Tertullian an inventor of trias c. ad 206: But, first, I shall discuss His essential nature, and so the nature of His birth will be understood. We have already asserted that God made the world, and all which it contains,          by His Word, and Reason, and Power.  It is abundantly plain that your philosophers, too,  regard the Logos-that is, the Word and Reason-          as the Creator of the universe. And we, in like manner, hold that the Word, and Reason, and Power, by which we have said God made all, have SPIRIT as their proper and essential     substratum, in which        the Word has in being to give forth UTTERENCES, .......and REASON abides to dispose and arrange,   ......and POWER is over all to execute. We have been taught that He (reason) proceeds forth from God, and in that PROCESSION He is GENERATED;       so that He is the SON of God,       and is called God from unity of substance with God. For God, too, is a Spirit. Even when the RAY is shot from the sun, ..........it is still part of the parent mass; the sun will still be in the           ray, because it is a ray of the sun- ..........there is no division of substance,           but merely an extension. Thus Christ is Spirit OF Spirit, and God OF God, as light OF light is kindled. [Jesus: My WORDS are SPIRIT and LIFE The material matrix remains entire and unimpaired, though you DERIVE from it any number of shoots possessed of its qualities; so, too, that which has come forth out of God is at once God and the Son of God, and the two are one. In this way also, as He is Spirit of Spirit and God of God, He [SPIRIT] is made a second in manner of existence-in position, not in nature; and He did not withdraw from the original source,            but went forth. This ray of God, then, as it was always foretold in ancient times, descending into a certain virgin, and made FLESH in her womb, ..........is in His birth God and man united.

Campbell, Thomax, Trinity The relationship of Word to God was the same as the relationship of a word to a thought. And so this is the most common understanding among the church fathers. The the word is the SON of the speaker as FATHER then there is ot problem trying to sort out how a LITERAL son of god could be equal with the Father or of the same age. 1st. A WORD is a sign or representative of a thought or an idea,  and is the idea in an audible or visible form. It is the exact image of that invisible thought  which is a perfect secret to all the world until it is expressed. 2d. All men think or form ideas by means of words or images; so that no man can think without words or symbols of some sort. 3d. Hence it follows that the word and the idea which it represents,          are co-etaneous, or of the same age or antiquity. ....... .It is true the word may not be uttered or born          for years or ages after the idea exists, ........but still the word is just as old as the idea. 4th. The idea and the word are nevertheless distinct from each other, though the relation between them is the nearest known on earth. ........An idea cannot exist without a word,          nor a word without an idea. 5th. He that is acquainted with the WORD, is acquainted with the IDEA,          for the idea is wholly in the word. By putting together the above remarks on the term word,  we have a full view of what John intended to communicate. As a word is an exact IMAGE of an IDEA, so is "The WORD" an exact image of the invisible God. As a WORD cannot exist without an idea, nor an idea without a word,         so God never was without "The Word,"          nor "The Word" without God; or as a word is of equal age, or co-etaneous with its idea,         so "The Word" and God are co-eternal. And as an idea does not create its word nor a word its idea; so God did not create "The Word," nor the "Word" God.

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