BERRUYER SAYS THAT JESUS CHRIST WAS MADE IN TIME, BY AN OPERATION AD EXTRA, THE NATURAL SON OF GOD, ONE SUBSISTING IN THREE PERSONS, WHO UNITED THE HUMANITY OF CHRIST WITH A DIVINE PERSON.
- He says, first : ” Jesus Christus D. N. vere dici potest et debet naturalis Dei Filius; Dei, inquam, ut vox ilia Deus supponit pro Deo uno et vero subsistente in tribus personis, agente ad extra, et per actionem transeuntem et liberam uniente humanitatem Christi cum Persona Divina in unitatem Persons” (1). And he briefly repeats the same afterwards: “Filius factus in tempore Deo in tribus Personis subsistenti” (2). And again: “Non repugnat Deo in tribus Personis subsistenti, fieri in tempore, et esse Patrem Filii naturalis, et veri.” Jesus Christ, then, he says, should be called the Natural Son of God, not because (as Councils, Fathers, and all Theologians say) the Word assumed the humanity of Christ in unity of Person; and thus our Saviour was true God and true man true man, because he had a human soul and body, and true God, because the Eternal Word, the true Son of God, true God generated from the Father, from all eternity, sustained and terminated the two Natures of Christ, Divine and human, but because, according to Berruyer, God, subsisting in three Persons, united the Word to the humanity of Christ, and thus Jesus Christ is the natural Son of God, not because he is the Word, born of the Father, but because he was made the Son of God in time, by God subsisting in three Persons, ” uniente humanitatem Christi cum Persona Divina.”
(1) Berruyer, t. 8, p. 59. (2) Idem, ibid, . 60.
Again, he repeats the same thing, in another place : “Rigorose loquendo per ipsam formaliter actionem unientem Jesus Christus constituitur tan turn Filius Dei naturalis.” The natural Son, according to Hardouin’s and Berruyer’s idea; because the real natural Son of God, was the only begotten Son, begotten from the substance of the Father; and hence, the Son that Berruyer speaks of, produced from the three Persons, is Son in name only. It is not repugnant, he says, to God to become a Father in time, and to be the Father of a true and natural Son, and he always explains this of God, subsisting in three Divine Persons.
- Berruyer adopted this error from his master, John Hardouin, whose Commentary on the New Testament was condemned by Benedict XIV., on the 28th of July, 1743. He it was who first promulgated the proposition, that Jesus Christ was not the Son of God as the Word, but only as man, united to the Person of the Word. Commenting on that passage of St. John, ” In the beginning was the Word, “ he says “Aliud esse Verbum, aliud esse Filium Dei, intelligi voluit Evangelista Joannes. Verbum est secunda Ss. Trinitatis Persona; Filius Dei, ipsa per so quidem, sed tamen ut eidem Verbo hypostatice unita Christi humanitas.” Ilardouin, therefore, says that the Person of the Word was united to the humanity of Christ, but that Jesus Christ then became the Son of God, when the humanity was hypostatically united to the Word; and, on this account, he says, he is called the Word, in the Gospel of St. John, up to the time of the Incarnation, but, after that, he is no longer called the Word, only the Only-begotten, and the Son of God “Quamobrem in hoc Joannis Evangelic Verbum appellatur usque ad Incarnationem. Postquam autem caro factum est, non tam Verbum, sed Unigenitus, et Filius Dei est.”
