Annotatio I

”In the beginning God created heaven and earth.” — Genesis 1:1

Thomas Cajetan, Cardinal-Priest, in the beginning of his commentaries on Genesis,¹ explaining why Moses in the first words of Genesis called God by a plural number — saying אלהים Elohim, that is, “Gods” (“In the beginning God created heaven and earth”) — taught that God is named by Moses with a plural appellation not to signify a plurality of divine persons in the Trinity, but because the name Elohim lacks a singular number;² adding that this passage in no way favors a Trinity of persons, since — as Athanasius testifies in his Creed — a divine person can be called neither “Gods” nor “lords” in the catholic sense.

Ambrose [Catharinus], Archbishop of Compsa, in the fourth book of the Annotations which he published against this same Cajetan, execrates this opinion as Jewish and abhorrent from the view of the most excellent Fathers, rejecting it among the other propositions of Cajetan for which he judges him to have thought ill concerning the holy Trinity. He also derides Cajetan’s argument — that from Athanasius’s Creed he wished to establish that divine persons are falsely called “Gods” or “lords” — since Athanasius does not teach that, but only that “three Gods” or “three lords” cannot be pronounced in the catholic sense. Yet this reasoning does not follow: “They cannot be called three Gods, therefore not Gods [at all]” — because many things are falsely said conjointly which are truly said separately. Wherefore the Master of the Sentences [Peter Lombard], and Thomas, and the rest of the doctors admit that they can be called “Gods,” but not likewise “three Gods.” Thus far Ambrose.

But it was certainly not fitting for him³ to bring his brother, for such trifling causes, under suspicion of injuring the Trinity — [a Trinity] which Cajetan not only most openly proclaims in his commentaries on this first chapter, expounding that “Let us make man,” etc., but also learnedly and piously teaches and defends in all his writings. Ambrose ought also to have noticed that Cajetan had no expositor to imitate, out of the Greek, Latin, or Hebrew writers, who expounded that word Elohim of the Trinity — except only Peter Lombard, who in the first [book] of the Sentences had somehow touched this interpretation in passing, and Paul of Bur→gos, the bishop, who had copied the same interpretation out of the same book of the Sentences. From whose opinions many not-ignoble men, even before Cajetan, had openly dissented without any note of heresy. Nor do I wish this to have been said by me to derogate in this part from the authority of those who expounded this passage mystically of the Trinity: for it delights me greatly — to use Augustine’s words — that in the very opening of the holy book of Genesis the Trinity is commended, when it is said: “In the beginning” — that is, in the Son — “God” (namely the Father) “made heaven and earth.”⁴