CHAPTER I: __________________________________________________________________
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THE DOCTRINE OF THE HOMOUSIA OF THE SON OF GOD WITH GOD HIMSELF. [2]
Is the Divine which appeared on the earth and has made its presence actively felt, identical with the supremely Divine that rules heaven and earth? Did the Divine which appeared on the earth enter into a close and permanent union with human nature, so that it has actually transfigured it and raised it to the plane of the eternal? These two questions necessarily arose out of the combination of the incarnation of the Logos and the deification of the human nature (See Vol. III., p. 289 ff.) Along with the questions, however, the answers too were given. But it was only after severe conflicts that these answers were able to establish themselves in the Church as dogmas. The reasons of the delay in their acceptance have been partly already indicated in Vol. III., pp. 167 ff. and will further appear in what follows. In the fourth century the first question was the dominant one in the Church, and in the succeeding centuries the second. We have to do with the first to begin with. It was finally answered at the so-called Second OEcumenical Council, 381, more properly in the year 383. The Council of Nicæa (325) and the death of Constantine (361) mark off the main stages in the controversy. __________________________________________________________________
[2] See the Opp. Athanas., and in addition the works of the other Church Fathers of the fourth century, above all, those of Hilary, the Cappadocians and Jerome; the Church Histories of Sulpicius, Rufinus, Socrates, Sozomen, Theodoret, Gelasius, the Vita Constantini of Eusebius, the Panarion of Epiphanius, and the Codex Theodosianus ed. Hænel; on the other side, the fragments of the Church History of Philostorgius; of the secular historians, Ammian in particular. For the proceedings of the Councils see Mansi Collect. Conc. v. II. and III.; Hefele, Conciliengesch. 2nd ed. v. I. and II.; Walch, Historie der Ketzereien v. II. and III.; Munscher, Ueber den Sinn der nicän. Glaubensformel, in Henke's Neues Magazin, VI., p. 334 f.; Caspari, Quellen zur Gesch. des Taufsymbols, 4 vols., 1866 ff.; Hahn, Bibliothek der Symbole, 2nd ed. 1877; Hort, On the Constantinop. Creed and other Eastern Creeds of the fourth century, 1876; Swainson, The Nicene and Apostles' Creeds, 1875; Bright, Notes on the Canons of the first four General Councils, 1882; my art. "Konstantinop. Symbol" in Herzog's R.-Encykl., 2nd ed. Besides the historical works of Baronius, Tillemont, Basnage, Gibbon, Schröckh, de Broglie, Wietersheim, Richter, Kaufmann, Hertzberg, Chastel, Schiller, Victor Schultze, and Boissier, above all, Ranke, (also Löning, Gesch. d. deutschen Kirchenrechts, vol. I.) and others, the references in Fabricius-Harless, the careful biographies of the Fathers of the fourth century by Böhringer, and the Histories of Dogma by Petavius, Schwane, Baur, Dorner (Entw. Gesch. d.
L. v. d. Person Christi), Newman (Arians of the fourth century), Nitzsch, Schultz, and Thomasius may be consulted. On Lucian: see my article in Herzog's R.-Encyklop. v. VIII. 2, and in my Altchristl. Lit. Gesch. vol. I. On Arius: Maimbourg, Hist. de l'Arianisme, 1673, Travasa, Storia della vita di Ario, 1746; Hassenkamp, Hist. Ariana controversiæ, 1845; Revillout, De l'Arianisme des peuples germaniques, 1850; Stark, Versuch einer Gesch. des Arianism, 2 vols., 1783 f.; Kölling, Gesch. der arianischen Häresie, 2 vols., 1874, 1883; Gwatkin, Studies of Arianism, 1882. On Athanasius: Möhler, Athan. d. Gr., 1827; Voigt, Die Lehre d. Athan., 1861; Cureton, The Festal Letters of Athan., 1848; Larsow, Die Festbriefe des hl. Athan., 1852; Sievers, Ztschr. f. d. hist. Theol., 1868, I.; Fialon, St. Athanase, 1877; Atzberger, Die Logoslehre d. hl. Athan., 1880 (on this ThLZ., 1880, No.
8) Eichhorn, Athan. de vita ascetica, 1886. On Marcellus: Zahn, M. von Ancyra, 1867; Klose, Gesch. d. L. des Marcel and Photin, 1837. Reinkens, Hilarius, 1864; Krüger, Lucifer, 1886, and in the Ztschr. f. wiss. Theol., 1888, p. 434 ff.; Klose, Gesch. and Lehre des Eunomius, 1833; Rode, Gesell. der Reaction des Kaiser Julian, 1877 (also the works of Naville, Rendall and Mücke); Ullmann, Gregor v. Naz., 2nd ed. 1867; Dräseke, Quæst. Nazianz. Specimen, 1876; Rupp, Gregor v. Nyssa, 1834; Klose, Basilius, 1835; Fialon, St. Basile, 2nd edit. 1869; Rade, Damasus, 1882; Förster, Ambrosius, 1884; Zöckler, Hieronymus, 1875; Güldenpenning and Ifland, Theodosius d. Gr., 1878; Langen, Gesch. d. röm. Kirche, I. 1881. In addition the articles on the subject in Herzog's R.-Encykl. (particularly those by Möller) and in the Dict. of Christ. Biography, and very specially the article Eusebius by Lightfoot. The most thorough recent investigation of the subject is that by Gwatkin above mentioned. The accounts of the doctrines of Arius and Athanasius in Böhringer are thoroughly good and well-nigh exhaustive. The literary and critical studies of the Benedictines, in their editions, and those of Tillemont form the basis of the more recent works also, and so far they have not been surpassed. __________________________________________________________________
1. FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE CONTROVERSY TO THE COUNCIL OF NICÆA.
At the great Oriental Council which met at Antioch about the year 268, the Logos doctrine was definitely accepted, while the "Homoousios" on the other hand was rejected. [3] The most learned man whom the East at that time possessed, Lucian (of Samosata) took up the work of the excommunicated metropolitan, Paul of Samosata. First educated at the school of Edessa, where since the days of Bardesanes a free and original spirit had prevailed, then a follower of Paul, he got from the latter his dislike to the theology of "the ancient teachers", and with this he united the critical study of the Bible, a subject in which he became a master. He founded in Antioch an exegetical-theological school which, during the time of the three episcopates of Domnus, Timäus and Cyril, was not in communion with the Church there, but which afterwards, shortly before the martyrdom of Lucian, made its peace with the Church.
This school is the nursery of the Arian doctrine, and Lucian, its head, is the Arius before Arius. Lucian started from the Christology of Paul, but, following the tendency of the time, and perhaps also because he was convinced on exegetical grounds, he united it with the Logos Christology, and so created a fixed form of doctrine. [4] It is probable that it was only gradually he allowed the Logos doctrine to have stronger influence on the Adoptian form. This explains why it was not till towards the end of his life that he was able to bridge over his differences with the Church. He was revered by his pupils both as the teacher par excellence, and in his character as ascetic; his martyrdom, which occurred in the year 311 or 312, increased his reputation. The remembrance of having sat at the feet of Lucian was a firm bond of union amongst his pupils. After the time of persecution they received influential ecclesiastical posts. [5] There was no longer anything to recall the fact that their master had formerly been outside of the Church. These pupils as a body afterwards came into conflict more or less strongly with the Alexandrian theology. So far as we know, no single one of them was distinguished as a religious character; but they knew what they wanted; they were absolutely convinced of the truth of their school-doctrine, which had reason and Scripture on its side. This is what characterises the school. At a time when the Church doctrine was in the direst confusion, and was threatening to disappear, and when the union of tradition, Scripture, and philosophical speculation in the form of dogma had been already called for, but had not yet been accomplished, this school was conscious of possessing an established system of doctrine which at the same time permitted freedom. This was its strength. [6]
The accounts of Lucian's Christology which have been handed down are meagre enough, still they give us a sufficiently clear picture of his views. God is One; there is nothing equal to Him; for everything besides Him is created. He has created the Logos or Wisdom--who is to be distinguished from the inner divine Logos--out of the things that are not (ex ouk onton), and sent him into the world. [7] This Logos has taken a human body though not a human soul, and accordingly all the feelings and spiritual struggles of Christ are to be attributed to the Logos. Christ has made known the Father to us, and by being man and by his death has given us an example of patience. This exhausts his work, by means of which--for so we may complete the thought--he, constantly progressing, has entered into perfect glory. It is the doctrine of Paul of Samosata, but instead of man it is a created heavenly being who here becomes "Lord". Lucian must have put all the emphasis on the "out of the things that are not" (ex ouk onton) and on the "progress" (prokope). The creaturehood of the Son, the denial of his co-eternity with the Father, and the unchangeableness of the Son achieved by constant progress and constancy, constitute the main articles in the doctrine of Lucian and his school. Just because of this he refuses to recognise in the Son the perfectly equal image of the ousia or substance of the Father (Philost. II. 15). [8] There can be no doubt as to the philosophy to which Lucian adhered. He worked with the means supplied by the critical and dialectic philosophy of Aristotle, although indeed his conception of God was Platonic, and though his Logos doctrine had nothing in common with the teaching of Aristotle. His opponents have expressly informed us that his pupils turned to account the Aristotelian philosophy. [9] If one recollects that in the third century the Theodotian-Adoptian Christology was founded by the help of what was supplied by Aristotelianism, and that the Theodotians were also given to the critical study of the Bible, [10] the connection between Arianism and Adoptianism thus becomes clear. It is incorrect to trace the entire opposition between the Orthodox and the Arians to the opposition between Platonism and Aristotelianism, incorrect if for no other reason because a strong Platonic element is contained in what they possess in common--namely, the doctrine of God and of the Logos; but it is correct to say that the opposition cannot be understood if regard is not had to the different philosophical methods employed. [11] In Lucian's teaching Adoptianism is combined [12] with the doctrine of the Logos as a creature (ktisma), and this form of doctrine is developed by the aid of the Aristotelian philosophy and based on the critical exegesis of the Bible. Aristotelian Rationalism dominated the school. The thought of an actual redemption was put in the background. The Christian interest in monotheism is exhausted by the statement that the predicate "underived" attaches to one single being only. This interest in the "unbegotten begetter", and also, what is closely connected with it, the ranging of all theological thoughts under the antithesis of first cause or God, and creation, are also Aristotelian. Theology here became a "Technology", that is, a doctrine of the unbegotten and the begotten [13] which was worked out in syllogisms and based on the sacred codex.
A pupil of Lucian named Arius, perhaps a Lybian by birth, became when already well up in years, first deacon in Alexandria, and afterwards presbyter in the church of Baukalis. The presbyters there at that period still possessed a more independent position than anywhere else.
[14] Owing, however, to the influence of the martyr bishop Peter (+
311) a tendency had gained ascendency in the episcopate in Alexandria, which led to Christian doctrine being sharply marked off from the teachings of Greek philosophy (mathemata tes Hellenikes philosophias) the presence of which had been observed in Origen, and in general shewed itself in a distrust of "scientific" theology, while at the same time the thought of the distinction between the Logos and the Father was given a secondary place. [15] Arius nevertheless fearlessly advanced the views he had learned from Lucian. The description we get of him is that of a man of grave appearance and a strict ascetic, but at the same time affable and of a prepossessing character, though vain. He was highly respected in the city; the ascetics and the virgins were specially attached to him. His activity had been recognised also by the new bishop Alexander who began his episcopate in 313. The outbreak of the controversy is wrapped in obscurity, owing to the fact that the accounts are mutually contradictory. According to the oldest testimony it was an opinion expressed by Arius when questioned by the bishop on a certain passage of Scripture, and to which he obstinately adhered, which really began the controversy, [16] possibly in the year 318. Since the persecution had ceased, the Christological question was the dominant one in the Alexandrian Church. Arius was not the first to raise it. On the contrary he was able later on to remind the bishop how the latter had often both in the Church and in the Council of Presbyters (en mese te ekklesia kai sunedrio pleistakis) refuted the Valentinian Christology, according to which the Son is an emanation,--the Manichæan, according to which the Son is a consubstantial part of the Father (meros homoousion tou patros),--the Sabellian, according to which the Godhead involves the identity of the Son and Father (huiopator),--that of Hieracas. according to which the Son is a torch lighted at the torch of the Father, that Son and Father are a bipartite light and so on,--and how he, Arius, had agreed with him. [17] It was only after considerable hesitation and perhaps vacillation too, that Alexander resolved on the excommunication of Arius. It took place at a Synod held in 321 or 320 in presence of about one hundred Egyptian and Lybian bishops. Along with Arius some presbyters and deacons of Alexandria, as well as the Lybian bishops Theonas and Secundus, were deposed. This did not quieten Arius. He sought and forthwith found support amongst his old friends, and above all, got the help of Eusebius of Nicomedia. This student-friend had an old cause of quarrel with Alexander, [18] and, contrary to ecclesiastical law, had been transferred to Nicomedia by Berytus, the most influential bishop [19] at the court of the Empress, a sister of Constantine. Arius, driven out of Alexandria "as an atheist", had written to him from Palestine. [20] He was able to appeal to a number of eastern bishops, and above all, to Eusebius of Cæsarea; in fact he asserted that all the eastern bishops agreed with him and had on this account been put under the ban by Alexander (?). Eusebius of Nicomedia espoused the cause of Arius in the most energetic fashion in a large number of letters. [21] Alexander on his part also looked about for allies. He wrote numerous letters to the bishops, two of which have been preserved--namely, the Encyclica, i.e., the official report of what had occurred, [22] and the epistle to Alexander, Bishop of Constantinople. (?) [23] In the latter letter, which is written in a very hostile tone, Alexander sought to check the powerful propaganda of Arianism. He appealed to the bishops of the whole of Egypt and the Thebaid and further to the Lybian, Pentapolitan, Syrian, Lycio-Pamphylian, Asiatic, Cappadocian, and other bishops. Arius betook himself to Nicomedia and from there addressed a conciliatory epistle to the Alexandrian bishop which we still possess. [24] He also composed at that time his "Thalia," of whose contents which were partly in prose and partly in verse, we cannot form any very correct idea from the few fragments handed down to us by Athanasius. His supporters thought a great deal of this. work while his opponents condemned it as profane, feeble, and affected. [25] A Bithynian Synod under the leadership of Eusebius decided for Arius, [26] and Eusebius of Cæsarea entered into communication with Alexander of Alexandria in the character of mediator, in order to induce him to take a more favourable view of the doctrine of the excommunicated presbyter. [27] It may have been, more than anything else, the political state of things which allowed Arius to find his way back once more to Alexandria. Under the patronage of some distinguishes bishops with whom he had entered into correspondence, but who were not able to bring about any amicable arrangement with Alexander, Arius resumed his work in the city. [28] In the autumn of 323 Constantine, after his victory over Licinius, became sole ruler in the Roman Empire. The controversy had already begun to rage in all the coast-provinces of the East. Not only did the bishops contend with each other, but the common people too began to take sides, and the dispute was carried on in such a base manner that the Jews scoffed at the thing in the theatres, and turned the most sacred parts of the doctrine of the Church into ridicule. [29] Constantine forthwith interfered. The very full letter which he sent to Alexander and Arius,
[30] in 323-24, is one of the most important monuments of his religious policy. The controversy is described as an idle wrangle over incomprehensible things, since the opponents are, he says, at one as regards the main point. [31] But the letter had no effect, nor was the court-bishop, Hosius of Cordova, who brought it, and who as an Occidental appeared to be committed to neither side, able to effect a reconciliation between the parties. In all probability, however, Hosius had already come to an understanding [32] in Alexandria with Alexander, and the latter shortly after took a journey to Nicomedia, thoroughly completed the understanding, talked over some other bishops there, and so prepared the way for the decision of the Council of Nicæa. [33] The Emperor was won over by Hosius after he perceived the fruitlessness of his union-policy. [34] He now summoned a General Council to meet at Nicæa, apparently on the advice of Hosius, [35] and the latter had the main share also in determining the choice of the formula proposed. [36]
But before we take up the Council of Nicæa, we must get some idea of the doctrines of the contending parties.
We still know what were the Christological formulæ of Bishop Alexander which were attacked by Arius. [37] They were the words: Aei theos, aei huios, hama pater, hama huios, sunuparchei ho huios agennetos [38] to theo, aeigenes, agenetogenes, out' epinoia, out' atomo tini proagei ho theos tou huiou, aei theos, aei huios, ex autou tou theou ho huios; always God, always Son, at the same time Father, at the same time Son, the Son exists unbegotten with the Father, everlasting, uncreated, neither in conception nor in any smallest point does God excel the Son, always God, always Son, from God Himself the Son.
Alexander thus maintains the beginningless, eternal co-existence of Father and Son: the Father is never to be thought of without the Son who springs from the Father. It is not improbable that Alexander was led thus to give prominence to the one side of the Logos doctrine of Origen, owing to the influence of the theology of Irenæus or Melito.
[39] The doctrine which Arius opposed to this is above all dominated by the thought that God, the Only One, is alone eternal, and that besides Him there exists only what is created, and that this originates in His will, that accordingly the Son also is not eternal, but a creation of God out of the non-existent. [40] From this thesis there necessarily follows the rejection of the predicate homoousios for the Son. Arius and his friends already before the Council of Nicæa give expression to it, incidentally indeed, but without ambiguity. [41]
The doctrine of Arius is as follows: [42]
(a) God, the Only One, besides whom there is no other, is alone unbegotten, without beginning and eternal; He is inexpressible, incomprehensible, and has absolutely no equal. These are the notes which express His peculiar nature. He has created all things out of His free will, and there exists nothing beside Him which He has not created. The expression "to beget" is simply a synonym for "to create". If it were not, the pure simplicity and spirituality of God's nature would be destroyed. God can put forth nothing out of His own essence; nor can He communicate His essence to what is created, for this essence is essentially uncreated. He has accordingly not been Father always; for otherwise what is created would not be created, but eternal. [43]
(b) Wisdom and Logos dwell within this God as the powers (not persons) which are coincident with His substance, and are by their very nature inseparable from it; there are besides many created powers. [44]
(c) Before the world existed, God of His free will created an independent substance or hypostasis (ousia, hupostasis) as the instrument by means of which all other creatures were to be created, since without it the creatures would not have been able to endure the contact of the Godhead. This Being is termed in Scripture Wisdom, also Son, Image, Word; this Wisdom, which, compared with the inner divine Wisdom, is called Wisdom only in a loose sense, has like all creatures been created out of nothing. It originates in God only in so far as it has been created by God; it is in no sense of the substance or essence of God. It has had a beginning; it accordingly did not always exist, there was a time in which it was not. That the Scriptures use the word "begotten" of this Substance does not imply that this is peculiar to it any more than is the predicate "Son"; for the other creatures are likewise described here and there as "begotten," and men are called "sons of God". [45]
(d) As regards his Substance, the "Son" is consequently an unrelated and independent being totally separated from, and different from, the substance or nature of the Father. He has neither one and the same substance together with the Father, nor a nature and constitution similar to that of the Father. If he had, then there would be two Gods. On the contrary, like all rational creatures he has a free will and is capable of change. He might consequently have been good or bad; but he made up his mind to follow the good, and continued in the good without vacillation. Thus he has by means of his own will come to be unchangeable. [46]
(e) Since the Son is, as regards his substance, unrelated to the Godhead, [47] he is not truly God, and accordingly has not by nature the divine attributes; he is only the so-called Logos and Wisdom. As he is not eternal, neither is his knowledge in any sense perfect; he has no absolute knowledge of God, but only a relative knowledge, in fact he does not even know his own substance perfectly, accordingly he cannot claim equal honour with the Father. [48]
(f) Still the Son is not a creature and a product like other creatures; he is the perfect creature, ktisma teleion; by him everything has been created; he stands in a special relation to God, but this is solely conditioned by grace and adoption; the bestowal of grace on the other hand, is based on the steadfast inclination of this free being to the good which was foreseen by God. Through God's bestowal of grace and by his own steady progress he has become God, so that we may now call him "only-begotten God", "strong God" and so on. [49]
(g) All that Scripture and tradition assert in reference to the incarnation and the humanity of this being holds good; he truly took a human body (soma apsuchon); the feelings shewn by the historical Christ teach us that the Logos to whom they attach--for Christ had not a human soul--is a being capable of suffering, not an absolutely perfect being, but one who attains by effort absolute perfection. [50]
(h) Amongst the number of created powers (dunameis) the Holy Ghost is to be placed beside the Son as a second, independent Substance or Hypostasis, (ousia, hupostasis); for the Christian believes in three separate and different substances or persons, (ousiai, hupostaseis); Father, Son and Spirit. Arius apparently, like his followers, considered the Spirit as a being created by the Son and subordinate to him. [51]
Alexander expressly notes that the Arians appeal to Scripture in support of their doctrine, and Athanasius says that the Thalia contained passages of Scripture. [52] The passages so frequently cited later on by the Arians; Deut. VI. 4, XXXII. 39; Prov. VIII. 22; Ps. XLV. 8; Mt. XII. 28; Mk. XIII. 32; Mt. XXVI. 41, XXVIII. 18; Lk. II. 52, XVIII. 19; John XI. 34, XIV. 28, XVII. 3; Acts II. 36; 1 Cor. I. 24, XV. 28; Col. I. 15; Philipp. II. 6 f.; Hebr. I. 4, III. 2; John XII. 27, XIII. 21; Mt. XXVI. 39, XXVII. 46, etc., will thus already have been used by Arius himself. Arius was not a systematiser, nor were his friends systematisers either. In this respect their literary activity was limited to letters in which they stirred each other up, and which were soon put together in a collected form. The only one amongst them before Eunomius and Aëtius who undertook to give a systematic defence of the doctrinal system, was the Sophist Asterius, called by Athanasius the advocate (sunegoros) of the sects. He was a clever, clear-headed man, but he was quite unable to wipe out what was in everybody's eyes the blot on his character, his denial of the Faith during the time of persecution. [53] There were various shades of opinion amongst the followers and supporters of Arius. In Arianism in its more rigid form the tradition of Paul of Samosata and Lucian predominated, in its milder form the subordination doctrine of Origen. Both types were indeed at one as regards the form of doctrine, and the elements traceable to Origen won over all enlightened "Conservatives". We may count Asterius too amongst. the latter, at all events the unbending Philostorgius was not at all pleased with him, and Asterius subsequently approached near to the Semiarians.
Previous to the Council of Nicæa, the letters of the bishop Alexander are, for us at all events, the sole literary manifestos of the opposite party. The Encyklica already shews that the writer is fully conscious he has got to do with a heresy of the very worst type. The earlier heresies all pale before it; no other heretic has approached so near to being Antichrist. Arius and his friends are the enemies of God, murderers of the divinity of Christ, people like Judas. Alexander did not enter into theoretical and theological explanations. After giving a brief but complete and excellent account of the Logos doctrine of Arius, he sets in contrast with the statements contained in it, numerous passages from the Gospel of John and other quotations from Scripture. [54] The sole remarks of a positive kind he makes are that it belongs to the substance or essence of the Logos, that he perfectly knows the Father, and that the supposition of a time in which the Logos was not, makes the Father alogos kai asophos. The latter remark, which for that matter of it does not touch Arius, shews that Alexander included the Logos or Son in the substance of the Father as a necessary element. The second epistle goes much more into details, [55] but it shews at the same time how little Alexander, in solving the problem, was able definitely to oppose fixed and finished formulæ to those of the Arians. The main positions of Arius are once more pertinently characterised and refuted.
Alexander is conscious that he is contending for nothing less than the divinity of Christ, the universal Faith of the Church, when he refutes the statements that the Son is not eternal, that He was created out of the non-existent, that He is not by nature (phusei) God, that He is capable of change, that He went through a moral development (prokope), that He is only Son by adoption, like the sons of God in general, and so on. [56] He not only adduces proofs from the Bible in large numbers,
[57] he has unmistakably in his mind what is for him a central, religious thought. Christ must belong to God and not to the world, because all other creatures require such a being in order to attain to God and become the adopted sons of God. In order to make clear the possibility of such a being, Alexander uses by preference for the Son the expression which had been already preferred by Origen--"the perfect image," "the perfect reflection." But even this expression does not suffice him; it gains deeper meaning by the thought that the Son as the image of the Father at the same time first clearly expresses the peculiar character of the Father. In the Wisdom, the Logos, the Power, the "Son is made known and the Father is characterised. To say that the reflection of the divine glory does not exist is to do away also with the archetypal light of which it is the reflection; if there exists no impress or pattern of the substance of God, then he too is done away with who is wholly characterised by this pattern or express image:"--gnorizetai ho huios kai ho pater charakterizetai. To gar apaugasma tes doxes me einai legein sunanairei kai to prototupon phos, hou estin apaugasma . . . to me einai ton tes hupostaseos tou Theou charaktera sunanaireitai kakeinos, ho pantos par autou charakterizomenos. While in laying down this thesis and others of a similar kind, e.g., that the Son is the inner reason and power of the Father Himself, he approaches "Sabellianism," the latter doctrine is repudiated in the most decided and emphatic way. But on the other hand again, not only is the supposition of two unbegottens (agen[n]eta) rejected as a calumny, but he repeatedly emphasises in a striking fashion the fact that the begetting of the Son is not excluded by the application to Him of the predicate always (aei), that the Father alone is unbegotten, and that He is greater than the Son. [58] Alexander thus asserts both things--namely, the inseparable unity of the substance of the Son with that of the Father [59] and their difference, and yet the one is held to be unbegotten and the other to be not unbegotten. In order to be able to maintain these contradictory theses he takes up the standpoint of Irenæus, that the mystery of the existence and coming forth of the Son is an inexpressible one even for Evangelists and angels, and is no proper object of human reflection and human statement. Even John did not venture to make any pronouncement regarding the anekdiegetos hupostasis tou monogenous Theou, [60] --the ineffable substance of the only begotten God. "How could anyone waste his labour on the substance of the Logos of God, unless indeed he were afflicted with melancholy?" Pos an periergasaito tis ten tou Theou logou hupostasin, ektos ei me melancholike diathesei lephthei tunchanoi. [61] Alexander's actual standpoint is undoubtedly plainly expressed here. He does not wish to speculate; for the complete divinity of Christ is for him not a speculation at all, but a judgment of faith, and the distinction between Father and Son is for him something beyond doubt. But he sees that he is under the necessity of opposing certain formula to the doctrine of Arius. These are partly vague and partly contradictory: [62] "The Son is the inner reason and power of God," "Father and Son are two inseparable things" (duo achorista pragmata), "Between Father and Son there is not the slightest difference" (diastema), "not even in any thought" (oud' achri tinos ennoias), "There is only one unbegotten," "The Son has come into being in consequence of a genesis kai poiesis" (an act of generation and production), "The Son has, compared with the world, an ineffable substance peculiarly his own" (idiotropos anekdiegetos hupostasis), "He is monogenes Theos" (only begotten God), "His Sonship is by its nature in possession of the deity of the Father" (kata phusin tunchanousa tes patrikes theotetos), [63] "Father and Son are two natures in the hypostasis" (te hupostasei duo phuseis [64] ), between the Underived and he who has come into being out of the non-existent there is a mesiteuousa phusis monogenes (the Son) di' es ta hola ex ouk onton epoiesen ho pater tou Theou logou, e ex autou tou ontos patros gegennetai," (a mediating only begotten nature by which the Father of the God-Logos has made all things out of the non-existent, and which has been begotten out of the existent Father), "The Son has not proceeded out of the Father kata tas ton somaton homoiotetas, tais tomais e tais ekdiaireseon aporroiais (in the manner in which bodies are formed, by separation or by the emanation of parts divided off);" still we may speak of a fatherly generation! (patrike theogonia) which certainly is beyond the power of human reason to grasp." "The expressions en, aei, etc., (was, always), used of the Son, are undoubtedly too weak, but on the other hand, they are not to be conceived so as to suggest that the Son is unbegotten (agennetos); the unbeginning genesis from the Father (anarchos gennesis para tou patros) is his,--"the Father is greater than the Son, to Him honour in the strict sense (oikeion axioma) is due, to the Son the dignity that is fitting (time harmozousa)." [65]
These confused thoughts and formulæ contrast unfavourably with the clear and definitely expressed statements of Arius. Alexander's opponents had a better right to complain of the chameleon-like form of this teaching than he had of that of theirs. When they maintained that it offered no security against dualism (two unbegotten, [ageneta]),
[66] or against Gnostic emanationism (probole, aporroia), or against Sabellianism (huiopator), or against the idea of the corporeality of God, and that it contained flagrant contradictions, [67] they were not far wrong. But they cannot have been in the dark as to what their opponents meant to assert, which was nothing else than the inseparable, essential unity of Father and Son, the complete divinity of Christ who has redeemed us and whom every creature must necessarily have as redeemer. Along with this they taught a real distinction between Father and Son, though they could assert this distinction only as a mystery, and when they were driven to describe it, had recourse to formulæ which were easily refuted.
We may at this point give an account of the doctrine of Athanasius; for although it was not till after the Nicene Council that he took part in the controversy as an author, [68] still his point of view coincides essentially with that of Bishop Alexander. It underwent no development, and considered from the stand-point of technical theology it partly labours under the same difficulties as that of Alexander. Its significance does not lie in the nature of his scientific defence of the faith, but solely in the triumphant tenacity of the faith itself. His character and his life are accordingly the main thing. The works he composed, like all the theological formulae he uses, were wrung out of him. The entire Faith, everything in defence of which Athanasius staked his life, is described in the one sentence: God Himself has entered into humanity. [69]
The theology and christology of Athanasius are rooted in the thought of Redemption, and his views were not influenced by any subordinate considerations. [70] Neither heathenism nor Judaism has brought men into fellowship with God, the point on which everything turns. It is through Christ that we are transported into this fellowship; He has come in order to make us divine, i e., to make us by adoption the sons of God and gods. But Christ would not have been able to bring us this blessing if He Himself had possessed it merely as a gift secundum participationem, for in this case He only had just as much as He needed Himself and so could not proceed to give away what was not His own.
[71] Therefore Christ must be of the substance of the Godhead and be one with it. Whoever denies that is not a Christian, but is either a heathen or a Jew. [72] This is the fundamental thought which Athanasius constantly repeats. Everything else is secondary, is of the nature of necessary controversy. In the Son we have the Father; whoever knows the Son knows the Father. [73] This confession is at bottom the entire Christian confession. The adoration of Christ, which according to tradition, has been practised from the first, and which has not been objected to by their opponents, already, he says, decides the whole question. God alone is to be adored; it is heathenish to worship creatures. [74] Christ therefore shares in the divine substance. Athanasius did not draft any system of theology or christology. The real point at issue appeared to him to be quite simple and certain. We have to put together his doctrinal system for ourselves, and the attempts to construct such a system for him is not something to be entered upon lightly. A body of theoretical propositions resulted solely from the polemic in which he was engaged and also from his defence of the "Homoousios." Throughout, however, his thought in the final resort centres not in the Logos as such, [75] but in the Divine, which had appeared in Jesus Christ. He has no longer any independent Logos doctrine, on the contrary he is a Christologist. We accordingly give merely some of the main lines of his teaching.
1. To acknowledge that the substantial or essential element in Christ is "God," is to assert that there is nothing of the creature in this, that it does not therefore belong in any sense to what has been created. Athanasius insisted as confidently as Arius on the gulf which exists between created and uncreated. This constitutes the advance made by both in clearness. [76] Arius, however, drew the dividing line in such a way that with him the Son belongs to the world side, while with Athanasius He, as belonging to God, stands over against the world.
2. Since the Divine, which has appeared in Christ, is not anything created, and since there can be no "middle" substance, [77] it follows, according to the reasoning of Athanasius, that this Divine cannot in any sense be postulated as resulting from the idea of the creation of the world. God did not require any agent for the creation of the world; He creates direct. If He had required any such intervening agent in order to effect a connection with the creature that was to come into existence, this Divine could not have supplied Him with it, for it itself really belongs to His substance. In this way the idea of the Divine, which in Christ redeemed men, is severed from the world idea;
[78] the old Logos doctrine is discarded; Nature and Revelation no longer continue to be regarded as identical. The Logos-Son-Christ is at bottom no longer a world principle, but, on the contrary, a salvation principle. [79]
3. Scripture and tradition know of only one Godhead; they, however, at the same time pronounce Christ to be God: they call the Divine which has appeared in Christ, Logos, Wisdom and Son; they thus distinguish it from God, the Father. Faith has to hold fast to this. But in accordance with this we get the following propositions:
(a) The Godhead is a unity (monas). Therefore the Divine which appeared in Christ, must form part of this unity. There is only one underived or unbegotten principle; this is the Father. [80]
(b) The very name Father implies, moreover, that a second exists in the Godhead. God has always been Father, and whoever calls Him Father posits at the same time the Son; for the Father is the Father of the Son, and only in a loose sense the Father of the world and of men; for these are created, but the divine Trinity is uncreated, for otherwise it might either decrease again, or further increase in the future. [81]
(c) This Son, the offspring of the Father (gennema tou patros), [82] was not, however, begotten in a human fashion as if God were corporeal. On the contrary, He has been begotten as the sun begets light and the spring the brook; He is called Son, because He is the eternal, perfect reflection of the Father, the image [83] proceeding from the substance of the Father; He is called Wisdom and Logos not as if the Father were imperfect without Him, [84] but as the creative power of the Father.
[85] "To be begotten" simply means completely to share by nature in the entire nature of the Father, implying at the same time that the Father does not therefore suffer or undergo anything. [86]
(d) Consequently the assertions of the Arians that the Son is God, Logos, and Wisdom in a nominal sense only, that there was a time in which the Son was not, that He has sprung from the will of the Father, that He was created out of the non-existent or out of some other substance, that He is subject to change, are false. [87] On the contrary He is (1) co-eternal with the Father and (2) He is of the substance of the Father, [88] for otherwise He would not be God at all, (3) He is by His own nature in all points similarly [89] constituted as the Father, and finally He is all this, because He has one and the same substance in common with the Father and together with Him constitutes a unity, [90] but "substance" in reference to God means nothing else than "Being." [91] It is not the case that the Father is one substance by itself and the Son another substance by itself and that these two are similarly constituted. This would do away with the unity of the Godhead. On the contrary, the Father is the Godhead; this Godhead, however, contains in it a mystery which can only be approximately conceived of by men. It conceals within itself in the form of an independent and self-acting product something which issues from it and which also possesses this Godhead and possesses it from all eternity in virtue, not of any communication, but of nature and origin,--the true and real Son, the image which proceeds from the substance. There are not two divine ousias, not two divine hypostases or the like, but one ousia and hypostasis, which the Father and the Son possess. Thus the Son is true God, inseparable from the Father and reposing in the unity of the Godhead, not a second alongside of God, but simply reflection, express image, Son within the one Godhead which cannot and ought not to be thought of apart from reflection, express image, and Son. He has everything that the Father has, for He actually possesses the ousia of the Father; He is homoousios, [92] of the same substance. Only He is not actually the Father, for the latter is also His source and root, the Almighty Father, the only unbegotten principle. [93]
(4) The language used of Christ in Scripture to express what is human and belonging to the creature, has, always and only, reference to the human nature which He took upon Him in order to redeem men. Since He who is by nature God took upon Him a body in order to unite with Himself what is by nature man in order that the salvation and deification of man might be surely accomplished, He also along with the body took to Himself human feelings. So complete, however, is the identity of the humanity of Christ with the nature of humanity as a whole that we may, according to Athanasius, refer the statements of Scripture as to a special endowment and exaltation of Christ, to the whole humanity. [94] Complete too, however, was the union of the Son of God with humanity, which Athanasius, like Arius up to the time of the Apollinarian controversy, usually thought of as "Flesh," "vesture of the Flesh." [95] Because the body of the Logos was really His own body--although we must discard the thought of variation, of change [96] --and because this union had become already perfect in Mary's body,
[97] everything that holds good of the flesh holds good of the Logos also, and this is true of all sufferings even,--although He was not affected by them so far as His Godhead is concerned, [98] --and Mary is the mother of God. Athanasius also refers to the incarnate Logos the locus classicus of the Arians, Prov. VIII. 22, 23, [99] with which Eustathius of Antioch likewise occupied himself. [100] Finally, Athanasius spoke also of a prokope or progress in reference to the incarnate Logos, of an increase in the manifestation of God in the body of Christ, by which he means that the flesh was more and more completely irradiated by the Godhead: to anthropinon en te sophia proekopten, [101] (the human advanced in wisdom).
How are the two mutually opposed doctrines to be judged from the standpoint of history, of reason, and of the Gospel? Each party charged the other with holding doctrines which involved contradictions, and, what is of more consequence, they mutually accused each other of apostasy from Christianity, although the Arians never advanced this charge with such energy as the opposite party. We have first of all to ascertain definitely how much they had in common. Religion and doctrine are with both thoroughly fused together, [102] and, indeed, formally considered, the doctrine is the same in both cases, i.e., the fundamental conceptions are the same. The doctrine of the pre-existent Christ, who as the pre-existent Son of God is Logos, Wisdom, and world-creating Power of God, seems to constitute the common basis. Together with this both have a common interest in maintaining the unity of God and in making a sharp distinction between Creator and creature. Finally, both endeavour to base their doctrines on Scripture and at the same time claim to have tradition on their side, as is evident in the case of Arius from the introduction to the Thalia. Both are, however, convinced that the final word lies with Scripture and not with tradition.
