B. The Son is truly from the Substance of the Father

98. Second I say [n.93] that when all materiality and quasi-materiality have been denied, the Son is yet truly ‘from the substance of the Father’, as the authorities [Augustine, Hilary] adduced in the text [of Lombard] say.

99. Here by the ‘from’ is not indicated only efficient causality or origination [n.54], because if it were efficient causality alone then creatures would be from the substance of God, - nor is indicated by the ‘from’ only consubstantiality, because then the Father would be from the substance of the Son, - but there is indicated origination and consubstantiality at the same time; namely so that in the [ablative] case, governed by the preposition ‘from’, consubstantiality is indicated, so that the Son has the same substance and quasi-form together with the Father, from whom he is by way of origin, -and by what is construed in the genitive case [‘of the Father’] with this prepositional clause the originating principle is indicated; so that the total understanding of this phrase ‘the Son is from the substance of the Father’ is this: the Son is originated by the Father as consubstantial with him.

100. And in this way the Master [Lombard] expounds the authorities adduced in the text, - not precisely by consubstantiality, nor precisely by origination, but by both, as is generally apparent. “From the substance of the Father, that is, from the Father, who is the same substance [n.54]” - by the first point origination is held to, by the second consubstantiality.

101. And that this is the intention of Augustine in his authorities Against Maximinus [n.53] that are put in the text, is apparent from the point of the authorities, -for in one authority Augustine sets down: “If you do not find another substance, recognize the substance of the Father, and confess the Son is homoousion (Greek: ‘of the same substance’) with the Father;” from this then he understood by ‘the Son is from the substance of the Father’ that the Son is so from the Father that he is homoousion with the Father. Again, in the other authority he says: “But if he is from the substance of the Father, then there is the same substance of Father and Son.”

102. But to understand this affirmative proposition by which it is said that ‘the Son is from the substance of the Father’ [n.98], according to the aforesaid understanding [n.101], I say that that understanding truly saves the fact that the Son is not from nothing, - it also truly saves the fact that the Son is ‘from’ in the way required for filiation.

103. I clarify the first point, because a ‘generated creature’ is not from nothing, because something of it pre-existed as matter. Therefore since the form is something of the composite, and something of it more perfect than matter, if the form of something pre-existed and matter came to it de novo and was informed by the already pre-existing form, the product itself would not be from nothing, because something of it would have pre-existed, nay something of it more perfect than the matter which commonly pre-exists. Therefore if the Son would not be said to be from nothing ‘because his essence according to order of origin pre-existed in the Father’, and this too if the essence were the quasimatter of the generation of the Son, much more will the Son not be from nothing if the essence ‘existing in the Father first by origin’ is the quasi-form communicated to the Son.

104. I clarify the second point [n.102] in this way, namely that the ‘from’ suffices for the idea of filiation, because in animate things, where paternity and filiation exist, we may see what the act is by which the generator is said to be formally ‘father’. It is namely the act of depositing semen, and if it were a perfect agent, so that now, when it deposits semen, it could immediately deposit the offspring, it would be truly father and much more perfectly than is now the case when so many intermediate changes are required; but now, in the act of depositing semen, that which was the substance of it, or in some way something of it, is not matter, but is as it were the formal term, communicated or produced through the act, just as the offspring would be if it were immediately deposited by the father; therefore because something of the substance of the generator is the term of its act, by which it is father, this truly saves the fact that a product alike in nature ‘is from the substance of it’, so that the ‘from’ truly suffices for the idea of father and son, - and as to the thing ‘deposited as term’ being the matter of subsequent changes, this happens to the ‘from’ as it belongs to father and son.

105. Therefore the eternal Father, not depositing some part of himself but communicating his whole essence, and this as formal term of the production, most truly produces the Son from himself, in the way in which ‘from’ pertains to father and son; and although the essence be there the ‘from which’ as from quasi-matter, the ‘from’ would not do anything for the idea of father, - just as neither in creatures, if the generator had its semen both for the formal term and for the matter of its action, the father would not be ‘father’ insofar as his semen was the matter subject to his action, but insofar as it was the term of the action, in the way too that, if the created father deposited a son from himself, he would be truly father, because that which would be from him would be the term of the action, but in no way the matter.