and your statement, “so the creative Word concealed itself within a created human being—one it had fashioned for itself by the Father’s good pleasure and the aid of the Holy Spirit, all together, in a new act of creation.”

One then asks them:

Is the Maker of the universe, in your view, a single Creator and thus one God, or does the universe have three creator-gods?

If they answer, “The Creator is one, yet they are three creator-gods”—as they frequently declare in their discourse that there are three gods and three creators—and then go on to say, “one God, one Creator,” it is said to them: This is an obvious contradiction; it must be either the one or the other.

And when you say, “The Creator is one who possesses three attributes,” we do not dispute the fact that the Creator has attributes; our objection is to limiting Him to precisely three.

Should they claim three creator-gods—as many of them do in their speech—their unbelief becomes manifest, their polytheism grave, and it is evident that their association of partners surpasses every other form of shirk in the world. The most the Magian dualists ever affirmed was two principles—light and darkness—whereas these affirm three.

Moreover, the scriptural proofs in the Torah, the Gospel, the Psalms, and the rest of the prophets’ words, together with the rational proofs establishing that the Creator is one, are so numerous that they cannot be counted here.

And if they say, “The Creator is one, possessing attributes,” it is said to them: This contradicts your claim that He dispatched His creative Word, and your statement that “the Word was not separated from Him