- Nothing can be more false than this, however, since all the Fathers, Councils, and even the Scriptures, as we shall presently see, clearly declare that the Word himself was the only-begotten Son of God, who became incarnate. Hear what St. Paul says : ” For let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant” (Phil, ii, 5, &c.) So that the Apostle says, that Christ, being equal to God, emptied himself, taking the form of a servant. The Divine Person, which was united with Christ, and was equal to God, could not be the only-begotten Son of God, according to Hardouin, but must be understood to be the Word himself, for, otherwise, it would not be the fact that He who was equal to God emptied himself, taking the form of a servant. St. John, besides, in his First Epistle (v, 20), says : ” We know that the Son of God is come.” He says, ” is come ;” it is not, therefore, true, that this Son of God became the Son, only when he came, for we see he was the Son of God before he came. The Council of Chalcedon (Act. v) says, speaking of Jesus Christ : ” Ante sæcula quidem de Patre genitum secundum Deitatem, et in novissimis autem diebus propter nos et propter nostram salutem ex Maria Virgine Dei Genitrice secundum Humanitatem……………. non in duas personas parti turn, sed unum eundemque Filium, et unigenitum Deum Verbum.” Thus we see it there declared, that Jesus Christ, according to the Divinity, was generated by the Father, before all ages, and afterwards became incarnate in the fulness of time, and that he is one and the same, the Son of God and of the Word. In the Third Canon of the Fifth General Council it is declared : ” Si quis dixerit imam naturam Dei Verbi incarnatam dicens, non sic ea excipit, sicut Patres docuerunt, quod ex Divina natura et humana, unione secundum subsistentiam facta, unus Christus effectus talis ………………anathema sit.” We see here there is no doubt expressed that the Word was incarnate, and became Christ, but it was prohibited to say absolutely that the Incarnate Nature of the Word was one. We say, in the Symbol at Mass, that we believe in one God, Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, born of the Father, before all ages. Jesus Christ is not, therefore, the Son of God, merely because he was made the Son in time, or because his humanity was united to the Word, as Hardouin says, but because his humanity was assumed by the Word, who was already the Son of God, born of the Father before all ages.
- All the Fathers teach that the Son of God who was made man is the very Person of the Word. St. Irameus (3) says : ” Unus et idem, et ipse Deus Christus Verbum est Dei.” St. Athanasius (4) reproves those who say : ” Alium Christum, alium rursum esse Dei Verbum, quod ante Mariam, et sæcula erat Filius Patris.” St. Cyril says (5) : ” Licet (Nestorius) duas naturas esse dicat carnis et Verbi Dei, differentiam significans attamen unionem non confitetur; nos enim illas adunantes unum Christum; unum eundem Filium dicimus.” St. John Chrysostom (6), reproving Nestorius for his blasphemy, in teaching that in Jesus Christ there were two Sons, says: “Non alterum et alterum, absit, sed unum et eundem Dom. Jesum Deum Verbum carne nostra amictum,” &c. St. Basil writes (7) : “Verbum hoc quod erat in principio, nec humanum erat, nec Angelorum, sed ipse Unigenitus qui dicitur Verbum; quia impassibiliter natus, et Generantis imago est.” St. Gregory Thaumaturgus (8) says : ” Unus est Deus Pater Verbi viventis perfectus pcrfecti Genitor, Pater Filii unigcniti.” St. Augustine says (9) : ” Et Verbum Dei, forma qurcdam non formata, sed forma omnium formarum existens in omnibus. Quærunt vero, quomodo nasci potuerit Filius coævus Patri : nonne si ignis æternus esset, coævus esset splendor?” And in another passage he says (10) : ” Christus Jesus Dei Filius est, et Deus, et Homo; Deus ante omnia secula, Homo in nostro seculo. Deus, quia Dei Verbum : Homo autem, quia in unitatcm personæ acccssit Vcrbo anima rationalis, et caro.” Eusebius of Ccscrca says (11), not like Hardouin : ” Non cum apparuit, tune et Filius : non cum nobiscum, tune et apud Deum : sed qucmadmodum in principio erat Verbum, in principio erat in principio erat Verbum, de Filio dicit.” We would imagine that Eusebius intended to answer Hardouin, by saying that the Word, not alone when he became incarnate and dwelt amongst us, was then the Son of God, and with God, but as in the beginning he was the Word, so, in like manner, he was the Son; and hence, when St. John says : ” In the beginning was the Word,” he meant to apply it to the Son. It is in this sense all the Fathers and schoolmen take it, likewise, as even Hardouin himself admits, and still he is not ashamed to sustain, that we should not understand that it is the Word, the Son of God, who became incarnate, though both Doctors and schoolmen thus understand it. Here are his words : “Non Filius stilo quidem Scripturarum sacrarum, quamquam in scriptis Patrum, et in Schola etiam Filius.”