I. We cannot understand Arianism unless we consider that it consists of two entirely disparate parts. It has, first of all, a Christ who gradually becomes God, who therefore develops more and more in moral unity of feeling with God, progresses and attains his perfection by the divine grace. This Christ is the Saviour, in so far as he has conveyed to us the divine doctrine and has given us an example of goodness perfectly realised in the exercise of freedom. When Arius calls this Christ Logos it appears as if he did this by way of accommodation. The conception of Arius here is purely Adoptian. But, secondly, with this is united a metaphysic which has its basis solely in a cosmology and has absolutely no connection with soteriology. This metaphysic is dominated by the thought of the antithesis of the one, inexpressible God, a God remote from the world, and the creature. The working-out of this thought accordingly perfectly corresponds with the philosophical ideas of the time and with the one half of the line of thought pursued by Origen. In order that a creation may become possible at all, a spiritual being must first be created which can be the means whereby a spiritual-material world can be created. This cannot be the divine reason itself, but only the most complete image of the divine reason stamped on a created, freely acting, independent being. With this we have arrived at the Neo-platonic origination. Whether in order to find a means of transition to the world we are to speak of "God, the essential nous of God, the created Logos," or "God, the created Logos, the world-spirit," or are to arrange the terms in some other way, is pretty much a matter of indifference, and to all appearance Arius laid little stress on this. It is the philosophical triad, or duad, such as we meet with in Philo, Numenius, Plotinus etc. These created beings which mediate between God and the creature are, however, according to Arius, to be adored, i.e., it is only as a cosmologist that he is a strict monotheist, while as a theologian he is a polytheist. This again perfectly corresponds to the dominant Hellenic view. Arius in fact occupies a place, so to speak, on the extreme left, for the energetic way in which he emphasises the thought that the second ousia has been created out of the free will of God, that it is foreign to the substance of God, that as a creaturely substance it is capable of change and definable, and, above all, the express assertion that this "Logos" and "Son" is "Logos" and "Son" merely nominally, that in no sense whatever is an emanation or anything of that kind to be thought of here, but simply a creation, is surprising even in the sphere of Hellenic philosophy. That this created Logos which made possible the further creation has appeared in Jesus Christ and has in human vesture developed into God and has therefore not been lowered, but on the contrary has been exalted by His being man, is accordingly what constitutes the uniting thought between the two parts of the system.
In the other case, as here, the expressions "pre-existent Son of God," "Logos," "Wisdom" are plainly only an accommodation. They are unavoidable, but not necessary, in fact they create difficulties. It clearly follows from this, however, that the doctrine of Origen does not constitute the basis of the system--in so far as its Christology is concerned--and that what it has in common with the orthodox system is not what is really characteristic of it, but is on the contrary what is secondary. The Arian doctrine has its root in Adoptianism, in the doctrine of Lucian of Samosata, [103] as is proved, above all, by the strong emphasis laid on the creaturehood of the Redeemer and by the elimination of a human soul. We know what signification this had for Origen. Where it is wanting we can no longer speak of Origenism in the full meaning of the word. But it is correct that the cosmological-causal point of view of Origen, this one side of his complicated system, was appropriated by Arius, that is by Lucian. Meanwhile it has to be added that it was not peculiar to Origen. He made an effort to get beyond it; he balanced the causal-cosmological point of view, according to which the Logos is a heavenly ktisma, by the soteriological, according to which He is the essential and recognisable image of the Father, which constitutes an essential unity with the Father. Of this there is nothing in Arius. [104]
Arianism is a new doctrine in the Church; it labours under quite as many difficulties as any other earlier Christological doctrine; it is, finally, in one important respect, really Hellenism which is simply tempered by the constant use of Holy Scripture. It is a new doctrine; for not only is the frank assertion of the creaturehood and changeableness of the Logos in this sharply defined form, new, spite of Origen, Dionysius Alex., Pierius and so on, but, above all, the emphatic rejection of any essential connection of the Logos with the Father. The images of the source and the brook, the sun and the light, the archetype and the type, which are almost of as old standing in the Church as the Logos-doctrine itself, are here discarded. This, however, simply means that the Christian Logos- and Son-of-God-doctrine has itself been discarded. Only the old names remain. But new too, further, is the combination of Adoptianism with the Logos-cosmology, and if the idea of two distinct Logoi and two Wisdoms is not exactly new, it is a distinction which had never before this been permitted.
Athanasius exposed the inner difficulties and contradictions, and in almost every case we may allow that he has right on his side. A son who is no son, a Logos who is no Logos, a monotheism which nevertheless does not exclude polytheism, two or three ousias which are to be revered, while yet only one of them is really distinct from the creatures, an indefinable being who first becomes God by becoming man and who is yet neither God nor man, and so on. In every single point we have apparent clearness while all is hollow and formal, a boyish enthusiasm for playing with husks and shells, and a childish self-satisfaction in the working out of empty syllogisms. [105] This had not been learned from Origen, who always had facts and definite ends in view when he speculated.
But all this might be put up with if only this doctrine were in any way designed to shew how communion with God is arrived at through Christ. This is what we must necessarily demand; for what the ancient Church understood by "redemption" was in part a physical redemption of a very questionable kind, and it would not necessarily have been anything to be regretted if anyone had emancipated himself from this "redemption." But one has absolutely nowhere the impression that Arius and his friends are in their theology concerned with communion with God. Their doctrina de Christo has nothing whatever to do with this question. The divine which appeared on earth is not the Godhead, but one of its creations. God Himself remains unknown. Whoever expresses adherence to the above propositions and does this with unmistakable satisfaction, stands up for the unique nature of God, but does this, however, only that he may not endanger the uniformity of the basis of the world, and otherwise is prepared to worship besides this God other "Gods" too, creatures that is; whoever allows religion to disappear in a cosmological doctrine and in veneration for a heroic teacher, even though he may call him "perfect creature," ktisma teleion, and revere in him the being through whom this world has come to be what it is, is, so far as his religious way of thinking is concerned, a Hellenist, and has every claim to be highly valued by Hellenists. [106]
The admission that the Arians succeeded in getting a grasp of certain features in the historical Christ presented to us by the New Testament, cannot in any way alter this judgment. In this matter they were far superior to their opponents; but they were absolutely unable to make any religious use of what they perceived. They speak of Christ as Paul of Samosata does, but by foisting in behind the Christ who was exalted to be Lord, the half divine being, logos-creature, logos-ktisma, they deprived the most valuable knowledge they had of all practical value. Paul could say in a general way: ta kratoumena to logo tes phuseos, ouk echei epainon; ta de schesei philias kratoumena huperaineitai (what was accomplished by the Logos of nature deserves no praise, but what was accomplished in the state of love is to be praised exceedingly). Such a statement was made impossible for the Arians by the introduction of cosmological speculation. What dominates Paul's whole view of the question--namely, the thought that the unity of love and feeling is the most abiding unity, scarcely ever finds an echo amongst the Arians, for it is swallowed up by that philosophy which measures worth by duration in time and thinks of a half-eternal being as being nearer God than a temporal being who is filled with the love of God. We cannot therefore finally rate very high the results of the rational exegesis of christological passages as given by the Arians; they do not use them to shew that Jesus was a man whom God chose for Himself or that God was in the man Jesus, but, on the contrary, in order to prove that this Jesus was no complete God. Nor can we put a high value on their defence of monotheism either, for they adored creatures. What is alone really valuable, is the energetic emphasis they lay on freedom, and which they adopted from Origen, but even it has no religious significance.
Had the Arian doctrine gained the victory in the Greek-speaking world, it would in all probability have completely ruined Christianity, that is, it would have made it disappear in cosmology and morality and would have annihilated religion in the religion. "The Arian Christology is inwardly the most unstable, and dogmatically the most worthless, of all the Christologies to be met with in the history of dogma." [107] Still it had its mission. The Arians made the transition from heathenism to Christianity easier for the large numbers of the cultured and half-cultured whom the policy of Constantine brought into the Church. They imparted to them a view of the Holy Scriptures and of Christianity which could present no difficulty to any one at that period. The Arian monotheism was the best transition from polytheism to monotheism. It asserted the truth that there is one supreme God with whom nothing can be compared, and thus rooted out the crude worship of many gods. It constructed a descending divine triad in which the cultured were able to recognise again the highest wisdom of their philosophers. It permitted men to worship a demiurge together with the primal substance, prote ousia; it taught an incarnation of this demiurge and, on the other hand again, a theopoiesis. and was able skilfully to unite this with the worship of Christ in the Church. It afforded, in the numerous formulæ which it coined, interesting material for rhetorical and dialectic exercises. It quickened the feeling of freedom and responsibility and led to discipline, and even to asceticism. And finally, it handed on the picture of a divine hero who was obedient even to death and gained the victory by suffering and patience, and who has become a pattern for us. When transmitted along with the Holy Scriptures, it even produced a living piety [108] amongst Germanic Christians, if it also awakened in them the very idea to which it had originally been specially opposed, the idea of a theogony. What was shewn above--namely, that the doctrine was new, is to be taken cum grano salis; elements which were present in the teaching of the Church from the very beginning got here vigorous outward expression and became supreme. The approval the doctrine met with shews how deeply rooted they were in the Church. We cannot but be astonished at the first glance to find that those who sought to defend the whole system of Origen partly sided with Arius and partly gave him their patronage. But this fact ceases to be striking so soon as we consider that the controversy very quickly became so acute as to necessitate a decision for or against Arius. But the Origenists, moreover, had a very strong antipathy to everything that in any way suggested "Sabellianism"; for Sabellianism had no place for the pursuit of Hellenic cosmological speculation, i.e., of scientific theology. Their position with regard to the doctrine of Athanasius was thereby determined. They would rather have kept to their rich supply of musty formulæ, but they were forced to decide for Arius.
II. Nothing can more clearly illustrate the perverse state of the problem in the Arian-Athanasian controversy than the notorious fact that the man who saved the character of Christianity as a religion of living fellowship with God, was the man from whose Christology almost every trait which recalls the historical Jesus of Nazareth was erased. Athanasius undoubtedly retained the most important feature--namely, that Christ promised to bring men into fellowship with God. But while he subordinated everything to this thought and recognised in redemption a communication of the divine nature, he reduced the entire historical account given of Christ to the belief that the Redeemer shared in the nature and unity of the Godhead itself, and he explained everything in the Biblical documents in accordance with this idea. [109] That which Christ is and is for us, is the Godhead; in the Son we have the Father, and in what the Son has brought, the divine is communicated to us. This fundamental thought is not new, and it corresponds with a very old conception of the Gospel. It is not new, for it was never wanting in the Church before the time of Athanasius. The Fourth Gospel, Ignatius, Irenæus, Methodius, the so-called Modalism and even the Apologists and Origen--not to mention the Westerns--prove this; for the Apologists, and Origen too, in what they say of the Logos, emphasised not only His distinction from the Father, but also His unity with the Father. The Samosatene had also laid the whole emphasis on the unity, although indeed he was not understood. [110] But not since the days in which the Fourth Gospel was written do we meet with anyone with whom the conviction is so definite, thought out with such an assurance of victory, expressed so strongly and so simply, and of such an absolute kind, as it is with Athanasius. All the rest by introducing qualifying thoughts in some way or other, brought an element of uncertainty into their feeling of its truth, and impaired its strength. That in the age of Constantine during the greatest revolution which the Church has experienced and which was so fraught with consequences, the faith represented by Athanasius was confessed with such vigour, is what saved the Christian Church. Its faith would probably have got entirely into the hands of the philosophers, its confession would have become degraded or would have been turned into an imperial official decree enjoining the worship of the "clear-shining Godhead", if Athanasius had not been there and had not helped those who shared his views to make a stand and inspired them with courage.
But at the beginning of the Fourth Century the form of expression for the belief in the unity of the eternal Godhead and its appearance in Jesus Christ was already sketched out. It was as little allowable to think of a unity of living feeling, of will and aim alone, as of the perfect identification of the persons. The doctrines of the pre-existing Son of God, of the eternal Logos, but, above all, the view that everything valuable is accomplished in the nature only, of which feeling and will are an annex, were firmly established. Athanasius in making use of these presuppositions in order to express his faith in the Godhead of Christ, i.e., in the essential unity of the Godhead in itself with the Godhead manifested in Christ, fell into an abyss of contradictions.
Unquestionably the old Logos doctrine too, and also Arianism, strike us to-day as being full of contradictions, but it was Athanasius who first arrived at the contradictio in adjecto in the full sense of the phrase. That the Godhead is a numerical unity, but that nevertheless Son and Father are to be distinguished within this unity as two--this is his view. He teaches that there is only one unbegotten principle, but that nevertheless the Son has not come into being. He maintains that the Divine in Christ is the eternal "Son", but that the Son is as old as the Father. This Son is not to be thought of either as created, or as an attribute of God, or as an emanation or a part of God, and is therefore something wholly indefinable. The thought of a theogony is rejected as emphatically as that of a creation, and yet the thought of an active attribute is not in any sense to be entertained. The Father is perfect for Himself and is sufficient for Himself; indeed, although Father and Son have one substance, in the sense of a single nature, in common, still the Father alone is "the God", and is the principle and root of the Son also. Quot verba, tot scandala!
Whatever involves a complete contradiction cannot be correct, and everyone is justified in unsparingly describing the contradiction as such. This the Arians sufficiently did, and in so far as they assumed that a contradiction cannot be seriously accepted by anyone, and that therefore the view of Athanasius must at bottom be Sabellian, they were right. Two generations and more had to pass before the Church could accustom itself to recognise in the complete contradiction the sacred privilege of revelation. There was, in fact, no philosophy in existence possessed of formulæ which could present in an intelligible shape the propositions of Athanasius. What he called at one time Ousia and at another Hypostasis, was not an individual substance in the full sense of the word, but still less was it a generic conception.
If anything is clear, it is the fact that the thought of Athanasius--namely, the unity of the Godhead which rested in and appeared in Christ, could not be expressed under the traditional presuppositions of the pre-existing Son of God and the personal Logos existing from all eternity. We have here to do with the most important point in the whole question. The very same series of ideas which created the most serious difficulties for the Arians and which have been shewn to occupy a secondary place in their system, seriously hamper the doctrinal utterances of Athanasius; namely, the Logos doctrine of Origen and the cosmological-metaphysical conceptions which form the background of statements regarding an historical person. The Arians required to have a created being, created before the world, changeable, of the same nature as men, for their Christ, and had to banish all other determinations from their conception, and so they could not make use of the Logos of Philo and the Apologists; Athanasius required a being who was absolutely nothing else than the Godhead, and so the Logos referred to did not in any sense fit in with his doctrine. In both cases the combined Logos doctrine of Philo and Origen was the disturbing element. And at bottom,--though unfortunately not actually,
[111] --they both discarded it; Arius when he distinguishes between the Logos nuncupativus which Christ is, and the actual Logos of God; Athanasius when he banishes the world-idea from the content of the substance which he adores in Christ. In the view of Arius, Christ belongs in every sense to the world, i.e., to the sphere of created things; in that of Athanasius he belongs in every sense to God, whose substance He shares.
Arius and Athanasius both indeed occupy the standpoint of the theology of Origen which no one could now abandon; but their religious and theological interests do not originate in it. In the gnosis of Origen everything spiritual stands to God in a two-fold relation; it is His created work and yet it is at the same time His nature. This holds good in a pre-eminent sense of the Logos, which comprises all that is spiritual in itself and connects the graduated spheres of the spiritual substances, which, like it, have an eternal duration, with the supreme God-head. To this idea corresponds the thought that the creatures are free and that they must return from their state of estrangement and their Fall to their original source. Of this we find nothing either in Arius or in Athanasius. In the case of the former, the sober Aristotelian philosophy on the one hand reacts against this fundamental thought, and on the other, the tradition of the Christ who is engaged in a conflict, who increases and progresses towards perfection. In the case of Athanasius what reacts against it is the ancient belief of the Church in the Father, the Almighty Creator of all things, and in the Son in whom the Father reveals Himself and has stooped to hold fellowship with man.
It is thus not the case that the gnosis of Origen was simply halved between Arius and Athanasius; on the contrary, it underwent a fundamental correction in the teaching of both. But it was no longer possible to avoid the "vis inertiæ." of the gnosis of Origen, the contrary formulae which were held together by the idea of the Logos-cosmology as the basis for Christology. [112] And now the question was which of the two was to be adopted, the Logos-ktisma or the Logos-homoousios formula. The former freed from the latter was indeed deprived of all soteriological content, but was capable of intelligent and philosophical treatment--namely, rational-logical treatment; the latter taken exclusively, even supposing that the distinction between the Son and the Father and the superiority of the Father were maintained in connection with it, simply led to an absurdity.
Athanasius put up with this absurdity; [113] without knowing it he made a still greater sacrifice to his faith--the historical Christ. It was at such a price that he saved the religious conviction that Christianity is the religion of perfect fellowship with God, from being displaced by a doctrine which possessed many lofty qualities, but which had no understanding of the inner essence of religion, which sought in religion nothing but "instruction," and finally found satisfaction in an empty dialectic.
It was intended that the General Church-Council which was summoned by the Emperor to meet at Nicæa should, besides settling some other important questions, compose the controversy which already threatened to produce division amongst the Eastern bishops. [114] It met in the year 325, in summer apparently. There were present about 300 (250, 270) bishops, hardly so many as 318 as asserted by Athanasius at a later time; the correctness of this latter number is open to suspicion. The West was very poorly represented; [115] the Roman bishop was not there, but he had sent two presbyters. The most important of the Eastern bishops were present. It is not clear how the business was arranged and conducted. We do not know who presided, whether Eustathius, Eusebius of Cæsarea, or Hosius, It is undoubted, however, that Hosius exercised a very important influence in the Council. The Emperor at first gave the Council a free hand, [116] though he at once put a stop to private wrangling, and he energetically interfered at the most decisive moment, and in the character of a theologian interpreted himself the formula to be adopted. [117] We may assume that at first he reckoned on the possibility that the Council would itself find some formula of agreement. He had, however, resolved, under the influence of Hosius, that in the case of this not being successfully carried out, he would enforce the formula which Hosius had agreed upon with Alexander. As regards the composition of the Council, the view expressed by the Macedonian Sabinus of Heraclea (Socr. I. 8), that the majority of the bishops were uneducated, is confirmed by the astonishing results. The general acceptance of the resolution come to by the Council is intelligible only if we presuppose that the question in dispute was above most of the bishops. [118] Of the "cultured" we have to distinguish three parties--namely, Arius and the Lucianists, who had Eusebius of Nicomedia for their leader; the Origenists, the most important man amongst whom was Eusebius of Cæsarea, who was already highly celebrated; [119] and Alexander of Alexandria with his following, to which the few Westerns also belonged. [120] The Arians came to the Council confident of victory; as yet nothing was pre-judged; the Bishop of Nicæa himself was on their side and they had relations with the Court.
All were apparently at one in thinking that the Council could not break up without establishing a standard of doctrine, (pistis, mathema) Those in the East possessed neither a uniform nor a sufficiently authoritative symbol by which the controversy could be settled. The Lucianists accordingly--who may have been about twenty in number, not more at any rate--produced, after deliberation, a confession of faith which was communicated by Eusebius of Nicomedia and embodied their doctrine in unambiguous terms. They did this without having previously come to an understanding with the Origenists. This was a tactical blunder. The great majority of the bishops rejected this rule of faith which was decisively in favour of Arianism. [121] Even the "Conservatives" must have been unpleasantly affected by the naked statement of the Arian doctrinal system. The supporters of Arius were now in the greatest perplexity owing to the unforeseen turn which events had taken. In order to be able to keep their position at the Council at all, they, with the exception of two who remained firm, withdrew this sketch of their doctrine, and now made up their minds to follow the lead of the Origenists in order to secure at least something. Eusebius of Cæsarea now came to the front. No one was more learned than he; no one was more intimately acquainted with the teaching of the Fathers. He had good reason to hope that he would be able to speak the decisive word. If there was a general conviction that in everything it was necessary to abide by the ancient doctrine of the Church, then there seemed to be no one more fitted to define that ancient doctrine than the great scholar who was also, moreover, in the highest favour with the Emperor. His formulæ were, "the created image", "the reflection originating in the will", "the second God" etc. [122] He could, if needful, have accepted the Arian formula; those of Alexander he could not adopt, for he saw in them the dreaded Sabellianism which meant the death of theological science. Eusebius accordingly laid a creed before the Council. [123] He was convinced that all could and must unite on the basis supplied by it, and as a matter of fact no better conciliatory formula could be imagined. [124] Still Eusebius considered it necessary to tack on to it an anti-Sabellian addition. [125] According to Eusebius the Creed was unanimously pronounced orthodox, [126] still the imperial will already made its influence felt here. The Arians were doubtless well pleased to get off on these terms. But Alexander and his following demanded a perfectly plain rejection of Arianism. They went about it in an extremely adroit fashion inasmuch as they accepted the basis of the Creed of Cæsarea, but demanded that its terms should be made more precise. We know from Eusebius himself that the Emperor sided with them, and so far as he was concerned resolved to incorporate in the Creed the word "homoousios", which was suggested to him by Hosius.
[127] But the matter was not settled by the mere insertion of a word. It was pointed out that the Creed of Cæsarea contained formulæ which might favour the Arian view. Its supporters were already put in the position of defendants. Accordingly, the Alexandrian party presented a very carefully constructed doctrinal formula which was represented as being a revised form of the Creed of Cæsarea [128] and in which some think they can recognise, in addition to the contributions of the Alexandrians, the hand of Eustathius of Antioch and of Makarius of Jerusalem. [129] (1) In place of apanton horaton etc., ("of all seen things whatsoever"), there was put by preference panton horaton ("of all seen things"), in order to exclude the creation of the Son and Spirit; [130] (2) in place of the Logos at the beginning of the second article, the "Son" was put, so that all that follows refers to the Son;
[131] (3) the words Theon ek Theou ("God of God") were extended to gennethenta ek tou patros monogene Theon ek Theou ("begotten of the Father only begotten God of God"), but in the final discussion, however, between monogene and Theon the words tout' estin ek tes ousias tou patros ("that is of the substance of the Father") were further inserted, because it was observed that otherwise the opposition party might be able to put their doctrine into the proposition; [132] (4) the unsatisfactory descriptions zoen ek zoes ("life of life"), prototokon pases ktiseos ("the first-born of every creature"), pro panton aionon ek tou patros gegennemenon ("begotten of the Father before all ages"), before di' hou, etc., were deleted, and in their place the following was put: Theon alethinon ek Theou alethinou, gennethenta, ou poiethenta, di' hou ta panta egeneto ("true God of true God, begotten, not made, by whom all things were"). At this point, however, a further insertion was made, and this once more in the course of the discussion itself, [133] at what too was not at all a suitable place--namely, after "poiethenta" ("made"), the words homoousion to patri ("of the same substance with the Father"), because it was observed that none of the other terms excluded the Arian evasions; (5) the indefinite en anthropois politeusamenon ("having lived amongst men") was replaced by the definite enanthropesanta ("having become incarnate"); and (6) finally, in order to exclude all ambiguity, the condemnation of the Arian catchwords was added on to this. [134]
The opposition parties did not yield without debates, in which the Emperor himself took part. [135] We do not know the details of the discussions, but we gather from the accounts of Athanasius that the Eusebians made still further proposals of a conciliatory kind and attempted to produce new catchwords. [136] The nature of their objections to the Alexandrian outline of doctrine may be gathered from the irenic explanation which Eusebius gave to his Church in Cæsarea as well as from the objections which later on were brought against the Nicene Creed. They fought against ek tes ousias ("of the substance") and homoousios because (1) they believed they saw in these words a materialising of the Godhead, which made it a composite substance comprising emanations or parts; because (2) they could not help seeing in the homoousios a Sabellian definition too, and because (3) the words did not occur in Holy Scripture. This last reason was specially decisive. In many parts of the Church there was still a shrinking from the definite adoption of unbiblical terms for the expression of the Faith. [137] In addition to this there was the fact that the homoousios had before this been rejected at Antioch. [138] But the will of the Emperor decided the matter. Respect for the Emperor, his express declaration that there was a desire not to endanger the absolute spirituality of the Godhead, the wish to conclude a grand work of peace--this doctrinal declaration [139] of the entire Church was, moreover, something new and imposing--induced the Conservatives, i.e., the Origenists and those who did not think for themselves, to fall in with what was proposed. They all subscribed with the exception of two, and at the same time salved their consciences in different ways by mental reservations. [140] The Lucianists who up till now had to all appearance been united together in an indissoluble friendship, were unprincipled enough to sacrifice their old comrade Arius. [141] He was condemned as the scapegoat, and the Emperor, anxious to protect with the strong hand the unity which had been won, gave orders that the books of Arius should be burned and that his adherents should henceforth be called "Porphyrians", i.e., should be placed on a level with the worst enemies of Christ. [142] To the Alexandrian Church he wrote: ho tois triakosiois eresen episkopois ouden estin eteron e tou Theou gnome, malista ge hopou to hagion pneuma toiouton kai telikouton andron tais dianoiais enkeimenon ten theian boulesin exephotisen [143] ("what satisfied the three hundred bishops is nothing else than the judgment of God, but most of all where the Holy Spirit being present in the thoughts of men such as these and so ripe in years, made known the Divine will"). He persecuted the Arians, and the orthodox approved of what he did. They are thus responsible along with him for the persecution. The Arians at a later date only carried on what the orthodox had begun.
The correct faith had triumphed and--the Bishop of Alexandria. [144] The Council of Nicæa is the first step taken by the Bishop of Alexandria in aspiring to the primacy of the East. __________________________________________________________________
[3] See Vol. iii., pp. 40, 45.
[4] It is extremely probable that Lucian's study of Origen too had convinced him of the correctness of the Logos doctrine. We have to regard his doctrine as a combination of the doctrines of Paul and Origen. Lucian and Origen are classed together by Epiph., H. 76, 3, as teachers of the Arians.
[5] Amongst Lucian's pupils were Arius, Eusebius of Nicomedia, Menophantus of Ephesus, Theognis of Nicæa, Maris of Chalcedon, Athanasius of Anazarbus (?), the sophist Asterius, and Leontius, afterwards bishop of Antioch, and others. In Syria the pupils of Dorotheus--namely, Eusebius of Cæsarea and Paulinus of Tyre were supporters of Arius, as were also many of Origen's admirers. As regards the other partisans of Arius who are known to us by name, we do not know whether they were pupils of Lucian or not. Egypt and Libya are represented by Theonas of Marmarica, Secundus of Ptolemais and the presbyter Georgius of Alexandria, and further, according to Philostorgius, by Daches of Berenice, Secundus of Tauchira, Sentianus of Boraum, Zopyrus of Barka and Meletius of Lykopolis. In other provinces we have Petrophilus of Scythopolis, Narcissus of Neronias, Theodotus of Laodicea, Gregorius of Berytus and Aëtius of Lydda. Philostorgius further mentions others, but he also reckons as belonging to his party those old bishops who did not live to see the outbreak of the controversy and who accordingly have been claimed by the orthodox side as well; see Gwatkin l.c., p. 31. For other names of presbyters and deacons at Alexandria who held Arian views, see the letters of Alexander in Theodoret, I. 4, and Socrates, I. 6.
[6] These pupils of Lucian must have displayed all the self-consciousness, the assurance, and the arrogance of a youthful exclusive school (ek tes autes deleteriou phratrias, says Epiphanius in one place, H. 69, 5), haughtily setting themselves far above the "ancients" and pitying their want of intelligence. Highly characteristic in this respect is the account of Alexander, their opponent, after making all allowance for the malevolent element in it; see very specially the following passage, Theodoret, H. E. I. 4): hoi oude ton archaion tinas sunkrinein heautois axiousin, oude hois hemeis ek paidon homilesamen didaskalois exisousthai anechontai; all' oude ton nun pantachou sulleitourgon tina eis metron sophias hegountai; monoi sophoi kai aktemones kai dogmaton heuretai legontes einai, kai autois apokekaluphthai monois, aper oudeni ton hupo ton helion hetero pephuken elthein eis ennoian. One may further compare the introduction to the Thalia.
[7] He is thus a created "God."
[8] For the proofs of what is here said regarding Lucian see my article "Lucian" in Herzog's R.-Encykl., 2nd ed. Vol. VIII. Here I give merely the following. For the close connection between Arius and Lucian we possess a series of witnesses. Alexander of Alex. says expressly in his letter to Alexander (Theodoret H.E. I. 4) that Arius started from Lucian. Arius himself in his letter to Eusebius of Nicomedia describes himself and his friend as Sulloukianistes; Philostorgius enumerates the pupils of Lucian, whom he regards as the friends of Arius (II. 14), and lets us see (II. 3, 13-15 and III. 15) that at the beginning of the fifth century Lucian was still regarded as the patriarch and teacher of the Arians. Epiphanius (Hær. 43. 1) and Philostorgius (l.c.) inform us that Lucian was revered by the Arians as a martyr. Epiphanius and Marius Victorinus call the Arians "Lucianists" (see also Epiph. H. 76. 3). Sozomen relates that the Fathers of Arian or semi-Arian views assembled in Antioch in the year 341 accepted a confession of faith of Lucian's (III. 5). This confession is, it is true, given by Athanasius (de synodis 23), Socrates (II. 10) and Hilary (de synod. 29) without any statement as to its having originated with Lucian; but Sozomen informs us that a semi-Arian synod which met in Caria in 367 also recognised it as Lucianist (VI. 12). According to the author of the seven dialogues on the Trinity, who was probably Maximus Confessor, the Macedonians did the same (Dial. III. in Theodoreti Opp. V. 2, p. 991 sq., ed. Schultze and Nöss). The semi-Arians also at the synod of Seleucia in 359 seem to have ascribed the Confession to Lucian (see Caspari, Alte and neue Quellen zur Gesch. d. Taufsymbols, p. 42 f., n. 18). Since Sozomen himself, however, questions the correctness of the view which attributes it to Lucian, and since, moreover, other reasons may be alleged against it, we ought with Caspari to regard the creed as a redaction of a confession of Lucian's. This fact too shews what a high reputation the martyr had in those circles. That Lucian's school was pre-eminently an exegetical one is evident amongst other things from Lucian's well-known activity in textual criticism, as well as from Philostorg. (III. 15).
[9] See on Arius, e.g., Epiphan. H. 69 c. 69, on Aëtius, who was indirectly a pupil of Lucian (Philostorg. III. 15), the numerous passages in the Cappadocians and Epiphanius H. 76 T. III., p. 251, ed. Oehler. Besides, in almost every sentence of what is left us of the writings of Aëtius we see the Aristotelian. Philostorgius testifies to the fact that he specially occupied himself with Logic and Grammar; see above all, the little work of Aëtius in 74 theses, which Epiphanius (H.
76) has preserved for us. In his application of Aristotelianism Aëtius, however, went further than Arius, as is peculiarly evident from the thesis of the knowableness of God.
[10] See Vol. III., p. 24.
[11] Correctly given in Baur, L. v. d. Dreieinigkeit I., p. 387 ff.--not at all clear in Dorner op. cit. I., p. 859.
[12] It is self-evident that this combination deprived Paul's system of doctrine of all the merit which it contained.
[13] According to Theodoret (Hær. fab. IV. 3) it was Aëtius himself who called theology "technology." Perhaps the most characteristic example of how this technology treated purely religious language is to be found in the benediction with which Aëtius concluded one of his works (Epiphan. H. 76. T. III., p. 222, ed. Oehler). Erromenous kai erromenas humas ho on autogenntos Theos, ho kai monos alethinos Theos prosagoreutheis hupo tou apostalentos Iesou Christou, hupostantos te alethos pro aionon kai ontos alethos gennetes hupostaseos, diateresei apo tes asebeias, en Christo Iesou to kurio hemon, di' hou pasa doxa to patri kai nun kai aei kai eis tous aionas ton aionon. Amen. This reminds us mutatis mutandis of the benediction of the modern rationalistic preacher, "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the great teacher and friend of men, be with you all." I am glad further to see that Rupp too (Gregor von Nyssa, p. 139) has connected the conception of agennesia, as being a central one in Eunomius, with the proton kinoun akineton of Aristotle.
[14] Spite, however, of what we know of the Meletian schism in Alexandria and of the temporary connection of Arius with it, (cf. also the schism of Colluthus) it is not very clear if the outbreak of the Arian controversy, is connected with the opposition between episcopate and presbyterate (against Böhringer). The Alexandrian Presbyters were at that time actual Parochi. There are some obscure references in the letter of Alexander (Theodoret I. 4), see Gwatkin, p. 29.
[15] See Vol. III., p. 99 ff.
[16] See Constantine's letter in Euseb., Vita Constant. II. 69; the notices in the Church historians and in Epiphanius (H. 69. 4) can hardly be reconciled with it. Along with Constantine's statements the account of Socrates is specially worthy of consideration (I. 5).
[17] Ep. Arii ad Alex. in Athanas. de synod. 16 and Epiphan. H. 69. 7. According to Philostorg. I. 3, the exertions of Arius had very specially contributed to bring about the election of Alexander as bishop, although he could then have become bishop himself.
[18] Ep. Alexandri in Socr. I. 6 on Eusebius. Ten palai gar autou kakonoian ten chrono siopetheisan nun dia touton (by letters) ananeosai boulomenos, schematizetai men hos huper touton graphon; ergo de deiknusin, hos hoti huper heautou spoudazon touto poiei. His lust of power is characterised by Alexander in the words (l. c.) nomisas ep' auto keisthai ta tes ekklesias.
[19] He is supposed to have been related to the Emperor. According to a letter of Constantine's of a later date (in Theodoret. H. E. I. 19) he remained faithful to Licinius and had before the catastrophe worked against Constantine.
[20] Theodoret H. E. I. 5, Epiph. H. 69 6.
[21] See the letter to Paulinus of Tyre--which is put later by some--in Theodoret, H. E. I. 6. In this letter Eusebius praises the zeal of the Church historian Eusebius in the matter and blames Paulinus for his silence. He too ought to come to the help of Arius by giving a written opinion based on the theology of the Bible. There is a fragment of a letter of Eusebius to Arius in Athanasius, de synod. 17, where there are also other letters of the friends of Arius.
[22] See Socrat. H. E. I. 6 and Athanas., Opp. I., p. 313 sq. (ed. Paris, 1689, p. 397 sq.).
[23] Theodoret, H. E. I. 4. The address is probably incorrect; the letter is written to several persons.
[24] See note 3, p. 8.
[25] On the Thalia see Athan., Orat. c. Arian I. 2-10 de synod. 15. Philostorgius II. 2 tells us that Arius put his doctrine also into songs for sailors, millers, and travellers etc., in order thus to bring it to the notice of the lower classes. Athanasius also mentions songs. We can see from this that Arius made no distinction between faith and philosophical theology. He followed the tendency of the time. His opponents are for him "heretics."
[26] Sozom. I. 15.
[27] The letter is in the Acts of the Second Nicene Council, Mansi XIII., p. 315.
[28] Sozom. I. 15.
[29] Euseb., Vita Const. II. 61; Socrates I. 7; Theodoret I. 6; the discord extended even into families.
[30] Vita Const. II. 64-70.
[31] Constantine wrote the letter not as a theologian, but as Emperor, which ought in fairness to be reckoned to his credit. The introduction is very skilfully worded: the Emperor trusted that he would he able with the help of the Eastern bishops to compose the Donatist schism, and now he sees the East torn by a far more destructive schism. He offers his services as mediator and accordingly takes up an absolutely impartial position. "Alexander should not have asked the questions and Arius should not have answered them; for such questions lie outside the "Law"; and above all, care ought to have been taken not to bring them to the notice of the people. The opponents, who at bottom presumably had the same convictions, ought to come to an agreement and compose their differences; this is what is done in the schools of philosophy; those who attend them dispute, but they afterwards formulate terms of agreement upon a common basis. It is only the common people and ignorant boys who quarrel about trifles." The close of the letter expresses the very great anxiety felt by the Emperor lest the grand work of restoring peace and unity entrusted to him by Providence should be hindered. He accordingly most earnestly urges peace, even if they cannot actually agree. In necessariis unitas, in dubiis libertas and--reserve, is thus the watchword of the Emperor; in faith in Providence and in the conception of the Supreme Being they are certainly one: for the upholder of all has given to all a common light; differences of opinion on separate points are unavoidable and are perfectly legitimate when there is radical unity in dogma. "Restore to me my peaceful days and my undisturbed nights and do not allow me to spend what remains of my life in joylessness." The close is once more very effective: he had already started, he says, for Alexandria, but had turned back when he heard of the split; the combatants may make it possible for him to come by becoming reconciled. This letter can hardly have been written under the influence of Eusebius of Nicomedia; still Nicomedia had already before this been the starting-point of a movement for bringing about union, as the conciliatory epistle of Arius and the pacific letter of his friends prove.
[32] If according to Socrat. III. 7, he at this time agitated in Alexandria the question about housia and hupostasis, it must have been in the western-orthodox sense. On the other hand, it is said (l. c.) that Hosius when in Alexandria endeavoured to refute the doctrine of Sabellius. He might thus, as a matter of fact, regard himself as a mediator, namely, between the Arian and Sabellian doctrinal propositions; see on this below. It is probable that a Synod was held in Alexandria during his stay there.
[33] This, it is true, is the account only of Philostorgius (I. 7), but there is no reason fur mistrusting him.
[34] In Egypt the tumults were so serious that even the image of the Emperor was attacked (Vita Const. III. 4).
[35] This is the account given by Sulpicius Severus, Chron. II. 40; "Nicæna synodus auctore Hosio confecta habebatur."
