Book IV
AGAINST ARTUS FOURTH BOOK1 I. THE SON, CONSUBSTANTIAL FORM OF THE FATHER, AS LIFE IS FORM OF "TO LIVE" 1. The Father is "to live," the Son life, and Each is in the Other A. IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE "TO LIVE" AND LIFE a) Initial exposition E LIVES AND LIFE,2 are they one thing, or the same thing, or are they different things? One? But why two terms? The same thing? But how so, since it is one thing to be actually, another thing to be actuality. Are they therefore different? But how would they be different, since in that which lives there is life, and in that which is life, it is necessarily the case that it lives? Indeed, that which lives does not lack life, since then there would be life that does not live. Therefore they are In Book IV the concentration is on the dyad rather than on the triad, but the dyad is Christ and the Holy Spirit. It conjoins act (actus) and form (forma), the actus of book IV now explicitly identified with the interior movement (motus intus) of book III. The Father and Son are reciprocally implied here not as "to be" (esse) and movement (motus) but as act and form, with the Son's preexistence as interior form (forma intus) . The model for the Son's begetting is the generation of knowledge as self-consciousness . The "form" has two states: life and knowledge. Book IV concentrates on the consubstantial form of God; its Scriptural bases are ln 5.16 and 6.57, and Phil 2.5-7. Note that in this book esse-vivereintelligere equals actus whereas existentia-vita-intelligentia equals forma. The esse or "To Be" which is the Father is best expressed by vivere or "To Live," but the latter's form is vita or life. 2 In this section Victorinus questions whether "He lives" and "Life" are the same or other. He then shows that otherness in identity is grounded 253 254 MARIUS VICTORINUS different in one another, and consequently, in one another, whatever they are, they are two; and if, in some way, they are two, they are not, however, two purely and simply, since indeed they are one in the other and that is the case in both of them. Are they therefore the same thing? But the same thing in two is other3 than itself. This identity therefore, is both the same and other in anyone of these. But, if there is an identity, and each of the two is identical to itself, both are identical and one.4 Indeed, each one being what the other is, neither of the two is double. Therefore, if each of the two, by the very same thing that he is, is also the other, each one of the two will be one in himself. But, since each one of the two is one in himself, it is the same one in the other. But, since it is the same one, both are truly one. For they do not differ from each other, neither by the power of being, nor by time; perhaps by cause, in that one is prior to the other. b) Development In their state of identity, "to live" and life are consubstantial (2) That this may more easily be judged, we shall reconsider the above in a better way.5 "To live" and life are such that what "to live" consists in is life, and what life consists in is "to live": not that one is duplicated in the other, or that one is with the other-for that would be a union: for from this, even if the connection were inseparable , there is only a union, not a unity-now in fact they are such that in the very act that is "to live," is "to-be-life," and in the same way, "to-be-life" is "to live." For we speak of these two: of "to in an original unity. This passage represents a new development which attempts to learn the relationship between the First One and the Intelligible Triad; it may be seen as an attempt to reconcile Plotinus and the "Chaldaean Oracles." It was believed that these Oracles were the divine revelation of certain gods although they reached the world through one "Julian the Theurgist,"who lived under Marcus Aurelius. They represent the last important sacred book of pagan antiquity and a major influence upon Neoplatonism from Porphyry to Psellus...
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