Canons (Mongredien and Coulson) n. 40

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40. CHAPTER II

THOSE THREE, FATHER, SON, AND HOLY SPIRIT, ARE THE THREE ESSENTIALS OF THE ONE GOD, BEING A ONE IN THE SAME WAY AS SOUL, BODY, AND ACTIVITY, WITH MAN ARE A ONE 1. The Divine Trinity, which is at the same time a Unity, cannot be comprehended by anyone in any other way than as being like soul, body, and activity, in the case of man; consequently in no other way than that the Divine Itself called the Father is the soul, the Human called the Son is the body of that soul, and the Holy Spirit is the activity proceeding.* 2. Everywhere in the Christian Church, therefore, there is acknowledgement that in Christ God and man, that is the Divine and the human, are One Person, as are soul and body in man. This acknowledgement is there due to the Athanasian Creed. 3. Anyone, therefore, who has an understanding of the union of soul and body, and the resulting activity, comprehends God's Trinity, and at the same time His Unity, in an obscure sort of way. 4. A rational man knows, or can know, that the soul of a son is from his father, and that the soul clothes itself with a body in the mother's womb, and that afterwards all activity proceeds from both. 5. Anyone who has a knowledge of the union of soul and body, also knows, or can know, that the life of the soul is in the body, and that the life of the body is thus the soul's life. 6. Consequently, that the soul lives, and accordingly feels and is active, in the body and from it, and the body lives, feels, and is active from itself, yet all the while from the soul. 7. This is so, because all things of the soul are the body's, and all things of the body are the soul's. It is due to this and to nothing else that there is union between them. 8. It is only an appearance that the soul acts separately of itself through the body, the fact being that it acts in the body and from the body. 9. From these things a rational man acquainted with the interaction between soul and body can grasp the meaning of these words of the Lord:

that the Father and He are One; [John x 30] that all things of the Father are His, and all His are the Father's; [John xvi 15; xvii 10] that all things of the Father come to Him; [John vi 37] that the Father hath given all things into the Son's hand; [John xiii 3] that as the Father works, the Son works also [John v 17, 19] that he who sees and knows the Son, sees and knows the Father also; [John xiv 7, 9] that they who are one in the Son, are one in the Father; [John xvii 21] that no one hath seen the Father, save the Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, and who has brought Him forth to view; [John i 18; v 37; Matt. xi 27; Luke x 22] that the Father is in the Son and the Son in the Father; [John xvii 21] that no one cometh to the Father but by the Son [John xiv 6] that as the Father hath life in Himself, so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself; [John v 26] that in Jesus Christ dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; [Col. ii 9] besides several other places. In these passages, by "the Son" is meant the Father's Human. 10. From these statements it follows that the Godhead and the soul of the Son of God, our Saviour, are not distinctly two, but are one and the same. 11.** That the "Son of God" is God the Father's Human has been fully shown above, for what else did the mother Mary give birth to but a Human in which was the Divine from God the Father? It is owing to this that from birth He was called "the Son of God"; for the angel Gabriel tells Mary, "the Holy thing that will be born of thee shall be called the Son of God" [Luke i 35.]; and the Holy thing that was born of Mary was a Human in which was the Divine from the Father. * In N. the words ab utroque, "from both," are added here by another hand. ** In N. this paragraph is unnumbered. In Sk. it is no. 11.


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