The Unchanging Essence and the Names of the Trinity

Indeed, regarding his becoming human, the meaning has been fully explained. For when it was said to him, 'I am the Son of God,' they answered back, 'Blasphemer!'; the Father affirmed him, saying, 'This one alone is my genuine Son.' For the 'this' and the 'beloved' and the being named 'Son' with the article signify this: in this, he says, I was well-pleased that through his becoming human, salvation might be provided for you.

And if someone were to take 'I was well-pleased' regarding his divinity, their sophistry is invalidated; since not every word spoken by God, and especially regarding the Word of God, constitutes a meaning according to cosmic custom. Furthermore, if he had been speaking regarding the Son as already existing, 'in whom I was well-pleased,' the cause of his existence would not be found in the good pleasure.

So that it becomes clearer what is signified by such a word, let us use the witness of the one singing in Psalm 140: 'For the Lord is well-pleased with his people.' But the good pleasure did not come before the people, but with them. For then he is well-pleased in them and sends both peace and grace, when they worship him rightly; but when they do not worship rightly, the opposite is prophesied now: 'When he struck them down, then they sought him' (Psalm 52); and in Psalm 84: 'The strength of their arms did not save them, but your right hand and your arm and the light of your face, because you were well-pleased with them,' repeating 'the right hand and arm of God' and 'the light of his face' regarding the Son; and in Psalm 103: 'Remember us, Lord, in the good pleasure of your people.'

Regarding the saying: 'If the unbegotten God is wholly generative, he did not generate essentially' and that 'If his essence was changed into a generation, the essence of God is not immutable.' For them, this too is placed as being appropriate and full of errors in such words: 'If the unbegotten God is wholly generative, the one begotten did not come to be generated essentially, his whole essence having the capacity to generate, but not to be generated.'

But let them hear that 'if light is wholly generative, the radiance does not generate essentially, but receives from without, his whole essence having the capacity to generate, but not to be generated.' If, however, the light does not receive the radiance from without, but generates it from his whole essence without distinction,. Text ends abruptly..

God acquired the Son from without, but he begat him from the whole subsistence without distinction, as incorporeal. Therefore he is truly Father.

Again, they come, pursuing everywhere the opposite order of the Scripture: 'if the essence of God, having been transformed, is called a generation, his essence is not unchangeable, having worked the transformation into the property of the Son.' But no one even permits them to say this. For Scripture, having mentioned these things as belonging to others, opposes every heretic with great difficulty.

For if the light, having been transformed, becomes a radiance, the light is not unchangeable, having worked the transformation into the property of the radiance. But if the light has begotten a radiance not having been changed, remaining itself light and having the radiance naturally from it perfectly, and God remains unchangeably God, becoming Father of his own radiance, not having acquired it from without, but having begotten it perfectly from the essence.

Concerning those babbling that 'the essence of the Son is changed from the name of the Father.' Repeating the same things and even to the utmost distorting the beauty of the truth, they maliciously assert this also: of whom the names are different, it is necessary that their essences also be changed. For they say: 'the word Father does not signify the Son, nor does the name Son signify the Father's subsistence.'

Let them hear, first, that if the divine hypostases were revealed by any symbol, not using a suitable designation, would he not have signified both the Father and that he has a Son by using any symbol? Or, by naming the Son and the Spirit as designations, would he not have spoken of both the Son and the Spirit, and that the Son has a Father, and that the Spirit is the Spirit of God?

Another thing they say, that regarding the Holy Trinity—except for calling the Father the truly existing one, and calling the naturally begotten one the Only-begotten, and the Spirit of God being called exactly that which it is called, happening to be of the Father—all the other names he has made the same, such as God, Lord, Holy, Just, Good, Light, Life. But surely, regarding the blessed Trinity alone, whose names are the...