gives rise to knowledge and speech, just as these arise from the soul of a learned man. Thus knowledge, wisdom, and speech arise from his essence, and this is why the word is called a son.”

The response is that this is false on several grounds.

First: Our attributes come into being through our learning, reflection, thought, and reasoning. The Lord’s word and His knowledge, however, are eternal and inseparable from His essence. They therefore cannot be described as generated, unless someone claims that every attribute inseparable from its bearer is generated from it and is its son. Such a claim is plainly among the most untenable, both rationally and linguistically. A person’s life, capacity for speech, and other inseparable attributes are not said to be generated from him or to be his son. Moreover, this would entail that the Lord’s life is likewise His son and generated from Him, as is His power. Otherwise, what distinguishes the generation of knowledge from the generation of life, power, and His other attributes?

Second: If this is a case of the generation of substances and self-subsisting entities, it must proceed from two sources, and a part must issue from the source. Our knowledge and speech, however, are not self-subsisting entities. If, on the other hand, it is an attribute subsisting in its bearer and an accident inhering in a subject, like our knowledge and speech, then this too can only be generated from two sources, and it must have a subject in which it is generated.

Knowledge and speech arise in any one of us only through antecedent premises, which serve as foundations for what follows from them. Knowledge and speech then come to exist in a subject in which they did not previously exist.