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The reply is in the negative from the Fourth Lateran
Council,[536] which declared against the error of
Abbot Joachim: "The divine essence does not generate,
nor is it generated, but it is the Father who generates
and the Son who is generated." Abbot Joachim did not
advert to the fact that the truth of a proposition depends
not only on the thing signified but also on the manner of
signification; the mode must also conform to the truth.
The reason for this reply is as follows: although the
Deity is God without any real distinction, we cannot say
that the Deity generates although we can say that God
generates, because the formal signification is not the
same. "Deity" signifies the divine essence in itself,
but "God" signifies the divine essence in the suppositum
or in a person that possesses the divine essence. Only by
reason of the suppositum of the Father is this proposition
true: God generates, that is, inasmuch as "God" is
substituted for "the Father."
To say that the Deity generates and that the Deity is
generated is to imply in the Deity a real distinction,
which can exist only between the persons according to the
opposition of relation, since no person can generate
himself.
Reply to the fifth objection. But we can say that the
divine essence is God generating or that which generates
because here the predicate is used in place of the name of
the person, and, as we shall see in the following
article, we can say that the divine essence is the Father
according to an identical predication.
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