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Reply. The reply is affirmative and of faith according
to the Athanasian Creed, which professes that the divine
persons are "coequal, " and the same doctrine is defined
by many councils.[572] In the Scriptures it is said
of the Son, "Who being in the form of God, thought it
not robbery to be equal with God."[573] The
explanation given in the body of the article is this:
things are said to be unequal according to a difference in
quantity. But in God quantity is the perfection of
divine nature, which is numerically the same in the three
persons. Therefore the three persons are not unequal but
all three are coequal.
In the reply to the first difficulty, St. Thomas
explains that quantity is twofold: quantity of amount
(molis) and quantity of power (virtutis). The latter
is predicated according to perfection of nature or form.
To be one in nature is to be the same; to be one in
quantity is to be equal; and to be one in quality is to be
similar.[574] Corollaries are presented in the
following articles.
In the reply to the second difficulty, it is noted that
the three persons are similar because we have here equality
not of amount but of power, according to communication in
one form.
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