(3) St. Iræneus, l 17, adv. Hæres. (4) St. Athan. Epist. ad Epictetum. (5) St. Cyrill. in Commonitor. Ad Eulogium. (6) St. Chrisost. Hom. 3, ad c. 1, Ep. ad Cæsar. (7) St. Basil. Horn, in Princ. Johann. (8) St. Greg. Thaumat. in Vita St. Greg. Nyss. (9) St. August. Serm. 38, de Verb. Dom. (10) St. August, in Euchirid, c. 3o. (11) Euseb. Ces. l. I, de Fide.
- This doctrine has been taken up, defended, and diffusely explained, by Berruyer; and to strengthen his position, even that Jesus Christ is not the Son of the Father, as the first Person of the Trinity, but of one God, as subsisting in the three Divine Persons, he lays down a general rule, by which he says all texts of the New Testament in which God is called the Father of Christ, and the Son is called the Son of God, should be understood of the Father subsisting in three Persons, and the Son of God subsisting in three Persons. Here are his words : ” Omnes Novi Testamenti textus, in quibus aut Deus dicitur Pater Christi, aut Filius dicitur Filius Dei, vel inducitur Deus Christum sub nomine Filii, aut Christus Deum sub nomine Patris interpretans : vel aliquid de Deo ut Christi Patre, aut de Christo ut Dei Filio narratur, intelligendi sunt de Filio facto in tempore secundum carnem Deo uni et vero in tribus Personis subsistenti.” And this rule, he says, is necessary for the proper and literal understanding of the New Testament : ” Hæc notio prorsus necessaria est ad litteralum et germanam intelligentiam Librorum Novi Testamenti” (12). He previously said that all the writers of the Old Testament who prophesied the coming of the Messiah should be understood in the same sense : ” Cum et idem omnino censendum est de omnibus Vet. Testamenti Scriptoribus, quoties de future Messia Jesu Christo prophetant” (13). Whenever God the Father, or the first Person, he says, is called the Father of Jesus Christ, it must be understood that he is not called so in reality, but by appropriation, on account of the omnipotence attributed to the Person of the Father : ” Recte quidem, sed per appropriationem Deus Pater, sive Persona prima, dicitur Pater Jesu Christi, quia actio uniens, sicut et actio creans, actio cst omnipo- tcntiao, cujus attributi actiones Patri, sive prima Personæ, per appropriationem tribuuntur” (14).
(12) P. Berruyer, t. 8, p. 89 & 98. (13) Berruyer, t. 8, p. 8, (14) Berruyer, t. 8, p. 83.
- This false notion of the Filiation of Jesus Christ Berruyer founds on that text of St. Paul (Rom. i, 3, 4) : “Concerning his Son, who was made to him of the seed of David, according to the flesh, who was predestined the Son of God in power,” &c. Now, these words, ” his Son, who was made to him according to the flesh,” he says, prove that Jesus Christ was the Son of God made in time according to the flesh. We reply, however, to this, that St. Paul, in this passage, speaks of Jesus Christ not as Son of God, but as Son of man; he does not say that Jesus Christ was made his Son according to the flesh, but ” concerning his Son, who was made to him of the seed of David, according to the flesh;” that is, the Word, his Son, was made according to the flesh, or, in other words, was made flesh was made man, as St. John says : ” The Word was made flesh.” We are not, then, to understand with Berruyer, that Christ, as man, was made the Son of God; for as we cannot say that Christ, being man, was made God, neither can we say that he was made the Son of God; but we are to understand that the Word being the only Son of God, was made man from the stock of David. When we hear it said, then, that the humanity of Jesus Christ was raised to the dignity of Son of God, that is, understood to have taken place by the communication of the idioms founded on the unity of Person; for the Word having united human nature to his Person, and as it is one Person which sustains the two Natures, Divine and human, the propriety of the Divine Nature is then justly affirmed of man, and the propriety of God, of the human nature he assumed. How, then, is this expression, ” who was predestined the Son of God in power,” to be taken? Berruyer endeavours to explain it by a most false supposition, which we will presently notice. It is, he says, to be understood of the new filiation which God made in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, for when our Lord died, as his soul was separated from his body, he ceased to be a living man, and was then no longer, he said, the Son of God; but when he rose again from the dead, God again made him his Son, and it is of this new filiation St. Paul, he says, speaks in these words : ” Who was predestinated the Son of God in power, according to the spirit of sanctification, by the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead (Rom i. 4). Commentators and Holy Fathers give different interpretations to this text, but the most generally received is that of St. Augustine, St. Anselm, Estius, and some others, who say that Christ was from all eternity destined to be united in time, according to the flesh, to the Son of God, by the operation of the Holy Ghost, who united this man to the Word, who afterwards wrought miracles, and raised him from the dead.
