—a plain affirmation of two gods, yet they still go on to say, “He is one God, one essence.”

One cannot claim that the essence together with knowledge—which they label a hypostasis—is equal to the essence that is the Self, for the essence is the Self, and there are not here two essences, one stripped of knowledge and another endowed with it, such that one could call the one equal to the other.

Rather, the Lord—exalted be He—is the Self characterized by knowledge. If the Father were a bare Self, then the Son would be more perfect than the Father, for he would be the Self together with knowledge, and the Father would be but a part of the Son.

By the same logic they must concede that the Son is only a part of the Holy Spirit; for in their Creed they made the Holy Spirit “the Lord, the Giver of Life.” Now the Life-Giver is the Self qualified by life, while the bare Self is but a fraction of that. Thus, if the Father is the bare Self, the Son is merely part of the Holy Spirit.

Then you said of the hypostasis of the Holy Spirit—whom you have declared to be the Lord, the Life-Giver—that he “proceeds from the Father, is worshipped and glorified, and has spoken through the prophets.” If the one who proceeds is a living Lord, that is the affirmation of a third deity, and you have portrayed the living Self as proceeding from the bare Self—each notion laden with unbelief and contradiction too obvious to hide.

Next you made this third being an object of prostration, and the one to whom prostration is offered is the deity who is worshipped. This is an explicit admission of worshipping a third god, rife with internal contradiction. Then you attributed to him speech through the prophets, which is an open acknowledgment that this third hypostasis