On the Generation of the Divine Word (to Candidus)

Contents

Reading pages: 1–22 · 23–32

1. 1Victorinus answers Candidus by reminding him that God is beyond human speech and that the Scriptures call Christ the only-begotten Son, one with the Father.
2. 2Victorinus argues that we are sons by adoption only because Christ is the true Son, and that God, above being, begot Jesus as the perfect existent, not from nothing.
3. 3Victorinus asks what “that which is not” means, and argues that God, as cause of all, is pre-existent and the cause of both what is and what is not.
4. 4Victorinus distinguishes four senses of “that which is not” and concludes that God is the supreme existent, called non-existent only as being above the things that are.
5. 5Victorinus explains that there is no absolute non-being by privation; the things that are not exist potentially or in idea before they come to be.
6. 6Victorinus divides what comes from God into four classes and says that what truly is not has no place in the fullness of God.
7. 7Victorinus describes the ladder of intelligible realities and explains that the soul, which becomes intelligent when intellect is roused in it, is a substance because it underlies intellect and the Holy Spirit.
8. 8Victorinus argues that non-being is understood only by reference to being, and so is in a certain way something, giving a natural order among the things that are.
9. 9Victorinus explains that the sensible world, made of matter and form and known through sense, belongs to the things that are not truly not.
10. 10Victorinus explains how matter and quality are one, how soul differs from matter by understanding itself, and why mixed things belong to the things that are not truly not.
11. 11Victorinus completes his classification, adding two derived modes and denying that what truly is not can exist, since all things are full of God.
12. 12Victorinus says God is not one of the things he causes, and recalls the four senses of non-being against Candidus's claim that the Son came from nothing by election.
13. 13Victorinus concludes that God, being above every existent, life and knowledge, may be called non-existent by eminence.
14. 14Victorinus argues that God begot the existent from himself, as a hidden child is brought to light at birth, and that this begotten existent is Jesus Christ, He who is.
15. 15Victorinus calls the Son the one perfect existent begotten by the Pre-existent before all things, the image in operation of the Father who is existent in power.
16. 16Victorinus argues from John 1 that the Word was in the beginning, with God, and in the Father's bosom, and so was not made from nothing but manifested from the Father's hidden power.
17. 17Victorinus defines the Word as the Father's unmoved, ever-working active power, which was in the beginning with God and is God, not made from nothing.
18. 18Victorinus explains that the Word is the maker of all things, yet God, as first cause and cause of himself, is the source even of the Word.
19. 19Victorinus argues that in God being and acting are one, the Father being and the Son acting, so that the Son is in the Father and the Father in the Son.
20. 20Victorinus reads John 1:1 and 1:18 to mean that the Word is within God's existence, as acting within being, so that Father and Son are two in power but one in simplicity.
21. 21Victorinus begins to explain the generation, insisting that “first” refers to the order of thought, not to time.
22. 22Victorinus says the Word, God's will and action, proceeded from the Father's being by a self-begotten motion outside time, so that being and acting are one and simple.
23. 23Victorinus concludes that the Son, as the action of the Father's being, is not from nothing but homoousios with the Father, God in God.
24. 24Victorinus rejects the claim that the Son came from nothing, since what truly is not cannot even be thought by God, and God's power begets only what has the power to be.
25. 25Victorinus explains that all things existed potentially in God, the Word being their seed, and appeared in action through the Son.
26. 26Victorinus answers the objection that “with God” means outside God: as God breathed the soul from within, so the Son was breathed forth from within, as Psalm 45 says, and was not made.
27. 27Victorinus reads Genesis 1:1 (with Aquila's “in the head”) as creation in Christ, the first of all, and concludes that the Father and the Word are homoousios.
28. 28Victorinus explains that names such as substance are applied to God improperly, taken from created things, so “homoousios” can be used though God is above substance.
29. 29Victorinus argues that texts saying Christ was “made” (Proverbs 8, Galatians 4, Acts 2) refer to his work after the eternal generation, not to his being, so that he is homoousios with the Father.
30. 30Victorinus turns Candidus's argument back on him: making is also motion, so not every motion is change, and the Son, the Word begotten by the divine intellect, is Son by truth, not by making.
31. 31Victorinus rejects the view that the Holy Spirit is a creature and affirms one divinity in three, distinct by their actions.
32. 32Victorinus ends with a prayer asking forgiveness for speaking of God and confessing the Father, the Son and the Spirit.