[36] Athan. hist. Arian. 42; houtos en Nikaia pistin exetheto. On Hosius see the lengthy article in the Dict. of Christ. Biogr. The life of this important and influential bishop covers the century between the death of Origen and the birth of Augustine.
[37] From the letter of Arius to Eusebius of Nicomedia.
[38] Lightfoot (S. Ignatius Vol. II., p. 90 ff.) has published a learned discussion on agenetos (underived) and agennetos (unbegotten) in the Fathers up till Athanasius. Ignatius (Eph. 7) called the Son as to His Godhead "agennetos." In the first decades of the Arian controversy no distinction was made between the words, i.e., the difference in the writing of them was not taken account of, and this produced frightful confusion. Still Athanasius saw clearly from the first that though the conception of generation might hold good of the Son, that of becoming or derivation did not; s. de synod 3: ton patera monon anarchon onta kai agenneton gegennekenai anephiktos kai pasin akataleptos oidamen; ton de huion gegennesthai pro aionon kaik meketi homoios to patri agenneton einai kai auton, all' archen echein ton gennesanta patera. Spite of this he could say (l. c. c. 46): touto to onoma--scil. agennetos, as if it were identical in form with agenetos--diaphora echei ta semainomena. kai hoi men, to on men mete de gennethen, mete holos echon ton aition, legousin agenneton, hoi de to aktiston; see also the tiresome distinctions in the work "de decret. synod. Nic." 28 sq. The distinction in fact between gennan, gignesthai, ktizein was not yet itself a definite one. At a later period there was no hesitation in asserting that the Son both as God and as Man is gennetos; s. Joh. Damasc. I. 8: chre gar eidenai, hoti to ageneton, dia tou henos n graphomenon, to aktiston e to me genomenon semainei, to de agenneton, dia ton duo n graphomenon, deloi to me gennethen. From this he infers that the Father only is agennetos, while the Son as God is gennetos and indeed monos gennetos. One can see from the wonderful word of Alexander's, agenetogenes, what difficulties were created at first for the orthodox by the agen[n]etos. Athanasius would have preferred to banish entirely the fatal word and not to have used it even for the Father. That it, as is the case with homoousios also, was first used by the Gnostics and in fact by the Valentinians is evident from the striking passage in the letter of Ptolemaus to Flora c. 5, which has hitherto escaped the notice of those who have investigated the subject. Ptolemaus is there dealing with the only good primal God, the primal ground of all Being and all things, with the true demiurge and Satan. He writes amongst other things: kai estai (ho demiourgos) men katadeesteros tou teleiou Theou, hate de kai gennetos on kai ouk agennetos--heis gar estin agennetos ho pater, ex hou ta panta . . . meizon de kai kurioteros tou antikeimenou genesetai kai eteras ousias te kai phuseos pephukos para ten hekateron touton ousian . . . tou de patros ton holon tou agennetou--that is thus the characteristic!--he ousia estin aphtharsia te kai phos autoon, haploun te kai monoeides, he de toutou (scil. tou demiourgou) ousia ditten men tina dunamin proegagen, autos de tou kreittonos estin eikon. mede se ta nun touto thorubeito, thelousan mathein, pos apo mias arches ton holon ouses te kai homologoumenes hemin kai pepisteumenes, tes agennetou kai aphthartou kai agathes, sunestesan kai hautai hai phuseis, he te tes phthoras kai he tes mesotetos, anomoousioi hautai kathestosai, tou agathou phusin echontos ta homoia heauto kai homoousia gennan te gai propherein; mathese gar hexes kai ten toutou archen te kai gennesin. This is how Ptolemaus wrote c. 160. His words already contain the ecclesiastical terminology of the future! We also already meet with the term "sophia anupostatos" in a passage of his l. c. c. 1. Many passages prove, moreover, that not only the words employed later on, but also the ideas from which sprang the Church doctrine of the immanent Trinity in its subsequent form, were present in the writings of the Valentinians, as, e.g., the following from Hipp. Philos. VI. 29 (Heracleon): en holos genneton ouden, pater de en monos agennetos . . . epei de en gonimos, edoxen auto pote to kalliston kai teleotaton, ho heichen en auto, gennesai kai proagagein; phileremos gar ouk en; Agape gar, phesin, en holos, he de agape ouk estin agape, ean me e to agpaomenon . . . teleioteros de ho pater, hoti agennetos on monos. In what follows the whole discussion is conditioned by the problem that the begotten Æons are in their nature indeed homoousioi with the Father, but that they are imperfect as gennetoi and are inferior to the monos agennetos. Here therefore the field for the Arian-Athanasian controversy is already marked out. But it is to be noticed further that the three terms, monogenes, prototokos, and eikon contain and define the entire Valentinian Christology, which is of an extremely complicated character. (See Heinrici, die Valentin. Gnosis. p. 120). In the fourth century, however, they became the catchwords of the different Christologies.
[39] It is impossible to come to any certain decision on this point, so long as it is not proved that the pieces which are ascribed to Alexander are really his, and at the same time so long as it is uncertain if the sentences from them which also bear the names of Irenæus and Melito really belong to these writers and have been made use of by Alexander. See on this question Cotterill, Modern Criticism and Clement's Epp. to the Virgins, 1884, on this ThLZ., 1884, p. 267 f; Pitra, Analecta Sacra T. IV. pp. 196 sq., 430 sq. On this Loofs, ThLZ. 1884, Col. 572 f., and very specially Krüger, Ztschr. f. wiss. Theol. 1888, p. 434 ff.; Melito of Sardes and Alex. of Alexandria. Socrates asserts (I. 5) that Arius believed that Alexander wished to introduce the doctrinal system of Sabellius. But the Christology of Irenæus has also been understood in a "Sabellian" sense. The important address of Alexander on soul and body, in which he also treats of the Incarnation, is to be found in Migne T. 18.
[40] This was the original point of dispute. Diokometha, writes Arius to Eusebius, hoti eipomen, Archen echei ho uhuos, ho de Theos anarchos esti. Dia touto diokometha, kai hoti eipomen, Ex ouk onton estin.
[41] See the fragment from the Thalia in Athan. de synod. 15, the letter of Eusebius of Nicomedia to Paulinus, also that of Arius to Alexander.
[42] The fragments of the Thalia and the two letters of Arius which have been preserved are amongst the most important sources: cf. also the confession of faith of Arius in Socr. I. 26 (Sozom. II. 27). Then we have the statements of his earliest opponents, very specially the two letters of Alexander and the verbal quotations of the propositions of Arius in Athanasius; see especially ep. ad episc. "Ægypt 12 and de sentent. Dionys. 23, also the Orat. c. Arian. In the third place, we can adduce the propositions laid down by the earliest Arians, or by the patrons of Arius. Opponents made little difference between them and Arius himself, and the actual facts shew that they were justified in so doing; see the letter of Eusebius of Nicomedia to Paulinus and the fragments of Arian letters in Athanas. de synod. 17, also the fragments from Asterius. Finally, we have to consider what the Church historians and Epiphanius have to tell us regarding the doctrinal propositions of Arius. There was no "evolution" of Arianism, we can only distinguish different varieties of it. Even Eunomius and Aëtius did not "develop" the doctrinal system, but only gave it a logically perfect form. Lucian had already completed the entire system, as is specially evident from the letter of Eusebius of Nicomedia to Paulinus; see also the introduction to the Thalia in Athan., Orat. c. Arian. I. 5, which, moreover, presents the character of Arius in an unfavourable light: kata pistin eklekton Theou, suneton Theou, paidon hagionm orthotomon, hagion Theou pneuma labonton, tade emathon egoge hupo ton sophies mete chonton, asteion, theodidakton, kata panta sophon te; touton kat' ichnos elthon ego bainon homodoxos ho periklutos, ho polla pathon dia ten Theou doxan, hupo te Theou mathon sophian kai gnosin ego egnon.
[43] In the doctrine of God as held by Arius and his friends two main ideas appear all through as those upon which everything depends: (1) that God alone is agennetos; (2) that all else has been created out of nothing by God's free will. In accordance with this they get rid of everything designated as probole agennetos, eruge, gennema, meros homoousion, ex aporroias tes ousias, monas platuntheisa, hen eis duo dieremenon, etc.; even the old pictorial expressions "Light of Light", "Torch of Torch" are rejected, and they will have nothing to do with the transformation of an originally impersonal eternal essence or substance in God into a personally subsisting essentiality; see the epp. Arii ad Euseb. et Alexand. Ei to; Hek gastros, kai to; Ek patros exelthon kai heko, hos meros tou homoousiou kai hos probole hupo tinon noeitai, sunthetos estai ho pater kai diairetos kai treptos kai soma . . . kai ta akoloutha somati paschon ho asomatos Theos.; It was Eusebius Nic. specially in his letter to Paulinus, who developed the thought that "to beget" is equal to "to create" and he, for the rest, allows that if the Son were begotten out of the substance of the Father the predicate agennetos would attach to Him, and He would possess the tautotis tes phuseos with the Father. In laying down their doctrine of God, Arius and his friends express themselves with a certain amount of fervour. One can see that they have a genuine concern to defend monotheism. At the same time they are as much interested in the negative predicates of the Godhead as the most convinced Neo-platonists. On pater see the Thalia in Athan., Orat. I. c. Arian c. 5: ouk aei ho Theos pater en, all' en hote ho Theos monos en kai oupo pater en, husteron de epigegone pater.
[44] Thalia l.c.: duo sophias einai. mian men ten idian kai sunuparchousan to Theo, ton de huion en taute te sophia gegenesthai kai tautes metechonta honomasthai monon sophian kai logon; he sophia gar te sophia huperxe sophou Theou thelesei. Ohuto kai logon heteron einai legei para ton huion en to Theo kai touton metechonta ton huion honomasthai palin kata charin logon kai huion . . . Pollai dunameis eisi, kai he men mia tou Theou estin idia phusei kai aidios, ho de Christos palin ouk estin alethone dunamis tou Theou, alla mia ton legomenon dunameon esti kai autos, hon mia kai he akris kai he kampe k.t.l.
[45] See the foregoing note and Thalia l.c.: ouk aei en ho huios, panton gar genomenon ex ouk onton kai panton onton ktismaton kai poiematon genomenon, kai autos ho tou Theou logos ex ouk onton gegone, kai en pote hote ouk en, kai ouk en prin genetai, all' archen tou ktizesthai esche kai autos . . . En monos ho Theos kai oupo en ho logos kai he sophia, eita thelesis hemas demiourgesai, tote de pepoieken hena tina kai honomasen auton logon kai sophian kai huion, hina hemas di' autou demiourgese. Ep. Arii ad Euseb.: Prin genethe etoi ktisthe etoi horisthe e themeliothe, ouk en, agenetos gar ouk en. Since the Son is neither a part of the Father nor ex hupokeimenou tinos, he must be ex ouk onton; thelemati kai boule hupeste pro chronon kai pro aionon ho huios. Ep. Arii ad Alex: . . . gennesanta huion monogene pro chronon aionon, di' hou kai tous aionas kai ta hola pepoieke . . . ktisma tou Theou teleion . . . thelemati tou Theou pro chronon kai pro aionon ktisthenta, kai to zen kai to einai para tou patros eilephota kai tas doxas sunupostesantos auto tou patros. Ou gar ho pater dous auto panton ten kleronomian esteresen heauton hon agennetos echei en heauto. pege gar esti panton, hoste treis eisin hupostaseis . . . Ho huios achronos gennetheis ouk en pro tou gennethenai oude gar estin aidios e sunaidios e sunagenetos to patri oude hama to patri to einai echei . . . Arche autou estin ho Theos, archei gar autou hos Theos autou kai pro autou hon. Ep. Euseb. ad Paulin.: ktiston einai kai themelioton kai geneton te ousia, according to Proverbs 8: . . . Ouden estin ek tes ousias tou Theou, panta de boulemati autou genomena. Ep. Euseb. Nic. ad Arium.: to pepoigmenon ouk en prin genesthai, to genomenon de archen echei tou einai. Athan. Nazarb., ep. ad. Alex.: "Why do you blame the Arians because they say that the Son ktisma pepoietai ex ouk onton kai hen ton panton estin? We are to understand by the hundred sheep of the parable all created beings, and thus the Son too is included." Georg. Laod. ep. ad. Alex.: "Don't blame the Arians because they say en pote hote ouk en ho huios tou Theou, Isaiah too came later than his father." Georg. Laod. ep. ad. Arianos. "Don't be afraid to allow that the Son is from the Father; for the Apostle says that all things are from God, although it is certain that all things are ex ouk onton." Thalia (de synod. 15): he monas en, he duas de ouk en prin huparxei. Arius for the rest seems to have considered the creation of this "Son" as simply a necessity, because God could not create directly, but required an intermediate power.
[46] Ep. Euseb. ad Paulin.: Hen to ageneton, hen de to hup' autou alethos kai ouk ek tes ousias autou gegonos, katholou tes phuseos tes agenetou me metechon, alla gegonos holocheros heteron te phusei k. te dunamei.. The tautotes tes phuseos is rejected. Ep. Arii ad Alex.: huion hupostesanta idio thelemati atrepton kai analloioton. Who says, therefore, that the Son is in everything like the Father introduces two "agennetoi." Thalia: te men phusei hosper pantes houto de autos ho logos esti treptos, to de idio autexousio, heos bouletai, menei kalos; hote men toi thelei dunatai trepesthai kai autos hosper kai hemeis, treptes on phuseos . . . As all things so far as their substance is concerned are unrelated to God and unlike Him, so too is the Logos allotrios kai anomoios kata panta tes tou patros ousias kai idiotetos. Memerismenai te phusei kai apexenomenai kai apeschoinismenai kai allotrioi kai ametochoi eisin allelon hai ousiai tou patros kai tou huiou kai tou hagiou pneumatos; they are even anomoioi pampan allelon tais te ousiais kai doxais ep' apeiron. ton goun logon phesin eis homoioteta doxes kai ousias allotrion einai polutelos hekateron tou te patros kai tou hagiou pneumatos. ho huios dieremenos estin kath' heauton kai ametochos kata panta tou patros. Thalia (de Synod. 15): Arretos Theos ison oude homoion ouch homodoxon echei. ho huios idion ouden echei tou Theou kath' hupostasin idiotetos oude gar estin isos all' oude homoousios auto. The Triad is not of homoiais doxais: anepimikta heautais eisin hai hupostaseis auton, mia tes mias endoxotera doxais ep' apeiron. Xenos tou huiou kat' ousian ho pater, hoti anarchos huparchei. According to the letter of Eusebius to Paulinus it looks as if Eusebius held the unchangeableness of the Son to belong to his substance; he probably, however, only means that it had come to be his substance. At a later date many Arians must have attributed to the Son an original unchangeableness as a gift of the Father, for Philostorgius mentions as a peculiarity of the Arian bishop Theodosius that he taught (VIII. 3): ho Christos treptos men te ge phusei te oikeia.
[47] Because of this sundering of the Father and the Son the Arians at a later date are also called "Diatomites" (Joh. Damasc. in Cotellier, Eccl. Gr. monum. I., p. 298).
[48] Thalia (Orat. c. Arian I. 6): oude Theos alethinos estin ho logos. He is only called God, but he is not truly God, kai to huio ho pater aoratos huparchei kai oute horan oute gignoskein teleios kai akribos dunatai ho logos ton heautou patera, alla kai ho gignoskei kai ho blepei analogos tois idiois metrois oide kai blepei, hosper kai hemeis gignoskomen kata ten idian dunamin. Ho huios ten heautou ousian ouk oide. Euseb. Cæs. ep. ad Euphrat.: Christos ouk estin alethinos Theos. The conviction that the Son is not truly God, and that all lofty predicates attach to him only in a nuncupative sense, that he does not know the Father, is very strongly expressed in the fragment of the Thalia de synod. 15.
[49] Arii Ep. ad Euseb.: pleres Theos monogenes, analloiotos (in virtue of his will). Arii ep. ad Alex.: huion monogene . . . ktisma tou Theou teleion, all' ouch hos hen ton ktismaton, gennema, all' ouch hos hen ton gennematon . . . Pater dous auto panton ten kleronomian . . . Ho huios monos hupo monou tou patros hupeste. Thalia: ton huion en taute te sophia gegenesthai nai tautes metechonta honomasthai monon sophian kai logon . . . Dia touto kai progignoskon ho Theos esesthai kalon auton, prolabon auto tauten ten doxan dedoken, hen anthropos kai ek tes aretes esche meta tauta; hoste ex ergon autou, hon proegno ho Theos, toiouton auton nun gegonenai pepoinke . . . Metoche charitos hosper kai hoi alloi pantes houto kai autos legetai onomati monon Theos . . . Theos enenken eis huion heauto tonde teknopoiesas; idion ouden echei tou Theou kath' hupostasin idiotetos . . . The Son is Wisdom, Image, Reflection, Word; God cannot produce a greater than He; Theou thelesei ho huios helikos kai hosos estin, ex hote kai aph' hou kai apo tote ek tou Theou hupeste, ischuros Theos on, but he extols the greater Father. Arius ap. Athan. Orat. I. c. Arian. 9: metoche kai autos etheopoiethe. It is evident from Alexander's letter to Alexander that Arius strongly emphasised the prokope, the moral progress of the Son.
[50] Owing to the general uncertainty regarding the extent of the "humanity" which prevailed at the beginning of the controversy, the latter assertion of the Arians was not so energetically combatted as the rest. That the limitation of the humanity of Christ to a body originated with Lucian, is asserted by Epiph. Ancorat. 33.
[51] In the writings of Arius ousia and hupostasis are used as synonymous terms. The impersonal Spirit (Logos, Wisdom) indwelling in God the Father as Power, was naturally considered by the Arians to be higher than the Son. On this point they appeal like the old Roman Adoptianists to Matt. XII. 31 (see Vol. III., p. 20 ff.). It is indeed not even certain whether Arius and the older Arians when they speak of a Trinity, always included the Holy Spirit. According to Athanasius de synod. 15, we may conclude that their Trinity consisted of the following hypostases: (1) God as primordial without the Son; (2) God as Father; (3) the Son. Still this is not certain.
[52] Orat. I. c. Arian. 8.
[53] On Asterius see Athan., Orat. c. Arian. I. 30-33; II. 37; III. 2, 60; de decret. syn. Nic. 8, 28-31; de synod. 18, 19, 47. Epiphan. H. 76, 3; Socrat. I. 36; Philostorg. II. 14, 15; Hieron. de vir. inl. 94. Marcellus of Ancyra wrote against the principal work of Asterius, see Zahn, p. 41 ff. Athanasius attacked a suntagmation of his. One of the main theses of this book was that there are two ageneta. Asterius also discussed 1 Cor. I. 24, and indeed he took the correct view. His explanation too of the passage John XIV. 10, is worthy of note: eudelon hoti dia touto eireken heauton men en to patri, en heauto de palin ton patera, epei mete ton logou, hon diexercheto, heautou phesin einai, alla tou patros dedokotos ten dunamin. Upon this passage Athanasius remarks (Orat. III. 2) that only a child could be pardoned such an explanation. It is a point of great importance that Asterius, like Paul of Samosata, reckoned the will as the highest thing. Accordingly, to create of His free will is more worthy of God too than to beget (l. c. III. 60). Athanasius says that Arius himself made use of the work of Asterius, and in this connection he gives us the important statement of Asterius (de decret. 8) that created things are not able tes akratou cheiros tou agennetou ergasian bastaxai, and that on account of this the creation of the Son as an intermediary was necessary. (See Orat. c. Arian II. 24.)
[54] John I. 1, 13, 18, X. 15, 30, XIV. 9, 10; Hebr. I. 3, II. 10, X1II. 8; Ps. XLV. 2; CX. 3; Mal. III. 6. The passages continued to be regarded by the orthodox as the most important.
[55] Theodoret I. 4. Exaggerations and calumnies of the worst kind are not wanting in this writing. The reproach, too, that the Arians acted like the Jews is already found here. Of more importance, however, is the assertion that the Arian christology gave countenance to the heathen ideas of Christ and that the Arians had also in view the approval of the heathen. Ebion, Artemas (see Athanas., de synod. 20) and Paul are designated their Fathers.
[56] The two last theses are rejected in a specially emphatic manner. Alexander repeatedly complains in this connection of the procedure of Arius in taking from the Holy Scriptures only such passages as have reference to the humiliation of the Logos for our sakes, and then referring them to the substance of the Logos. "They omit the passages which treat of the divinity of the Son. Thus they arrive at the impious supposition that Paul and Peter would have been like Christ if they had always persisted in the good."
[57] John I. 1-3, I. 18, X. 30, XIV. 8, 9, 28; Matt. III. 17, XI. 27; 1 John V. 1; Coloss. I. 15, 16; Rom. VIII. 32; Heb. I. 2 f.; Prov. VIII. 30; Ps. II. 7, CX. 3, XXXV. 10; Is. LIII. 8.
[58] From this it is plainly evident that the real point in dispute was not as to subordination and coordination, but as to unity of substance and difference of substance. That the archetype is greater than the type is for Alexander a truth that is beyond doubt. He goes still farther and says: oukoun to agenneto patri oikeion axioma phulakteon, medena tou einai auto ton aition legontas, to de huio ten harmozousan timen aponemeteon, ten anarchon auto para tou patros gennesin anatithentas.
[59] The expression "homoousios" does not occur in Alexander.
[60] On this expression, which was used by Arius, see Hort, Two Dissertations, 1876.
[61] The respective passages in the letter have so many points of contact with expressions of Irenæus (see Vol. II., pp. 230 f., 276 f.) as to make the supposition, which also commends itself for other reasons, very probable (see above, p. 54, note 1), that Alexander had read Irenæus and had been strongly influenced by him. That Irenæus was known in Alexandria, at least at the beginning of the third century, follows from Euseb., H. E. VI. 14. (Strange to say it has undoubtedly not been proved that Athanasius ever quotes from Irenæus.) Alexander shews that he is not throughout dependent on Origen.
[62] Alexander made no distinction between ousia, hupostasis, phusis.
[63] Hon tropon gar he arretos autou hupostasis asunkrito huperoche edeichthe huperkeimene panton hois autos to einai echarisato, houtos kai he huiotes autou kata phusin tunchanousa tes patrikes theotetos alekto huperoche diapherei ton di' autou thesei huiotethenton.
[64] On John X. 30: hoper phesin ho kurios ou patera heauton anagoreuon oude tas te hupostasei duo phuseis mian einai saphenizon, all' hoti ten patriken emphereian akribos pephuken sozein ho huios tou patros, ten kata panta homoioteta autou ek phuseos apomaxamenos kai aparallaktos eikon tou patros tunchanon kai tou prototutou ektupos charakter.
[65] In the Confession of Faith which Alexander had put at the close of his letter, the Spirit, the Church, and so on, are mentioned. According to Alexander, too, the Logos got only a body from Mary, who, for the rest, is called theotokos (see Athan. Orat. III. 29, 33). Möhler and Newman (Hist. Treatises, p. 297) consider Athanasius as the real author of Alexander's encyclical epistle. Their arguments, however, are not convincing.
[66] Hence the reproach so frequently brought against this doctrine, that according to it Father and Son are "brothers"; see, e.g., Orat. c. Arian I. 14. Paul of Samosata had already brought this reproach against all the adherents of the Logos doctrine. The Arians sought to make a reductio ad absurdum of the doctrine that the Son is the perfect image of the Father, by pointing out that in this case the Son too must beget as well as the Father (Or. c. Arian. I. 21).
[67] See some of those adduced by them in Orat. c. Arian. I. 22: they are said to have pointed them out to children and women.
[68] That he took an active interest in the Nicene Council is undoubted; see Theodoret I. 26, Sozom, I. 17 fin., but, above all, Apol. Athan. c. Arian. 6 and the work "de decretis." The Arians drew special attention to the influence exercised by Athanasius, when deacon, on his bishop Alexander, and Athanasius did not contradict their statements; see also Gregor Naz. Orat. 21, 14.
[69] His chief works against the Arians are the four Orationes c. Arian--his most comprehensive work, containing mainly his refutation of the Arian Bible exegesis; the fourth Oration is, however, either merely a sketch, or else it is not in its proper place along with the others; further, the treatises de decret. Nic. synodi, de sentent. Dionys. Alex., historia Arian. ad monachos, apologia c. Arian., apologia ad imp. Constantium, de synodis Arimini et Seleuciæ habitis, the Tomus ad Antioch., and in addition the festival-orations and some lengthy letters, e.g., that ad Afros episcopos.
[70] To prove this it would be necessary to quote hundreds of passages. In none of his larger works has Athanasius omitted to base his anti-Arian christology on the thought of redemption, and wherever he gives this as the basis one feels that he is adducing what is his most telling argument. The manner too in which he was able, starting from this as the central point of his whole view of the subject, to justify what were purely derivative formulæ by referring them back to it, is well worthy of notice; cf. the Orat. c. Arian., espec. II. 67-70. The fact that his knowledge of scientific theology was slender is hinted at by Gregor Naz., Orat. 21. 6.
[71] Specially striking is what he says de synod. 51: Christ could not make others gods if He himself had, to begin with, been made God; if He possessed His god-head merely as something bestowed upon Him, He could not bestow it, for it would not be in His own power, and He would not have more than He needed Himself. Similarly Orat. I. 39, I. 30: Ouk ara katabas ebeltiothe alla mallon ebeltiosen autos ta deomena beltioseos; kai ei tou beltiosai charin katabebeken, ouk ara misthon esche to legesthai, huios kai Theos, alla mallon autos huiopoiesen hemas to patri kai etheopoiese tous anthropous genomenos autos anthropos. Ouk ara anthropos on husteron gegone Theos, alla Theos on husteron gegonen anthropos, hina mallon hemas theopoiese. II. 69, I. 16: autou tou huiou metechontes tou Theou metechein legometha, kai touto estin ho elegen ho Petros hina genesthe theias koinonoi phuseos.
[72] The frequent designation of the Arians as Jews and heathen, and together with this the designation "Ariomanites," were employed by Athanasius in a really serious sense; see de decret. 1-4, 27; Encycl. ad. ep. "Ægypt. et Lib. 13, 14; Orat. I. 38, II. 16, 17, III, 16, 27 sq. "Abomination of the impious" XI. Festbrief, p. 122 (Larsow).
[73] Orat. I. 12: To the demand of Philip, "Shew us the Father," Christ did not reply: (blepe ten ktisin, but "He who sees me, sees the Father." Orat. I. 16: tou huiou metechontes tou Theou metechein legometha . . . he tou huiou ennoia kai katalepsis gnosis esti peri tou patros, dia to ek tes ousias autou idion einai gennema. I. 21.
[74] This is a point which is very frequently emphasised; see Orat. I. 10, II. 20, 24, but chiefly III. 16: Diati oun hoi Areianoi toiauta logizomenoi kai noountes ou sunarithmousin heautous meta ton Hellenon; kai gar kakeinoi, hosper kai outoi, te ktisei latreuousi para ton ktisanta ta panta Theon; alla to men onoma to Hellenikon pheugousi, dia ten ton anoeton apaten, ten de homoian ekeinois dianoian hupokrinontai. kai gar kai to sophon auton, hoper eiothasin legein, ou legomen duo agenneta, phainontai pros apaten ton akeraion legontes; phaskontes gar; "ou legomen duo agenneta," legousi duo Theous kai toutous diaphorous echontas tas phuseis, to men geneten, to de agenetoi. Ei de hoi men Hellenes heni ageneto kai pollois genetois latreuousin. houtoi de heni ageneto kai heni geneto, oud' houto diapherousin Hellenon. This was the view of it which was still held at a later period also. The expression in the Vita Euthymii (Cotel. Monum. II., p. 201) C. 2, is full of meaning: Tou Hellenismou lexantos ho tou Areianismou polemos ischuros ekratei.
[75] It is very characteristic of Athanasius' way of looking at things that with him the Logos in general retires into the background, and further that he expressly declines to recognise or to define the divine in Christ from the point of view of his relation to the world or in terms of the predicate of the eternal. Image, Reflection and Son are the designations which he regards as most appropriate. See, e.g., Orat. III. 28: ou tosouton ek tou aidiou gnorizetai kurios, hoson hoti huios esti tou Theou; huios gar on achoristos esti tou patros . . . kai eikon kai apaugasma on tou patros echei kai ten aidioteta tou patros.
[76] Beyond Origen and the Origenists, who, though they too certainly make a sharp distinction between the Godhead and the creation, attribute with Philo an intermediate position to the Logos. The Eusebians held fast to this, and that is why Athanasius always treats them as Arians; for in connection with this main point the maxim in his opinion held good "Whosover is not with us is against us." See Orat. IV. 6, 7; Encycl. ad ep. Ægypt, et Lib. 20; de decret. 6, 19, 20; ad Afros 5, 6, and the parallel section in the work "de synodis."
[77] Orat. I. 15: If the Son is Son then that wherein He shares is not outside of the substance of the Father: touto de palin ean heteron e para ten ousian tou huiou to ison atopon apantesei, mesou palin heuriskomenou toutou ek tou patros kai tes ousias tou huiou, hetis pote esti. In putting it thus Athanasius corrected not only an incautious expression of Bishop Alexander (see above p. 24 f.), but very specially the thesis of the Origenists of "The image and reflection which sprang from and was created out of the will" (see e.g., Euseb. Demonstr. IV. 3). But Arius himself, spite of all his efforts to avoid it, also arrived at the idea of a "middle substance" between the Godhead and the creature, because according to him God had necessarily to make use of such a being in order to be able to create at all.
[78] In contrast to this it holds good of the Arians that ton demiourgon ton holon tois poiemasi sunarithmesosi (Orat. I. c. Arian.
T. I., p. 342).
[79] It is this which constitutes the most significant advance made by Athanasius, the real fruit of his speculation which took its start from the thought of redemption. The Logos of the philosophers was no longer the logos whom he knew and adored. The existence of the Logos who appeared in Christ is independent of the idea of the world. The creation of the world--abstractly speaking--might even have taken place without the Logos. This is the point in which he is most strongly opposed to the Apologists and Origen. No traces of this advance are to be found as yet in the works "c. Gent" and "de incarnat." See, on the other hand, Orat. II. 24, 25: ou kamnei ho Theos prostatton, oude asthenei pros ten ton panton ergasian, hina ton men huion monos monon ktise, eis de ten ton allon demiourgian hupourgou kai boethou chreian eche tou huiou. oude gar oude huperthesin echei, hoper an ethelese genesthai, alla monon hethelese kai hupeste ta panta, kai to boulemati autou oudeis anthesteke. Tinos oun heneka ou gegone ta panta para monou tou Theou to prostagmati, ho gegone kai ho huios . . . alogia men oun pasa par' authois; phasi de homos peri toutou, hos ara thelon ho Theos ten geneten ktisai phusin, epeide heora me dunamenen auten metaschein tes tou patros akrarou cheiros kai tes par' autou demiourgias, poiei kai ktizei protos monon hena kai kalei touton huion kai logon, hina toutou mesou genomenou houtos loipon kai ta panta di autou genesthai dunethe; tauta ou monon eirekasin, alla kai grapsai tetolmekasin Eusebios te kai Areios kai ho thusas Asterios. As against this view Athanasius shews that God is neither so powerless as not to be able to create the creatures nor so proud as not to be willing to create them (ei de hos apaxion ho Theos ta alla ergasasthai, ton men huion monon eirgasato, ta da alla to huio anecheirisen hos boetho; kai touto men anaxion Theou; ouk esti gar en theo tuphos); he shews further from Matt. X. 29, VI. 25 f. that God cares for all things in the most direct way, and therefore has also brought them into existence. The same proof is given in de decret. 8. Athanasius thus did away with the latent dualism between the godhead and the creature which had existed in Christian theology since the time of Philo. God is creator in the directest way. This, however, implies that the Logos is discarded. If spite of this Athanasius not only retained the name, but also recognised the function of a mediator of creation and type of all rational beings, the reason was that he understood Scripture as implying this, and because he was not able wholly to free himself from the influence of tradition. But the Divine in Christ is no longer for him the world-reason, on the contrary it is the substance of the Father which--accidentally, as it were--has also the attributes of creative power and of the reason that embraces and holds ideas together. For Athanasius, in fact, the Son is the substance of the Father as the principle of redemption and sanctification. The most pregnant of his formulæ is in Orat. III. 6. in support of which he appeals to 2 Cor. V. 19: to idion tes tou patros ousias estin ho huios, en ho he ktisis pros ton Theon katellasseto.
[80] That the Godhead is a unity, is a thought which Athanasius emphasised in the strongest way over and over again (monas tes theotetos), (2) also that there are not two underived or unbegotten principles (archai), and finally (3) that the Father is the arche, which because of this may be identified with the monas also. He retorts the charge of Polytheism brought against him by the Arians; they, he says, adore two gods (see above, note 4, p. 27). The best summary of his view is in Orat. IV. I: monada tes theotetos adiaireton kai aschiston; lechtheie mia arche theotetos kai ou duo archai hothen kurios kai monarchia estin.
[81] Orat. III. 6: patera ouk an tis eipoi, me huparchontos huiou; ho men toi poieten legon ton Theon ou pantos kai ta genomena deloi; esti gar kai pro ton poiematon poietes; ho de patera legon euthus meta tou patros semainei kai ten tou huiou huparxin. dia touto kai ho pisteuon eis ton huion eis ton patera pisteuei; eis gar to idion tes tou patros ousias pisteuei, kai houtos mia estin he pistis eis hena Theon. II. 41. De decret. 30 fin.: legontes men gar ekeinoi ton Theon ageneton ek ton genomenon auton poieten monon legousin, hina kai ton logon poiema semanosi kata ten idian hedonen; ho de ton Theon patera legon heuthus en auto kai ton huion semainei. The Son is a second in the Godhead, see Orat. III. 4: duo men eisin, hoti ho pater parer esti kai ouch ho autos huios esti; kai ho huios esti kai ouch ho autos pater esti; mia de he phusis. IV. I: hoste duo men einai patera kai huion, monada de theotetos adiaireton.. The idea that the Triad must be from all eternity and be independent of the world, if it is not to be increased or diminished, is developed in Orat. I. 17. There is a strong polemic against the Sabellians in Orat. IV.
[82] In the theoretical expositions of his teaching Athanasius uses the expression gennema in preference to huios, in order to exclude the idea of human generation.
[83] "Reflection", "Image", "God of God", are the expressions which always appeared to Athanasius to be the most appropriate. He preferred the first of these in order to exclude the thought that the Son proceeded from the will of the Creator. The light cannot do otherwise than lighten, and it always shines or lightens, otherwise it would not be light. The archetype projects its type necessarily. Following Origen he puts the whole emphasis on the eternal (Orat. I. 14: aidios estin ho huios kai sunuparchei to patri) and necessary. If the Son were begotten by the will of the Father, He would be something contingent, a creation, and would have a beginning: though certainly He was not, on the other hand, begotten contrary to this will, as the Arians charge their opponents with believing (Orat. III. 62, 66), nor from some necessity superior to God, nor does the blessed Godhead undergo any kind of suffering (Orat. I. 16), on the contrary He proceeded from the substance of God ou para gnomen. Only the expression ek tes ousias suffices, as Athanasius over and over again makes plain; any intervention of the will here degrades the Son; for "the substance is higher than the will." See the characteristic passage Orat. III. 62: hosper antikeitai te boulesei to para gnomen, houtos huperkeitai kai proegeitai tou bouleuesthai to kata phusin. oikian men oun tis bouleuomenos kataskeuazei, huion de genna kata phusin. kai to men boulesei kataskeuazomenon erxato ginesthai kai exothen esti tou poiountos; ho de huios idion esti tes ousias tou patros gennema kai ouk estin exothen autou; dio oude bouleuetai peri autou, hina me kai peri heautou doke bouleuesthai; hoso oun tou ktismatos ho huios huperkeitai, tosouto kai tes bouleseos to to kata phusin. The Father wills the Son in so far as He loves Him and wills and loves Himself (Orat. III. 66), but in so far as "willing" involves ten ep' ampho rhopen, i.e., includes the ability not to will, the Son is not from the will of the Father.
[84] Athanasius rarely repeats the unguarded utterances of Bishop Alexander and others belonging to the orthodox party. The Father is for him, on the contrary, in and for Himself--if one may so put it--personal; He is nous and He is tes idias hupostaseos theletes. In one passage in his later writings (de decret. 15) he has. however, curiously enough, argued that the Father would be alogos and asophos, if the Logos were not from all eternity.
[85] In order to give meaning to the expressions "Logos", "Wisdom", Athanasius could not avoid describing the divine in Christ as the wisdom, prudence, strength, might, creative power in God, see Orat. I. 17, III. 65. Still he rarely has recourse to these terms.
[86] After the beginning of the Arian controversy, though not before it (see c. Gent. 2), Athanasius made a thorough distinction between "to beget" and "to create." "Begetting" held good of the Father only in reference to the Son. It means the production of a perfect image of Himself which, while originating in His substance, has by nature a share in the entire substance. That the Son shares in the entire substance of the Father is a thought which was constantly repeated by Athanasius, Orat. I. 16: to holos metechesthai ton Theon ison esti legein hoti kai genna. The begotten is thus idion tes ousias tou Theou gennema (Orat. II. 24), which phusei echei ten patriken ousian and in fact teleian. That God does not in consequence of this suffer or undergo anything, and that there is here no question of an emanation, are points which he urges as against the Valentinians.
