Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
If anyone should suppose that by this I am introducing some probole — that is, a putting-forth of one thing out of another, the sort of thing Valentinus does when he produces one aeon after another out of an aeon — I will say to you first of all that the truth does not fail to make use of a term and its reality and its proper sense merely because heresy also makes use of it; rather, heresy has taken from the truth the very thing it uses to build up its lie. Did the Word of God proceed forth, or did he not? Stop with me right here, on this exact point. If he was put forth, then recognize this as the truth's own probole, and let heresy see for itself whether it has imitated anything of the truth. The question now is who uses a given thing, and its name, and how. Valentinus marks off his "putting-forths" and separates them from their author, setting them so far apart from him that the aeon does not even know the Father; indeed it longs to know him and cannot, and is very nearly swallowed up and dissolved back into the rest of substance. In our case, though, only the Son has knowledge of the Father, and he alone has disclosed what lies in the Father's bosom, and has heard and seen everything in the Father's presence, and speaks whatever the Father has enjoined upon him, and has carried out, not what he himself willed, but what belonged to the Father, a thing known to him at close quarters — indeed from the very beginning. For who knows the things that are in God, except the Spirit who is in him? Now the Word is composed of spirit, and, so to speak, the Spirit forms the body of the Word. The Word, accordingly, dwells forever within the Father, as he states, "I abide within the Father"; and remains forever alongside God, as scripture has it, "the Word was present with God"; and is at no time cut off from the Father, nor situated anywhere apart from the Father, since "the Father and I are a single thing." This, then, will count as the truth's own probole — the guardian of unity — by which we say the Son was put forth from the Father, but not separated from him. For God put forth the Word, just as the Paraclete himself teaches, in the way a root puts forth a shoot, and a spring a river, and the sun a ray; for these forms too are "puttings-forth" of the substances from which they proceed. Nor would I hesitate to call the Son now the shoot of the root, now the river of the spring, now the ray of the sun, since every source is a parent, and everything that is brought forth from a source is its offspring — much more so the Word of God, who has even properly received the name of Son. And yet the shoot is never severed from its root, nor the stream from its wellspring, nor the ray from its sun, any more than the Word is from God. So then, following the pattern of these examples, I profess that I profess two exist — God together with his Word, the Father together with his Son. For root and shoot are two things, but linked; spring and river are two forms, yet unsplit; sun and ray are two aspects, yet bound together. Whatever proceeds from another thing must of necessity rank second to the source it proceeds from, without on that account being cut away from it. But wherever a second exists, that makes two; and wherever a third is added, that makes three. For the Spirit holds third place, proceeding from God and the Son, in the same way the fruit put forth by the shoot ranks third from the root, and the channel drawn off from the stream is third from the spring, and the point of light is third from the ray, from the sun. Yet nothing is alienated from the source from which it draws its own properties. So it is that the threefold Godhead, descending from the Father through linked and joined stages, in no way disturbs the Monarchy, and yet safeguards the order of the Economy.