In fact, he himself [Christ] made known whose Son he was when he accounted to men the name of the Father. Indeed, he said: “I have manifested your name to the men whom you gave me out of the world” [Jn 17:6]. He then manifested the Father’s name to men when he made himself known as the true, not putative, the real, not adoptive, Son of the Father. But what is said must be noted: “to the men whom you gave me.” In fact, among those whom the Father had given him and those whom he indeed, with the Father, had chosen before the creation of the world are not those who have confessed an adoptive and not real Son, as though at some point he was separated from the father, or that, by assuming flesh, he removed himself from him; whereas, it was (through) one will of the Father and the Son that the Word became flesh, as it is written: “I delight to do your will, O my God” [Ps 40:8].
For this
reason, he says elsewhere: “I am ascending to my Father and your father” [Jn
20:17]. Indeed, he distinctly says “my” and “your,” his, of course, not
through grace but through nature; ours, however, through the grace of adoption.
Heinrich Denzinger,
Compendium of Creeds, Definitions, and Declarations on Matters of Faith and
Morals, ed. Peter Hünermann, Robert Fastiggi, and Anne Englund Nash (43rd
ed; San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012), 209