[87] The refutation of these propositions given by Athanasius takes a great number of forms; we may distinguish the religious-dogmatic, the dialectic-philosophic, the patristic and the biblical refutations (see Böhringer, Athanasius, pp. 210-240). For Athanasius himself the religious and biblical argument is the chief thing. Besides numerous passages from the Gospel of John, Athanasius quotes specially 1 John V. 20; Rev. I. 4; Matt. III. 17, XVII. 5; Rom. I. 20, VIII. 32, IX. 5; Hebr. I. 3, XIII. 8; Ps. II. 7; XLV. 2, CII. 28, CXLV. 13; Is. XL. 28. Matt. XXVIII. 19 had for him supreme importance. Amongst the theses laid down by the Arians he had a special objection to that of the prokope of the Logos. Hence the strong emphasis he lays on the atreptos.
[88] "From the Father," as Athanasius says in several passages, would be sufficient if it were not possible to say, using the words in an improper sense, that everything is from God because it has been created by God. It is because the Eusebians make capital out of this that we must avow: ek tes ousias tou patros; see de decret. 19; de synod. 33 sq.: ad Afros 5. He entirely rejects the idea of a mere unity of feeling or doctrine between the Father and the Son (e.g., Orat. III. ii) for this would mean the disappearance of the Godhead of the Son.
[89] The word "homoios" means something more than our word "resembling" and something less than our word "similar"; our "similarly constituted" comes nearest it. The "homoios" alone did not satisfy Athanasius, because it implicitly involves a difference and, above all, a distinction, and he says, moreover, that even dog and wolf, tin and silver are homoia. He, however, certainly applied the word in connection with substance (phusis ousia) or with "kata panta" (e.g., de decret. 20) to the relation between Father and Son (homoiosis tou huiou pros ton patera kata ten ousian kai kata ten phusin, de synod. 45). But still he found it necessary as a rule, at least at a later date, expressly to emphasise the henotes--where he expresses himself in a less strict way we also find homoiotes alone--and in opposition to the Homoiousians was driven to add "ek tes ousias" to "homoiousios" in order to banish any idea of separateness. (de synod. 41). Yet he recognised at the same time (l.c. c. 53 sq.) that homoios is really an unsuitable word; for it cannot be used of substances, but only of schemata kai poiotetes. In connection with substances we say tautotes. Men resemble each other in general outline and character, but in substance they are homophueis; vice versa, man and dog are not unlike, but yet they are heterophueis. Thus homophues and homoousion match each other, and in the same way heterophues and heteroousion. The phrase homoios kat' ousian always suggests a metousia; to gar homoion poiotes estin, hetis te ousia prosgenoit' an. Thus it is correct to say of created spiritual beings that they resemble God, not however in substance, but only in virtue of sonship. Homoiousios is in fact nothing, and when used of the real Son is consequently either nonsense or false.
[90] This is the key to the whole mode of conception: Son and Father are not a duality, but a duality in unity, i.e., the Son possesses entirely the substance which the Father is; He is a unity with the unity which the Father is. Athanasius did not defend the idea of the co-ordination of the two as opposed to a subordination view, but the unity and inseparability as opposed to the theory of difference and separateness. He, however, expresses this as follows: in substance Father and Son are one; or, the Son has one and the same substance with the Father. Thus the expression "mia phusis" is often used for both; and so we have: ousia hen estin autos gennesas auton pater (de synod. 48). The Son has the henotes pros ton patera (de decret. 23); He constitutes with Him a adiairetos henotes; there subsists between both henotes homoioseos kata ten ousian kai kata ten phusin. He expresses his meaning most plainly in those passages in which he attaches the tautotes to Father and Son without prejudice to the fact that the Father is the Father and not the Son. Identity of substance, as Athanasius (de synod. 53) explains, is tautotes. Thus he says (Orat. I. 22): ho huios echei ek tou patros ten tautoteta. In a passage of earlier date he had already said (c. Gent. 2): dous to huio kai tes idias aidiotetos ennoian kai gnosin, hina ten tautoteta sozon k.t.l. Later on, (de decret. 23): ananke kai en touto ten tautoteta pros ton heautou patera sozein, 20: me monon homoion ton huion alla tauton te homoiosei ek tou patros einai . . . ou monon homoios alla kai adiairetos esti tes tou patros ousias, kai hen men eisin autos kai ho pater. 24: henotes kai phusike idiotes . . . ten henoteta tes phuseos kai ten tautoteta tou photos me diairomen. Orat. IV. 5 (and elsewhere): pater en to huio, huios en to parti . . . he tou huiou theotes tou patros esti . . . he theotes kai he idiotes tou patros to einai tou huiou esti Thus homoios is unsatisfactory not only because it does not express complete likeness, but, above all, because it does not express the unity upon which everything depends. The Son cannot, like human sons, go away from the Father, (de decret. 20) for He is in a more intimate relation to Him that a human son is to his father; He is connected with the Father not as an accident of which we might make abstraction (l. c. 12), but as to idion tes patrikes hupostaseos (Orat. III. 65) or as to idion tes ousias tou patros (frequently in de decret. Orat. I. 22), or as idion tes ousias tou Theou gennema. Athanasius uses the words "idios", "gnesios" frequently; they give the conception of Son a more extended meaning than it naturally has, so that the Son may not appear as exothen haplos homoios and consequently as heteroousios (de decret. 23). The substantial unity of Father and Son is the fundamental thought of Athanasius. Atzberger therefore correctly says (op. cit. p. 117) "There can be no doubt but that Athanasius conceived of the unity of the Father and the Son as a numerical unity of substance." In Orat. III. 3 ff. where he puts himself to great trouble to state the problem that two are equal to one, he says: Hei kai heteron estin hos gennema ho huios, alla tauton estin hos Theos; kai hen eisin autos kai ho pater te idioteti kai oikeioteti tes phuseos kai te tautoteti tes mias theotetos. We cannot therefore help being astonished (with Zahn p. 20) to find that Athanasius declines to use the word monoousios of the Son (see Expos. fidei 2: oute huiopatora phronoumen hos hoi Sabellioi, legontes monoousion kai ouch homoousion kai en touto anairountes to einai huion); still he always says: mian oidamen kai monen theoteta tou patros. If the question is raised as to whether Athanasius thought of the Godhead as a numerical unity or as a numerical duality, the answer is: as a numerical unity. The duality is only a relative one--if we may write such an absurdity--the duality of archetype and type. That the Arians called the Catholics "Sabellians" is expressly stated by Julian of Eclan. (August., op. imperf. V. 25).
[91] Theotes, ousia, hupostasis, idiotes tes ousias, oikeiotes tes ousias (hupostaseos) are all used by Athanasius in reference to the Godhead as perfectly synonymous. He had no word by which to describe Father and Son as different subjects, and indeed he never felt it necessary to seek for any such word. We cannot call idiotes tes ousias anything special; for Athanasius by the very use of the word idiotes asserted the unity of the Father and Son. Hupostasis and ousia are repeatedly described by him as identical; see de decret. 27; de synod. 41; ad Afros 4; he de hupostasis ousia esti, kai ouden allo semainomenon echei e auto to on, hoper Ieremias huparxin onomazei legon . . . he gar upostasis kai he ousia huparxis estin (so still in the year 370). Tom. ad Antioch. 6: hupostasin men legomen hegoumenoi tauton einai eipein hupostasin kai ousian. The divine substance is, however, nothing other than to on (pure Being); see ad Afr. l.c. and the decret. 22; Godhead is the ousia akataleptos . . . to; Theos, ouden heteron e ten ousian autou tou ontos semainei. As opposed to this phusis is the nature which attaches to the substance as the complex of its attributes; Athanasius distinguishes it from ousia; hence the formula often used: kata ten ousian kai kata ten phusin (e.g., de synod. 45) see also Tom. ad Antioch 6, where Athanasius after the words above quoted, continues: mian de phronoumen dia to ek tes ousias tou patros einai ton huion kai dia ten tautoteta tes phuseos; mian gar theoteta kai mian einai ten tautes phusin pisteuomen. Orat. I. 39: The Son is phusei kat' ousian tauta. When, however, Athanasius asserts the numerical unity of the Ousia of Father, Son, (and Spirit) he is thinking of it both as being that which we call "substance" and also as what we call "subject", so that here again, too, what is obscure is not the unity, but the duality (triad) as in Irenæus. In de synod. 51 the conception of the Ousia as involving three substances, i.e., a common genus and two co-ordinate "brothers" ranged under it, is expressly rejected as Hellenon hermeneiai. It is only the one passage: Expos. fid. 2, (see above) where Athanasius rejects monoousios, that betrays any uncertainty on his part. It stands quite by itself. Otherwise by ousia he understands the individual or single substance which, however, as applied to God, is the fulness of all Being, a view which allows him to think of this substance as existing in wonderful conditions and taking on wonderful shapes.
[92] The meaning of this word will be clear from what was said in the preceding discussion. It signified oneness of substance, not likeness of substance, "unius substantiæ." Father and Son possess in common one and the same substance, substance in the sense of the totality of all that which they are. This is how Athanasius always understood the word, as Zahn (op. cit., pp. 10-32) was the first to point out in opposition to the long current erroneous interpretations of it. It is in fact equal to tautousios, the meaning which the Semiarians also attached to it (Ephiph. H. 73. 11). Athanasius neither discovered the word, nor had he any special preference for it; but he always recognised in it the most fitting expression wherewith to repel Arians and Eusebians; see on the adoption of the word into the Nicene Creed and the history of its interpretation, the discussions which follow.
[93] This is an important point in the Athanasian doctrine and balances in some degree the thoughts comprised in the word "homoousios." From some passages it certainly appears as if the statement that the Son has everything in common with the Father (according to Holy Scripture) except the name of Father (see Orat. III. 4 fin; III. 6; de synod. 48, 49; frequently as in Orat. I. 61, the language is paradoxical to the verge of absurdity) expressed a merely nominal distinction between Father and Son. According to this, He is either identical with the Father, or a part of the Father's substance, or an attribute of God, or a kind of pendicle which has emanated from the Father; but all these modes of conception were considered at the, time to be "Sabellian": they were condemned already. In order to escape them or rather because he himself considered them to be false, Athanasius in the proper place strongly emphasised the idea that the Father is the entire monad, that He is the arche for the Son too, that it is in fact the ousia of the Father which the Son has received, that thus the conception of the Father as the sole Theos pantokrator maintains the unity of the Godhead. The Father is the mia arche (Orat. IV. 1); there are not two or three Fathers (III. 15); there is hen eidos theotetos, which is the Father, but to eidos touto esti kai en to huio (l.c.); the Father is ho Theos. He alone is autos ho Theos, He alone is the unbegotten God (Expos. fid. I); the Son is a gennema, even though He has not come into being. Accordingly the Father is sufficient for Himself (Orat. II. 41), and he ousia tou patros estin arche kai rhiza kai pege tou huiou. The "homoousios" does not thus include any absolute co-ordination. According to Athanasius all men are homoousioi relatively to each other, because they are homogeneis and homophueis (de synod. 52 sq.) and yet spite of this we find amongst them superiority and subordination. The same is the case here. Athanasius maintains the inseparable unity of substance of Father and Son, the unity of the Godhead; but this idea is for him applicable only in virtue of another, according to which the Father has everything of Himself while the Son has everything from the Father. Father and Son, according to Athanasius, are not co-ordinate equal substances, but rather one single substance, which involves the distinction of arche and gennema, and thus of principle and what is deduced, and in this sense involves a subordination, which, however, is not analogous to the subordination in which the creature stands to God.
[94] See Orat. I. 41: Tes anthropotetos estin he hupsosis, i.e., not of the humanity of Christ, but of humanity as a whole: c. 42: When Scripture uses the word "echarisato;" in reference to what God does to Christ, this is not said of the Logos, but on our account: di' hemas kai huper hemon touto palin peri autou gegraptai. hosper gar hos anthropos ho Christos apethane kai hupsothe, houtos hos anthropos legtai lambanein hoper eichen aei hos Theos, hina eis hemas phthase kai he toiaute dotheisa charis. The human race is thereby enriched. c. 43: By our kinship with the body of Christ we too have become a temple of God and are henceforth made sons of God, so that already in us the Lord is adored. "Therefore hath God also exalted Him"--this signifies our exaltation.
[95] So correctly Baur. I have not found Dorner's statement that the presupposition of a human soul occupies the background of the whole view of Athanasius "of the incarnation and redemption as affecting the totality of man" (op. cit. I. p. 957) to be supported by evidence. From what is alleged by Dorner it merely follows that Athanasius did not reflect on the subject. Baur, however, meanwhile goes too far when he expresses the opinion that Athanasius designedly left the human soul of Christ out of account; on the contrary, by the term "Flesh" he understood the whole substance of man, (see Orat. III. 30) and did not feel there was any necessity for studying the question as to the position occupied by the soul.
[96] Orat. IV. 31.
[97] Orat. IV. 32-34.
[98] Orat. I. 45, III. 30-33.
[99] Almost the whole second oration against the Arians is devoted to the task of refuting the use made by them of this passage.
[100] Theodoret, H. E. I. 8.
[101] Orat. III. 53: Luxanontos en helikia tou somatos, sunepedidoto en auto kai e tos theotetos phanerosis . . . to anthropinon proekopten, huperanabainon kat' oligon ten anthropinen phusin kai theopoioumenon kai organon tes sophias pros ten energeian tes theotetos kai ten eklampsin autes genomenon.
[102] Both thus occupy the stage of development which was described in Vol. III., pp, 113-118. We may say meanwhile, and what follows will prove it, that the fusion of a theoretical doctrine with religion was more thorough in the case of Arianism than with Athanasius.
[103] See above p. 3, and in addition Athan. Orat. III. 51: The view of Lucian of Samosata is the idea of the pure creaturehood and humanity of the Redeemer ho te men dunamei kai umeis phroneite, to de onomati monon arneisthe dia tous anthropous. This is no mere trick of logic, although the alleged motive of the correction of the Adoptianist doctrine is assuredly incorrectly described.
[104] We do not know whether or not Arius appealed to Origen. The later Arians undoubtedly quoted him in support of their views; they seem, however, to have appealed most readily to Dionysius of Alex. See Athan. de sentent. Dionysii.
[105] See the tractate of Aëtius preserved in Epiphanius; but the older Arians had already acted in the same way.
[106] There are some good remarks on Arianism in Kaufmann, Deutsche Geschichte I., pp. 232, 234; also in Richter, Weström. Reich, p. 537.
[107] Schultz, Gottheit Christi, p. 65.
[108] The figure of Ulfilas vouches for this; his confession of faith (Halm, § 126) is the only Arian one which is not polemical.
[109] Anyone, on the other hand, who, like Arius, held to the idea of a developing and struggling Christ was not able to conceive of Him as Redeemer, but only as teacher and example. This was the situation: the Bible accounts of Christ did not favour and establish the sole idea which was held at the time regarding fellowship with God and redemption, but, on the contrary, they interfered with it.
[110] Athanasius always appealed to the collective testimony of the Church in support of the doctrine which he defended. In the work, de decret, 25 sq., he shews that the words ek tes ousias and homoousios were not discovered by the Nicene Fathers, but, on the contrary, had been handed down to them. He appeals to Theognostus, to the two Dionysii and Origen, to the latter with the reservation that in his case it is necessary to distinguish between what he wrote gumnastikos and what he wrote of a positive character. It is one of the few passages in which he has thought of Origen.
[111] They were not able, and did not dare, to discard it actually, because of John I. 1 f., on account of the Church tradition, and because of the scientific views of the time. As regards Athanasius, we have to keep in mind his idea of the Father as the rhiza of the Son, and his other idea, according to which the world was actually made by the Son.
[112] Dionysius of Alexandria was a genuine pupil of Origen, for he was equally prepared to maintain the other side of the system of Origen, when his namesake pointed out to him that by his one-sided emphasising of the one side, he had lost himself in highly questionable statements. Eusebius of Cæsarea took up the same position.
[113] The Nicene Creed sanctioned it. One of its most serious consequences was that from this time onward Dogmatics were for ever separated from clear thinking and defensible conceptions, and got accustomed to what was anti-rational. The anti-rational--not indeed at once, but soon enough--came to be considered as the characteristic of the sacred. As there was everywhere a desire for mysteries, the doctrine seemed to be the true mystery just because it was the opposite of the clear in the sphere of the profane. Even clear-headed men like the later members of the school of Antioch were no longer able to escape from absurdity. The complete contradiction involved in the Homoousios drew a whole host of contradictions after it, the further thought advanced.
[114] For the sources and the literature referring to the Council of Nice see Herzog's R-Encykl., Vol. X. 2, p. 530 ff. The accounts are meagre and frequently self-contradictory. We do not yet possess an exhaustive study of the subject. In what follows the main points only can be dealt with. I must renounce the idea of giving here the detailed reasons in support of the views I hold. See Gwatkin, p. 36 ff.
[115] No one was present from Britain; though there were probably bishops from Illyria, Dacia, Italy, Gaul, Spain, Africa and also a Persian bishop. Eusebius (Vita III. 8) compares the meeting with that described in Acts II.
[116] Sozom. I. 18; we certainly cannot form any clear picture of what took place from the account given in this passage.
[117] This follows from the letter of Eusebius of Cæsarea to his Church (Theodoret, H. E. I. 11), which we may regard as trustworthy in connection with this matter. Eusebius there distinguishes quite plainly two parties; (1) the party to which he himself belongs and (2) the party which he introduces with "hoi de" (hoi de prophasei tes tou homoousiou prosthekes tende ten graphen pepoiekasin, the Nicene Creed follows) and which he does not describe in more definite terms than by "autoi" (kai de tautes tes graph~s hup' auton hupagoreutheises).
[118] With the exception of the bishops whom their contemporaries and our earliest informants have mentioned by name, there do not seem to have been any capable men at the Council.
[119] It is worthy of note that Eusebius in the letter just cited does not introduce the Arians as a special party, but merely hints at their existence. The middle party stood, in fact, very near to them.
[120] Athanasius (de decret. 19 sq. ad Afros 5, 6, de synod. 33-41) mixes up the two opposition-parties together.
[121] See Theodoret I. 6: fin.; he relies upon the account of Eustathius. In addition Athanas., Encycl. ad epp. Ægypt 13, de decret. 3.
[122] See the characteristic passage Demon str. IV. 3: he men auge ou kata proairesin tou photos eklampei. kata ti de tes ousias sumbebekos achoriston. ho de huios kata gnomen kai proairesin eikon hupeste tou patros. bouletheis gar ho Theos gegonen huiou pater kai phos deuteron kata panta heauto aphomoiomenon hupestesato.
[123] According to Eustathius (in Theodoret I. 7) the creed of the strict Arians was composed by Eusebius of Nicomedia; at least I think that it must be the latter who is referred to in what is said in that passage: hos de ezeteito tes pisteos ho tropos, enarges men elenchos to gramma tes Eusebiou prouballeto blasphemias. epi panton de anagnosthen autika sumphoran men astathmeton tes ektropes heneka tois autekoois prouxenei, aischunen d'anekeston to grapsanti pareichen. It is impossible that it can be the creed of Eusebius of Cæsarea which is referred to here, for the latter (1.c. I. 11) expressly notes that his creed after having been communicated to the Council was substantially accepted. Whether we have a right to call the creed which he produced simply "Baptismal Creed of the Church of Cæsarea," is to me questionable, judging from the introduction to it given in the letter to his Church.
[124] The creed is contained in the letter of Eusebius to his Church. See Theodoret I. 1: Pisteuomen eis hena Theon patera pantokratora, ton ton hapanton horaton te kai aoraton poieten, kai eis hena kurion Iesoun Christon, ton tou Theou logon, Theon ek Theou, phos ek photos, zoen ek zoes, huion monogene, prototokon pases ktiseos, pro panton ton aionon ek tou patros gegennemenon, di' hou kai egeneto ta panta, ton dia ten hemeteran soterian sarkothenta kai en anthropois politeusamenon kai pathonta kai anastanta te trite hemera kai anelthonta pros ton patera kai hexonta palin en doxe krinai zontas kai nekrous, kai ei en pneuma hagion.
[125] Touton hekaston einai kai huparchein pisteuontes, patera alethinos patera, kai huion alethinos huion, pneuma te hagion alethinos pneuma hagion, katha kai ho kurios hemon apostellon eis to kerugma tous heautou mathetas eipe; Matt. XXVIII. 19 follows.
[126] Tautes huph' hemon ektetheises tes pisteos oudeis paren antilogias topos, all' autos te protos ho theophilestatos hemon basileus orthotata periechein auten emarturesen. houto te kai heauton phronein sunomologese; kai taute tous pantas sunkatatithesthai, hupographein te tois dogmasi kai sumphonein toutois autois parekeleueto (I. 11).
[127] According to Eusebius, however, the Emperor himself added an interpretation of the Homoousios. We read in the letter of Eusebius, immediately after the words cited in the foregoing note: henos monou prosengraphentos rhematos tou Homoousiou, ho kai autos hermeneuse legon hoti me kata somaton pathe legoito Homoousios, oute kata diairesin, oute kata tina apotomen ek tou patros hupostenai . . . theiois de kai aporretois logois prosekei ta toiauta noein. The word is thus only intended to express the mystery!
[128] Eusebius in an ill-concealed tone of reproach says hoi de (i.e., the Alexandrians) prophasei tes tou Homoousiou prosthekes tende ten graphen, (i.e., the Nicene Creed) pepoiekasi, that is, they have corrected my proposed creed not only here but in other passages also.
[129] See Hort., l.c., p. 59 and my article in Herzog, R.-Encyklop., Vol. VIII., p. 214 ff.
[130] See Gwatkin, p. 41.
[131] The "Logos" is wholly absent from the Nicene Creed; after what has been adduced above this will cause as little astonishment as the fact that neither Athanasians nor Arians took any offence at its exclusion.
[132] See on this what is told us by Athanasius, l.c. The clumsy position of the words which mutilate the conception monogene Theon, further proves that they are an insertion made at the very last.
[133] See Athanasius, l.c.
[134] The doctrinal formula in accordance with this was worded as follows. (The differences above discussed between it and the Creed of Cæsarea are to he explained as the result of the influence exercised by the Jerusalem and Antiochian Creed). The textual proofs are enumerated in Walch, Bib]. symb., p. 75 sq., Hahn, § 73, 74, and Hort. l.c.;--slight variations occur--: Pisteuomen eis hena Theon patera pantokratora, panton horaton te kai aoraton poieten, kai eis hena kurion Iesoun Christon, ton huion tou Theou, gennethenta ek tou patros monogene--tout' estin ek tes ousias tou patros--Theon ek Theou, phos ek photos, Theon alethinon ek Theou alethinou, gennethenta ou poiethenta--homoousion to patri--di' hou ta panta egeneto, ta de en to ourano kai ta en te ge, ton di' hemas tous anthropous kai dia ten hemeteran soterian katelthonta kai sarkothenta, enanthropesanta, pathonta, kai anastanta te trite hemera, anelthonta eis [tous]ouranous, erchomenon krinai zontas kai nekrous, kai eis to hagion pneuma. Tous de legontas; En pote hote en kai prin gennethenai ouk en, kai hoti ex ouk onton egeneto, e ex heteras hupostaseos e ousias phaskontas einai [e ktiston] e trepton e alloioton ton huion tou Theou [toutous] anathematizei he katholike [kai apostolike] ekklesia.
[135] Eusebius in Theoderet, H. E. I. 11: eroteseis toigaroun kai apokriseis enteuthen anekinounto, ebasanizeto ho logos tes dianoias ton eiremenon.
[136] See Athan. de decret. 19, 20; ad Afros 5, 6.
[137] Still Gwatkin, p. 43, goes too far when he asserts that "the use of agrapha in a creed was a positive revolution in the Church." It is quite impossible to maintain this in view, for example, of the Creed of Gregorius Thaumaturgus.
[138] See on moousios, which the Gnostics were the first to use, and on its meaning and history Vol. III. 141 f., 221; above pp. 15 f., 32-35;
I. 257; II. 259, 352, 354; iii. 45. On the older ecclesiastical use of ousia, hupostasis, hupokeimenon, above all in Origen, see the scholarly discussions by Bigg (the Christian Platonists, p. 164 ff.). "Ousia is properly Platonic, while hypostasis, a comparatively modern and rare word, is properly Stoic" . . . Hypokeimenon already in Aristotle means the substantia materialis, hule quæ determinatur per formam or ousia cui inhærent pathe sumbebekota . . . the theological distinction between the terms ousia and hupostasis is purely arbitrary." On the conception of hypostasis see Stentrup, Innsbrucker Zeitschr. f. Kath. Theologie. 1877, p. 59 ff. The question as to who brought forward the homoousios again after it had been condemned at Antioch, is an important one. It does not occur in the letters of Bishop Alexander. Athanasius had never any special preference for the word. It is found only once in the Orat. c. Arian (Orat. I. 9), and in the undoubtedly conciliatory work, de synod., 41, he admits that importance does not attach so much to the word as to the thing. The conceptions "henotes" and "ek tes ousias" would have served the purpose so far as he himself was concerned. Such being the state of the case one may reasonably assume that the word was not revived by any one belonging to the Eastern Church, since its rejection at Antioch must have stood in the way of this, but rather that some one in the West went back upon it, and Hosius is the only one we can think of as the likely person. This hypothesis is strengthened by the following considerations: (1) According to the testimony of Eusebius of Cæsarea there can be no doubt that the Emperor himself energetically defended the word homoousios, but the Emperor was dependent on Hosius; (2) Athanasius (hist. Arian.
42) says of Hosius: houtos en Nikaia pistin exetheto; (3) the Western-Roman doctrine was the substantial unity of Father and Son; the Alexandrian bishop was accused before the Roman bishop Dionysius on the ground that he was unwilling to use "homoousios'" and in Rome the accused excuses himself for not using it, and it is the Roman bishop who in his letter stated in energetic language the kerugma tes monarchias, the henosthai to Theo ton logon, and the ou katamerizein ten monada. I therefore conjecture that the word had been retained in Rome, i.e., in the West, since the time of the controversy of the Dionysii, that when the occasion offered it was once more produced in the East, and that the Alexandrians then accepted the word because they themselves had no better short catchword at their command. This explains why Athanasius always treats the expression as one which was suitable so far as the actual fact to be expressed was concerned, but which as regards its form was for him a foreign term. He could not, it is true, go quite so far as Luther (Opp. reform. V., p. 506): "Quod si odit anima mea vocem homousion et nolim ea uti, non ero hæreticus. Quis enim me coget uti, modo rem teneam, quæ in concilio per scripturas definita est? Etsi Ariani male senserunt in fide, hoc tamon optime, sive malo sive bono animo, exegerunt, ne vocem profanam et novam in regulis fidei statui liceret." Finally, the statement of Socrates (III.
7) which indeed has been rejected by most, is decisive. According to this Hosius during his stay in Alexandria--before the Nicene Council--had discussed ousia and hupostasis. At the first glance that undoubtedly seems unworthy of belief, because it is a husteron-proteron but as soon as we remember the work of Tertullian, adv. Prax., which is the most important dogmatic treatise which the West produced previous to Augustine and which cannot have been unknown to Hosius, everything becomes clear. In this work in which Tertullian bears witness to the strong influence exercised upon him by Monarchianism spite of the fact that he is opposing it, no thought is so plainly expressed as this, that Father, Son, and Spirit are unius substantiæ, i.e., homoousioi (Vol. II., p. 259 ff.). Along with this, however, we have the idea clearly developed, that Father, Son, and Spirit are different a personæ" (see e.g., c. 3: "proximæ personæ, consortes substantiæ patris", 15; "visibilem et invisibilem deum deprehendo sub manifesta et personali distinctione condicionis utriusque"; see also the conception of "personales substantiæ" in adv. Valent. 4). These personæ are also called by Tertullian "formæ cohærentes", "species indivisæ", "gradus" (c. 2, 8), and in fact even simply "nomina" (c. 30), and this gives his representation as much a Monarchian appearance as the appearance of an immanent Trinity (for a more detailed examination, see the appendix to this chapter). It is from this source, and also from Novatian who in his work, de trinitate, adopted the thoughts of Tertullian, that the theology of Hosius is derived. He may very probably, along with Tertullian, have already spoken of "personæ", side by side with the "unius substantiæ" which the entire West possessed belief in, in accordance with the baptismal formula, for this is what it was understood to be. (See Hilar., de trinit. II. I. 3: Ambros. de myster. 5 fin). That his formula was: "unius substantiæ tres personæ" where persona is certainly to be conceived of rather as species or forma--not as "substance"--is very probable. The Western Hippolytus, moreover, (c. Noët. 14) also spoke of one God and several prosopeia, and so too did the Western Sabellius, and Tert. (l.c. c. 26) says bluntly: "ad singula nomina in personas singulas tinguimur." Only this point must remain undecided--namely, whether Hosius already actually translated "persona" by "hupostasis." It is not probable, since in the so-called Creed of Sardica he used hupostasis as = ousia (substantia). That his main catchword was mia ousia follows from what he says in his letter to Narcissus of Neronias (Euseb. c. Marcell., p. 25).
[139] This is what the Nicene Creed was primarily intended to be, and not a baptismal creed, as the anathemas prove.
[140] Theouas of Marmarika and Secundus of Ptolemais refused and were deposed and banished, and the same thing happened in the case of Arius and some presbyters. Arius was specially forbidden by the Council to enter Alexandria, Sozom I. 20. The evasions to which the Lucianists and Origenists had recourse in order to justify their conduct to themselves, can be studied in the letter of Eusebius to his Church. Eusebius interprets "ek tes ousias tou patros" as equal to "He has His existence from the Father" (!), "gennethenta ou poiezenta" as equivalent to "the Son is not a creature like the rest of the creatures", homoousios as homoiousios, meaning mono to patri to gegennekoti kata panta tropon omoios and not out of a foreign substance. The worst shift of all is undoubtedly when Eusebius writes to his Church that he has (now) rejected the formula en pote hote ouk en, because we ought not to use any unbiblical expressions whatsoever (but Homoousios!) and because the Son did indeed exist already before His incarnation. But that was not the point at all! Peponthe ti deinon, says Athanasius (de decret. 3), with justice, of this passage in the letter.
[141] They afterwards asserted no doubt that they had not subscribed the anathemas, but only the positive doctrine of the Nicene Creed (Socr. I. 14). However, Eusebius of Nicomedia and Theognis of Nicæa a were, notwithstanding this, banished soon after; they were suspected by the Emperor of being Arians and intriguers; see the strongly hostile letter of Constantine in Theodoret I. 19.
[142] Socr. I. 9; those with Arian books in their possession were even to be punished with death.
[143] L.c. Other writings of Constantine in the same place. The synodal-epistle in Theodoret I. 9, Gwatkin, p. 50, has proved that in the respect shewn by Athanasius for the Nicene Council there is no trace "of the mechanical theory of conciliar infallibility." It is necessary to guard against exaggerated ideas of the extent to which the decree of the Nicene Council was accepted. It can be proved that in the East (see e.g., Aphraates' Homilies) and still more in the West, there were numerous bishops who did not trouble themselves about the decree and for whom it had no existence. It was not till after the year 350 that men began to think over the Nicene Creed in the West, and to perceive that it contained more than a mere confirmation of the ancient Western belief in the doctrine of monarchy.
[144] The victory of the Bishop of Alexandria may be studied above all in the Canons of Nicæa. They have not so far been treated of from this point of view. __________________________________________________________________
2. TO THE DEATH OF CONSTANTIUS. [145]
Never again in the history of the Church has there been a victory so complete and so quickly secured as that at Nicæa, and no other decision of the Church approaches it in importance. The victors had the feeling that they had set up for all ages [146] a "warning notice against all heresies" (stelographia kata pason haireseon), and this estimate of the victory has continued to be the prevailing one in the Church. [147] The grand innovation, the elevation of two unbiblical expressions to the rank of catchwords of the Catholic Faith, insured the unique nature of this Faith. At bottom not only was Arianism rejected, but also Origenism; for the exclusive Homoousios separated the Logos from all spiritual creatures and seemed thus to do away with scientific cosmology in every form.
But it was just because of this that the strife now began. The Nicene Creed effected in the East a hitherto unprecedented concord, but this was amongst its opponents, while its friends, on the other hand, felt no genuine enthusiasm for its subtle formulae. The schismatic Meletians of Egypt made common cause with the Arians and Origenists; those of the bishops who were indifferent or stupid were induced to oppose it by the bugbear of Sabellianism and by the unbiblical shape in which the new faith was formulated. Society was still for the most part heathen, and this heathen society openly sided with the anti-Nicenes; the Jews too, who were still influential, ranged themselves on this side. The clever sophist Asterius was able, as "travelling professor", to interest large numbers in "the one Unbegotten". But, above all, the two Eusebiuses sought again to be masters of the situation. The one necessarily strove in the first instance to regain his seat, the other to make the weight of his untouched personal authority once more felt in theology also. What their mutual relationship was is not clear; in any case they marched separately and struck unitedly. [148] The Nicomedian always thought first of himself and then of his cause; the Bishop of Cæsarea saw science and theology disappear in the movement which received its impulse from Alexandria. Both, however, had made up their minds not to part company with the Emperor if they could not otherwise succeed in managing him. The great mass of the bishops always were, in accordance with this policy, purely "imperial". With regard to the strict Arians, however, it must be admitted to their credit that during the whole controversy they were as little willing to accept as authoritative the decisions of the Emperors in matters of faith as were Athanasius, Hilary, and Lucifer.
When Constantine interfered in the great controversy, he had only just come to the East. He was under the guidance of Western bishops, and it was Western Christianity alone with which he had hitherto been acquainted. And so after an abortive attempt to compose the controversy, he had accomplished the "work of peace" at Nicæa in accordance with Western views. But already during the years which immediately followed he must have learned that the basis upon which he had reared it was too narrow, that, above all, it did not meet the requirements of the "common sense" of the East. As a politician he was prudent enough not to take any step backward, but, on the other hand, as a politician he knew that every law gets its meaning quite as much from the method in which it is carried out as from the letter of it. Feeling this--to which has to be added the presence of Arian influences at the Court--he had since about the year 328 resolved, under cover of the Nicene Creed, to reinstate the broader doctrinal system of older days whose power he had first got to know in Asia, in order to preserve the unity of the Church which was endangered. [149] But Constantine did not get the length of doing anything definite and conclusive. He merely favoured the anti-Nicene coalition to such an extent that he left to his sons a ruptured Church in place of a united one. The anti-Nicene coalition, however, had already become during the last years of Constantine's life an anti-Athanasian one. On the eighth of June, 328, Athanasius, not without opposition on the part of the Egyptian bishops,
[150] had mounted the Episcopal throne in Alexandria. The tactics of the coalition were directed first of all towards the removal of the main defenders of the Nicene faith, and it was soon recognised that the youthful bishop of Alexandria was the most dangerous of these. Intrigues and slanders of the lowest kind now began to come into play, and the conflict was carried on sometimes by means of moral charges of the worst kind, and sometimes by means of political calumnies. The easily excited masses were made fanatical by the coarse abuse and execrations of the opponents, and the language of hate which hitherto had been bestowed on heathen, Jews, and heretics, filled the churches. The catchwords of the doctrinal formula, which were unintelligible to the laity and indeed even to most of the bishops themselves, were set up as standards, and the more successful they were in keeping up the agitation the more surely did the pious-minded turn away from them and sought satisfaction in asceticism and polytheism in a Christian garb. In every diocese, however, personal interests, struggles about sees and influence, were mixed up with the controversy, and this was the case in the West too, especially in Rome, as we may gather from the events of the year 366. Thus a series of bloody town-revolutions accompanied the movement.
In the midst of all this Athanasius alone in the East stood like a rock in the sea. If we measure him by the standard of his time we can discover nothing ignoble or mean about him. The favourite charge of hierarchical imperiousness has something naïve about it. His stern procedure in reference to the Meletians was a necessity, and an energetic bishop who had to represent a great cause could not be anything else but imperious. It is certainly undeniable that for years he was formally in the wrong, inasmuch as he would not admit the validity of his deposition. He regarded it as the task committed to him, to rule Egypt, to regulate the Church of the East in accordance with the standard of the true faith, and to ward off any interference on the part of the State. He was a Pope, as great and as powerful a one as there ever has been.
When the sons of Constantine entered upon the inheritance of their father, the heads of the Nicene party in the East had been deposed or exiled; Arius, however, was dead. [151] The exiled bishops in accordance with a resolution [152] come to in common by the Emperors, were free to return as a body. This was the case in the latter part of the autumn of 337. But as soon as Constantius became master in his own domain he continued the policy of his father. He wished to rule the Church as the latter had done; he perceived that this was possible in the East only if the Nicene innovation, or at least the exclusive application of it, were got rid of, and he did not feel himself bound to the Nicene Creed as his father had done. One cannot but admit that the youthful monarch shewed statesmanlike insight and acted with energy, and with all his devotion to the Church he never allowed churchmen to rule as his brother did. He had not, however, the patience and moderation of his father, and though he had indeed inherited from the latter the gift of ruling, he had not got from him the art of managing men by gentle force. The brutal trait which Constantine knew how to keep in check in himself, appeared in an undisguised fashion in his son, and the development of the Emperor into an Oriental despot advanced a stage further in Constantius. [153] First of all, Paul of Constantinople was deposed for the second time; Eusebius of Nicomedia at last secured the seat he had so long striven after. Eusebius of Cæsarea died, and his place was taken by a man deserving of little respect, Acacius, a friend of the Arians. The tumults which took place in Egypt after the return of Athanasius made it easier for his enemies, who regarded him as deposed and once more pronounced the sentence of deposition at a Synod in Antioch, to move the Emperor to proceed against him. His energetic conduct in his diocese and the violence of his Egyptian friends (Apol. c. Arian. 3-19) aggravated the situation. Constantius listened to the Eusebians, but did not sanction the choice of Bishop Pistus whom they had set apart for Alexandria. He decreed the deposition of Athanasius, and sent as bishop to Alexandria, a certain Gregory, a Cappadocian who had nothing to commend him save the imperial favour. Athanasius anticipated a violent expulsion by leaving Alexandria--in the spring of 339. He betook himself to Rome, leaving his diocese behind him in a state of wild uproar.
