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Book III
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AGAINST ARIUS THIRD BOOK CONCERNING HOMOOUSIOS 1 (CONSUBSTANTIAL) 1. SUMMARY OF THE PRECEDING BOOKS 1. The Soul, Image of the Logos, the Logos, Image ofGod HE LOGOS OR THE DIVINE NOUS uses as a center and as a body the celestial soul: this, indeed, uses the sensible nous or logos; the latter resides in the sensible soul so that it itself is in the sensible body and, for that reason, in every kind of body. But everything which is from the divine reality is related to them not as part of them but as an image2 -that In this book Victorinus teaches that the Church's almost exclusive reference to Father and Son testifies, not to the nondivinity of the Spirit, but to the consubstantiality of Holy Spirit and Son. He responds to the Pneumatomachi (Fourth-Century heretics who denied the full Godhead of the Holy Spirit) when he shows that the Father-Son dyad is really a Father-Son-Spirit triad. Cf. 7,5-8; 18,18-25. He discusses the identity and the difference between the Son and the Holy Spirit. Thus his Trinity is a double dyad: Father-Son and Son-Spirit. The dyad is "to be"-movement (esse-motus) and life-knowledge (vita-scientia). Hence the essevivere -intelligere schema remains fundamental, with vivere and intelligere as motus in relation to esse. Cf. III,4 and 5; book III is summarized in IV, 16, 1-18,44. Victorinus pursues his usual method of combing the Scriptures for texts relating to the Holy Spirit; cf. III 10-16. 2 The opening chapter and the first paragraph of its sequel present a summary of adv. Ar. IB and II. This is the image theme and includes the consubstantiality formulas of God from God (Deum de deo) and Light from Light (Lumen de lumine). The Son is described as the Father's self-identity; cf. II 2,7-11 and 3,34-41; I 53,9-26; II 4,19-22.The Son as Image makes it possible for man to have the only positive knowl-edge of God open to him; insofar as man can identify himself with the conversion of the Logos, the return to the interior through the Spirit, man can know God and become saved. Cf. Porphyry, Sententiae 25 (Mommert, 11.5). On the soul as image see above, Introd., sect. 69. 219 220 MARIUS VICTORINUS has been proven also and established in the other books3 -since certainly in the divine realities themselves, the Logos is the Image of God. So, therefore, is it with the others. Therefore, it is the same with all of the divine realities. Indeed, just as the Logos is the Image of God, so also is the soul an image of the Logos. And all other things of this kind which are there are images. But in sensible nature there are not images, nay rather it is necessary to speak of appearances and simulations. 2. The Image ofthe Light is Consubstantial with the Light For the progression of things is such that the radiance of the light is the image of the light. It follows that there is one same substance in the supreme and eternal things, because the image of the light is light. For just as from the Spirit comes only Spirit, and from the true only the true, and from God only God, so also from substance comes only substance. For "Spirit" and "true" and "God" designate substance. But everything which has its own "to be" is substance. But this "to be" of which we speak must be understood in one way with respect to that which is "to be," in another way with respect to that which is "to be in a certain mode"; inasmuch as the former is that of substance, the latter that of quality. But this distinction is found here in sensible things and in the world. But in divine and eternal things these two are one. For all that which is there is simple, and God is that very same which is light, which is the sovereign good, which is existence, which is life, which is knowledge. And on this topic we have also spoken in other books.4 Therefore, there, all is substantially simple, without composition, one as to number, not numerically one but one prior to number, that is, before numerical unity, that is, absolutely simple, alone, without any appearance of otherness. Consequently, that which is born of it, the image...