SECOND ARTICLE: WHETHER THE NAME FATHER IS PROPERLY THE NAME OF A DIVINE PERSON

This is to say, whether the name "Father" is used not metaphorically but properly of the First Person and not of the others. The reply is in the affirmative for so the name is used in the Gospels, for example, in the formula for baptism, in the creeds, and by the councils.

This can be explained easily as follows. The proper name of any person signifies that by which that person is distinguished from others. But that by which the person of the Father is distinguished from the other persons is paternity.

Reply to the first objection. "Father" is indeed the name of a relation, but in God since relation is subsisting it can be the constitutive of a person.

Reply to the third objection. The divine Word is not metaphorically called the Son, because He is the mental concept, not accidental but substantial. Therefore the Father is so called not metaphorically but properly.

Reply to the fourth objection. The name "paternity" as it is used in its proper sense of God the Father has a prior significance than when it is used as designating an earthly father, at least with regard to the thing signified if not with regard to the manner of signification. For divine generation is the most perfect of all because it generates not only that which is similar in species but a Son whose nature is numerically the same as the nature of the Father. The earthly father, moreover, in generation does not produce the spiritual soul of his son, but only a disposition for it, nor does he produce a son in adult age. God, on the other hand, communicates to His Son His infinite nature, numerically the same as His own, so that His Son is immediately and eternally as perfect as the Father.

More and more it appears that the first procession is truly and properly generation, a generation that is spiritual in the full meaning of that word. It is not only conception, as when we say we conceive a mental concept; conception is only the initial stage of generation.

In God, the Father not only spiritually conceives His Son; He truly and properly generates Him spiritually, that is, He communicates to Him His nature in its entirety and numerically one with His own nature, which nature cannot be multiplied or divided. The Father communicates His nature to the Son from all eternity so that the only-begotten Son is from all eternity most perfect, an adult, if I may say so, in His divine age and entirely equal to the Father. From the height of his mystery light falls on the words of St. Paul to the Ephesians (3:15): "I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom all paternity in heaven and earth is named." For from the divine paternity is derived that spiritual paternity by which the Supreme Pontiff is the Father of the Christian people, by which the founder of a religious order is the father of his sons, by which the bishop is the father of his diocese, and by which the priest is the father of the souls committed to his care. From this divine paternity, too, is derived that earthly paternity, which is something noble and excellent in the good Christian father, who like a patriarch gives his sons and daughters not only corporal life but heavenly blessings as did Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.