The Eusebians were now masters of the situation, but just because of this they had a difficult task to perform. What had now to be done was to get the Nicene Creed actually out of the way, or to render it ineffective by means of a new formula. This could only be done in conjunction with the West, and it would have to be done in such a way that they should neither seem to be giving the lie to their own vote in Nicæa--and therefore they would have to make it appear that they were attacking only the form and not the contents of the confession--nor seem to the Church in the West to be proclaiming a new faith. It is in the light of these facts that we are to regard the symbols of Antioch and the negotiations with Julius of Rome. They found themselves shut up in a position from which they could not escape without a certain amount of evasion. The faith of Athanasius must not be attacked any more than that of the Westerns. [154] The condemnation of the great bishop had thus always throughout to be based on personal accusations. As regards the doctrinal question, the whole stress had to be laid on getting the Homousios put quietly aside, on the ground that it was unbiblical and gave an inlet to Sabellianism. In this respect the doctrine of Marcellus of Ancyra was very welcome to the Eusebians, for they sought, not without justice, to shew from it to what destructive results a theology which based itself on the Homousios must lead. [155] But the Roman bishop was not to be corrupted, he did not even sacrifice Marcellus; and the creeds of Antioch which were not actually heterodox, but which were not sincere, did not at all meet with his approval. He did not concern himself with the attempt, justifiable from the point of view of the Orientals and of Constantius, to create for the East a doctrinal form of expression which was more in accordance with the convictions of the majority. The most important result of the operations of the Eusebians at Antioch, and the one which was of the greatest consequence, was that they had to bring themselves to renounce Arianism in order to gain over the West. Arianism was now condemned on all sides in the Church; nevertheless the Eusebians did not attain their aim. [156]
During the following years Constantius' hands were tied by the Persian war, and he was forced to keep on good terms with his brother so as to avoid having trouble on the western boundary of his kingdom also. At the same time, just after the death of Eusebius of Nicomedia, which took place in the autumn of 342, the party amongst the conservatives of the East who, partly no doubt for political reasons, were actually set on coming to an agreement with the West, gained the lead. A general Council which was summoned by Constans to meet at Sardica in the summer of 343 and was approved of by Constantius, was to restore the unity of the Church. But the Western bishops, about a hundred in number, rejected the preliminary demand of the Eastern bishops for the deposition of Athanasius and Marcellus, both of whom were present in Sardica; pronounced sentence of deposition upon the leaders of the Orientals after the exodus of the latter; after an investigation declared the bishops attacked to be innocent, that is to say, orthodox; avowed their belief in the Nicene Creed, and under the guidance of Hosius took up the most rigid attitude possible on the doctrinal question. [157] In opposition to this the bishops, who met together in the neighbouring Philippopolis, framed a circular letter, dated from Sardica, in which they set forth the illegality of the procedure of their opponents, and confessed the faith in terms essentially identical with those of the fourth formula of Antioch. [158]
The endeavours of Constantius to give efficacy [159] to the resolutions of his bishops fell through; in fact, the shameless attempt to set a trap for the two Western bishops sent as a deputation from Sardica to Constantius and provided with a letter of introduction from Constans, and who were to try and effect the recall of the banished bishops, turned out to their advantage. [160] Constantius, so at least it seems, had not for a while any real confidence in his own party; or was it that he was afraid to rouse his brother? In a long-winded formula drawn up at Antioch in the summer of 344 they once more sought to hint to the West their orthodoxy and to suggest the minimum of their demands. [161] The Church in the West, it is true, rejected at both the Councils held at Milan in the years 345 and 347, the teaching of Photinus of Sirmium, who, in a surprising fashion, had developed an Adoptian doctrinal system out of the doctrine of Marcellus, [162] but otherwise remained firm; and the ship of the Eusebians already appeared to be in so great danger that its two chief pilots, Ursacius and Valens, preferred to go over to the opposite party and to make their peace with Athanasius.
[163] Constantius, very sorely pressed by the Persians, sought to have peace in the Church at any price and even granted the prayer of his brother's protégé, Athanasius, and allowed him to return to Alexandria (in October 346), where Gregory meanwhile had died (in June 345 [164] ). The bishop got an enthusiastic welcome in his city. The protest of the Eastern Council at Sirmium--the first Council of Sirmium--had no effect. A large number of the Eastern bishops were themselves tired of the controversy, and it almost looked as if the refusal of the West to condemn Marcellus together with the word homoousios, now virtually constituted the only stone of offence. [165]
But the death of Constans in 350 and the overthrow of the usurper Magnentius in 353 changed everything. If in these last years Constantius had been compelled by the necessities of the situation to submit to the bishops, his own subjects, who had ruled his deceased brother, now that he was sole sovereign he was more than ever resolved to govern the Church and to pay back the humiliations which he had undergone. [166] Already in the year 351 the Easterns had at Sirmium--the second Council--again agreed upon taking common action, and Ursacius and Valens promptly rejoined them. [167] The great thing now was to humiliate the stubborn West. Constantius set about the task with wisdom, but what he wanted done he carried out by the sheer force of terror. He demanded only the condemnation of Athanasius, his mortal enemy, as a rebel, and purposely put the doctrinal question in the background. He forced the Western bishops, at Arles in 353 and at Milan in 355, to agree to this, by terrorising the Councils. The moral overthrow of the Westerns was scarcely less complete than that of the Easterns at Nicæa. Though the great majority were unaware of the struggle and were not forced to adopt a new confessional formula, still the fact could not be concealed from those who better understood the state of things, that the projected condemnation of Athanasius meant something more than a personal question. The few bishops who refused were deposed and exiled. [168] The order for his deposition was communicated to Athanasius in February 356. Yielding only to force, he made his escape into the desert where the Emperor could not reach him. Egypt was in a state of rebellion, but the revolt was put down by the Emperor with blood. [169] The unity of the Church was restored; above all, it was once more brought under the imperial sway. And now, forsooth, the orthodox bishops who had formerly secured so much by the help of Constans began to recollect that the Emperor and the State ought not to meddle with religion. Constantius became "Antichrist" for those who would have lauded him as they had his father and his brother, if he had given them the help of his arm. [170]
But the political victory of the Eastern bishops directly led to their disunion; for it was only under the tyranny of the West and in the fight against Athanasius and the word "homoousios" that they had become united. Above all, Arianism in its rigid, aggressive form again made its appearance. Aëtius and Eunomius, two theologians of spirit who had been trained in the Aristotelian dialectic, and were opponents of Platonic speculation, expressed its tenets in the plainest possible way, would have nothing to do with any mediation, and had no scruple in openly proclaiming the conversion of religion into morality and syllogistic reasoning. The formula which they and their followers, Aëtians, Eunomians, Exukontians, Heterousiasts, Anomoeans, defended, ran thus: "heterotes kat' ousian", "anomoios kai kata panta kai kat' ousian" ("different in substance", "unlike in everything and also in substance"). If they allowed that the Son perfectly knows the Father, this was not in any way a concession, but an expression of the thought that there is no kind of mystery about the Godhead, which on the contrary can be perfectly known by every rightly instructed man. And so too the statement that the Logos had his superior dignity from the date of his creation, and did not first get it by being tested, was not intended at all as a weakening of the Arian dogma, but as an expression of the fact that God the Creator has assigned its limit to every being.
[171] The great majority of the Eastern bishops, for whom the Origenistic formula in very varied combinations were authoritative, were opposed to this party. The old watchword, however, "the unchangeable image", which was capable of different interpretations, now received in opposition to Arianism, in its strict form, and on the basis of the formula of Antioch, more and more a precise signification as implying that the Son is of like nature with the Father in respect of substance also, and not only in respect of will (homoios kata panta kai kata ten ousian), and that his begetting is not an act at all identical with creation. The likeness of the qualities of Son and Father was more and more recognised here; on the other hand, the substantial unity was disallowed, so as to avoid getting on the track of Marcellus; i.e., these theologians did not, like Athanasius, advance from the unity to the mystery of the duality, but, on the contrary, still started from the duality and sought to reach the unity by making Father and Son perfectly co-ordinate. They therefore still had a Theos deuteros, and in accordance with this excluded the idea of full community of substance. The leaders of these Homoiousians, also called semi-Arians, were George of Laodicea, [172] Eustathius of Sebaste, Eusebius of Emesa, Basilius of Ancyra, and others.
The point of supreme importance with the Emperor necessarily was to maintain intact the unity between those who up till now had been united, but this was all the more difficult as the Homoiousians more and more developed their doctrinal system in such a way that their ideas came to have weight even with those Westerns who lingered in exile in the East and whose theology was on Nicene lines. [173] Some bishops who were devoted to Constantius and who represented simply and solely the interests of the Emperor and of the Empire, now sought by means of a formula of the most indefinite possible character to unite Arians and semi-Arians. These were Ursacius, Valens, Acacius of Cæsarea, and Eudoxius of Antioch. If up till 356 the Nicene Creed had, strictly speaking, been merely evaded, now at last a Confession was to be openly brought forward in direct opposition to the Nicene Creed. Simple likeness of nature was to be the dogmatic catchword, all more definite characterisations being omitted, and in support of this, appeal was made to the insoluble mystery presented by the Holy Scriptures (homoios kata tas graphas--like according to the Scriptures). This ingenious formula, along with which, it is true, was a statement expressly emphasising the subordination, left it free to every one to have what ideas he chose regarding the extent of the qualities of Father and Son, which were thus declared to be of like kind. The relative homoios did not necessarily exclude the relative anomoios, but neither did it exclude the homoiousios. Already at the third Council of Sirmium (357), after Constantius, on a visit to Rome, had overthrown his enemies, a formula was set forth by the Western bishops of as conciliatory a character so far as Arianism was concerned as could possibly be conceived. It was proclaimed in presence of the Emperor, who under the influence of his consort came more and more to have Arian sympathies. This is the second Sirmian formula. [174] But the bishops assembled at Ancyra did not acquiesce in the move towards the Left (358). [175] What a change! Easterns now defended purity of doctrine against Arianising Westerns! A deputation from this Council succeeded in paralysing the influence of the Arians with Constantius, and in asserting at the Fourth Council of Sirmium, in 358, their fundamental principles to which the Emperor lent the weight of his authority. [176] But the triumph of the Homoiousians led by Basilius Ancyranus was of short duration. The Emperor saw that the Church could not be delivered up either to Nicæans, to semi-Arians, or to Arians. The alliance between the two first mentioned, which was so zealously pushed on by Hilary, was not yet perfect. A grand Council was to declare the imperial will, and Homoiousians and Arians vied with each other in their efforts to get influencing it. The Homoeans alone, however, both in their character as leaders and as led, concurred with the Emperor's views. They were represented by Ursacius, Valens, Marcus of Arethusa, Auxentius of Milan, and Germinius of Sirmium. The fourth Sirmian formula (359), an imperial cabinet-edict and a political masterpiece, was intended to embody what was to be laid before the Council. [177] The latter was summoned to meet at Rimini and Seleucia because the circumstances in the East and West respectively differed so very much. In May 359 more than four hundred Western bishops assembled at Rimini. They were instructed to treat only of matters relating to the Faith and not to leave the Council till the unity aimed at had been attained. But the Emperor's confidants failed to induce the great majority of the members to accept the Sirmian formula. The bishops, on the contrary, took their stand on the basis of the Nicene Creed which had been abandoned during these last years, rejected Arianism and declared its friends deposed. But when they sought by means of a Deputation to get the Emperor to give his sanction to their decisions, they did not get a hearing. The Deputation was not admitted to the Emperor's presence, was at first detained and then conducted to Nice in Thrace, where the members at last shewed themselves docile enough to sign a formula--the formula of Nice--which was undoubtedly essentially identical with the Confession which the Westerns had themselves drawn up two years earlier at Sirmium, at the third Synod in 357--("the Son is like the Father [kata panta is omitted] according to the Scriptures"). Armed with this document Ursacius and Valens made their way to Rimini, taking the deputies with them, and by means of threats and persuasions finally induced the Assembly there to accept the formula into which one could indeed read the Homoiousia, but not the Homousia. In the autumn of 359 the Eastern Synod met at Seleucia. The Homoiousians, with whom some Niceans already made common cause, had the main say. Still the minority led by Acacius and Eudoxius, which defended the Sirmian formula and clung to the likeness while limiting it, however, to the will, was not an insignificant one. There was an open rupture in the Synod. The majority finally deposed the heads of the opposition-party. [178] But as regards the East as well, the decision lay with the court. [179] The Emperor, importuned on all sides, had resolved to abandon the strict Arians, and accordingly Aëtius was banished and his Homoean friends had to leave him, but he was also determined to dictate the formula of Nice to the Easterns too.
[180] Their representatives finally condescended to recognise the formula, and this event was announced at the Council of Constantinople in 360, and the Homoean Confession was once more formulated. [181] Although the new Imperial Confession involved the exclusion of the extreme Left, this did not constitute its peculiar significance. Had it actually been what it appeared to be, a formula of union for all who rejected the unlikeness, it would not have been something to be condemned, from the standpoint of the State at all events. But in the following year it was recklessly used as a weapon against the Homoiousians. [182] They had to vacate all positions of influence, and by way of making up for what had been done to the one Aëtius, who had been sacrificed, his numerous friends were installed as bishops. [183] Under cover of the "likeness in nature" a mild form of Arianism was actually established in the Church, modified chiefly only by the absence of principle. In Gaul alone did the orthodox bishops once more bestir themselves after Julian had in January 360 been proclaimed Augustus at Paris. [184] Constantius died in November 361, during the campaign against the rebels. __________________________________________________________________
[145] In what follows I give merely a sketch; the details belong to Church history.
[146] Athanas. ad Afros II. and elsewhere.
[147] Up to time of the Chalcedonian Creed the conceptions Homoousia and Orthodoxy were quite identical; the latter involved no more than the former. Thus the orthodoxy of Origen is for Socrates (VI. 13) undoubted, just because none of his four chief opponents (Methodius, Eustathius, Apollinaris, and Theophilus) charge him with heresy in reference to his doctrine of the Trinity.
[148] The best investigation regarding Eusebius of Nicomedia is contained in the article in the Dict. of Chr. Biogr. We know Eusebius, it is true, almost exclusively from the picture which his opponents have drawn of him. But in his actions he has portrayed himself as an imperious prince of the Church of a secular type, for whom all means were justifiable.
[149] If Eusebius is right the Emperor had already at Nice also advocated a broad application of the orthodox formula.
[150] The matter, so far as the particulars are concerned, is quite obscure.
[151] The dates put shortly are as follows. Some three years after the Nicene Council, years which for us are absolutely dark (the letter of Constantine in Gelas., Hist. Conc. Nic. III. I is probably not genuine), Constantine begins to turn round. (Was this owing to the influence of Constantia and her court-clergyman?) The recall of Arius, Eusebius of Nicom. and Theognis (the latter's letter in Socrat. I. 14, is perhaps not genuine). Eusebius gains a decisive influence over the Emperor. At an Antioch synod 330. Eustathius of Antioch, one of the chief champions of the Nicene Creed is deposed (for adultery) at the instigation of the two Eusebiuses. Arius presents to the Emperor a diplomatically composed confession of faith which satisfies him, (Socr.
I. 26) is completely rehabilitated, and demands of Athanasius that he be allowed to resume his position in Alexandria. Athanasius refuses, and succeeds in making good his refusal and in clearing himself from the personal charges brought against him on the part of the Eusebians. At the Synod of Tyre 335 (not 336) held under the presidency of the Church historian Eusebius, the coalition nevertheless succeeds in passing a resolution for the deposition of Athanasius on account of certain alleged gross excesses, and in persuading the Emperor to proceed against him as a disturber of the peace, and this spite of the fact that in the year 334 Athanasius, in opposition to the Synod of Cæsarea, had convinced the Emperor of his perfect innocence and of the base intrigues of the Meletian bishops. Athanasius notwithstanding this succeeded a second time in inducing the Emperor to give his case an impartial trial, by hastening to Constantinople and making a personal statement to the Emperor, who was taken by surprise. His opponents, who had meanwhile been commanded to go from Tyre to Jerusalem, now expressly declared that the doctrinal explanations given by Arius and his friends were sufficient, and already made preparations for burying the Nicene Creed in their pretentious assembly, and also for bringing to trial Marcellus, the friend of Athanasius. They were, however, summoned by the Emperor to come to Constantinople and to carry on their deliberations. Only the worst of Athanasius' opponents complied with this demand, and they succeeded by bringing forward new accusations (at the beginning of the year 336), in inducing the Emperor to banish Athanasius (to Trier). Still it is at least doubtful if the Emperor did not wish him to escape for a while from his enemies. His chair in any case was not filled. Marcellus, who had also appealed to the Emperor, was deposed and condemned on account of erroneous doctrine. The solemn induction of Arius into his Church--against the wish of the bishop, Alexander of Constantinople--was immediately robbed of its significance by his sudden death. The Emperor sought to carry on his energetic peace-policy by the banishment of other "disturbers of the peace," such as the Meletian leading spirit, and Paulus, the newly elected bishop of Constantinople. He died, however, in May 337, in his own opinion in the undoubted Nicene faith. His son maintained that he had himself further resolved on the restitution of Athanasius. Sources: besides the Church historians and Epiphanius, chiefly Athan. Apolog. c. Arian.; in addition, the Festival letters, the Hist. Arian. ad monach. de morte Arii ad Serapionem, Ep. ad epp. Æg. 19, and Euseb., Vita Constant. IV.
[152] On this resolution see Schiller II., p. 277 f.
[153] The best characterisation is in Ranke IV., p. 35 ff.; see also Krüger, Lucifer, p. 4 ff., Gwatkin, p. 109 sq., Schiller II., p. 245 ff.
[154] This explains why the canons of the Synod of Antioch came to enjoy a high reputation and why Hilary (de synod. 32) designated the assembly a synodus sanctorum.' All the same such a description is not quite intelligible; we know too little both of the character and of the proceedings of the Synod.
[155] Marcellus is an extremely interesting phenomenon in the history of theology; he did not, however, succeed in effecting any change in the history of dogma or in creating any noteworthy number of followers. At the Council of Nicæa he belonged to the few who zealously championed the Homousios (Apol. c. Arian. 23, 32). After the Council he was, besides Eustathius, at first the sole literary representative of orthodoxy, since he wrote a comprehensive treatise peri hupotages by way of reply to the work of the Arian Asterius. This work, in which he defends the unity of substance of the Logos, drew upon him from the dominant party the accusation of Sabellianism and Samosatenism. His case was dealt with at the Councils of Tyre, Jerusalem, and Constantinople, since he also personally defended Athanasius and opposed the restoration of Arius. Spite of his appeal to the Emperor he was at Constantinople deprived of his office as a teacher of erroneous doctrine, another bishop was sent to Ancyra, and Eusebius of Cæsarea endeavoured in two works (c. Marcell., de ecclesiast. theolog.) to refute him. These works are for us the source for the teaching of Marcellus. Marcellus did not recognise the common doctrinal basis of Arianism and orthodoxy; he went back behind the traditional teaching of Origen, like Paui of Samosata, and consequently got rid of the element which caused the trouble to Arianism and, in a higher degree, to orthodoxy. His doctrinal system presents, on the one hand, certain points of agreement with that of the old Apologists, though these are more apparent than real, and on the other with that of Irenmus; still it cannot be proved that there is any literary dependence. Marcellus was at one with Arius in holding that the conceptions "Son", "begotten" etc., involve the subordination of the being thus designated. But just because of this he rejected these conceptions as being inapplicable to the divine in Christ. He clearly perceived that the prevalent theology was on a wrong track owing to its implication with philosophy; he wished to establish a purely biblical system of doctrine and sought to shew that these conceptions are all used in the Scriptures in reference to the incarnate one, the view of most in the older days, e.g., Ignatius. The Scripture supplies only one conception to express the eternal-divine in Christ, that of the Logos (the Logos is image or type only in connection with man created in his image): the Logos is the indwelling power in God, which has manifested itself in the creation of the world as dunamis drastike, in order then for the first time to become personal with the view of saving and perfecting the human race. Thus the Logos is in and for itself, in its essential nature, the unbegotten reason of God indwelling in God from all eternity and absolutely inseparable from him; it begins its actuality in the creation of the world, but it first becomes a personal manifestation distinct from God in the incarnation, through which the Logos as the image of the invisible God becomes visible. In Christ consequently the Logos has become a person and son of God--a person who is as surely homoousios to Theo as he is the active working of God Himself. After the work has been completed, however, the Son subordinates Himself to the Father in such a way that God is again all in all, since the hypostatic form of the Logos now ceases (hence the title of M.'s work: peri hupotages; the idea is an old one, see Vol. II.). M. confessed that he did not know what became of the humanity of Christ. The stumbling-blocks which this system presented to that age were (1) that
M. called only the incarnate one Son of God, (2) that he taught no real pre-existence, (3) that he assumed the Kingdom of Christ would have an end, and (4) that he spoke of an extension of the indivisible monad. Marcellus having been recalled (337) and then expelled again from his diocese (338), like Athanasius, betook himself to Rome, and by means of a confession in which he disguised his doctrine, induced Bishop Julius to recognise his orthodoxy. (The confession is in the letter to Julius in Epiph. H. 72. 2: Zahn, Marcell. p. 70 f., vainly attempts to dispute the fact of a "disguising." In the letter he avows his belief in the Roman Creed also.) The Roman synod of the year 340 declared him to be sound in the faith. It scarcely fully understood the case; what is of much more importance is that Athanasius and consequently also the Council of Sardica did not abandon Marcellus, and the Council indeed remarked that the Eusebians had taken as a positve statement what he had uttered only tentatively (zeton). That Athanasius spite of all remonstrances should have pronounced Marcellus orthodox, is a proof that his interest in the matter was confined to one point, and centred in the godhead of the historical Jesus Christ as resting upon the unity of substance with God. Where he saw that this was recognised, he allowed freedom of thought on other points. At a later period, it is true, when it became possible still more to discredit Marcellus through his pupil Photinus, there was a disagreement of a temporary kind between him and Athanasius. Athanasius is said to have refused to have intercourse with him and Marcellus is said to have dropped him. Athanasius also combatted the theology of M. (Orat. c. Arian. IV), though he afterwards again recognised the truth of his faith. Epiphanius informs us (72. 4) that he once put some questions to the aged Athanasius regarding M.: Ho de oute huperapelogesato, oute palin pros auton apechthos henechthe, monon de dia tou prosopou meidiasas hupephene , mochtherias me makran auton einai, kai hos apologesamenon eiche. Marcellus' followers in Ancyra also possessed at a later date an epistle of Athanasius (Epiph. 72. 11) which was favourable to them. The East, however, stuck firmly to the condemnation of Marcellus, and so too did the Cappadocians at a later period--a proof this also of a radical difference between them and Athanasius The further history of this matter has no place here (see Zahn op. cit. and Möller, R.-Encykl., 2nd Ed., p. 281 f.). Marcellus died in the year 373, close on a hundred years old, after that his theology had repeatedly done good service to the opponents of orthodoxy, without, however, helping them to discredit Athanasius.
[156] The negotiations between Bishop Julius and the Eusebians assembled at Antioch (Rom. Council, autumn 340 Council at Antioch, summer and autumn 341) are from the point of view of Church politics of great significance, and more particularly the letter of Bishop Julius to the Eusebians after the Roman Council (Apol. c. Arian. 21) is a masterpiece. But we cannot enter on this matter here. The four formula of Antioch (it is to them that the reproach brought by Athanasius against his opponents chiefly refers--namely, that they betrayed their uncertainty by the new forms of faith they were constantly publishing see de decret. 1: de synod. 22--23: Encycl. ad epp. Ægypt. 7 sq.: Ep. ad. Afros 23) are in Athan., de synod. 22 sq. (Hahn § 84, 115, 85, 86). There are some good remarks in Gwatkin, p. 114 sq. The zealous efforts made by the Eusebians to arrive at a harmonious agreement with the West were probably closely connected also with the general political situation. After the fall of Constantine II. (spring 340) Constans had promptly made himself master of the whole of his brother's domain Constantius, whose attention was claimed by severe and incessant wars on the eastern boundary, was unable to hinder this. From the year 340 Constans thus had the decisive preponderance in the Empire. The first Antiochian formula still supports Arius, though with the odd qualification that those who were in favour of him had not followed him (pos gar episkopoi ontes akolouthesan presbutero), but had tested his teaching: it limits itself to describing the Son as monogene, pro panton ton aionon huparchonta kai sunonta to gegennekoti auton patri, but it already contains the anti-Marcellian proposition descriptive of the Son: diamenonta basilea kai Theon eis tous aionas. The second, so-called Lucian, formula already gathers together all designations for the Son which could possibly be used of His Godhead from an Origenistic standpoint (above all, monogene Theon, Theon ek Theou, atrepton te kai analloioton, tes theoteros ousias te kai boules kai dunameos kai doxes tou patros aparallakton eikona, Theon logon); it then adopts once more the addition which Eusebius had appended to the outline of his belief presented at Nicæa (see p. 52), and formulates the following proposition against Marcellus; ton onomaton ouch haplos oude argos keimenon semainonton akribos ten oikeian hekastou ton onomazomenon hupostasin (N.B. = ousian) kai taxin kai doxan, hos einai te men hupostasei tria, te de sumphonia hen; but on the other hand, without mentioning Arius, it expressly rejects the Arian catchwords objected to at Nicæa. The third, submitted by the Bishop of Tyana, has a still stronger anti-Marcellan colouring (I. Chr. onta pros ton Theon en hupostasei . . . menonta eis tous aionas), repudiates Marcellus, Sabellius, and Paul of Samosata by name, but otherwise in place of all other possible designations it has the Nicene sounding: Theon teleion ek Theou teleiou. At length the fourth formula, drawn up some months later, became the final one. It is constructed as far as possible on the model of the Nicene Creed; at the end too some Arian catchwords are expressly condemned. The most important propositions run thus: kai eis ton monogene autou huion, ton kurion hemon I. Chr., ton pro panton ton aionon ek tou patros gennethenta, Theon ek Theou, phos ek photos . . . logon onta kai sophian kai dunamin kai zoen kai phos alethinon, at the close of this section (against Marcellus): hou basileia akatalutos ousa diamenei eis tous apeirous aionas; estai gar kathezomenos en dexia tou patros ou monon en to aioni touto, alla kai en to mellonti. All four formulæ have this in common, that they are compatible with the theology of Origen; the three last, that Arianism in the strict sense is repudiated. The fourth was communicated to the Emperor Constans by a deputation in Gaul. For the rest it ought not to be forgotten that the Eusebians formally adhered to the basis of the Nicene Creed; see Hefele I., p. 502 ff.
[157] Sardica was situated in the territory of Constans. The most influential of the Eastern bishops were present. Hosius took the lead. (Histor. Arian 15.) The formal restatement of the Nicene Creed desired by some of them was not proceeded with. (Athan. Tom. ad Antioch. 5 against Socrates II., 20); but the description of the Faith which will be found at the close of the encyclical letter, although it is not to be regarded as an official declaration, is a document whose importance has hitherto not been sufficiently recognised. It originated with Hosius and Protogenes of Sardica, and is the most unambiguous expression of the Western view in the matter, so unambiguous that for the moment it seemed even to the orthodox Orientals themselves to be questionable (the formula is in Theodoret II. 8, lat. translation discovered by Maffei). It is here first of all that the proposition is found: mian hupostasin, hen autoi hoi hairetikoi ousian prosagoreuousi (for hupostasin we have in the Latin "substantiam" ), tou patros kai tou huiou kai tou hagiou pneumatos. Kai ei zetoien, tis tou huiou he hupostasis estin, homologoumen hos haute en he mone tou patros homologoumene. In the second place the doctrine of the Son is put in such a way that one can very easily understand how the Westerns refused to condemn Marcellus; there are turns of expression which approach the doctrine of Marcellus. (A comparison with the Christology of Prudentius is instructive in this connection.) Ursacius and Valens amongst others were declared deposed. Their bishoprics were situated in the territory of Constans, but they were of an Arian way of thinking. Eefele, op. cit. p. 533 ff., treats in great detail the canons and acts of the Council.
[158] Above all, the Eusebians repeated their old statement that the decrees of deposition pronounced by Councils in reference to bishops are irrevocable. So too they held to the charges against Marcellus (of erroneous doctrine) and against Athanasius (of flagrant abuse of his power). There is a wish to introduce something entirely new, "ut orientales episcopi ab occidentalibus judicarentur"; but whoever holds by Marcellus and Athanasius let him be Anathema. The doctrinal formula (Hilarius Fragm. III. and de synod, 34) differs little from the fourth formula of Antioch and thus condemns Arianism. Formally the Easterns were in the right as regards Athanasius.
[159] Histor. Arian. 18, 19.
[160] Histor. Arian. 20; Theodoret II. 9, 10. Bishop Stephanus of Antioch, who had tried the trick, was deposed.
[161] Their motive in bringing forward the new formula was by almost completely meeting the demands of the Westerns in reference to the doctrinal question, to induce them to give way on the personal question. (Ekthesis macrostichos, see Athan., de synod. 26: Socrat II. 19). It begins with the fourth formula of Antioch, then follow detailed explanations of the faith as against the Arians, Sabellians, Marcellus, and Photinus who is mentioned here for the first time. Spite of the polemic against the proposition of Athanasius--who is, however, not mentioned by name--that the Son is begotten ou boulesei oude thelesei, this formula indicates the greatest approach conceivable on the part of the Eusebians towards meeting the views of their opponents. They emphasise in the strongest way the unity of the one Godhead (c. 4): oute men, tria homologountes pragmata kai tria prosopa (it has to be noticed that the bishops avoid the expression three "substances or hypostases" and use the Western prosopon which had been brought into discredit by Sabellius) tou patros kai tou huiou kai a. pneumatos kata tas graphas, treis dia touto Theous poioumen, and they expressed themselves in such a way in c. 9, that the words must pass for an unobjectionable paraphrase of the Homousios. They are practically the very same expressions as those used by Athanasius to describe the relation of Father and Son. "Homousios" is, however, wanting: but, on the other hand, we find here, so far as I know, for the first time: kata panta homoion. Socrates, II. 20, has candidly remarked on the formula macrostichos: tauta hoi kata ta hesperia mere episkopoi dia to alloglossous einai kai dia to me sunienai ou prosedechonto, arkein ten en Nikaia pistin legontes. On the Acts of a Synod at Köln, from which we gather that Bishop Euphrates of Köln who was sent to Antioch from Sardica, had afterwards fallen away to Arianism, see Rettberg (K.-G. Deutschlands, I., p. 123 ff.) and Hauck (K.-G. Deutschlands, I., p. 47 f.), who are opposed to their genuineness; Friedrich (K.-G. Deutschland, I., p. 277 f.) and Söder (Stud. u. Mitth. ans. d. Benedict. Orden, fourth year's issue, I., p. 295 f., II., p. 344 f., fifth year, I., p. 83 f.) who are in favour of it.
[162] Photinus of Sirmium, a fellow-countryman and pupil of Marcellus, developed the doctrinal system of the master in such a way as to represent even the energeia drastike of God as not assuming a concrete hypostatic form in Jesus Christ, (or if it did take a concrete form as a hypostasis, then this was a purely human one--the matter is not quite clear). He thus rigidly held fast the single personality of God, and accordingly, like Paul of Samosata, saw in Jesus a man miraculously born (Zahn, op. cit., p. 192 combats this; but neither is the evidence that Photinus denied the birth from the Virgin Mary certain enough, nor is it in itself credible that a catholic bishop in the fourth century should have departed so far from the tradition), predestined to his office by God, and who in virtue of his moral development has attained to divine honour. We thus have here the last inherently logical attempt to guard Christian monotheism, entirely to discard the philosophical Logos-doctrine, and to conceive of the Divine in Christ as a divine effect. But this attempt was no longer in harmony with the spirit of the age; Photinus was charged on all sides with teaching erroneous doctrine. His writings have disappeared: compare the scattered statements regarding him in Athanasius, Hilary, the Church historians, Epiph. H. 72 and the anathemas of various Councils, see also Vigilius Taps. adv. Arian., Sabell. et Photin.). The two Milan Councils, the date of which is not quite certain, condemned him, so too did a Sirmian Council of Eusebians which was perhaps held as early as 347. Still he remained in office till 351, held in high respect by his congregation. That the macrostic Confession of the Orientals ought not all the same to be accepted as so orthodox as it from its wording appears to be, is evident from the fact that the Eastern bishops who were deputed to take it to the West declined at Milan to condemn Arianism too. (Hilarius, Fragm. V.)
[163] For the documents relating to their conversion, which was hypocritical and dictated entirely by policy, and to their complete recognition of Athanasius, see Athanas. Apol. c. Arian. 58, Hilar., Fragm. II.
[164] Schiller (op. cit. p. 282). "As a matter of fact Constans wished to establish a kind of supremacy in relation to his brother, which in spiritual matters was to be exercised through the Bishop of Rome. Trusting to his support, deposed bishops on their own authority returned to their dioceses, without having received the sanction of the Emperor. The restoration of Athanasius resolved on by the Council was a direct interference with the sovereignty of Constantius . . . But Constans was able once more to make such a skilful use of the existing Persian difficulty that his brother yielded." The fact is that the recall of Athanasius was altogether forced upon Constantius; the relation of the great bishop to his Emperor at this time was not that of a subject, but that of a hostile power with which he had to treat. This is naturally glossed over in the papers issued by Constantius referring to the recall. It is specially characteristic that Athanasius did not personally present himself before Constantius till after repeated invitations; see, above all, Apol. c. Arian. 51-56, Hist. Arian. 21-23.
[165] A Council of Jerusalem held in 346 under Maximus actually recognised Athanasius as a member of the Church. (Apol. c. Arian. 57). Cyril's Catecheses shew the standpoint of the Oriental extreme Right; they are undoubtedly based on Orig. de princip.; but they faithfully express the Christological standpoint of the formula macrostichos; the homoousios only is wanting; as regards the matter of the Faith, Cyril is orthodox. The polemic directed against Sabellius and Marcellus (Catech. 15, 27) is severe and very bitter; Arianism is also refuted, but without any mention of names. Jews, Samaritans, and Manicheans are the chief opponents referred to, and Cyril is at great pains everywhere to adduce the biblical grounds for the formulæ which he uses. The Catecheses of Cyril are a valuable document in illustration of the fact that amongst the Eastern opponents of the Nicene formula there were bishops who, while fully recognising that Arianism was in the wrong, could not bring themselves to use a doctrinal formula which seemed to them a source of ceaseless strife and to be unbiblical besides.
[166] Schiller (p. 283 f.) supposes that Constantius was apprehensive before this that Athanasius would declare for Magnentius. Hence his friendly letter to Athanasius after the death of Constans, Hist. Arian. 24.
[167] Photinus was deposed here. The Creed of this Council, the first formula of Sirmium (in Athanas., de synod. 27, Hilar. de synod. 38 and Socr. II., 30), is identical with the Fourth Formula of Antioch, but numerous anathemas are added to it in which formulæ such as "two gods", (2), "platusmos tes ousias estin ho huios" (7), "logos endiathetos e prophorikos" (8) are condemned, and already several explanations of Bible passages are branded as heretical (11, 12, 14-18). The subordination of the Son is expressly (18) avowed in this Creed, which otherwise strongly resembles the Nicene Creed. The anathemas 20-23 have to do with the Holy Ghost. In No. 19 the formula hen prosopon is rejected. Nos. 12, 13, deny that the divine element in Christ is capable of suffering. One can see that new questions have emerged.
[168] Of the Western bishops--leaving out Pannonia--almost all were orthodox. The Councils--that of Arles was a provincial Council, that of Milan a General Council, but apparently badly attended--were also managed by the new Pope Liberius (since 352), but ended quite contrary to his will. The best description is in Krüger Lucifer, pp. 11-20. At Arles Paulinus of Trier was the only one who remained firm, and he was exiled to Phrygia; even the Papal legates yielded. At Milan Lucifer and Eusebius. of Vercelli were exiled, and also Dionysius of Milan, although he had agreed to the condemnation of Athanasius. Soon after Hosius, Liberius, and Hilary had to follow them into exile. In Milan Constantius actually ruled the Church, but with a brutal terrorism. There are characteristic utterances of his in Lucifer's works and in Athanasius.
[169] Already in the years immediately preceding, an incessant agitation had again been kept up against Athanasius; see Socr. II., 26, Sozom. IV., 9, Athan. Apol. ad Const. 2 sq., 14 sq., 19 sq. He betook himself to the desert, but later on he seems to have remained in hiding in Alexandria. No one, it would appear, cared to secure the price set upon his head. We have several writings of his belonging to this period. His successor, George, was pretty much isolated in Alexandria.
