son and Spirit is carefully maintained, but yet the essential duality which is in God—the distinction of that which is from that which proceeds forth—the distinction expressed in all the antitheses referred to above, is clearer to Victorinus than the Trinity of relations. The Son and the Spirit seem to him more utterly one than the Father and the Son. They are "existentiae duae," but they proceed forth "in uno motu" and that "motus" is the Son; so that the Spirit is, as it were, contained in the Son (adv. Ar. iii. 8, 1105 A). Thus Victorinus sometimes speaks as if the Spirit were the Son in another aspect (he even says "idem ipse et Christus et Spiritus Sanctus," see ib. iii. 18, 1113 D and i. 59, 1085 B). He has also a subtle mode of speaking of the Spirit as the "Λόγος in occulto," and Christ Incarnate as the "Λόγος in manifesto"; Logos and Spiritus being used interchangeably[1]; or again Christ is the "Spiritus apertus," the Spirit the "Spiritus occultus" (iii. 14, 1109 B, C). Again, the Spirit is the "interior Christi virtus" (iv. 17, 1125 C) in Whom Christ is present (1109 C). The confusion seems to spring from the use of "Spiritus" as meaning the Divine nature. But in intention and generally the two persons are kept distinct. If Christ is the "vox," the Spirit is the "vox vocis" (iii. 16, 1111 C, i. 13, 1048 A), or again, as the Son is Life the Spirit is Knowledge ("vivere quidem Christus, intelligere Spiritus," i. 13, 1048 B), or again the relations of the Trinity are expressed in formulas such as these: "visio, videre, discernere"; "esse, vivere, intelligere," expressing three stages of a great act (iii. 4, 5; the latter chapter should be studied). Victorinus is the first theologian to speak of the Spirit as the principle of unity in the Godhead, the bond or "copula" of the eternal Trinity, completing the perfect circle of the Divine Being, the return of God upon Himself (i. 60, 1085 C, D, "sphaera," "circularis motus").
- ↑ So the words "genitus," "procedens," are not kept strictly to the second and third Persons of the Trinity respectively. The Spirit is said once (adv. Ar. iv. 33 1138 A) to be "genitus," and the "processio" of the Son is frequently spoken of, e.g. i. 27, 1060 D; i. 14; 1048 B.
