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AND THEIR REFUTATION. 357
again made him his Son, and it is of this new filiation St. Paul,
he says, speaks in these words :
" Who
was predestinated the
Son of God in power, according to the spirit of sanctification, by
the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead
(Rom i. 4). Commentators and Holy Fathers give different
interpretations to this text, but the most generally received is
that of St. Augustin, St. Anselm, Estius, and some others, who
say that Christ was from all eternity destined to be united in
time, according to the flesh, to the Son of Gd, by the operation
of the Holy Ghost, who united this man to the Word, who
afterwards wrought miracles, and raised him from the dead.
11. To return to Berruyer. In his system he lays it down
for a certainty, that Jesus Christ is the natural Son of one God,
subsisting in three Persons. Is Christ, then, the Son of the
Trinity ? an opinion which shocked St. Fulgentius (15), who says
that our Saviour, according to the flesh, might be called the
work of the Trinity ; but, according to his birth, both eternal
and in time, is the Son of God the Father alone :
"
Quis unquam
tant39 reperiri possit insania?, qui auderet Jesum Christum totius
Trinitatis Filium prsedicare ? Jesus Christus secundum carnem
quidem opus est totius Trinitatis ;
secundum vero utramque
Nativitatem solius Dei Patris est Filius." But Berruyer s par-
that he does not teach that Jesus Christ is the
tizans may say
Son of the Trinity ; but granting that he allows two filiations
one eternal, the filiation of the Word, and the other in time, when
Christ was made the Son of God, subsisting
in three Persons
he must then, of necessity, admit that this Son made in time was
the Son of the Trinity. He will not have Jesus Christ to be the
Word, that is, the Son generated from the Father, the first
Person of the Trinity, from all eternity.
If he is not the Son of
the Father, whose Son is he, if not the Son of the Trinity ?
Had he any Father at all ? There is no use in wasting words on
the matter, for every one knows that in substance it is just the
same to say the Son of one God subsisting in three Persons, as
to say the Son of the Trinity. This, however,
is what never
can be admitted ; for if we said Christ was the Son of the three
Persons, it would be the same, as we shall prove, as to say that
(15) St .Fulgent. Fragm. 32,
I. 9.