[170] The watchword of the "independence" of the Church of the State was now issued by Athanasius, Hilary, and above all by the hot-blooded Lucifer. Hilary, who first emerges into notice in 355, speedily gained a high reputation. He was the first theologian of the West to penetrate into the secrets of the Nicene Creed, and with all his dependence on Athanasius was an original thinker, who, as a theologian, far surpassed the Alexandrian Bishop. On his theology see the monograph by Reinkens, also Möhler, op. cit. 449 ff., and Dorner.
[171] After the full account given of the theology of Arius there was no need for any detailed description of the theology of Aëtius and Eunomius; for it is nothing but logical Arianism; see on the Ekthesis pisteos and the Apologetikos of Eunomius Fabricius-Harless T. IX. The rejection of all conciliatory formulæ is characteristic.
[172] Dräseke (Ges. patristische Unters., 1889, p. 1 ff.) wishes to credit him with the anonymous work against the Manicheans, which Lagarde discovered (1859) in a MS. of Titus of Bostra.
[173] With Hilary, for example, as his work "de synodis" proves. It is very characteristic that Lucifer, the strictest of the Nicenes, never came to have a clear idea of the meaning of the formulæ, homoousios and homoiousios; see Krüger, p. 37 f.
[174] The Confession is in Hilary, de Synod. 11, Athan. de synod. 28, Socrat. II. 30. Valens, Ursacius and Germinius of Sirmium took the lead. The words homoousios and homoiousios were forbidden as being unbiblical and because no one could express the generation of the Son. It is settled that the Father is greater, that the Son is subordinate. Here too the Christological problem of the future is already touched upon. Hilary pronounces the formula blasphemous. It marks the turning-point in the long controversy to this extent that it is the first public attempt to controvert the Nicene Creed. Against it Phobadius wrote the tractate "de filii divinitate", which is severely Western-Nicene in tone, and in this respect is markedly different from the conciliatory work of Hilary "de synodis"; see on it Gwatkin, p. 159 sq. The Eastern bishops Acacius and Uranius of Tyre, who shared the sentiments of the court-bishops, accorded a vote of thanks to the latter at a Council at Antioch, held in 358. Hosius subscribed the second Sirmian formula (Socr. II. 31).
[175] Aëtius was in high favour with Eudoxius of Antioch, and his pupils occupied the Eastern bishoprics. The manifesto of Sirmium appeared like an edict of toleration for strict Arianism. At the instigation of George of Laodicea some Semi-Arians joined together to oppose it at the Council of Ancyra. The comprehensive synodal-letter of Ancyra (Epiph. p. 73, 2-11, see Hilar. de synod) indicates the transition on the part of the Semi-Arians to the point of view at which the Nicæans were able to meet them. It was re-echoed in the writings of Hilary and Athanasius de synodis (358-359). The Semi-Arians at Ancyra took up a position based on the fourth Antiochian formula, which was also that of Philippopolis and of the First Sirmian Council, but they explained that the new Arianism made it necessary to have precise statements. The following are the most important explanations given; (1) the name Father by its very form points to the fact that God must be the author of a substance of like quality with Him (aitios homoias autou ousias): pas pater homoias autou ousias noeitai pater--this does away with the relation of Logos-Son and world-idea--(2) the designation "Son" excludes everything of a created kind and involves the full homoiotes, (3) "the Son" is consequently Son in the peculiar and unique sense, and the analogy with men as sons of God is thus done away with. The likeness in substance is further based on Bible statements, and in the 19 anathemas together with Sabellianism all formulæ are rejected which express less than likeness in substance. Finally, however, "homoousios" too, together with the characteristic addition "e tautoousios" has an anathema attached to it, i.e., the substantial unity of essence is rejected as Sabellian. The Conservatives of the East have undoubtedly here quite changed their ground. A definitely defined doctrine has taken the place of prolix formulæ, at once cosmological and soteriological in drift, and derived from Origen, Lucian, and Eusebius.
[176] The victory of the Semi-Arians at the court is a turn of affairs which we cannot clearly explain. The fact is incontestable. The third formula of Sirmium, drawn up at the Fourth Council of Sirmium, is identical with the fourth Antiochian formula. That Constantius should have fallen back on this is perhaps to be explained from the fact that the disturbances at Rome made it necessary for him to send Liberius back there, though the most he could hope for was to get him to subscribe that formula, but not the manifesto of the year 357. He actually got him to do this, i.e., Liberius subscribed several older confessional formularies which originated at a time when the Nicene Creed had been only indirectly attacked. It was not only, however, that Liberius bought his freedom at that time, but it was actually for the time being a question of a general victory of the Homoiousians, which they used too entirely in their own interest, after all the bishops present at Sirmium, including Ursacius and Valens, had had to make up their minds to subscribe the synodal decrees. Eudoxius of Antioch and Aëtius and in addition 70 Anomoeans were banished at the instigation of Basil of Ancyra and there were many instances of the violent use of power. One cannot be certain if these same violent proceedings did not bring about once more a quick change of feeling on the part of the Emperor.
[177] The Council was intended to bring about at last a general peace; at first the Emperor evidently intended to summon it to meet at Nicæa (Soz. IV. 16), then Nicomedia was next considered as a likely place, but it was destroyed by an earthquake. Then it was that Nicæa was again thought of; Basil of Ancyra had still a great influence at the time. Finally, the party opposed to this was victorious, and the plan of a division of the Councils was carried through. But it was just this opposition-party which now wished to unite all parties in a Homoean Confession and gained over the Emperor to assent to this. The actual result, however, was that Homoeans and Anomoeans on the one hand, Homoiousians and Homousians on the other, more and more drew together. Hilary, who was staying in the East, had indeed already explained to his Gallic compatriots that it was possible to attach an "unpious" meaning to homoousios quite as readily as to homoiousios. The bishops assembled in presence of the Emperor now composed in advance for the Council a Confession which, since Semi-Arians were also present, might serve as a means of reconciling Homoean and Homoiousian conceptions. It was already evident at the time of signing it that it was differently interpreted. The catchwords ran thus: homoion patri kata tas graphas--homoion kata panta hos hoi hagiai graphai legousin. Valens signed it and at the same time simply repeated the word homoion without the kata panta; Basil in signing it expressly remarked that panta included being also. The formula is in Athan. de synd. 8, Socrat. II. 37; see Sozom. IV. 17. The dogmatic treatise of Basil in Epiph. H. 73, 12-22, has reference to this formula, which Athanasius (de synodis) had already scoffed at because of its being dated, i.e., because it bore the signs of its newness on its front.
[178] Socr. II. 37 explains that Nice was chosen with the view of giving to the new formula a name which sounded the same as that of the Nicene Creed. The formula is in Athan. de synod. 30, and Theodoret II. 21: homoion kata tas graphas, hou ten gennesin oudeis oiden. In addition: to de onoma tes ousias hoper haplousteron enetethe hupo ton pateron, agnooumenon de tois laois skandalon ephere, dia to en tais graphais touto me ekpheresthai, erese periairethenai kai pantelos medemian mnemen ousias tou loipou ginesthai . . . mete me dein epi prosopou patros kai huiou kai hagiou pneumatos mian hupostasin onomazesthai. One might be pleased with this rational explanation if polytheism did not in fact lurk behind it.
[179] Hilary was present in Seleucia and made common cause with the Homoiousians against the others. Acacius in face of the superior numbers of the Homoiousians sought to save his party by drawing up a creed in which he expressly repudiated the Anomoeans and proclaimed the likeness in will, (see the creed in Athanas. de synod. 29, Epiph. H. 73, c. 25, Socr. II. 40). But this did not protect him and his party.
[180] It was on the night of the last day of the year 359 that the Emperor achieved the triumph of the homoios in his empire.
[181] The Confession is in Athanas. de synod. 30 and Socr. II. 41.
[182] People like Eudoxius and Acacius were real victors; they got a perfectly free hand for themselves against the Homoiousians at the cost of the condemnation of Aëtius, and made common cause with Valens and Ursinus. The Creed of Nice was sent all over the Empire for signature under threat of penalty.
[183] Eunomius became bishop of Cyzikus; Eudoxius of Antioch received the chair of Constantinople.
[184] See the epistle of the Synod of Paris (360 or 361) in Hilar. Fragm. XI. It did not at that time require any courage to declare against Constantius. __________________________________________________________________
3. TO THE COUNCILS OF CONSTANTINOPLE 381. 383.
The three possible standpoints--the Athanasian, the Lucianist-Arian, and the Origenist, which in opposition to the Arian had gradually narrowed itself down to the Homoiousian--had been set aside by Constantius in the interest of the unity of the Church. But the Homoean formula, which had no firm theological conviction behind it, meant the domination of a party which gravitated towards Arianism, i.e., which resolved faith in Jesus Christ into a dialectical discussion about unbegotten and begotten and into the conviction of the moral unity of Father and Son. It was for twenty years, with the exception of a brief interval, the dominant creed in the East. This fact finds its explanation only in the change, or narrowing, which came over what was at an earlier date the middle party. The Arianising Homoeans were now conservative and in their way even conciliatory. They disposed of the ancient tradition of the East as the Eusebians had done before them; for their formula "of like nature according to Holy Scripture" contained that latitude which corresponded to the old traditional doctrine. With this we may compare the standpoint of Eusebius of Cæsarea. The old middle party had, however, in the homoiousios made for themselves a fixed doctrinal formula. [185] This was a change of the most decisive kind. We may still further say it was not the "Homousios" which finally triumphed, but on the contrary the Homoiousian doctrine, which fixed on the terms of agreement with tale "Homousios." The doctrine which Hosius, Athanasius, Eustathius, and Marcellus had championed at Nicæa, was over-thrown. The new Origenism which was based on the "Homousios" succeeded in establishing itself. A form of doctrine triumphed which did not exclude scientific theology, a subject in which Athanasius and the Westerns of the older days never shewed any interest. But Athanasius himself contributed to the revolution thus accomplished, [186] though it is very doubtful if he ever came to see the full extent of it.
Julian granted liberty to all the bishops to return, and in so doing did away with the artificial state of things created by Constantius. The Nicæans were once more a power, and Athanasius who returned to Alexandria in February 362, at once re-assumed the leadership of the party. A Synod was held at Alexandria in summer, and this prepared the way for the triumph of orthodoxy in the year 381. [187] It was here resolved that the Nicene Creed was to be accepted sans phrase. i.e., that those were to be recognised as Christian brethren who now acknowledge the homoousios, and condemn the Arian heresy together with its chief supporters, irrespective of any former departure on their part from the faith. But still further, the question as to whether it was necessary to believe in one hypostasis or in three was left an open one. (At Alexandria the Holy Spirit had already been the subject of discussion as well as the Son.) Both statements were disapproved of since the homoousios was considered to be sufficient, but it was explained that both might be understood in a pious sense. [188] These resolutions were not passed without strong opposition. [189] Not only did some bishops demand that those who had subscribed the Fourth Sirmian Formula should be denied the communion of the Church, but, what was of much greater importance, there was a party which insisted on the interpretation of the Nicene Creed which had been settled by some of the Western bishops at Sardica, and which as a matter of fact was the original one. [190] But they did not press their views, and they seem to have acquiesced in the decision of the Synod. This marked a complete change. [191] If up till now orthodox faith had meant the recognition of a mysterious plurality in the substantial unity of the Godhead, it was now made permissible to turn the unity into a mystery, i.e., to reduce it to equality and to make the threefoldness the starting-point; but this simply means that that Homoiousianism was recognised which resolved to accept the word homoousios. And to this theology, which changed the substantial unity of substance expressed in the homoousios into a mere likeness or equality of substance, so that there was no longer a threefold unity, but a trinity, the future belonged, in the East, though not to the same extent in the West. The theologians who had studied Origen regarded it with favour. The Cappadocians started from the homoousios, [192] though this is certainly true of Gregory of Nyssa only indirectly. They acknowledged the homoousios and accordingly set up a system of doctrine which neither disavowed the theology of Origen, that is, science in general, nor yet remained in the terminologically helpless condition of Athanasius. But they succeeded in attaining terminological clearness--they could not improve on the matter of the doctrine--only because they modified the original thought of Athanasius and developed the theology which Basil of Ancyra had first propounded in his tractate. Ousia now got a meaning which was half way between the abstract "substance" and the concrete "individual substance", still it inclined very strongly in the direction of the former. [193] Hupostasis got a meaning half way between "Person" and "Attribute", (Accident, Modality), still the conception of Person entered more largely into it. [194] Prosopon was avoided because it had a Sabellian sound, but it was not rejected. The unity of the Godhead, as the Cappadocians conceived of it, was not the same as the unity which Athanasius had in his mind. Basil the Great was never tired of emphasising the new distinction implied in ousia, and hupostasis. For the central doctrine of the incarnation of God they required a conception of God of boundless fulness. Mia ousia (mia theotes) en trisin hupostasesin, (one divine substance (one divine nature) in three subjects,) was the formula. In order to give clear expression to the actual distinction of the Persons within the Godhead, Gregory of Nyssa attached to them tropoi huparxeos, (modes of existence,) idiotetes charakterizousai, exaireta idiomata, (characteristic peculiarities, special characters). To the Father he attributed agennesia, the quality of being unbegotten, and in consequence of this the word which had formerly been forbidden by the Niceans was once more restored to a place of honour, no longer, however, as referring to substance, but as expressing a mode of being (schesis) of God the Father. To the Son he attributed gennesia, the quality of being begotten, and even the older Homoiousians shewed more reserve on this point than Gregory did. To the Spirit he attributed ekporeusis--procession. [195] But what is more, the entire Origenistic speculation regarding the Trinity, with which Athanasius would have nothing to do, that is, of which he knew nothing, was rehabilitated. The moment or element of finitude within the Trinitarian evolution was no doubt struck out, still the Absolute has nevertheless not only modi in itself, but also in some degree, stages. The (eternal) generation or begetting, in the sense of a Godhead extending itself to the limits of the creaturely, was again put in the foreground. In this way the subordination-conception, which was an irreducible remainder in Athanasius' whole way of looking at the question, again acquired a peculiar significance. The idea that the Father in Himself is to be identified with the entire Godhead again became one of the ground-principles of speculation. He is the starting-point of the Trinity, just as He is the Creator of the world. The idea that He is source, beginning, cause of the Godhead (pege, arche, aitia tes theotetos), the cause (to aition) and consequently God in the proper sense (kurios Theos), while the other Hypostases again are effects (aitiata), [196] meant something different to the Cappadocians from what it did to Athanasius. For the Logos-conception, which Athanasius had discarded as theistic-cosmical, again came to the front, and in their view Logos and Cosmos are more closely related than in that of Athanasius. The unity of the Godhead does not rest here on the Homousia, but in the last resort, as with Arius, on the "monarchy" of God the Father; and the Spiritual on earth is, in fine, not a mere creature of God, but--at any rate with Gregory of Nyssa--as in the view of Origen, is a being with a nature akin to His. [197] "Science" concluded an alliance with the Nicene Creed; that was a condition of the triumph of orthodoxy. If at the beginning of the controversy the scientific thinkers--including those amongst the heathen--had sympathised with Arianism, men were now to be found as the defenders of the Nicene Creed to whom even a Libanius yielded the palm. These men took their stand on the general theory of the universe which was accepted by the science of the time; they were Platonists, and they once more naïvely appealed to Plato in support even of their doctrine of the Trinity. [198] Those who were on the side of Plato, Origen,
[199] and Libanius--Basil indeed had recommended the latter to his pupils as one who could help them in advanced culture,--those who were on a footing of equality with the scholars, the statesmen, and highest officials, could not fail to get sympathy. The literary triumphs of the Cappadocians who knew how to unite devotion to the Faith and to the practical ideals of the Church with their scientific interests, the victories over Eunomius and his following were at the same time the triumphs of Neo-platonism over an Aristotelianism which had become thoroughly arid and formal. [200] Orthodoxy in alliance with science had a spring which lasted from two to three decades, a short spring which was not followed by any summer, but by destructive storms. Spite of all the persecutions, the years between 370 and 394 were very happy ones for the orthodox Church of the East. It was engaged on a great task, and this was to restore the true faith to the Churches of the East, and to introduce into them the asceticism which was closely allied with science. [201] It was in the midst of a struggle which was more honourable than the struggles of the last decades had been. Men dreamt the dream of an eternal league between Faith and Science. Athanasius did not share this dream, but neither did he disturb it. He did not go in for the new theology, and there is much to shew that it did not quite satisfy him. [202] But he saw the aim of his life, the recognition of the complete Godhead of Christ, brought nearer accomplishment, and he continued to be the patriarch and the recognised head of orthodoxy, as the letters of Basil in particular shew. When, however, orthodoxy had attained its victory, there arose after a few years within its own camp an opponent more dangerous to its scientific representatives than Eunomius and Valens--the traditionalism which condemned all science.
Nothing more than an outline can here be given of the development of events in particular instances. The Synod of Alexandria was not able by means of its resolution to unite the parties which had separated at Antioch: the party of the orthodox who clung to the old faith and that of the Homoiousians who under the leadership of Meletius acknowledged the Homousios. This Antiochian split remained an open wound, and the history of the attempts to get it healed makes it abundantly evident that different doctrines were really in question, that Alexandria and the East had not lost their feeling of distrust of Meletius, and that the Cappadocians who were at the head of the new orthodoxy in the East were not able to suppress the suspicion of Sabellianism in the light of the old orthodoxy. [203]
Jovian, who was inclined to orthodoxy, once more recalled Athanasius who had been banished for the last time by Julian. [204] Athanasius somewhat prematurely announced the triumph of the true faith in the East. [205] Under the new ruler, Acacius, at a Synod held in Antioch in 363, found himself obliged to agree with Meletius and to join with him in declaring his adherence to the homoousios, explaining at the same time that it expressed as much as the ek tes ousias (of the substance) and the homoiousios together [206] (see Athan., de Synod.) But the accession of Valens in the following year changed everything. An attempt on the part of the semi-Arians at the Synod at Lampsacus in 364 to get the upper hand, miscarried. [207] Eudoxius of Constantinople and the adroit Acacius who again made a change of front, became masters of the situation, and Valens resolved to adopt once more the policy of Constantius, to maintain the Arian Homoeism in its old position, and to make all bishops who thought differently [208] suffer. Orthodox and Homoiousians had again to go into banishment. From this time onwards many Homoiousians turned to the West, having made up their minds to accept the homoousios in order to get support. The West after the brief episode of the period of oppression (353-360) was once more Nicene. There were but few Arians, although they were influential. After various Councils had met, the Homoiousians sent deputies from Pontus, Cappadocia, and Asia [209] to Liberius to get the doctrinal union brought about. Liberius, whose sentiments were the same as those of Hilary, did not refuse their request. The announcement of this happy event was made at Tyana in 367; [210] but at a Carian Council a Homoiousian minority persisted in rejecting the homoousios. [211] From this time Basil, who became bishop in 370, [212] took an active part in affairs and he was soon after followed by the other Cappadocians, and they threw not only the weight of science, but also that of asceticism, into the scale in favour of orthodoxy. The new bishop of Rome, Damasus, took a decided stand against Arianism at the Roman Synods held in 369 (370) and 377, then against the Pneumatomachians (see below) and the Apollinarian heresy, while Marcellus and Photinus were also condemned. The rigid standpoint of the bishops Julius and Athanasius again became the dominant one in the West, and it was only after some hesitation that the Western bishops resolved to offer the hand of friendship to the new-fashioned orthodoxy of the East. The representatives of the latter did not indeed settle the Antiochian schism at the well-attended Council at Antioch in September 379, but they subscribed the Roman pronouncements of the last years, and thus placed themselves at the standpoint of Damasus. [213]
But meanwhile very great changes had taken place in the State. In November 375 Valentinian died. He had not taken any part in Church politics, and had in fact protected the Arian bishops as he did the orthodox bishops, and had never had any difference with his brother regarding their religious policy. His successor, the youthful Gratian,
[214] yielded himself wholly to the guidance of the masterful Ambrose. He firmly established the State Church as against the heterodox parties, by passing some severe laws, and in doing this he followed Ambrose "whom the Lord had taken from amongst the judges of the earth and placed in the Apostolic chair." (Basil ep. 197, 1.) In August 378 Valens fell at the battle of Adrianople, fighting with the Goths; and on the 19th of January, 379, the Western Theodosius was made Emperor of the East by Gratian. The death of Valens was quite as much a determining cause of the final triumph of orthodoxy as its alliance with science; for the inner force of a religious idea can never secure for it the dominion of the world. Theodosius was a convinced Western Christian who took up the policy of Gratian, but carried it out in a perfectly independent fashion. [215] He was determined to rule the Church as Constantius had done, but to rule it in the spirit of rigid orthodoxy. He had himself been baptised [216] in the year 380, and immediately after appeared the famous edict which enjoined the orthodox faith on all nations. It is, however, in the highest degree characteristic of his whole policy that this faith is more definitely described as the Roman and Alexandrian faith, i.e., the new doctrinal orthodoxy of Cappadocia and Asia is passed over in silence. [217] After his entry into Constantinople Theodosius took all their churches from the Arians and handed them over to the orthodox. [218] In the year 381 he issued a regulation in which he prohibited all heretics from holding divine service in the towns. In the same year, however, the Emperor summoned a large Eastern Council to meet at Constantinople, and its resolutions were afterwards regarded as ecumenical and strictly binding, though not till the middle of the fifth century, and in the West not till a still later date. This Council denotes a complete change in the policy of Theodosius. His stay in the East had taught him that it was necessary for him to recognise as orthodox all who acknowledged the Nicene Creed however they might interpret it, and at the same time to make an attempt to gain over the Macedonians. He had come to see that in the East he must rely upon the Eastern form of orthodoxy, the new orthodoxy, that he would have to suppress the aspirations of the Alexandrian bishops, and that he must do nothing which would have the appearance of anything like tutelage of the East by the West. This reversal of his policy is shewn most strikingly by the fact that Meletius of Antioch was called upon to preside at the Council, the very man who was specially suspected by the orthodox of the West. [219] He died shortly after the Council met, and first Gregory of Nazianzus, [220] and then Nectarius of Constantinople presided over its deliberations. The opposition at the Council between the old orthodox party, orthodox in the Alexandrian and Western sense, who were few in numbers, and the new orthodox party composed of Antiochians, Cappadocians and Asiatics, was of the most pronounced character, though we are only partially acquainted with it. [221] The confusion was so great that Gregory of Nazianzus resigned and left the Council with the most bitter feelings. [222] Still union was finally secured, although the attempt to win over the Macedonians failed. The "150 bishops" unitedly avowed their adherence to the Nicene faith, and, as we are told, accepted in addition to this a special explanation of the doctrine of the Trinity in which the complete Homousia of the Spirit also was expressed. In the first canon containing the decisions, after the ratification of the Nicene Creed, Eunomians (Anomeans) Arians (Eudoxians) Semi-Arians (Pneumatomachians) Sabellians, Marcellians, Photinians and Apollinarians were expressly anathematised. The Nicene Creed thus gained an unqualified victory so far as its actual terms were concerned, but understood according to the interpretation of Meletius, the Cappadocians, and Cyril of Jerusalem. The community of substance in the sense of equality or likeness of substance, not in that of unity of substance, was from this time the orthodox doctrine in the East. But the Creed which since the middle of the fifth century in the East, and since about 530 in the West, has passed for the ecumenical-Constantinopolitan Creed, is neither ecumenical nor Constantinopolitan; for the Council was not an ecumenical one, but an Eastern one, and it did not in fact set up any new Creed. This Creed, on the contrary, is the Baptismal Creed of the Jerusalem Church which was issued in a revised form soon after 362 and furnished with some Nicene formulæ and with a regula fidei in reference to the Holy Spirit, and which was perhaps brought forward at the Council of 381 and approved of, but which cannot pass for its creed. How it subsequently came to rank as a decision of the Council is a matter regarding which we are completely in the dark. This much, however, is clear, that if this Creed had any connection at all with the Council of 381, the neo-orthodox character of the latter is thereby brought out in a specially striking way; for the so-called Creed of Constantinople can in fact be taken simply as a formula of union between orthodox, Semi-Arians, and Pneumatomachians. The most contested phrase of the Nicene Creed "ek tes ousias tou patros" is wanting in it, and it presents the doctrine of the Holy Spirit in a form which could not have appeared wholly unacceptable even to the Pneumatomachians. [223]
For this very reason it is certainly out of the question to regard the Creed as the Creed of the Council of 381. It did indeed assert the complete Homousia of the divine Persons. But the legendary process in the Church which attached this Creed to that Council performed a remarkable act of justice; for in tracing back to this Council "an enlarged Nicene Creed" without the "ek tes ousias tou patros", "of the substance of the Father", without the Nicene anathemas, and without the avowal of the Homousia of the Spirit, and in attesting it as orthodox, it, without wishing to do so, preserved the recollection of the fact that the Eastern orthodoxy of 381 had really been a neo-orthodoxy, which in its use of the word Homoousios did not represent the dogmatic conviction of Athanasius. In the quid pro quo involved in this substitution of one Creed for another, we have a judicial sentence which could not conceivably have been more discriminating; but it involves still more than that--namely, the most cruel satire. From the fact that in the Church the Creed of Constantinople gradually came to be accepted as a perfect expression of orthodoxy, and was spoken of as the Nicene Creed while the latter was forgotten, it follows that the great difference which existed between the old Faith and the Cappadocian neo-orthodoxy was no longer understood, and that under cover of the Homoousios a sort of Homoiousianism had in general been reached, the view which has really been the orthodox one in all Churches until this day. The father of the official doctrine of the Trinity in the form in which the Churches have held to it, was not Athanasius, nor Basil of Cæsarea, but Basil of Ancyra.
All the same, the thought of the great Athanasius, though in a considerably altered form, had triumphed. Science and the revolution which took place in the political world had paved the way for its victory; suppressed, it certainly never could have been.
The Westerns were anything but pleased in the first instance with the course things had taken in the East. At Councils held at the same time in Rome and Milan, in the latter place under the presidency of Ambrose, they had made representations to Theodosius and had even threatened him with a withdrawal of Church privileges. [224] But Theodosius answered them in a very ungracious manner, whereupon they sought to justify their attitude. [225] The Emperor was prudent enough not to fall in with the proposal of the Westerns that an ecumenical Council should be summoned to meet at Rome. He followed the policy of Constantius also in keeping the Churches of the two halves of the Empire separate, as his choice of Rimini and Seleucia proves. And by his masterly conduct of affairs he actually succeeded in introducing a modus vivendi in the year 382, spite of the attempts made to thwart him by his colleague Gratian who was led by Ambrose. Gratian summoned a General Council to meet at Rome, to which the Eastern bishops were also invited. But Theodosius had already got them together in Constantinople. They accordingly replied in a letter in which they declined the invitation, and its tone which was as praise-worthy as it was prudent, helped in all probability to lessen the tension between the East and the West. They appealed, besides, not only to the decisions of the Council of 381, but also to their resolution of 378 in which they had made advances to the West, [226] and they explained finally that they had adopted a recent detailed dogmatic declaration of the Western bishops, of Damasus that is, and were ready to recognise the Paulinists in Antioch as orthodox, which meant that they no longer suspected them of Marcellianism. [227] The despatch of three envoys to Rome where, besides Jerome, the distinguished Epiphanius happened to be just at this time, could not but help towards the conclusion of a treaty of peace. The opposition to Nectarius of Constantinople and Cyril of Jerusalem was now allowed to drop in Rome; but the Western bishops could not yet bring themselves to acknowledge Flavian in Antioch, and, moreover, Paulinus, his opponent, was himself present at the Council in Rome. There was once more a strong reaction against Apollinarianism.
[228]
If Arianism, or Homceism, from the time when it ceased to enjoy the imperial favour tended rapidly to disappear in the Empire, if too it had no fanatic as Donatism had, it was nevertheless still a power in the East in 383; large provinces had still Arian tendencies, the common people [229] in them above all; while in the West it had supporters
[230] in the Empress Justinia and her son. Theodosius was more concerned to win over the Arians than to drive them out of the Church. In the first years of his reign while shewing a firm determination to establish orthodoxy, he had at the same time followed a sort of conciliatory policy which, however, to the honour of the Arians be it said, did not succeed. lust as in 381 he invited the Macedonians to the Council, so in the year 383 he made a further attempt to unite all the opposing parties at a Constantinopolitan Council and if possible to bring about concord. The attempt was sincere--even Eunomius was present--but it failed; but it is very memorable for two reasons: (1) the orthodox bishop of Constantinople made common cause on this occasion with the Novatian bishop, a proof of how insecure the position of orthodoxy in the capital itself still was; [231] (2) an attempt was made at the Council to transfer the whole question in dispute between orthodox and Arians into the region of tradition. The Holy Scriptures were to be dispensed with, and the proof of the truth of orthodoxy was to be furnished solely by the testimony of the ante-Nicene Fathers to whose authority the opposite party must as good Catholics bow. This undertaking was a prophecy of the ominous future which was before the Church, and proved at the same time that the actual interest in the controversy in the East had already once more taken a secondary place compared with the conservative interest. Nothing grows faster than tradition, and nothing is more convenient when the truth of a proposition has to be defended than to fall back on the contention that it has always been so. [232]
After this Council Theodosius discontinued his efforts in favour of union and from this time sought to suppress Arianism. Ambrose seconded his plans in Upper Italy. The orthodox State-Church, which was, however, on the other hand, a Church-State, was established. Severe laws were now passed against all heretics with the exception of the Novatians. [233] The State had at last secured that unity of the Church which Constantine had already striven after. But it was a two-edged sword. It injured the State and dealt it a most dangerous wound. Amongst the Greeks Arianism died out more quickly than Hellenism. Violent schisms amongst the Arians themselves seem to have accelerated its downfall, [234] but the different stages are unknown to us. The history of its fortunes amongst the German peoples until the seventh century does not fall within the scope of this work. The educated laity, however, in the East regarded the orthodox formula rather as a necessary evil and as an unexplainable mystery than as an expression of their Faith. The victory of the Nicene Creed was a victory of the priests over the faith of the Christian people. The Logos-doctrine had already become unintelligible to those who were not theologians. The setting up of the Nicene-Cappadocian formula as the fundamental Confession of the Church made it perfectly impossible for the Catholic laity to get an inner comprehension of the Christian Faith taking as their guide the form in which it was presented in the doctrine of the Church. The thought that Christianity is the revelation of something incomprehensible became more and more a familiar one to men's minds. This thought has for its obverse side the adoration of the mystery,
[235] and for its reverse side indifference and subjection to mystagogues. [236] The priests and theologians could certainly not give the people more than they possessed themselves; but it is alarming to note in the ecclesiastical literature of the Fourth Century and the period following how little attention is given to the Christian people. The theologians had always the clergy. the officials, good society in their minds. The people must simply believe the Faith; they accordingly did not live in this Faith, but in that Christianity of the second rank which is represented in the legends of the saints, in apocalypses, in image-worship, in the veneration of angels and martyrs, in crosses and amulets, in the Mass regarded as magical worship, and in sacramental observances of all sorts. Christ as the homoousios became a dogmatic form of words; and in place of this the bones of the martyrs became living saints, and the shades of the old dethroned gods together with their worship, revived once more. __________________________________________________________________
[185] The dogmatic dissertation of the Homoiousians in Epiphan. 73, 12-22, is of the highest importance; for it shews in more than one respect a dogmatic advance: (1) the differentiation of the conceptions ousia, hupostasis, prosopon begins here. The first of these is used in order to express the idea of the essence or substance which imprints itself in the form of a definite quality; accordingly the action of the Fathers who in protesting against Paul of Samosata attributed a special ousia to the Son, is by an explanation excused. They did this in order to do away with the idea that the Logos is a mere rhema, a lektike energeia. The proper expression, however, is hupostasis. It is because the Logos is an hupostasis, i.e., because he does not, like the other words of God, lack being, that the Fathers called ten hupostasin ousian (c. 12). The akribeia tes ton prosopon epignoseos must be strictly maintained as against Sabellius (c. 14); but no one is to be led astray by the word hupostaseis (Pl.); it does not mean that there are two or three Gods: dia touto gar hupostaseis hoi anatolikoi legousin, hina tas idiotetas ton prosopon huphestosas kai huparchousas gnorisosin. The word "Hypostasis" is thus merely meant to give the word prosopon a definite meaning, implying that it is to be taken as signifying independently existing manifestations (c. 16), while ousia is in the tractate interchangeable with phusis or pneuma, and is thus still used only in the singular; (2) quite as much attention is already given to the Holy Ghost as to the Son, and the tropoi huparxeos are developed, i.e., an actual doctrine of the Trinity independent of any ideas about the world, is constructed (c. 16): Ei gar pneuma ho pater, pneuma kai ho huios, pneuma kai to hagion pneuma, ou noeitai pater ho huios; huphesteke de kai to pneuma, ho ou noeitai huios, ho kai ouk esti . . . Tas idiotetas prosopon huphestoton hupostaseis onomazousin hoi anatolikoi, ouchi tas treis hupostaseis treis archas e treis theous legontes . . . Homologousi gar mian einai theoteta . . . homos ta prosopa en tais idiotesi ton hupostaseon eusebos gnorizousi, ton patera en te patrike authentia huphestota noountes, kai ton huiou meros onta tou patros, alla katharos ek patros teleion ek teleiou gegennemenon kai huphestota homologountes, kai to pneuma to hagion, ho he theia graphe parakleton onomazei, ek patros di' huiou huphestota gnorizontes . . . Oukoun en pneumati hagio huion axios nooumen, en huio de monogenei patera eusebos kai axios doxazomen, (3) the Christological problem based on Philipp. II. 6 and Rom. VIII. 3 (homoioma) is already introduced for the elucidation of the Trinitarian: apo tou somatikou eusebos kai ten peri tou homoiou ennoian hemas kai epi tou asomatou patros te kai huiou didachthenai (c. 17, 18). As Christ's flesh is identical with human flesh, but is, on the other hand, on account of its wonderful origin only homoios, kata ton homoion tropon kai ho huios pneuma on kai ek tou tatros pneuma gennetheis, kata men to pneuma ek pneumatos einai to auto estin, kata de to aneu aporroias kai pathous kai merismou ek tou patros gennethenai homoios esti to patri. Accordingly we have now the decisive statement: Oukoun dia tes pros philippesious epistoles edidaxen hemas pos he hupostasis tou huiou homoia esti te hupostasei tou patros; pneuma gar ek patros. Kai kata men ten tou pneumatos ennoian (and therefore thought of in essence as a generic conception) tauton, hos kata ten tes sarkos ennoian tauton. Ou tauton de alla homoion, dioti to pneuma, ho estin ho huios, ouk estin ho pater, kai he sarx, hen ho logos anebalen, ouk estin ek spermatos kai hedones, all' houtos hos to euangelion hemas edidaxen . . . ho pater pneuma on authentikos poiei, ho de huios pneuma on ouk authentikos poiei hos ho pater all' homoios. Oukoun katha men sarx kai sarx tauton, hosper katho pneuma kai pneuma tauton. katho de aneu sporas ou tauton all' homoion, hosper katho aneu aporroias kai pathous ho huios ou tauton all' homoion. Thus these Homoiousians already admit the tauton if they also reject the tautoousios (= homoousios, i.e., Father and Son are tauton as regards substance, in so far as they are both pneuma, but in so far as they are different Hypostases they are not identical, but of like nature. (4) These Homoiousians have expressly rejected the designations agennetos for God and gennetos for the Son, and indeed not only because they are unbiblical, but because "Father" includes much more than "Unbegotten", and because "gennetos" includes much less than "Son", and further because the conjunction "unbegotten--begotten" does not express the relation of reciprocity between Father and Son (the gnesios gegennemeno), which is emphasised as being the most important (c. 14, 19): dio kan patera monon onomazomen, echomen to onomati tou patros sunupakouomenen ten ennoian tou huiou, pater gar huiou pater legetai; kan huion monon onomasomen, echomen ten ennoian tou patros, hoti huios patros legetai. Whoever names the one names the other at the same time, and yet does not posit him merely in accordance with his name, but with his name kai tes phuseos oikeioteta; on the other hand, agenneton ou legetai gennetou agenneton, oude genneton agennetou genneton. Athanasius could scarcely wish more than this, or rather: we have already here the main outlines of the theology of the three Cappadocians, and it is not accidental that Basil of Ancyra is himself a Cappadocian.
[186] The work of Athanasius, de synodis, written in the year 359, is of the highest importance for the history of the Arian controversy. It is distinguished as much by the firmness with which his position is maintained--for Athanasius did not yield in any point--as by its moderation and wisdom. The great bishop succeeded in combining these qualities in his book, because he was not concerned with the formula itself, but solely with the thought which in his view the formula attacked best expressed. We must, he said, speak like brethren to brethren to the Eomoiousians who hold almost the same view as the Nicæans and are merely suspicious about a word. Whoever grants that the Son is in nature of like quality with the Father and springs from the substance of the Father is not far from the homoousios; for this is a combination of ek tes ousias and homoiousios (c. 41 ff.). While expressly making an apology to Basil of Ancyra, he endeavours to remove the stumbling-blocks presented by homoousios, but seeks at the same time to shew that homoiousios either involves an absurdity or is dogmatically incorrect (c. 53 f.).
[187] The most important source of information for the Synod of Alexandria is the Tomus of Athanas. ad Antioch., and in addition Rufin.
X. 27-29, Socr. III. 7, Athan. ep. ad Rufinian. I need not here (after the work published by Revillout) enter upon any discussion of the suntagma didaskalias of the Synod, which is identical with Opp. Athanas. ed. Migne XXVIII., p. 836 sq.; cf. Eichhorn, Athan., de vita ascet. testim., 1886, p. 15 sq. On the Synod cf. also Gregor. Naz. Orat. 21, 35.