- To return to Berruyer. In his system he lays it down for a certainty, that Jesus Christ is the natural Son of one God, subsisting in three Persons. Is Christ, then, the Son of the Trinity ? an opinion which shocked St. Fulgentius (15), who says that our Saviour, according to the flesh, might be called the work of the Trinity; but, according to his birth, both eternal and in time, is the Son of God the Father alone : ” Quis unquam tantæ reperiri possit insania?, qui auderet Jesum Christum totius Trinitatis Filium prædicare? Jesus Christus secundum carnem quidem opus est totius Trinitatis; secundum vero utramque Nativitatem solius Dei Patris est Filius.” But Berruyer’s partizans may say that he does not teach that Jesus Christ is the Son of the Trinity; but granting that he allows two filiations one eternal, the filiation of the Word, and the other in time, when Christ was made the Son of God, subsisting in three Persons he must then, of necessity, admit that this Son made in time was the Son of the Trinity. He will not have Jesus Christ to be the Word, that is, the Son generated from the Father, the first Person of the Trinity, from all eternity. If he is not the Son of the Father, whose Son is he, if not the Son of the Trinity ? Had he any Father at all ? There is no use in wasting words on the matter, for every one knows that in substance it is just the same to say the Son of one God subsisting in three Persons, as to say the Son of the Trinity. This, however, is what never can be admitted; for if we said Christ was the Son of the three Persons, it would be the same, as we shall prove, as to say that he was a mere creature; but when we say he is the Son, we mean that he was produced from the substance of the Father, or that he was of the same substance as the Father, as St. Atha-nasius teaches (16) : ” Omnis films ejusdem essentiæ est proprii parentis, alioquin impossibile est, ipsum verum esse filium.” St. Augustine says that Christ cannot be called the Son of the Holy Ghost, though it was by the operation of the Holy Spirit the Incarnation took place.
(15) St .Fulgent. Fragm. 32, I. 9. (16) St. Athan. Epist. 2, ad Scrapion.
How, then, can he be the Son of the three Persons ? St. Thomas (17) teaches that Christ cannot be called the Son of God, unless by the eternal generation, as he has been generated by the Father alone; but Berruyer wants us to believe that he is not the Son, generated by the Father, but made by one God, subsisting in three Persons.
- To carry out tliis proposition, if he understands that Jesus Christ is the Son, consubstantial to the Father, who subsists in three Persons, he must admit four Persons in God, that is, three in which God subsists, and the fourth Jesus Christ, made the Son of the Most Holy Trinity; or, in other words, of God subsisting in three Persons. If, on the other hand, he considers the Father of Jesus Christ as one person alone, then he falls into Sabellianism, recognizing in God not three distinct Persons, but one alone, under three different names. He is accused of Arianism by others, and, in my opinion, his error leads to Nestorianism. He lays down as a principle, that there are two generations in God one eternal, the other in time one of necessity, ad intra the other voluntary, ad extra. In all this he is quite correct; but then, speaking of the generation in time, he says that Jesus Christ was not the natural Son of God the Father, as the first Person of the Trinity, but the Son of God, as subsisting in three Persons.
- Admitting this, then, to be the case, it follows that Jesus Christ had two Fathers, and that in Jesus Christ there are two Sons one the Son of God, as the Father, the first Person of the Trinity, who generated him from all eternity the other, the Son made in time by God, but by God subsisting in three Persons, who, unking the humanity of Jesus Christ (or, as Berruyer says, uniting that man, hominem ilium,) to the Divine Word, made him his natural Son. If we admit this, however, then we must say that Jesus Christ is not true God, but only a creature, and that for two reasons, first because Faith teaches us that there are only two internal operations (ad intra) in God, the generation of the Word, and the spiration of the Holy Ghost; every other operation in God is external (ad extra), and external operations produce only creatures, and not a Divine Person.
(17) St. Thom. 3, p. 711, 32, art. 3.
