Vos Group #89 - The Various Aspects of Christ's Revealing Function 

Here is Calvin's own clarification on that matter, as Warfield cites a letter he wrote in May of 1543 on the topic: “This,” he here declares, “is the state of the controversy (status controversiae): Whether it may be truly predicated of Christ, that He is, as He is God, a se ipso? This Capunculus denies. Why? Because the name of Christ designates the Second Person in the Godhead, who stands in relation to the Father. I confess that if respect be had to the Person, we ought not so to speak. But I say we are not speaking of the Person but of the essence. I hold that the Holy Spirit is the real (idoneum = proper) author of this manner of speaking, since He refers to Christ all the declarations in which autotheos is predicated of God, as in other passages, so in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews.… He [Capunculus] contends that Christ, because He is of the substance of the Father, is not a se ipso, since He has a principium from another. This I allow to him of the Person. What more does he want?… I confess that the Son of God is of the Father. Accordingly, since the Person has a cause (ratio), I confess that He is not a se ipso. But when we are speaking, apart from consideration of the Person, of His divinity or simply of the essence, which is the same thing, I say that it is rightly predicated of Him that He is a se ipso. For who, heretofore, has denied that under the name of Jehovah, there is included the declaration of autotheos.” Benjamin B. Warfield, The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield: Calvin and Calvinism, vol. 5, 238-239. And then he cites Calvin yet again: “I assert both truths-both that Christ is of the Father as He is the second Person, and that He is of Himself (a se ipso) if we have respect to the Divine essence simpliciter”-a declaration which he supports from the Fathers, particularly Augustine, thus: “Similarly Augustine (Sermo 38 ‘de tempore’): ‘Those names which signify the’ substance … or essence of God, or whatever God is said to be in Himself (ad se), belong equally to all the Persons. There is not, therefore, any name of nature which can so belong to the Father that it may not belong also to the Son, or Holy Spirit.’ Benjamin B. Warfield, The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield: Calvin and Calvinism, vol. 5, 240.