[188] Tom. ad Antioch. 5. 6. This was probably the largest concession which Athanasius ever made. When Socrates affirms that at the Synod the employment of "Ousia" and "Hypostasis" in reference to the Godhead was forbidden, his statement is not entirely incorrect; for it is evident from the Tomus that the Synod did actually disapprove of the use of the terms in this way.
[189] This is sufficiently shewn in the Tomus; the Lucifer schism has its root here; see Krüger, op. cit., pp. 43-54. Lucifer was, moreover, not a man of sufficient education to appreciate the real question at issue. He did not wish to have the venia ex poenitentia accorded to the Semi-Arians who were passing over to orthodoxy. It was thus a Novatian-Donatist element which determined his position.
[190] See above, p. 68, and the Tom. c. 5. init. These bishops thus demanded the acknowledgment of the mia hupustasis. The West never at bottom abandoned this demand, but in the Meletian-Antiochian schism it, however, finally got the worst of it and had to acquiesce in the Eastern doctrinal innovation. That at the Synod of Alexandria, however, the Homoiousians also attempted to get their catchword, or, their interpretation of the homoousios, adopted, is evident from the letter of Apollinaris to Basil; see Dräseke Ztschr. f. K.G., VIII., p. 118 f.
[191] Just as it is to Zahn that, speaking generally, we primarily owe the understanding of the original meaning of Homoousios, so it is he too who, so far as I know, first plainly noticed this complete change. (Marcell, p. 87 f., also Gwatkin, p. 242 sq.)
[192] This is specially evident from the letter of Basil to Apollinaris (in Dräseke, op. cit. 96 ff.) of the year 361. Basil communicates to the great teacher (of whom later) his doubts as to whether it is justifiable to use the word homoousios. For biblical and philosophical dogmatic reasons he is inclined to prefer the formula aparallaktos homoios kat' ousian. Apollinaris accordingly explains to him (p. 112 ff.) that the homoousios is more correct, but his own explanation of the word is no longer identical with that of Athanasius. He finds both expressed in it, the tautotes as well as the heterotes, and according to his idea the Son is related to the Father as men are to Adam. Just as it may be said of all men, they are Adam, they were in Adam, and just as there is only one Adam, so too is it with the Godhead. Basil at any rate started from Homoiousianism, and it is because this has not been taken into consideration that the letter in question has been pronounced not genuine. For the rest, the efforts of the Benedictines in the third volume of their edition of the Opp. Basil. (Præf.) to vindicate Basil's orthodoxy shew that, leaving this letter out of account, his perfect soundness in the faith is not--in all his utterances--beyond doubt. Later on Basil understood the homoousios exactly in the sense given to it by him in the letter to Apollinaris and which at that time made him hesitate to use it; see Krüger, p. 42 f. See further the characteristic statements made at an earlier date in ep. 8. 9: ho kat' ousian Theos to kat' ousian Theo homoousios!
[193] Basil has frequently so expressed himself as to suggest that he regarded the idea of the generic unity of Father and Son as sufficient (see, e.g., ep. 38, 2). Zahn (p. 87): "the ousia with Basil designates the koinon, the hupostasis the idion (ep. 114, 4). He is never tired of holding forth on the difference between the two expressions, and goes so far as to assert that the Nicene Fathers were well aware of this difference, since they would surely not have put the two words side by side without some purpose (ep. 125)." It is interesting to note that already at the Council of Antioch in 363 it had been explained that ou kata tina chresin Helleniken lambanetai tois patrasi to onoma tes ousias. Assuredly not! It was a terminology which was expressly invented.
[194] And yet in Gregory of Nyssa the persons appear also as sumbebekota (accidents).
[195] See the treatises of Gregor. Nyss. peri diaphoras ousias kai hupostaseos--peri tou oiesthai legein Theous--pros Hellenas ek ton koinon ennoion. "Prosopon" is no longer for Gregory a technical term in the strict sense of the word, but on the other hand he also avoids the expression "three atoma". The word phusis maintained itself alongside of ousia, and in the same way idiotes was used along with hupostasis. The God who was common to the Three was supposed to be a real substance, not, however, a fourth alongside of the Three, but on the contrary the unity itself! On the characteristics of the Hypostases, see Gregor. Naz. Orat. 25. 16: Koinon to me gegonenai kai he theotes. Idion de patros men he agennesia, huiou de he gennesis, pneumatos de he ekpempsis. The two others expressed their views in almost similar terms in their works against Eunomius, unless that Gregory of Nyssa alone put the doctrine of the Holy Ghost in a logically developed form (see below), while as regards it, Basil (see de spir. s. ad Amphiloch.) advanced least of them all. The pronounced attitude taken up by them all, especially by Basil, against Marcellus, is characteristic. The theological orations of Gregory of Nazianzus (Orat. 27-31) may, more than anything else, have spread the doctrinal system far and wide. (It is important to note that in opposition to it Athanasius in his letter ad Afros. [c. 369] expressly said that hupostasis and ousia were to be used as identical in meaning.) It follows from Orat. 31 (33) that Gregory did not wish to apply the number one to the Godhead; a unity was for him only the kinesis and phusis (mian phusin en trisin idiotesi, noerais teleiais, kath' heautas huphestosais, arithmo diairetais kai ou diairetais theoteti). So too he was doubtful about, the suitability of the old image, "source, stream", for the Trinity, not only because it represents the Godhead as something changeable, something flowing, but also because it gave the appearance of a numerical unity to the Godhead. He is equally unwilling, and in fact for the same reasons, to sanction the use of the old comparison of sun, beam, and brightness. He is always in a fighting attitude towards "Sabellianism". The doctrine of the one God is to him Jewish--that is the new discovery. "We do not acknowledge a Jewish, narrow, jealous, weak Godhead" (Orat. 25. 16). Gregory had, moreover, already begun those odd speculations about the immanent substance of God which, though they are mere bubble-blowing, are still highly thought of. The divine loftiness, according to him, shews itself in this, that in His immanent life also God is a fruitful principle; the life of the creature has its vital manifestation in the tension of dualities, but it is in this opposition that its imperfection also consists; the Trinity is the "sublation", or abrogation of the duality, living movement and at the same time rest, and not in any way a sublimation into multiplicity. The Orat. 23 in particular is full of thoughts of this sort, see c. 8: triada teleian ek teleion trion, monados men kinetheises dia to plousion, duados de huperbatheises, huper gar ten hulen kai to eidos, ex hon ta somata, triados de horistheises dia to teleion, prote gar huperbainei duados sunthesin, hina mete stene mene he theotes mete eis apeiron cheetai; to men gar aphilotimon, to de atakton, kai to men Ioudaikon pantelos, to de Hellenikon kai polutheon.
[196] Gregor. Nyss., ek ton koinon ennoion T. II. p. 85; hen kai to auto prosopon tou patros, ex hou ho huios gennatai kai to pneuma to hagion ekporeuetai, dio kai kurios ton hena aition onta ton autou aitiaton hena Theon phamen..
[197] It is here that we have the root of the difference between Athanasius and Gregory.
[198] From this time this once more became the fashion amongst the scientific orthodox. The confession of Socrates (VII. 6) is very characteristic. He cannot understand how the two Arian Presbyters, Timotheus and Georgius can remain Arians and yet study Plato and Origen so industriously and esteem them so highly oude gar Platon to deuteron kai to triton aition, hos autos onomazein eiothen, archen huparxeos eiliphenai phesi, kai Origenes sunaidion pantachou homologei ton huion to patri. It is instructive further to note how Philostorgius too (in Suidas) asserts that in the matter of the vindication of the homoousios Athanasius was deemed a boy in comparison with the Cappadocians and Apollinaris.
[199] See the Philocalia.
[200] This is one of the strongest impressions we carry away from a reading of the works against Eunomius.
[201] This aspect of the activity of the Cappadocians cannot be too highly valued. But in this respect too, though in quite a new fashion, they took up the work of Athanasius. The dominant party on the contrary were supported by an Emperor (Valens) who no doubt for good reasons persecuted monarchism. (See the law in the Cod. Theodos. XII. 1, 63 of the year 365.) The aversion of the Homoeans to monasticism is evident from the App. Const. Basil's journey to Egypt was epoch-making. The relation in which he stood to Eustathius of Sebaste, the ascetic and Semi-Arian, is also of great importance.
[202] For the sake of peace and in order to secure the main thing, Athanasius at the Synod of Alexandria, which may be called a continuation of the Synod of Ancyra, himself concluded the alliance with the new Oriental orthodoxy and acknowledged Meletius. But his procedure later on in the Antiochian schism (see Basil., ep. 89, 2), the close relation in which he stood throughout to Rome as contrasted with the East, the signal reserve he exhibited towards Basil (Basil. ep. 66, 69), and finally the view he took of the Marcellian Controversy which was still going on--Basil saw in Marcellus a declared Sabellian heretic, while the judgment passed on him and his following by Athanasius was essentially different--prove that he never came to have a satisfying confidence in the neo-orthodox Niceans who were associated with Meletius; see on this Zahn, pp. 83 ff., 88 ff., Rade; Damasus, p. 81 ff.
[203] See the art. "Meletius" in Herzog's R.-Encykl. IX., p. 530 f. and the discussion by Rade, op. cit., p. 74 ff. The Westerns had the same kind of feeling in reference to the opponent of Meletius in Antioch, Paulinus, as they formerly had in reference to Athanasius; he alone was for them orthodox; but they did not succeed in getting their view adopted. Heron. ep. 15. 16 shews what scruples the formula, treis hupostaseis, gave rise to in the minds of the Westerns.
[204] Julian, spite of his aversion to all Christians, seems nevertheless to have been somewhat more favourably disposed towards Arianism than towards orthodoxy, i.e., than to Athanasius, who, moreover, incurred his suspicions on political grounds.
[205] See his letter to Jovian in the Opp. and in Theodoret. IV. 3. Here the matter is so represented as to suggest that there were now only a few Arian Churches in the East. The attack on those who do indeed accept the homoousios, but give it a false interpretation, is worthy of note.
[206] See the Synodical epistle in Socrat. III. 25, Mansi III., p. 369.
[207] Socrat. IV. 2 sq. 12, Sozom. VI, 7 sq. In the following decade the view of Eudoxius of Constantinople was the authoritative one.
[208] The Altercatio Heracliani et Germinii is instructive see Caspari, Kirchenhist. Anecdota, 1883.
[209] Cappadocia was the native land of the new orthodoxy; see the Cappadocian self-consciousness of Gregor. Naz.; up till this time, however, it had been the principal seat of Arianism.
[210] Socrat. IV. 12.
[211] Sozom. VI. 12.
[212] He was at the same time the patriarch of the diocese of Pontus.
[213] It was Athanasius who roused Damasus to take up an attitude of energetic opposition to the Arian Bishop Auxentius of Milan, and thus, speaking generally, led him to follow in the track of Bishop Julius; see Athan. ep. ad Afros. It was at the Roman Council of 369 that the Western episcopate first formally and solemnly renounced the resolution of Rimini. On the text of the epistle of this Council, see Rade, p. 52 ff. Auxentius of Milan was condemned; but this sentence was a futile one since the Court protected him. No mention was yet made at this Council of the difficulties of the East. The years from 371 to 380 are the epochs during which the new-fashioned orthodoxy of the East, under the leadership of Basil and Meletius, attempted to induce the West to bring its influence to bear on Valens and the Homoean-Arian party, by means of an imposing manifesto, and thus to strengthen orthodoxy in the East, but at the same time to pronounce in favour of the Homoiousian-Homoousian doctrine and to put the orthodox Niceans in the wrong. These attempts were not successful; for Damasus in close league, first with Athanasius, then after his death (373), with his successor Peter, was extremely reserved, and in the first instance either did not interfere at all or interfered in favour of the old Niceans, of Paulinus that is, at Antioch. (This Peter, like Athanasius before him, had fled to Rome, and the alliance of Rome with Alexandria was part of the traditional policy of the Roman bishop from the clays of Fabian to the middle of the fifth century.) The numerous letters and embassies which came from the East of which Basil was throughout the soul, shew what trouble was taken about the matter there. But the letters of Basil did not please the "akribesteroi" in Rome; at first, indeed, intercourse with the East was carried on only through the medium of Alexandria, and on one occasion Basil had his letter simply returned to him. He complained that at Rome they were friendly with everybody who brought an orthodox confession and did not mind anything else. He referred to the friendship shewn towards those who were inclined to the views of Marcellus, further to the friendly intercourse of the Roman bishop with Paulinus, who was always suspected of Sabellianism by Basil, and to the occasional recognition of an Apollinarian. In letter 214 Basil brought the charge of Sabellianism against the entire Homoousian doctrine in its older form. It was in the year 376 that the West first promised help to the East. (The decretals of Damasus = 1 Fragment of the letter of Damasus designated by Constant as ep. 4.) Basil now (ep. 263) pleads for active interference--where possible an imposing Council--against the heretics who are heretics under cover of the Nicene Creed, and he designates as such the Macedonian Eustathius of Sebaste, Apollinaris and Paulinus, i.e., the man who taught pretty much the same doctrine as Athanasius; according to Basil, however, he is a Marcellian. The accusations against Paulinus were naturally received with anything but favour in the West. Peter of Alexandria who was still in Rome at the time, called Meletius, Basil's honoured friend, simply an Arian. A Synod was nevertheless held in Rome at which Apollinarianism was for the first time rejected (377); to it we owe the pieces 2 and 3 in the ep. Damasi, 4 ed. Constant. Basil died in January
379. He did not attain the aim of all his work, which was to unite the orthodoxy of the East and the West on the basis of the Homoiousian interpretation of the Homousios. But soon after his death, in September 379, Meletius held a synod in Antioch, and this synod subscribed all the manifestoes of the Romans, i.e., of the West, issued during the previous years 369, 376, 377, and thus simply submitted to the will of the West in dogmaticis, and despatched to Rome the Acts which contained the concessions. The triumph of the old-orthodox interpretation of the Nicene Creed thus seemed perfect. The West, under the guidance of Ambrose, from this time forth recognised the Meletians also as orthodox. It was from there (see the Synod of Aquileia 380, under Ambrosius) that the proposal emanated that if one of the two anti-bishops in Antioch should die, no successor should be chosen, and thus the schism would be healed. The fact that the Meletians thus came round to the orthodox standpoint is explicable only when we consider the complete changes which had taken place in the political situation since the death of Valens. On the involved state of things in the years from 369 to 378 see the letters of Basil, 70, 89-92, 129, 138, 214, 215, 239, 242, 243, 253-256, 263, 265, 266. It was the investigation of the matter by Rade, op. cit. pp. 70-121, which first threw light on this. On Damasus and Peter of Alex. see Socrat. IV. 37, Sozom. VI. 39, Theod. IV. 22. All were agreed in holding Athanasius in high respect. It was this that kept the combatants together. Gregory begins his panegyric (Orat. 21) with the words: Athanasion epainon areten epainesomai, and in saying this he said what everybody thought.
[214] See on Gratian's religious policy my art. in Herzog's R.-Encykl. s. h. v.
[215] Valentinian was the last representative of the principle of freedom in religion, in the sense in which Constantine had sought to carry it out in the first and larger half of his reign, and also Julian.
[216] During a severe illness, by the orthodox bishop of Thessalonica.
[217] Impp. Gratianus Valentinianus et Theodosius AAA. ad populuin urbis Constantinop.: "Cunctos populos, quos clementiæ nostræ regit temperamentum in tali volumus religione versari, quam divinum Petrum apostolum tradidisse Romanis religio usque ad nunc ab ipso insinuata declarat quamque pontificem Damasum sequi claret et Petrum Alexandriæ episcopum virum apostolicæ sanctitatis, hoc est, ut secundum apostolicam disciplinam evangelicamque doctrinam patris et filii et spiritus sancti unam deitatem sub pari majestate et sub pia trinitate credamus (this is the Western-Alexandrian way of formulating the problem). Hanc legem sequentes Christianorum catholicorum nomen jubemus amplecti, reliquos vere dementes vesanosque judicantes hæretici dogmatis infamiam sustinere, divina primum vindicta, post etiam motus nostri, quem ex cælesti arbitrio sumpserimus, ultione plectendos" (Cod. Theod. XVI. s, 2; Cod. Justin I. 1.
[218] With the exception of Egypt most of the Churches in the East were at this time in the hands of the Arians.
[219] The relations which existed in the years 378-381 between the East and the West (Alexander was closely allied with the latter) are complicated and obscure. Their nature was still in all essential respects determined by the continuance of the schism in Antioch. The following is certain (1) Theodosius, as soon as he came to perceive the true state of things in the East, had ranged himself on the side of the orthodox there; he wished to suppress Arianism not by the aid of the West and of the Alexandrian bishop Peter who was closely allied with Rome and who had already acted as if he were the supreme Patriarch of the Greek Church, but by the orthodox powers of the East itself. The proof of this is (1) that he transferred in a body to Meletius the Arian Churches in Antioch Paulinus was shelved; (2) that in the Edict (Cod. Theodos. XVI. 1, 3) he does not mention Damasus, but on the contrary enumerates the orthodox of the East as authorities (July 30th,
381) and this Gwatkin, p. 262, rightly terms an "amended definition of orthodoxy"; (3) that he refused to accede to the repeated and urgent demands of the Westerns who wished him to settle impartially the dispute at Antioch with due respect to the superior claims of Paulinus, and also refused their request for the summoning of an Ecumenical Council at Alexandria; (4) that he summoned an Eastern Council to meet at Constantinople without troubling himself in the slightest about the West, Rome and Alexandria, made Meletius president of it, heaped honours upon him, and sanctioned the choice of a successor after his death, and this in spite of the advice of the Westerns that the whole Antiochian Church should now be handed over to Paulinus, an advice which had the support of Gregory of Nazianzus himself. Nor can there be any doubt in view of the manner in which the Council was summoned to meet, that its original intention was to draw up a formula of agreement with the Macedonians. It is certain (II.) that the orthodox Fathers who assembled at Constantinople gladly recognised and availed themselves of the opportunity thus presented of freeing themselves from the tutelage of Alexandria and the West, and of recalling by a distinct act the concessions which they had made under compulsion two years previously at Antioch. "It is in the East that the sun first rises, it was starting from the East that the God who came in the flesh flashed upon the world." By their united attitude, their choice of Flavian as the successor of Meletius, who had died during the Council, by passing the third Canon--on the importance of the chair of Constantinople--and by their rejection of Maximus who was proposed for the chair of Constantinople by Alexandria and patronised by Rome and the West, they inflicted the severest possible defeat on Alexandria and the West, and specially on the policy of Peter and Damasus. It is certain (III.) finally, that shortly before the Council of Constantinople, during the Council, and immediately after it rose, the relations between the Egyptians and Westerns and the East were of the most strained character, and that a breach was imminent. (See the letter in Mansi III., p. 631.)
[220] The choice of him as president (on this and on the general procedure of the Council see his Carmen de vita sua) was not any more than that of Meletius approved of by Alexandria and Rome. His support of Paulinus may find its explanation in the fact that he aimed at getting into the good graces of Rome after he had himself attained the Patriarchate. Gregory had a Tasso-like nature. Quite incapable of effecting anything in the sphere of Church government or politics, he did not really desire office; but he wished to have the honour and distinction which are connected with office. So long as he did not have office he was ambitious, when he had it he threw it away.
[221] The Egyptians even went the length of separating themselves from the majority at the Council; they did not approve of the decisions come to by the neo-orthodox; see Theodoret V. 8.
[222] The Egyptian bishops felt it to be intolerable that the Cappadocian and not their man, Maximus, should get the position of Patriarch in Constantinople The resignation of Gregory of Nazianzus was the price demanded by the Egyptians for yielding; see Gregory's farewell address to the Council, Orat. 42. The Canons 1-4 of the Council--for these only are in all probability genuine, while those which follow belong to the Council of 382--are strongly anti-Alexandrian and are intended to bring down the claims of the Alexandrian which were already pitched high Canon 3 is directed not so much against Rome as against Alexandria (Ton mentoi Konstantinoupoleos episkopon echein ta presbeia tes times meta ton tes Rhomes episkopon, dia to einai auten nean Rhomen). Canon 2 is intended to put a stop to the attempt of the Bishop of Alexandria to rule other Eastern Churches. But this very Canon plainly proves (cf. the sixth Canon of Nice) that as a matter of fact the Bishop of Alexandria had a position in the East which was wholly different from that of the other bishops. He only is mentioned in the singular number--ton men Alexandreias episkopon . . . tous de tes Anatoles episkopous . . , phulattomenon ton presbeion te Antiocheon ekklesia . . , tous tes Asianes dioikeseos episkopous . . . tous tes Pontikes . . . tous tes Thrakikes. The peculiar position of the Alexandrian bishop which the latter wished to develop into a position of primacy, was chiefly due to three causes. (It is quite clear that Athanasius and Peter wished so to develop it, and perhaps even Dionysius the Great; the intention of the Alexandrian scheme to place Maximus on the episcopal seat of Constantinople, was to secure a preponderating influence upon the capital and the imperial Church by the aid of this creature of Alexandria.) These three causes were as follows; (1) Alexandria was the second city of the Empire and was recognised as such in the Church also at least as early as the middle of the third century; see, e.g., the conciliar epistle of the great Council of Antioch of the year 268, addressed "to the bishops of Rome and Alexandria and to all Catholic churches." (Alexandria ranks as the second, Antioch as the third city of the Empire in Josephus, de Bello Jud. 4, 11, 5, cf. the chronograph of the year 354, Stryzygowski, Jahrb. d. k. deutschen archäol. Instituts. Supplementary vol., 1888, I., die Kalenderbilder des Chronographen v. j. 354, p. 24 f. The chronograph gives the series thus, Rome, Alexandria, Constantinople, Trèves. Lumbroso, L'Egitto dei Greci e dei Romani, 1882, p. 86, proves that all the authors of the first to the third centuries agree in giving the first place after Rome to Alexandria, see, e.g., Dio Chrysostomus, Orat. 32, I, p. 412: he gar polis humon to megethei kai to topo pleiston hoson diapherei kai periphanos apodedeiktai deutera ton hupo ton helion. In the "ordo urbium nobilium" of Ausonius we have for the first time the cities given in the following order: Rome, Constantinople, Carthage, Antioch, Alexandria, Trèves. So long as Alexandria was the second city in the Empire, it was the first city in the East. (2) Alexandria had this in common with Rome, that it had no cities in its diocese which were of importance in any way. The bishop of Alexandria was always the bishop of Egypt (Libya and Pentapolis), as the bishop of Rome was always the bishop of Italy. The case was quite otherwise with Antioch and Ephesus; they always had important episcopates alongside of them. (3) The lead in the great Arian controversy had fallen to the Bishop of Alexandria; he had shewn himself equal to this task and in this way had come to be the most powerful ecclesiastic in the East. The hints which I have given as to the policy of the Alexandrian Patriarch here and in Chap. III. 2, have been further developed in an instructive fashion by Rohrbach (die Patriarchen von Alexandrien) in the Preuss. Jahrb. Vol. 69, Parts I and 2.
[223] On the Creed of Constantinople see my article in Herzog's R.-Encyklop. VIII., pp. 212-230, which summarises the works of Caspari and particularly of Hort, and carries the argument further. The following facts are certain. (1) The Council of 381 did not set up any new creed, but simply avowed anew its adherence to the Nicene Creed (Socrat. V. 8, Sozom. VII. 7, 9, Theodoret V. 8, Greg. Naz. ep. 102 [Orat. 52] the testimony of the Latin and Constantinople Councils of 382). (2) If we take the years from 381 to 450, we do not find in any Synodal Act, Church Father, or heterodox theologians during that period any certain trace whatsoever of the existence of the Creed of Constantinople, much less any proof that it was used then as the Creed of Constantinople or as the official Baptismal Creed; it is simultaneously with the recognition of the Council of 381 as an ecumenical Council--about 451 in the East, in the West fifty years later--that the Creed in question, which now emerges, is first described as the Creed of Constantinople. (3) It did not, however, then first come into existence, but is on the contrary much older; it is found already in the Ancoratus of Epiphanius which belongs to the year 374, and there is no reason for holding that it is an interpolation here; on the contrary (4) the internal evidence goes to shew that it is a Nicene redaction of the Baptismal Creed of Jerusalem composed soon after 362. The Creed is thus not any extension of the Nicene Creed, but rather belongs to that great series of Creeds which sprang up after the Council of Alexandria (362) in the second creed-making epoch of the Eastern Churches. At that time the opponents of Arianism in the East, now grown stronger, resolved to give expression to the Nicene doctrine in connection with the solemn rite of baptism. It was possible to do this in three different ways, that is to say either by embodying the Nicene catchwords in the old provincial church creeds, by enlarging the Nicene Creed for the special purpose of using it as a baptismal Creed, or, finally, by adopting it itself, without alteration, for church use as a baptismal Creed, in spite of its incompleteness and its polemical character. These three plans were actually followed. In the first half of the fifth century the third was the one most widely adopted, but previously to this the two first were the favourites. To this series belong the revised Antiochian Confession, the later Nestorian Creed, the Philadelphian, the Creed in the pseudo-Athanasian hermeneia eis to sumbolon, the second, longer, Creed in the Ancoratus of Epiphanius, the Cappadocian-Armenian, the exposition of the Nicene Creed ascribed to Basil, a Creed which was read at Chalcedon and which is described as "Nicene." To this class our Creed also belongs. If it be compared with the Nicene Creed it will be easily seen that it cannot be based on the latter; if, on the other hand, it be compared with the old Creed of Jerusalem (in Cyril of Jerusalem) it becomes plain that it is nothing but a Nicene redaction of this Creed. But this is as much as to say that it was probably composed by Cyril of Jerusalem. Moreover, its general character also perfectly corresponds with what we know of Cyril's theology and of his gradual approximation to orthodoxy. (Socrat. V. 8, Sozom. VII. 7) "Cyril's personal history presents in various respects a parallel to the transition of the Jerusalem Creed into the form of the so-called Creed of Constantinople." That is to say, in the Creed which afterwards became ecumenical the words of the Nicene Creed "tout' estin ek tes ousias tou patros" and the Nicene anathemas are omitted. The christological section accordingly runs thus: "kai eis hena kurion Iesoun Christon, ton huion tou Theou ton monogene, ton ek tou patros gennethenta pro panton ton aionon, phos ek photos, Theon alethinon ek Theou alethinou, gennethenta ou poiethenta, homoousion to patri, di' hou ta panta egeneto." From the writings of the Eomoiousians and the Cappadocians we can accordingly easily gather that the "ek tes ousias tou patros" presented a far greater difficulty to the half-friends of the Nicene Creed than the homoousios; for homoousios not without some show of fairness might be interpreted as homoios kat' ousian, while on the contrary the "ek tes ousias", both in what it said and in what it excluded--the will, namely--seemed to leave the door open to Sabellianism. It follows also from Athan. de Synodis that he considered the "ek tes ousias" as of supreme importance; for in a way that is very characteristic of him he observes that homoousios is equal to homoiousios ek tes ousias, that is, whoever intentionally avows his belief in the homoousios without the "ek tes ousias" avows his belief in it as a Homoiousian. The Christological formula in the Creed of Jerusalem, i.e., what was later on the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, is thus almost homoiousian, even although it retains the homoousios. It corresponds exactly to the standpoint which Cyril must have taken up soon after 362. The same holds good of what the Creed says regarding the Holy Spirit. The words: "kai eis to pneuma to hagion, to kurion, to zoopoion, to ek tou patros ekporeuomenon, to sun patri kai huio sunproskunoumenon kai sundoxazomenon, to lalesan dia ton propheton" are in entire harmony with the form which the doctrine of the Holy Spirit had in the sixties. A Pneumatomachian could have subscribed this formula at a pinch; and just because of this it is certain that the Council of 381 did not accept this Creed. We can only conjecture how it came to be the Creed of Constantinople (see Hort., pp. 97-106 f. and my article pp. 225 f., 228 f.). It was probably entered in the Acts of the Council as the Confession by which Cyril had proved to the Council that his faith was orthodox and which the highly esteemed Epiphanius had also avowed as his. The Bishop of Constantinople took it from among the Acts shortly before the year 451 and put it into circulation. The desire to foist into the churches a Constantinopolitan Creed was stronger in his case than his perception of the defects of this very Creed. It was about 530 that the Creed of Constantinople first became a Baptismal Creed in the East and displaced the Nicene Creed. It was about the same time that it first came into notice in the West, but it, however, very quickly shoved the old Apostolic Baptismal Creeds into the background, being used in opposition to Germanic Arianism which was very widely spread there. On the "filioque" see below. We may merely mention the extreme and wholly unworkable hypothesis of the Catholic Vincenzi (De process. Spiritus S., Romæ, 1878) that the Creed of Constantinople is a Greek made-up composition belonging to the beginning of the seventh century, a fabrication the sole aim of which was to carry back the date of the rise of the heresy of the procession of the Holy Spirit ex patre solo into the Fourth Century.
[224] See the letter "Sanctum" in Mansi III., p. 631.
[225] See the letter "Fidei" in Mansi III., p. 630.
[226] The important letter is in Theodoret V. 9. It contains a description of the persecutions which had been endured, of the struggles which still continued, thanks that they hos oikeia mele should have received an invitation to the Council so that they may rule along with the West and that it may not rule alone, regret that they are prevented from appearing at it; then follows the exposition of the Faith, after the despatch of the three envoys had been announced: "What we have suffered we suffered for the Evangelical Faith which was settled at Nicæa, tauten ten pistin kai humin kai hemin kai pasi tois me diastrethpusi ton logon tes alethous pisteos sunareskein dei; hen molis pote [sic] presbutaten te ousan kai akolouthon to baptismati kai didaskousan hemas pisteuein eis to onoma tou patros kai tou huiou kai tou hagiou pneumatos, delade theotetos te kai dunameos kai ousias mias tou patros kai tou huiou kai tou hagiou pneumatos pisteuomenes, homotimon te tes axias kai sunaidiou tes basileias, en trisi teleiais hupostasesin egoun trisi teleiais hupostasesin egoun trisi teleiois prosopois, hos mete ten Sabelliou noson choran labein suncheomenon ton hupostaseon, eigoun ton idioteton anairoumenon, me te men ten ton Eunomianon kai Areianon kai Pneumatomachon blasphemian ischuein, tes ousias e tes phuseos e tes theotetos temnomenes kai te aktisto kai homoousio kai sunaidio triadi metagenesteras tinos e ktistes e heteroousiou phuseos epagomenes. The Easterns did not yield anything here and yet they expressed their belief in as conciliatory a form as possible since they were silent about Marcellus, called Sabellianism a "disease", but Arianism a "blasphemy". Next follows the reference to the acts of the Councils of 379 and 381, then an explanation regarding the new appointment to the "as it were newly founded Church of Constantinople" and to the bishopric of Antioch where--this is directed against Rome and Alexandria--the name Christian first arose. So too the recognition of Cyril of Jerusalem, who had suffered so much for the Faith, is justified. Jerusalem is called in this connection "the mother of all Churches." The Easterns at the close beseech the Westerns to give their consent to all this, tes pneumatikes mesiteuouses agapes kai tou kuriakou phobou, pasan men katastellontos anthropinen proapatheian, ten de ton ekklesion oikodomen protimoteran poiountos tes pros ton kath' hena sumpatheias e charitos. Then will we no longer say, what is condemned by the Apostles: "I am of Paul, and I of Apollos, and I of Cephas", but we shall all appear as belonging to Christ, who is not divided in us, and will with the help of God preserve the body of the Church from division.
[227] The so-called fifth Canon of the Council of 381 (see Rade, pp. 107, 116 f., 133) belongs to the Synod of 382, as also the sixth; the seventh is later. It runs: peri tou tomou ton Dutikon kai tous en Antiocheia apedexametha tous mian homologountas patros kai huiou kai hagiou pneumatos theoteta. It can only he the Paulinists in Antioch who are here referred to. But as regards the Western Tomos we must with Rade, op. cit., apparently take it to be the twenty-four Anathemas of Damasus (in Theodoret V. II.). This noteworthy document, which perhaps originated in the year 381, presents in a full and definite way the standpoint of the Westerns in regard to the different dogmatic questions. It is specially worthy of notice that the doctrine of Marcellus is condemned without any mention being made of its author. The ninth anathema is further of importance and also the eleventh: "If anyone does not confess that the Son is from the Father, i.e., is born of His Divine substance, let him be accursed." Compare with this the so-called Creed of Constantinople in which the ek tes ousias is wanting. The fulness with which the doctrines of the Incarnation and the Holy Spirit are already treated, is significant.
[228] To this period, according to Rade's pertinent conjecture, the work of Damasus given in Theodoret V. to against Apollinarianism, also belongs. It probably came from the pen of Jerome, soon after 382, and gives expression to the supreme self-consciousness of the occupant of the chair of Peter. Jerome always flattered Damasus.
[229] The Church historians, Philostorgius in particular, give us some information about this, but they do not enter much into particulars. Eunomius kept his ground firmly and courageously and declined all compromises. He did not even so much as recognise the baptism and ordination of the other Church parties (Philostorg. X. 4). The Conciliar epistle of the Easterns of the year 382 (see above) further shews what difficulties the attempt to carry through the Homoousios gave rise to.
[230] See the struggles of Ambrose against Arianism in Upper Italy, which went on still the year 388. After the death of his mother, Valentinus II. declared for orthodoxy; see Cod. Theodos. XVI. 5, 15. The knowledge that Maximus the usurper had owed his large following to the fact of his being strictly orthodox helped to bring about this decision. The assertion of Libanius that Maximus entered into an alliance even with the unruly and rebellious Alexandrians is one which is calculated to make us reflect. The fact that in the days of Theodosius Ambrose was at the head of the Church in the West, probably contributed largely to bring about an adjustment of the differences between the Western-Alexandrian and the Cappadocian-neo-orthodox doctrines of the Son. This bishop had learned from Philo, Origen, and Basil, and he had friendly intercourse with the last mentioned; but he never sheaved any interest in or appreciation of the difference between the form of doctrine in East and West, and he did not go into the speculations of the theologians of the East. It was thus merely in a superficial fashion that he accepted the theological science of the East. But this very fact was of advantage to him so far as his position was concerned; for it meant that he did not separate himself from the common sense of the West, while, on the other hand, he had a great respect for the Cappadocian theology and consequently was admirably suited for being a peace-maker. Ex professo he did not handle the Trinitarian problem; his formulæ bear what is essentially the Western stamp, without, however, being pointed against the "Meletians", and in fact, he himself accepted the statement: "nulla est discrepantia divinitatis et operis; non igitur in utroque una persona, sed una substantia est"; but on the other hand: "non duo domini, sed unus dominus, quia et pater deus et filius deus, sed unus deus, quia pater in filio et filius in patre--nevertheless--unus deus, quia una deitas" (see Förster, Ambrosius, p. 130). Ambrose did not engage in any independent speculations regarding the Trinity, as Hilary did (see Reinkens, op. cit., and Schwane, D G. d. patrist. Zeit., p. 150 ff.). The fact, however, that in the fourth century the greatest theologian of the West--namely, Jerome, and the most powerful ecclesiastical prince of the West, Ambrose, had learned their theology from the Greeks, was the most important cause of the final union of East and West in the matter of the doctrine of the Trinity. Hosius, Julius of Rome, Lucifer and Damasus of Rome would not have been able to accomplish the dogmatic unity of the two halves of the Empire. As a matter of fact the dogmatic unity did not spring from the alliance of Athanasius, Julius, Peter, and Damasus, Alexandria and Rome that is, but from the alliance of Athanasius, Hilary, Basil, Jerome, and Ambrose.
[231] On the Novatians in the East in the Fourth Century and their relations to the orthodox, particularly in the city of Constantinople, see my articles s. v. "Novatian", "Socrates", in Herzog's R: Encykl. The Novatians, strange to say, always had been and continued to be Nicene. The explanation of this may be found in the fact that they originated in the West, or in the fact of their connection with the West.
[232] Socr. V. to (Sozom. VII. 12) has given us some information regarding the proceedings at the Council of Constantinople in 383. Theodosius wished to have an actual conference between the opposing parties. Sisinius, the reader to the Novatian bishop Agelius, is then said to have advised that instead of having a disputation the matter should be settled simply on the basis of passages from the Fathers; the patristic proof alone was to be authoritative. Socrates tells us that with the consent of the Emperor this was actually the course followed, and that on the part of the orthodox only those Fathers were appealed to who had lived before the Arian controversy. The raising of the question, however, as to whether the various parties actually recognised these Fathers as authoritative, produced a Babylonian confusion amongst them, and indeed even amongst the members of one and the same party, so that the Emperor abandoned this plan of settling the dispute. He next collected together Confessions composed by the different parties (the bold one composed by Eunomius is still preserved, see Mansi III., p. 646 sq.), but rejected them all with the exception of the orthodox one, and ungraciously sent the parties home. The Arians, it is said, consoled themselves for the Emperor's unkind treatment of them, with the saying that "many are called but few chosen". This narrative, so far as the particulars are concerned, is too much a made-up one to be implicitly trusted. But the attempt to decide the whole question on the authority of tradition was certainly made. If we consider how at first both parties proceeded almost exclusively on the basis of the Holy Scriptures we can perceive in the attempt an extremely significant advance in the work of laying waste the Eastern Churches.
[233] See Cod. Theodos. XVI. 1, 4 of the year 386 and the other laws of Theodosius and his sons. Things became particularly bad from about 410 onwards.