The second reason is because if Jesus Christ were the natural Son of God, subsisting in three Persons, he would be the Son of the Trinity, as we have already stated, and that would lead us to admit two grievous absurdities first, the Trinity, that is, the three Divine Persons would produce a Son of God; but as we have already shown, the Trinity, with the exception of the production of the Word and the Holy Ghost, ad intra, only produces creatures, and not Sons of God. The second absurdity is, that if Jesus Christ was made the natural Son of God by the Trinity, he would generate or produce himself (unless we exclude the Son from the Trinity altogether), and this would be a most irrational error, such as Tertullian, charged Praxeas with : ” Ipse se Filium sibi fecit” (18). Therefore, we see, according to Berruyer’s system, that Jesus Christ, for all these reasons, would not be true God, but a mere creature, and the Blessed Virgin would be, as Nestorius asserted, only the Mother of Christ, and not, as the Council decided, and Faith teaches, the Mother of God; for Jesus Christ is true God, seeing that his humanity had only the Person of the Word alone to terminate it, for it was the Word alone which sustained the two natures, human and Divine.
- Berruyer’s friend, however, says that he does not admit the existence of two natural Sons oe from eternity, the other in time. But then, I say, if he does not admit it, where is the use of torturing his mind, by trying to make out this second filiation of Jesus Christ, made in time the natural Son of God, subsisting in three Persons. He ought to say, as the Church teaches, and all Catholics believe, that it is the same Word who was from all eternity the natural Son of God, generated from the substance of the Father, who assumed human nature, and has redeemed mankind. But Berruyer wished to enlighten the Church with the knowledge of this new natural Son of God, about whom we knew nothing before, telling us that this Son was made in time, not from the Father, but by all the three Divine Persons, because he was united to, or, as he expressed it, had the honor of the Consortium of the Word, who was the Son of God from all eternity. We knew nothing of all this till Berruyer and his master, Hardouin, came to enlighten us.
(18) Tertull. adv. Praxcam, n. 50.
- Berruyer, however, was grievously astray in asserting that Jesus Christ was the natural Son of one God, subsisting in three Persons. In this he has all Theologians, Catechisms, Fathers, Councils, and Scripture, opposed to him. We do not deny that the Incarnation of the Word was the work of the three Divine Persons; but neither can it be denied that the Person who became incarnate was the only Son, the second Person of the Trinity, who was, without doubt, the Word himself, generated from all eternity by the Father, who, assuming human nature, and uniting it to himself in unity of Person, wished by this means to redeem the human race. Hear what the Catechisms and the Symbols of the Church say; they teach that Jesus Christ is not the Son of God made in time by the Trinity, as Berruyer imagines, but the eternal Word, born of the Father, the principal and first Person of the Most Holy Trinity. This is what the Roman Catechism teaches: ” Filium Dei esso (Jesum) et verum Deum, sicut Pater est, qui eum ab æterno genuit”(19). And again (N. 9), Berruyer’s opinion is directly impugned : ” Et quamquam duplicem ejus nativitatem agnoscamus, unum tamen Filium esse credimus; una enim Persona est, in quam Divina et humana natura convenit.” The Athanasian Creed says that the Son is from the Father alone, not made nor created, but begotten; and speaking of Jesus Christ, it says that he is God, of the substance of the Father, begotten before all ages; and man, of the substance of his mother, born in time, who, though he is God and man, still is not two, but one Christ one, not by the conversion of the Divinity into flesh, but by the assumption of the humanity into God. As Jesus Christ, therefore, received his humanity from the substance of his mother alone, so he had his Divinity from the substance of his Father alone.
(19) Catech. Rom. c. 3. art. 2, n. 11,
- In the Apostles Creed we say : ” I believe in God, the Father Almighty …..and in Jesus Christ, his only Son….. born of the Virgin Mary, …..suffered,” &c. Remark, Jesus Christ, his Son, of the Father, the first Person, who is first named, not of the three Persons; and his only Son, that is one Son, not two. In the Symbol of the Council of Florence, which is said at Mass, and which comprises all the other Symbols previously promulgated by the other General Councils, we perceive several remarkable expressions. It says : “I believe in one God, the Father Almighty and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, and born of the Father before all ages (see, then, this only begotten Son is the same who was born of the Father before all ages), consubstantial to the Father, by whom all things were made, who for us men, and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and became incarnate,” &c. The Son of God, then, who wrought the redemption of mankind, is not he whom Berruyer supposes made in time on this earth, but the eternal Son of God, by whom all things were made, who came down from heaven, and was born and suffered for our salvation. Berruyer, then, is totally wrong in recognizing two natural Sons of God, one born in time of God, subsisting in three Persons, and the other generated by God from all eternity.
