nd 'to act' are
not distinct. But in God, begetting signifies relation. Therefore,
the same applies to the power of begetting.

Obj. 3: Further, terms signifying the essence in God, are common to
the three persons. But the power of begetting is not common to the
three persons, but proper to the Father. Therefore it does not
signify the essence.

_On the contrary,_ As God has the power to beget the Son, so also He
wills to beget Him. But the will to beget signifies the essence.
Therefore, also, the power to beget.

_I answer that,_ Some have said that the power to beget signifies
relation in God. But this is not possible. For in every agent, that is
properly called power, by which the agent acts. Now, everything that
produces something by its action, produces something like itself, as
to the form by which it acts; just as man begotten is like his
begetter in his human nature, in virtue of which the father has the
power to beget a man. In every begetter, therefore, that is the power
of begetting in which the begotten is like the begetter.

Now the Son of God is like the Father, who begets Him, in the divine
nature. Wherefore the divine nature in the Father is in Him the power
of begetting. And so Hilary says (De Trin. v): "The birth of God
cannot but contain that nature from which it proceeded; for He cannot
subsist other than God, Who subsists from no other source than God."

We must therefore conclude that the power of begetting signifies
principally the divine essence as the Master says (Sent. i, D, vii),
and not the relation only. Nor does it signify the essence as
identified with the relation, so as to signify both equally. For
although paternity is signified as the form of the Father,
nevertheless it is a personal property, being in respect to the person
of the Father, what the individual form is to the individual creature.
Now the individual form in things created constitutes the person
begetting, but is not that by which the begetter begets, otherwise
Socrates would beget Socrates. So neither can paternity be understood
as that by which the Father begets, but as constituting the person of
the Father, otherwise the Father would beget the Father. But that by
which the Father begets is the divine nature, in which the Son is like
to Him. And in this sense Damascene says (De Fide Orth. i, 18) that
generation is the "work of nature," not of nature generating, but of
nature, as being that by which the generator gen