Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] But this sharing of the Father's titles by the Son they find hard to see clearly, because scripture unsettles them whenever it asserts that God is one — as if the same scripture had not also, as we showed above, set out two, both gods and lords. 'Since, then,' they say, 'we find two and yet one, therefore the two are one and the same — Son and Father alike.' [2] But scripture runs no risk here, such that you need to rush to its rescue with your own arguments lest it seem to contradict itself: it has its own logic both when it asserts one God and when it shows two, Father and Son, and it is quite sufficient unto itself. That it names the Son is plain: for with the Son intact, it can rightly determine one God, of whom the Son is the Son. Having a Son does not stop him from remaining the only one, under his own title, on those occasions when he is spoken of apart from the Son. And he is spoken of apart from the Son whenever he is identified chiefly, as the primary person, whose name must be given before that of the Son, since the Father is recognized first and the Son named afterward. [3] Therefore, 'one God, the Father, and besides him there is no other' — and in saying this he does not deny the Son, but another god; for the Son is not another besides the Father. Look, in fact, at what usually follows such declarations, and you will find that they are directed mostly against the makers and worshippers of idols, so that the oneness of the Godhead may drive out a multitude of false gods — though he still has a Son, who, the more undivided and inseparable he is from the Father, the more he is to be reckoned as within the Father, even when not named. [4] But had he named him, he would have set him apart, saying instead, 'There is none other than I, save my own Son' — for that would have turned even the Son into a separate other, singled out from the rest. Suppose the sun declared, 'I alone am the sun, and beside me exists no other, save my own ray'— would you not have noticed how absurd that sounds, as though the ray were not itself counted as part of the sun? So then, that there is no other god besides himself is said on account of idolatry, as much the nations' as Israel's — and also on account of the heretics, who, just as the nations fashion idols with their hands, fashion them just as much with their words, that is, another god and another Christ. [5] So, then, even when he pronounced himself one, the Father was securing the Son's own claim — so that Christ should not be believed to have come from some other god, but from that very one who had said beforehand, 'I am God, and there is no other besides me' — the one who shows himself unique, yet together with the Son, with whom, alone, he 'stretched out the heavens.'