would likewise be a second Son; and if by that they mean that it emerged from Him after previously not existing, this would entail that He became knowing after not having been knowing. Besides being sheer falsehood and unbelief, the same consequence would have to follow for the attribute of life, namely, that He became living after not having been living.

Fourth reply: Nowhere in any of the divinely revealed scriptures is God’s life ever called “the Holy Spirit.” To bestow the title Holy Spirit upon God’s life, therefore, is one of their inventions and distortions.

Fifth reply: They claim that the entity united with the Messiah is the “Word,” which they interpret as “knowledge.” If by that they mean the very essence that is knowing and speaking, then the Messiah would be the Father, and the Messiah himself would simultaneously be the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—an assertion that, by their own admission and by the judgment of all people, is false and unbelief.

If, however, they say that what is united with him is knowledge, then knowledge is an attribute that never departs from the One who knows, nor is it separable from the other attribute, life; hence it is impossible for knowledge to unite with him apart from the essence and apart from life.

Sixth reply: Knowledge, too, is an attribute, and an attribute is neither created nor sustained; moreover, the Messiah himself is certainly not an attribute subsisting in something else—this is unanimously acknowledged by rational people. They also maintain that he is the Creator of the heavens and the earth, which makes it impossible that the thing united with him is a mere attribute. The God Who alone deserves worship is the living, knowing, all-powerful God; He is not identical with life itself, nor with knowledge and speech themselves.

Accordingly, were someone to say, “O Life of God,” or “O Knowledge of God,” or “O Speech of God, forgive—"