- But, says Berruyer, then Jesus Christ, inasmuch as he was made a man in time, is not the real, natural Son of God, but merely his adopted Son, as Felix and Elipandus taught, and for which they were condemned? But this we deny, and we hold for certain that Jesus Christ, even as man is the true Son of God (See Refutation vii, n. 18), but that does not prove that there are two natural Sons of God, one eternal and the other made in time, because, as we have proved in this work, as quoted above, Jesus Christ, even as man, is called the natural Son of God, inasmuch as God the Father continually generates the Word from all eternity, as David writes : “The Lord hath said to me, Thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee” (Psalm ii, 7). Hence it is that as the Son, previous to the Incarnation, was generated from all eternity, without flesh, so from the time he assumed humanity he was generated by the Father, and will for ever be generated, hypostatically united to his humanity. But it is necessary to understand that this man, the natural Son of God created in time, is the very Person of the Son, generated from all eternity, that is the Word, who assumed the humanity of Jesus Christ, and united it to itself. It cannot be said, then, that there are two natural Sons of God, one, man, made in time, the other, God, produced from all eternity, for there is only one natural Son of God, that is the Word, who, uniting human nature to himself in time is both God and man, and is, as the Athanasian Creed declares, one Christ : ” For as the rational soul and flesh is one man, so God and man is one Christ. And as every man, though consisting of soul and body, is still only one man, one person, so in Jesus Christ, though there is the Word and the humanity, there is but one Person and natural Son of God.”
- Berruyer’s opinion also is opposed to the First Chapter of the Gospel of St. John, for there we read : “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God ;” and then it is said that it was this same Word which was made flesh : ” And the Word was made flesh.” Being made flesh does not mean that the Word was united to the human person of Jesus Christ, already existing, but it shows that the Word assumed humanity in the very instant in which it was created, so that from that very instant the soul of Jesus Christ and his human flesh became his own proper soul and his own proper flesh, sustained and governed by one sole Divine Person alone, which is the Word, which terminates and sustains the two Natures, Divine and human, and it is thus the Word was made man. Just pause for a moment! St. John affirms that the Word, the Son, generated from the Father from all eternity, is made man, and Berruyer says that this man is not the Word, the Son of the eternal God, but another Son of God, made in time by all the three Divine Persons. When, however, the Evangelist has said : ” The Word was made flesh,” if you say and understand that the Word is not made flesh, are you not doing just what the Sacramentarians did, explaining the Eucharistic words, “This is my body,” that the body of Jesus Christ was not his body, but only the figure, sign, or virtue of his body ? This is what the Council of Trent reprobates so much in the heretics, distorting the words of Scripture to their own meaning. To return, however, to the Gospel of St. John. The Evangelist says, he dwelt among us. It was the eternal Word, then, which was made man, and worked out man’s redemption, and, therefore, the Gospel again says: “The Word was made flesh and we saw his glory, as it were the glory of the only-begotten of the Father.” This Word, then, who was made man in time, is the only-begotten, and, consequently, the only natural Son of God, generated by the Father from all eternity. St. John (I. Epis. iv, 9), again repeats it : ” By this has the charity of God appeared towards us, because God hath sent his only-begotten Son into the world, that we may live by him.” In this text we must remark that the Apostle uses the word ” hath sent.” Berruyer then asserts what is false, in saying that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, made in time, for St. John says that he existed Before he ” was sent,” for in fact it was the eternal Son of the Father that was sent by God, who came down from heaven, and brought salvation to the world. We should also recollect that St. Thomas says (20), that speaking of God, whenever one Person is said to be sent by another, he is said to be sent, inasmuch as he proceeds from the other, and therefore the Son is said to be sent by the Father to take human flesh, inasmuch as he proceeds from the Person of the Father alone. Christ himself declared this in the resurrection of Lazarus, for though he could have raised him himself, still he prayed to his Father that they might know he was his true Son, ” That they may believe that thou hast sent me” (John, xi, 42), and hence St. Hilary says (21) : ” Non prece eguit, pro nobis oravit, ne Filius ignoraretur.”
