The schoolmen fell into the fundamental error of supposing that an elaboration of phraseology is a science of theology, and that we can add to our knowledge of God by dialectic formulae about Him. Can any other name but nonsense be given to discussions as to whether the Father begets the Divine Essence, or whether the Divine Essence begets the Son? Whether the Essence begets the Essence, or whether the Essence itself neither begets nor is begotten? Such questions, as Erasmus says, it is more learned to ignore than to know. For all these years, he says, we have been frivolously caviling in the schools whether we should say that Christ is composed or that He consists of two nature; and whether the right word to use respecting their union is “conflate,” or “commixed,” or “conglutinate,” or “coagmentate,” or “copulated,” or “ferruminate.” What again, are we to say of the immense and long-continued discussions as to whether the host still continued to be the body of Christ if it was eaten by a mouse, or the wine to be his blood when tasted by an insect which had fallen into the chalice?
Frederic W. Farrar, History of Interpretation, Bampton Lectures 1885 (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1961), 292-293.
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