Thursday, August 31, 2006

Q41 A2: Whether the notional acts are voluntary?

No. The notional acts are not voluntary because the Father begot the Son neither by will, nor by necessity.

What can exist in different ways is far from the divine nature, whereas it belongs to the nature of a created being (because God is of Himself necessary being, whereas a creature is made from nothing).

The Arians, wishing to prove the Son to be a creature, said that the Father begot the Son by will, taking will in the sense of principle. But we, on the contrary, must assert that the Father begot the Son, not by will, but by nature.