- Along with all this we have the Tradition of the Fathers generally opposed to Berruyer’s system. St. Gregory of Nazianzen (22) says : ” Id quod non erat assumpsit, non duo factus, sed unum ex duobus fieri subsistens; Deus enim ambo sunt, id quod assumpsit, et quod est assumptum, naturæ duæ in unum concurrentes, non duo Filii.” St. John Chrysostom (23) writes : “Unum Filium unigenitum, non dividens dum in Filiorum dualitatem, portantem tamen in semetipso indivisarum duarum naturarum inconvertibiliter proprietates ;” and again, ” Etsi enim duplex natura, verumtamen indivisibilis unio in una filiationis confitenda Persona, et una subsistentia.”
(20) St. Thomas, p. 1, q. 4, ar. 1. (21) St. Hilar. l. 10, de Trin (22) St. Greg. Naziaii. Orat. 31. (23) St. John Chrysos. Ep. ad Cæsar. et Hom. 3, ad cap. 1
St. Jerom says (24) : ” Anima et caro Christi cum Verbo Dei una Persona est, unus Christus” St. Dionisius of Alexandria wrote a Synodical Epistle to refute Paul of Samosata, who taught a doctrine like Berruyer; “Duas esse Personas unius, et solius Christi; et duos Filios, unum natura Filium Dei, qui fuit ante sæcula, et unum homonyma Christum filium David.” St. Augustine says (25) : “Christus Jesus Dei Filius est Deus et Homo : Deus quia Dei Verbum : Homo autem, quia in unitatem Personæ necessit Verbo Anima rationalis et caro.” I omit the quotations from many other Fathers, but those who are curious in the matter will find them in the Clypeum of Gonet and in the writings of Petavius, Gotti, and others.
- Another reflection occurs to my mind. Besides the other errors published by Berruyer, and which follow from his opinions, which we will immediately refute, if the reader goes back to N. 9, he will perceive that the faith of Baptism, as taught by all Christians and Councils is jeopardized. According to his system, all passages in the New Testament in which God is called the Father of Christ, or the Son is called the Son of God, or where anything is mentioned about God, as Father of Christ, the Son of God, must be understood to apply to the Son of God made in time, according to the flesh, and made by that God, subsisting in three Persons. On the other hand, it is certain that Baptism is administered in the Church in the name of the three Persons, expressly and individually named, as Jesus Christ commanded his Apostle to do : ” Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost” (Matt, xxviii, 19). But if the general rule laid down by Berruyer, as we have explained it, should be observed, then the Baptism administered in the Church would be no longer Baptism in the sense we take it, because the Father who is named would not be the first Person of the Trinity, as is generally understood, but the Father Berruyer imagined, a Father subsisting in three Divine Persons in a word, the whole Trinity. The Son would not be the Word, generated by the Father, the Principle of the Trinity, from all eternity, but the Son, made in time by all the three Persons, who, being an external work of God, ad extra, would be a mere creature, as we have seen already.
(24) St. Hieron. Tract 40, in Jo. (25) St. August, in Euchirid. cap. 33.
The Holy Ghost would not be the third Person, such as we believe him, that is, proceeding from the Father, the first Person of the Trinity, and from the Son, the second Person, that is, the Word, generated from all eternity by the Father. Finally, according to Berruyer, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost would not be what they are in reality, and what the whole Church believes them to be, the real Father, the real Son, and the real Holy Ghost, in opposition to what that great theologian, St. Gregory of Nazianzan teaches : ” Quis Catholicorum ignorat Patrem vere esse Patrem, Filium vere esse Filium, et Spiritum Sanctum, vere esse Spiritum Sanctum, sicut ipse Dominus ad Apostolos dicit : Euntes docete, &c. Hæc est perfecta Trinitas,” &c. (26). Read, however, further on the Refutation of the third error, and you will find this fiction more diffusely and clearly refuted. We now pass on to the other errors of this writer, which flow from this first one. (26) St. Greg. Nazian. in Orat. de Fide, post. init.