  Some of these names describe more than a person within the godhead. The name “father,” for instance, may also be used of animals, in which case it means the male parent. We seem to apply such names literally to animals and only metaphorically to persons within the godhead. But Dionysius uncovers a passage from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians which leads him to claim otherwise. Paul says that God the Father is the one “from whom all fatherhood in the heavens and on earth is named.” On the basis of this scriptural authority, Dionysius explains that we are able to use the terms “father” and “son” of animals only because the godhead has already undergone the same relation. In other words, the internal causality exercised within the godhead is the source of all other causality. This includes not only the causation of one animal by another, but of one angel by another, since angels, too, receive the names of “father” and “son.”