Thus light would have to be a self-subsisting substance; and if that is so, they have made the Father a lord, a self-subsisting substance, the Son likewise a lord, a self-subsisting substance, and the Holy Spirit a lord, a self-subsisting substance.

Yet it is obvious that the light and heat of fire or of the sun are not in themselves separate suns or fires that exist independently, nor are they self-subsisting substances. Had they affirmed God’s life and knowledge—or His speech—as two attributes subsisting in Him, without turning each of them into a lord, a self-subsisting substance in its own right, their assertion would have been sound and their analogy accurate. But they did not stop at making them mere divine attributes; rather, they made each of them a lord, a substance, and a creator. Indeed, they openly declared that the Messiah, in whom they claim one of these united, is a single god and creator. Yet if he were truly the very Word of God and His knowledge, he would not be a deity and creator, for God’s speech and knowledge are not themselves a deity or creator. How, then, when the Messiah is a creature produced by the Word of God, can he be the very Word of God?

Third: Their statement, “the sun and its ray and its light”—if by “light” they mean what inheres in the sun, and by “ray” what is emitted from it—does not match the example of fire with its heat and flame, for both of those inhere in the fire. On that understanding only one attribute, not two, inheres in the sun, so the comparison is inaccurate. And if by both “light” and “ray” they mean either what inheres in the sun, or both what departs from it, then both are attributes