05.How generation applies to God

3 How generation applies to God

First of all we must observe that Muslims are silly in ridiculing us for holding that Christ is the Son of the living God, as if God had a wife. Since they are carnal, they can think only of what is flesh and blood. For any wise man can observe that the mode of generation is not the same for everything, but generation applies to each thing according to the special manner of its nature. In animals it is by copulation of male and female; in plants it is by pollination or generation, and in other things in other ways.

God, however, is not of a fleshly nature, requiring a woman to copulate with to generate offspring, but he is of a spiritual or intellectual nature, much higher than every intellectual nature. So generation should be understood of God as it applies to an intellectual nature. Even though our own intellect falls far short of the divine intellect, we still have to speak of the divine intellect by comparing it with what we find in our own intellect. Our intellect understands sometimes potentially, sometimes actually. Whenever it actually understands it forms something intelligible, a kind of offspring, which is called a concept, something conceived by the mind. This is signified by an audible voice, so that as the audible voice is called the exterior word, the interior concept of the mind signified by the exterior audible word is called the word of the intellect or mind. A concept of our mind is not the very essence of our mind, but something accidental to it, because even our act of understanding is not the very being of our intellect; otherwise our intellect would have to be always in act. So the word of our intellect can be likened to a concept or offspring, especially when the intellect understands itself and the concept is a likeness of the intellect coming from its intellectual power, just as a son has a likeness to his father, from whose generative power he comes forth. The word of our intellect is not properly an offspring or son, because it is not of the same nature as our intellect. Not everything that comes forth from another, even if it is similar to its source, is called a son; otherwise a painted picture of someone would be a son. To be a son, it is required that the one coming forth from the other must not only resemble its source but also be of the same nature with it. But in God understanding is not different from his being. Consequently the word which is conceived in his intellect is not something accidental to him or alien from his nature but, by the very fact that it is a word, it must be coming forth from another and must be a likeness of its source. All this is true even of our own word. But besides this, the Word of God is not an accident or a part of God, who is simple, nor something extrinsic to the divine nature, but is something complete, subsisting in the divine nature and coming forth from another, as any word must be. In our human way of talking, this is called a son, because it comes forth from another in its likeness and subsists in the same nature with it.

Therefore, as far as divine things can be represented by human words, we call the Word of the divine intellect the Son of God, while God, whose Word he is, we call the Father. We say that the coming forth of the Word is an immaterial generation of a son, not a carnal one, as carnal men surmise.

There is another way that this generation of the Son of God surpasses every human generation, whether material, as when one man is born from another, or intelligible, as when a word is brought forth in the human mind. In either of these cases what is born is younger than its source. A father does not generate as soon as he begins to exist, but he must first mature. Even the act of generation takes time before a son is born, because carnal generation is a matter of stages. Likewise the human intellect is not ready to form intelligible concepts as soon as a man is born, but when he matures. So he does not always actually understand, but after potentially understanding he actually understands and again stops actually understanding and remains understanding only in potency or with habitual knowledge. So a human word is younger than a man and sometimes stops existing before the man. But these two limitations cannot apply to God, who has no imperfection or change, or going from potency to act, since he is pure and first act. The Word of God, therefore, is co-eternal with God.

Another difference of our word from the divine is that our intellect does not simultaneously understand everything, or with one act, but by many different acts; therefore the words of our intellect are many. But God understands everything simultaneously by one single act, because his understanding must be one, since it is his very being. It follows therefore that in God there is only one word.

There is yet another difference: The word of our intellect does not measure up to the power of our intellect, because when we mentally conceive one thing we can still conceive many other things; thus the word of our intellect is imperfect and can be composed, when several imperfect notions are put together to form a more perfect word, as happens in the process of formulating a definition. But the divine Word measures up to the power of God, because by his essence he understands himself and everything else. So the Word he conceives by his essence, when he understands himself and everything else, is as great as his essence. It is therefore perfect, simple and equal to God. We call this Word of God a Son, as said above, because he is of the same nature with the Father, and we profess that he is co-eternal with the Father, only-begotten and perfect.