[234] See Sozom. in Books VII. and VIII., especially in VIII. 1.
[235] Athanasius had already described the whole substance of the Christian religion as a "doctrine of the mysteries"--see, e.g., his Festival-letters, p. 68 (ed. Larsow).
[236] We have here, above all, to remember the attitude taken up by Socrates, which is typical of that of the ecclesiastically pious laity of the East. His stand-point is--we ought silently to adore the mystery. Whatever the generation the last but one before his own has fixed, is for him already holy; but he will have nothing to do with dogmatic disputes in his own time, and one may even find in what he says traces of a vague feeling on his part that the laity as regards their Faith had in fine been duped by the bishops and their controversies. His agreement with what was said by Euagrius in reference to the Trinity (III. 7) is characteristic of his position in the matter: pasa protasis e genos echei kategoroumenon e eidos e diaphoran e sumbebekos e to ek touton sunkeimenon; ouden de epi hagias triados ton eiremenon esti labein. siope proskuneistho to arreton. He will have nothing to do with ousia and hupostasis. The case too of Procopius of Cæsarea illustrates the attitude of reserve taken up by the laity in the sixth century to the whole dogmatic system of the Church. __________________________________________________________________
[1] Vide Preface. __________________________________________________________________
APPENDIX.
THE DOCTRINE OF THE HOLY GHOST AND OF THE TRINITY.
I. In the baptismal formula, along with the confession of belief in the Father and Son, there had always been from early times a confession also of belief in the Holy Spirit. This belief expressed the thought that Christianity has within it the Spirit of the Father--the Spirit of Christ--the living, illuminating, divine principle. The Spirit is the gift of God. But after the Montanist controversies the combination of Spirit and Church, Spirit and individual Christians came to have a secondary place in regular theological thought. The World-Church and its theologians busied themselves instead with the Spirit in so far as it spoke through the prophets, in so far as it had before this brooded "over the waters", in so far as it descended on Christ at His baptism, etc.--though this soon became a minor point--or took part in His human origin. But there was quite an accumulation of difficulties here for rational theology. These difficulties lay (1) in the notion itself, in so far as pneuma also described the substance of God and of the Logos; (2) in the impossibility of recognising any specific activity of the Spirit in the present; (3) in the desire to ascribe to the Logos rather than to the Spirit the active working in the universe and in the history of revelation. The form of the Spirit's existence, its rank and function were accordingly quite uncertain. By one the Holy Spirit was considered as a gift and as an impersonal--and therefore also an unbegotten--power which Christ had promised to send and which consequently became an actual fact only after Christ's Ascension; by another as a primitive power in the history of revelation; by a third as an active power in the world-process also. Others again attributed to it a personal existence misled by the expression "the Paraclete". Of these some regarded it as a created divine being, others as the highest spiritual creature made by God, the highest angel; others again as the second probole or "derivatio" of the Father, and thus as a permanently existing Being sharing in the God-head itself; while once more others identified it with the eternal Son Himself. There were actually some too who were inclined to regard the Spirit, which is feminine in Hebrew, and which was identified with the "Wisdom" of God, as a female principle. [237] The views held regarding its rank and functions also were accordingly very different. All who regarded the Spirit as personal, subordinated it to the Father and probably also as a rule to the Son when they distinguished it from the latter, for the relation of Father and Son did not seem to permit of the existence of a third being of the same kind, and, besides, Christ had expressly said that he would send the Spirit, and therefore it looked as if the latter were His servant or messenger. The other idea that the Logos is the organ of the Spirit or Wisdom is very rarely met with. This or an idea similar to it was the one reached by those who distinguished between the impersonal Logos or Wisdom eternally inherent in God and the created Logos or Wisdom, and then identified the divine in Christ with the latter. As to its functions, we meet with no further speculations regarding their peculiar nature after the attempts of the Montanists to define them, until a very much later date when at last theologians had learned to commit a special department of the mysteries to the care of the Spirit. All that was meanwhile said regarding the activity of the Spirit in the world-process, in the history of revelation, in regeneration, including illumination and sanctification, was of a wholly vague kind, and was frequently either the expression of perplexity or of exegetical learning, but never gave evidence of any special theological interest in the question. We must not, however, overlook the fact that in Church theology in its oldest form as we see it in Irenæus and Tertullian, we find an attempt made to give to the Spirit, which had necessarily to be ranked as a being of special dignity within the Godhead, an immanent relation to the Father and the. Son. The passages in Irenæus referring to the Spirit are of special importance, though Tertullian was the first to call Him "God". One can trace within theology a well-marked line of development running from Justin through Tertullian to Origen.
[238] After Sabellius, starting from totally different premises, had by his speculations drawn attention to the Holy Spirit, Origen here too supplied a definite conception on the subject just as he had in connection with the doctrine of the Logos. While admitting the want of any certainty in what was given by tradition, he treated the doctrine of the Holy Spirit entirely according to the analogy of the doctrine of the Logos, and even demanded that it should be so treated. The Holy Spirit forms part of the Godhead, it is a permanently existing divine Being, but it is at the same time a creature, and a creature, in fact, which occupies a stage lower than the Son, because it, like everything created, has come into being by the Son or Logos. The sphere of its activity is correspondingly smaller than that of the Son. Origen declared that intensively it was more important, but he did not give this its due value, since for him the categories of magnitude, space, and causality were in the last resort the highest. [239] The fact that the doctrine of the Holy Spirit was treated in Tertullian (adv. Prax.) and Origen in a way perfectly analogous to that followed in the case of the doctrine of the Logos, is the strongest possible proof that there was no specific theological interest taken in this point of doctrine.
[240] Nor was it different in the period following. The Arian and the Arianising formula of the Fourth Century still at least embody the attempt to state in reference to the Spirit what, according to the old Church tradition, describes the character of its active working, little as that is; the pompous formula of orthodoxy, however, merely gives expression to the general thought that there is no foreign element in the Godhead, and shews, moreover, that the doctrine of the hypostasis of the Holy Spirit was already beginning to be an embarrassing one for the Church.
The doctrine of Origen that the Holy Spirit is an individual hypostasis and that it is a created being included within the sphere of the Godhead itself, found only very partial acceptance for more than a century. And even in the cases in which, under the influence of the baptismal formula, reference was made to a Trinity in the Godhead--which came to be more and more the practice,--the third Being was still left in the vague, and, as at an earlier period, we hear of the promised gift of the Holy Spirit. Nevertheless the philosophical theologians became more and more convinced that it was necessary to assume the presence not merely of a threefold economy in the Godhead, but of three divine beings or substances. In the first thirty years after the commencement of the Arian controversy, the Holy Spirit is scarcely ever mentioned, [241] although the Lucianists and consequently Arius too regarded it as indeed a divine hypostasis, but at the same time as the most perfect creature, which the Father had created through the Son and which therefore was inferior to the Son also in nature, dignity, and position. [242] In their Confessions they kept to the old simple tradition: pisteuomen kai eis to pneuma to hagion, to eis paraklesin kai hagiasmon kai teleiosin tois pisteuousi didomenon, [243] "and we believe in the Holy Spirit given to believers for consolation, and sanctification, and perfection." They recognised three graduated hypostases in the Godhead. The fact that Athanasius did not in the first instance think of the Spirit at all, regarding which also nothing was fixed at Nicæa, is simply a proof of his intense interest in his doctrine of the Son. The first trace of the emergence of the question as to the Spirit is found, so far as I know, in the Anathemas (20 ff.) of the very conservative Creed of the Eusebian Council of Sirmium (351). Here the identification of the Holy Spirit with the unbegotten God and with the Son, as also the designation of it as meros tou patros e tou huiou, (part of the Father and of the Son,) are forbidden. [244] It was towards the end of the fifties that Athanasius directed his attention to the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, and he at once took up a firm position. [245] If the Holy Spirit belongs to the Godhead it must be worshipped, if it is an independent being then all that holds good of the Son holds good of it also, for otherwise the Triad would be divided and blasphemed and the rank of the Son too would again become doubtful--this is for him a conclusive argument. There can be nothing foreign, nothing created in the Triad which is just the one God (hole trias heis Theos estin). Athanasius was not only able to adduce a number of passages from Scripture in support of this assertion, but he also endeavoured to verify his view by a consideration of the functions of the Holy Spirit. The principle of sanctification cannot be of the same nature as the beings which it sanctifies; the source of life for creatures cannot itself be a creature; he who is the medium whereby we enter into fellowship with the Divine nature must himself possess this nature. [246] On the other hand, He who works as the Father and the Son work, or to put it more accurately, He who bestows one and the same grace--for there is only one grace, namely, that of the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit--is part of the Godhead, and whoever rejects Him separates himself from the Faith generally. Thus everything is really already expressed in the baptismal formula; for without the Holy Spirit it would be destroyed, since it is the Spirit who throughout completes or perfects what is done. The personality of the Spirit is simply presupposed by Athanasius in the indefinite form in which he also presupposed the personality of the Son. The attempts to distinguish the peculiar nature of the activity of the Spirit from that of the Father and the Son did not indeed get beyond empty words such as perfection, connection, termination of activity, etc. The question as to why the Son could not do all this Himself, and why, if there was here a third, the existence of a Fourth was not also possible, was left unanswered. It is necessary to believe in the Trinity as handed down by tradition: "and it is manifest that the Spirit is not one being of the many nor an angel [one of many], but one unique being, or rather, He belongs to the Logos who is one, and to God who is one, and is also of the same substance" (kai ouk adelon, hoti ouk esti ton pollon to pneuma, all' oude angelos, all' hen on. mallon de tou logou henos ontos idion kai tou Theou henos ontos idion kai homoousion estin). [247] The "Tropicists" as he calls those who teach erroneous doctrine in reference to the Holy Spirit, are in his view no better than the Arians.
The letters of Athanasius to Serapion of Thmuis were called forth by the complaints of this bishop about the intrigues of those who taught false doctrine regarding the Holy Spirit. As a matter of fact, amongst the Semi-Arians the doctrine of the Holy Spirit was now purposely developed in opposition to the Homousia. It was in particular the highly esteemed chief of the Thracian Semi-Arians, Macedonius, at a later date the deposed bishop of Constantinople, who defended the doctrine that the Spirit is a creature similar to the angels, a being subordinate to the Father and the Son and in their service. [248] It is worth noting with regard to these Semi-Arians that the more their common opposition to the Homoeans and Anomoeans drove them to side with the Nicæans the more firmly they stuck to their doctrine of the Spirit. It looked as if they wished to preserve in their doctrine of the Holy Spirit the Conservativism which they had had to abandon as regards the doctrine of the Son. It was at the Synod of Alexandria (362) that the orthodox first took up the definite position with regard to this question that whoever regards the Holy Spirit as a creature and separates it from the substance of Christ, in so doing divides up the Holy Trinity, gives a hypocritical adherence to the Nicene Faith, and has merely in appearance renounced Arianism. [249] But what was thus firmly established by the Alexandrians by no means at once became law for the orthodox in the East. The statements regarding the Spirit [250] were indeed further amplified in subsequent years in connection with the remodelling of the old Confessions, but amongst the Homoiousians who were becoming Homousians, the greatest uncertainty continued to prevail up till 380. The thirty-first oration of Gregory of Nazianzus which was composed at that time, proves this. [251] Meanwhile it was just the Cappadocians who did most towards getting the orthodox conception naturalised in the Church, namely, Basil in his work against Eunomius (lib. III.) and in the tractate "de spiritu sancto," Gregory of Nazianzus in several of his orations (31, 37, 44), and Gregory of Nyssa in his amplifications of Trinitarian doctrine. They had apparently learned something from the letters of Athanasius ad Serap., for they repeat his arguments and give them more formal development. But neither in Basil nor in Gregory of Nazianzus is there the stringency which marks the thought of Athanasius. The absence of any tangible tradition exercised a strong influence [252] on them, and at bottom they are already satisfied--Basil at any rate--with the avowal that the Spirit is not in any sense a creature. [253] Gregory of Nyssa as an Origenist and speculative Trinitarian carried the doctrine further. [254] As the theologians were at a loss how to accord to the Spirit a peculiar mode of being in relation to the Father, they hit upon the plan of attributing to it, following some passages in St John, eternal sending forth (ekpempsis) and procession (ekporeusis). Just as in the second century the begetting of Christ whereby he came to exist on this earth had been made into a super-terrestrial begetting then became an eternal begetting, while the "being begotten" next came to be regarded as the supreme characteristic of the second hypostasis, so in the fourth century an "eternal sending" of the Spirit was made out of the promised "sending" of the Holy Spirit and was regarded as descriptive of the essential characteristic of the third hypostasis within the Holy Trinity. Nowhere can the work of imaginative conception be more plainly recognised than here. Behind a history already in itself a wonderful one, and the scene of which is laid partly in the Godhead and partly within humanity, there was put by a process of abstraction and reduplication a second history the events of which are supposed to pass entirely within the Godhead itself. The former history is to get its stability through the latter which comprises "the entire mystery of our Faith."
The matter was much more quickly settled in the West. Hilary, it is true, was anything but clear as regards doctrine, but this was merely because he had eaten of the tree of Greek theology. The general unreasoned conviction in the West was that the Holy Spirit, belief in whom was avowed in the Apostles' Creed, is the one God likewise.
When the question as to the personality of the Spirit emerged, it was as quickly settled that it must be a persona, for the nature of God is not so poor that His Spirit cannot be a person.--(It has to be noted that persona and our "person" are not the same thing.) The views of Lactantius again on this point were different. Since the year 362 the orthodox at several Councils in the West and then in Asia had pronounced in favour of the complete Godhead of the Spirit [255] in opposition to the Arians, as we see from the Confession of Eunomius, and also to the Pneumatomachians. [256] The big Eastern Council summoned to meet at Constantinople in 381 by Theodosius originally included thirty-six Macedonians amongst its members. But they could not be got to assent to the new doctrine of the Holy Spirit, spite of all the imperial efforts made to win them over. They were accordingly compelled to leave the Council. [257] The latter reaffirmed the Nicene Creed, but gave to it a detailed dogmatic explanation which has not been preserved, in which the complete homousia of the Spirit was avowed, and in the same way the first canon of the Council passes condemnation on the Semi-Arians or "Pneumatomachians". [258] The pronouncements of the years following confirmed the final result; see the epistle of the Council of Constantinople of 382, [259] but above all, the anathemas of Damasus. [260] The doctrine of the homousia of the Spirit from this time onward was as much a part of orthodoxy as the doctrine of the homousia of the Son. But since according to the Greek way of conceiving of the matter, the Father continued to be regarded as the root of the Godhead, the perfect homousia of the Holy Spirit necessarily always seemed to the Greeks to be called in question whenever he was derived from the Son also. He consequently seemed to be inferior to the Son and thus to be a grandchild of the Father, or else to possess a double root. Then, besides, the dependence of the Spirit on the Son was obstinately maintained by the Arians and Semi-Arians on the ground that certain passages in the Bible supported this view, and in the interest of their conception of a descending Trinity in three stages. Thus the Greeks had constantly to watch and see that the procession of the Spirit from the Father alone was taught, and after the revised Creed of Jerusalem became an ecumenical Creed, they had a sacred text in support of their doctrine, which came to be as important as the doctrine itself.
II. The Cappadocians [261] and their great teacher, Apollinaris of Laodicea, [262] before them, reached the doctrine of the Trinity, which remained the dominant one in the Church, though it always continued to be capable of being differently restated by theologians. We are to believe in one God, because we are to believe in one divine substance or essence (ousia, phusis, essentia, substantia, natura) in three distinct subjects or persons (hupostasis,persona [prosopon]). The substance is to be thought of neither as a mere generic conception nor, on the other hand, as a fourth alongside of the three subjects, but as a reality, i.e., the unity must coincide with the real substance. The subjects again are not to be represented as mere attributes nor, on the other hand, as separate persons, but as independent, though apart from their mutual relationship, unthinkable, partakers of the divine substance. Their likeness of nature which is involved in their community of substance finds expression in the identity of their attributes and activities, their difference in the characteristic note (tropos huparxeos, idioma) of their manner of existence as signified by the ideas, unbegotten, begotten, proceeding from (agennesia, gennesia, ekporeusis). The special characteristic attached to the Father implies that He is the source, the root, the first principle of the Godhead, while the two other persons--within the divine substance--are "caused". The Father is greater than the other two in so far as He is the first principle and the cause (kata ton tes arches kai aitias logon). The Godhead is consequently in itself and apart from all relation to the world, an inexhaustible living existence and no rigid and barren unity, "as the Jews teach." Yet neither is it a divided multiplicity "as the heathen think", but, on the contrary, unity in Trinity and Trinity in unity. Because the Godhead is what is common to the Three, there is only one God. At the same time the hypostatic difference is not to be regarded as a merely nominal one, but it has not reference to the substance, the will, the energy, the power, time, and consequently not to the rank of the persons. From the unity results the unity of activity. Every divine act is to be understood as a working of the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit as is expressed in the terms, primal source, mediating power, and completion. See, above all, Gregor. Naz. Orat. 27-32.
This doctrinal system shews itself to be a radical modification of the system of Origen under the influence of the religious thought defended by Athanasius and the West, that the Godhead which appeared, Jesus Christ, and the Godhead which is still active in the Church, the Holy Spirit, are the Godhead themselves. [263] The Cappadocians were pupils both of Origen [264] and of Athanasius. This fact explains their doctrinal system.
Before them, however, there had been a theologian in the ancient Church who had come under influences wholly similar to those which had affected them, and who because of this, also anticipated in a striking way their formulae when he saw that he must amplify the doctrine of God. This was Tertullian. Tertullian's theology was dependent on the one hand on Justin and the Apologists, and on the other on Irenæus, but besides this the modalistic Monarchianism which at that time held sway in the West and which he combatted, exercised a strong influence upon him. Consequently the conditions under which Tertullian composed his work "adv. Praxean" were, mutatis mutandis, the same as those by which the Cappadocians were surrounded, and they accordingly led to a similar result, so that we may say: the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity already announced its presence even in its details, in Tertullian--and only in him and in his pupil Novatian. [265] Did not Hosius carry it into the East? (See above p. 57.)
The Christological dogma with its formula had already had a share in the establishment of the Trinitarian dogma. Tertullian had already made use of the same conceptions for giving a fixed form both to his doctrine of God and to his Christology (adv. Prax.). The form taken by the Trinitarian doctrine of the Homoiousians, as represented by Basil of Ancyra and of Apollinaris, was likewise determined by their Christological speculations. (It was Christological speculation which produced the "homoioma" [likeness] and which gave currency to the analogy of the conceptions. "Humanity" and "Adam" in relation to individual men. [266] But the Cappadocians learned from them. Quod erat in causa, apparet in effectu! An Aristotelian and a Subordinationist element lurks in the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity as well as this element of dependence upon Christological dogma. The Christological controversies accordingly could not but re-act on the form given to the dogma of the Trinity. That their influence was not stronger than the historical evidence shews it actually to have been, is to be explained solely by the rigid form taken by the dogma so quickly rendered sacred by tradition. Anything in the way of modification was unsuccessful, and accordingly the attempts in this direction belong not to the history of dogma, but of theology. Some Monophysites who were influenced by the Aristotelian philosophy and who were thus scholars of the same type as Apollinaris, but who were also Chalcedonian theologians, attempted to give a dialectic shape to the ambiguous conceptions of "Nature" and "Person" in the Church. In doing this they naturally landed either in Tritheism or in Unitarianism, which their opponents could also represent as Quaternity whenever the three persons were reckoned as belonging to the one real Substance as Reals and not as attributes. The departure on the part of the Monophysites from orthodox dogma had not a philosophical cause only, though the period was one in which there had been a revival of Aristotelian study, but was also the result of their Christology. Since in their Christology they regarded phusis (nature) as equal to hupostasis (hypostasis), [267] it naturally suggested itself to them to carry out the same equation in reference to the Trinity. But if ousia or phusis be regarded as equivalent to upostasis then we have Unitarianism; while if on the other hand, in making this equation we start from the hypostasis, we have three gods. Both of these doctrines were taught amongst the Monophysites in the sixth century, or to put it more accurately, from about 530. [268] In opposition to the Tritheists Johannes Damascenus, although he was himself strongly influenced by Aristotle and based his theology on the work of the Cappadocians, gave a Modalistic turn to the theological exposition of the dogma of the Trinity, and in so doing sought to get rid of the last remains of Subordinationism. It is true that he also grants that the Father is greater than the Son (de fide orthodox. I. 8) because He is the Principle of the Son, a view which Athanasius too, founding on John XIV. 28, had always maintained, but he nevertheless conceives of the being unbegotten (agennesia) in a still higher fashion than the Cappadocians had done--namely, as a mode of being of the same kind as the being begotten (gennesia) and procession (ekporeusis), and in order to put the unity of the Hypostases on a firm basis he not only emphasises much more strongly the "in one another" (en allelois) which had already been maintained before this, rejecting the Apollinarian analogy of human-substance and man, and teaching that each person is not less dependent on others than on himself, but he also uses the questionable formula that the difference between them exists only for thought (epinoia), and that there exists between them a pervasion (perichoresis) without, however, any blending (sunaloiphe) and mixture (sumphursis) (I. 8). In his case too this way of putting the dogma was determined by the Christological dogma. [269]
In the Eastern Church the further development of the dogma of the Trinity beyond the limit reached by the Cappadocians had no appreciable result. [270] It was too unimportant in itself, and, above all, it left untouched the point in connection with which the placing of the Father above the other Hypostases came most plainly to the front. John also (I. 8) taught that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father. [271] He further simply repeated the old statements that the Spirit proceeds through the Son, that He is the image of the Son as the latter is of the Father, and that He is the mediation between Father and Son, although in his day the doctrine of the Latins--the filioque--was already known in the East. [272] The Easterns clung to the statements in support of which they alleged countless passages from the writings of the Fathers of the Fourth Century, that the Spirit proceeds from the Father, or from the Father through the Son. As against the Arians and Semi-Arians they emphasised the Spirit's independence of the Son, in so far as dependence meant that the Spirit was a creation of the Son, and they always continued to stick to the "from the Father". If in the following centuries they seldom purposely emphasised it, still they always laid stress on it as being a self-evident expression of the thesis that the Father is the First Principle (arche) in the Trinity, and that accordingly the Spirit appears as depotentiated, or double caused, if it is regarded as proceeding from the Son also. [273] The doctrine of the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father alone thus clearly shews that in the East the mutual indwelling of the Hypostases was not thought of as complete, and that the Father was regarded as greater than the Son. The spiritual representation of the Trinity was of a different kind in the East and in the West respectively, especially from the time of Augustine onwards. It is accordingly at this point that Photius (867) took up the subject, since he, in searching for a dogmatic disputed point, charged the West with introducing innovations into doctrine, and strengthened this charge by alleging the still graver accusation against the West, of having falsified the most holy Creed of Constantinople by the addition of the "filioque"--"worst of evils is the addition to the holy Creed" (kakon kakiston he en to hagio sumbolo prostheke). As a matter of fact "filioque", as a word in the Creed and indeed in the doctrine itself too, was an innovation, but in reality it was merely the correct expression for the original Western conception of the one God in whom the Trinity coheres. This is not the place to describe the endless controversy; for the countless and ever new arguments adduced on both sides, so far as they do not spring from a different way of conceiving of the Trinity and from the determination to hold by what had once been delivered to the Church, are worthless. Nor have the attempts to reconcile the opposing views any interest for the history of dogma, because, as a rule, they were dictated by ecclesiastical policy. It is, however, worthy of note that the Greeks gradually came to be suspicious of the old "dia tou huiou", "through the Son", too, but that they otherwise continued to hold by the Cappadocian doctrine of the Trinity.
[274] This together with the dogma of the Incarnation continued to be the Faith of the Church, the mystery kat' exochen. The whole of the material, however, which had been taken over from Greek philosophy was turned to account in giving a definite form to this dogma, and was to a certain extent exhausted here. Accordingly in the Trinitarian theology we also meet with what the Church inherited from the downfall of the ancient world of thought, though certainly it presents itself in a very much abridged and stunted form. Owing to the way in which it was employed and owing to its being united with separate Biblical expressions which came to be taken as philosophical-theological conceptions--the tropoi huparxeos, modes of existence for example--it doubtless underwent the most astonishing modification. Still the doctrine of the Trinity in the theological treatment given to it, became the vehicle by which the Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy was transmitted to the Slavic and Germanic peoples. It contains a most peculiar blend of the Christian thought of the revelation of God in Jesus and the legacy of ancient philosophy.
In the West, Augustine, following an ancient Western tendency, destroyed the last remains of subordinationism, though just because of this he advanced in the direction of Modalism. According to him in constructing the doctrine of God we should not start from the person of the Father. On the contrary the conception of the Godhead ought from the very first to be personal and Trinitarian, so that the Father is regarded as being conditioned in His existence by the Son in the same way as the Son is by the Father. Augustine wishes the unity of the three persons to be so conceived of that the three are equal to each one singly, and the triple personality is understood as existing within the absolute simplicity of God. The differences or characteristic notes of the three persons are still to hold good when the Godhead is so conceived of; but they appear merely as relations in the one Godhead, and their characteristics are done away when it is considered that in connection with the act of production or procession Son and Spirit are to be regarded as active agents. Augustine searched for analogies to the threefoldness which is found in the one divine essence, in creation, in the conceptions of basis and substance, form and idea, persistence, and in the human spirit in object, subjective picture of the object, intention of perception--mens ipsa, notitia mentis, amor--memoria, intelligentia, voluntas. The doctrine in its entirety is the effort of a man whose mind was as sceptical as it was intellectually powerful, but who revelled in the incomprehensible, who had laid hold of a new thought, but who both as sceptic and as theosophist felt himself bound to tradition, and who for this reason was for his punishment driven about between the poles of a docta ignorantia and a knowledge which was replete with contradictions. This speculation, which attempts to construe the most immanent of immanent Trinities and to sublimate the Trinity into a unity, just because it does this, discards everything in the way of a basis in historical religion and loses itself in paradoxical distinctions and speculations, while at the same time it is not able to give clear expression to its new and valuable thought. The great work of Augustine, "De Trinitate", can scarcely be said to have promoted piety anywhere or at any time. It, however, became the high-school not only for the technicological culture of the understanding, but also for the metaphysics of the Middle-Ages. The realistic scholasticism of the Middle-Ages is not conceivable apart from this work, because it itself already contains Scholasticism. [275]
It was for Augustine a self-evident truth that the Holy Spirit proceeds also from the Son, and he expressly maintained this. [276] In doing this he merely gave expression to the view which was implicitly contained in the ancient Western doctrine of the Trinity [277] inasmuch as the procession of the Spirit from Father and Son implied in it could never be regarded as the procession from two First Principles. The first mention of the doctrine after Augustine is in the Confession of Faith of a Synod of Toledo which probably met in 447, hardly in 400, "paracletus a patre filioque procedens" (Hahn, § 97) and in the words of Leo I. (ep. ad Turib. c. 1): "de utroque processit"; see further the so-called Athanasian Creed and the Confession of the Synod of Toledo in the year 589 (Reccared's Confession, Hahn, § 106). It was at this Synod that the "filioque" was first put into the text of the Creed of Constantinople, which had probably then or shortly before first reached Spain. We have no further information regarding the reception it met with; [278] it is likely that in opposition to the West Gothic Arianism there was a desire to give expression to the doctrine of the equality of Father and Son. From Spain the addition reached the Carlovingian Frankish Empire, [279] and already in the first decades of the ninth century it had been there embodied in the official form of the Creed--by the order of Charles the Great. In Rome the Augustinian doctrine of the Holy Spirit had indeed been long ago sanctioned, but as late as the beginning of the ninth century the Creed as accepted there was still without that addition, as the table constructed by Leo III. and his answer to the Frankish ambassadors in the year 809 prove. Soon after this, however,--when and under what circumstances it is impossible to say--it was adopted into the Creed in Rome too; see the ordo Romanus de div. off. (Max Bibl. Patr. XIII., p. 677a), which perhaps belongs to the second half of the ninth century, and the controversy with Photius. [280]
So far as popular Christian thought is concerned, the Cappadocian manner of formulating the doctrine exercised in the end a more decisive influence even in the West than the Augustinian view which dissolves the persons into conceptions and leaves little room for the play of ordinary or pictorial thought. But for the Church and for Science [281] Augustine's view came to be authoritative. What contributed most to this result was the fact that it was embodied as the doctrine of Athanasius in a formula which came to have the authority of a universal and binding Confession of Faith. It is extremely probable that the so-called Athanasian Creed, so far as the first half of it is concerned, is a Gallican Rule of Faith explanatory of the Creed of Nicæa. As such it was from the fifth century onwards, by means of the theology of Augustine and Vincentius of Lerinum, gradually made into a course of instruction for the clergy, i.e., the monks, suitable for being committed to memory. As a regula fidei meant to explain the Nicene Creed it was called "fides catholica" or "fides Athanasii", though it had other names also, and perhaps as early as 500 it began with the words "Quicunque vult salvus esse." It is probable that in the course of the sixth century it essentially received its present technical form in Southern Gaul where the West-Gothic Spanish Arianism still continued to provoke opposition. In the middle of the sixth century it, or at least a recension very similar to it, was already current as the authoritative course of instruction for the clergy in Southern Gaul, and was together with the Psalms learned by heart. It got into the decisions of single Councils from the Psalm-books and breviaries of the monks and clergy, in so far as the practice had here begun of appealing to single statements in this rule of faith. Starting from here it gradually came to be the Confession of the Frankish Church in the eighth and ninth centuries. It was perhaps then that the second Christological half was added, the origin of which is completely wrapped in obscurity; it was of course put together before the ninth century. The Frankish Church by its relations with Rome was the means of communicating the Creed as the Confession of Athanasius to the entire Western Church during the period from the ninth to the eleventh centuries. As Rome and--through Rome--the West finally received the Gallico-Frankish form of the so-called Apostles' Creed and gave up the primitive Apostles' Creed, so too Rome adopted as a second Creed the Gallico-Frankish statement of the Augustinian doctrine of the Trinity. This, at any rate, is the relatively most probable view that can be taken of the obscure history of the origin and reception of the so-called Athanasian Creed. [282] The three so-called ecumenical Creeds are consequently all "apocryphal." The Apostles' Creed did not originate with the Apostles, though so far as its basis is concerned, it belongs to the post-Apostolic age; the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed originated neither in Nicæa nor in Constantinople, but in Jerusalem or Cyprus, though it got its main contents from Nicæa; the Athanasian Creed is not the work of Athanasius. Nor are they ecumenical, on the contrary it is at most the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed which can be so termed [283] since the East knew nothing of the other two.
The doctrine of the Trinity in the Athanasian Creed is strictly Augustinian, and yet it has certain traits which are not to be traced either to Augustine or to Vincentius. No other Creed went so far in the development of the doctrine of the Trinity as an article of faith necessary to salvation, as this one. This can be explained only by the fact of its having originated in mediæval times. The Franks regarded the Faith handed down to them by the ancient Church simply as a legal statute, and accordingly only required faith in the Faith, obedience, that is, fides implicita therefore, since they did not yet possess what was required for a religious or philosophical appropriation of the system of belief. Under the form of fides implicita, however, i.e., a faith of obedience, the most developed theology can be looked for from every one. In the Athanasian Creed as a Creed we have the transformation of the doctrine of the Trinity as an article of Faith to be inwardly appropriated, into an ecclesiastical legal statute on the observance of which salvation depends. [284]
For Athanasius the fundamental religious thought was the "Homoousios", and just because of this he could not treat it technically. For the Cappadocians the "Homoousios" and the doctrine of the Trinity came to be the sum of theological knowledge. For the Westerns after Augustine these doctrines became a sacred legal statute, to which, above all, obedience must be rendered. This is the course of things which is constantly repeated in the history of religion. Men pass from the religious thought to the philosophical and theological doctrinal proposition, and from the doctrinal proposition which requires knowledge to the legal proposition which demands obedience, or to the sacred relic the common veneration for which constitutes a bond of union for the community, whether it be that of the nation, the state, or the Church. And thus the process of formulating comes to have an ever-increasing importance, and the Confession with the mouth becomes the foundation of the Church. But in reference to this the Valentinian Herakleon had as early as the second century correctly remarked:--
"There is an agreement in faith and life on the one hand and in word on the other; the agreement in word is also an agreement based on authorities which many hold to be the only agreement, though this is not a sound opinion; for hypocrites can subscribe to this kind of agreement." (Homologian einai ten men en te pistei kai politeia, ten de en phone; he men oun en phone homologia kai epi ton exousion ginetai, hen monen homologian hegountai einai hoi polloi, ouch hugios; donantai de tauten ten homologian kai hoi hupokritai homologein.) __________________________________________________________________
[237] The fact that in the original draft of the Apostolical Constitutions (II. 26) a parallel is drawn between the deaconess and the Holy Spirit is perhaps connected with this too.
[238] But it is only in so far as Origen teaches the pre-temporal "processio" of the Spirit that his doctrine betokens an advance on that of Tertullian, who still essentially limits the action of the Spirit to the history of the world and of revelation. By the "unius substantiæ" which he regards as true of the Spirit also, Tertullian comes nearer the views which finally prevailed in the Fourth Century than Origen. For the remarkable formula used by Hippolytus in connection with the Spirit, see Vol. II., p. 261.
[239] On the doctrine of the Holy Spirit before Origen and in Origen see Vol. II. passim, Kahnis, L. vom. h. Geist, 1847, Bigg, The Christian Platonists, 171 sq., Nitzsch, pp. 289-293.
[240] It is in Irenæus alone that we find indications of any specific speculation regarding the Holy Spirit.
[241] See Basil., ep. 125: ho de peri tou pneumatos logos en paradrome keitai, oudemias exergasias axiotheis, dia to medepo tote kekinesthai to zetema, i.e., at the time of the Nicene Council.
[242] See above, p. 19. The view of Eunomius is representative of the whole group; see the documents which originated with him and Basil c. Eunom. III. 5. Epiphanius has pithily summarised the Arian doctrine (H. 69 c. 56): to hagion pneuma ktisma palin ktismatos phasin einai dia to dia tou huiou ta panta gegenesthai (John I. 3).
[243] See the so-called Confession of Lucian, i.e., the Second Creed of Antioch.; cf. besides the third and fourth formulæ of Antioch, the so-called formula of Sardica--a proof that the orthodox theologians of the West had not yet given attention to the question; their statement: pisteuomen ton parakleton, to hagion pneuma, hoper hemin autos ho kurios kai epengeilato kai hepempsen; kai touto pisteuomen pemphthen, kai touto ou peponthen, all' ho anthropos, if it has been correctly handed down, shews, besides, a highly suspicious want of clearness; further the formula macrostich., the formulæ of Philippopolis and the later Sirmian and Homoean formula; in the formula of 357 we have "spiritus paracletus per filium est."
[244] The theology of Marcellus might certainly have drawn the attention of the theologians to the doctrine of the Spirit; for Marcellus discussed this doctrine although not with fulness; see Zahn, op. cit., p. 147 ff. According to Marcellus the Spirit proceeds from the Father and from the Logos, and forms part of the divine substance; its special work does not, however, begin till after that of the Son.
[245] See Athanas. ad Serap.
[246] Passages op. cit., above all, I. 23, 24: ei ktisma de en to pneuma to hagion, ouk an tis en auto metousia tou Theou genoito hemin; all' e ara ktismati men suneptometha, allotrioi de tes theias phuseos eginometha, hos kata meden autes metechontes . . . ei de te tou pneumatos metousia ginometha koinonoi theias phuseos, mainoit' an tis legon to pneuma tes ktistes phuseos, kai me tes tou Theou; dia touto gar kai en hois ginetai houtoi theopoiountai; ei de theopoiei, ouk amphibolon, hoti he toutou phusis Theou esti.
[247] Ad Serap. I. 27. Athanasius also appeals in support of this belief to the tradition of the Catholic Church (c. 28 sq.), though he is able to construe it ideally only and does not quote any authorities.
[248] On Macedonius see the articles in the Diction. of Chr. Biogr. and in Herzog's R.-Encykl, and in addition Gwatkin, pp. 160-181, 208. The doctrine is given in Athan. ad Serap. I. 1 f. Socrat. II. 45, 38, Sozom. IV. 27, etc., Basil, ep. 251, Theodoret. II. 6. The Macedonians laid stress on the difference between the particles ek, dia, en, as used of the hypostases, and emphasised the fact that the Holy Scripture does not describe the Holy Spirit as an object of adoration, and pointed out that the relation of Father and Son did not admit of a third. What the trite diatheke of the Macedonians was (see Gregor. Naz. Orat. 31. 7), I do not know.
[249] See Athan., Tom. ad Antioch. 3, see also 5: to agion pneuma ou ktisma oude xenon all' idion kai adiaireton tes ousias tou huiou kai tou patros.
[250] The formula of the revised Creed of Jerusalem, i.e., the later Creed of Constantinople, is characteristic. It only demands the complete adoration and glorifying of the Spirit along with the Father and Son, but otherwise confines itself to general predicates: "to kurion, to zoopoion, to ek tou patros ekporeuomenon, to lalesan dia ton propheton." These are undoubtedly of a very exalted kind and seem also to exclude the idea of the dependence of the Spirit on the Son, but nevertheless they do not get the length of the complete Homousia.
[251] He writes, "Of the wise amongst us some consider the Holy Spirit to be an energy, others a creature, others God, while others again cannot make up their minds to adopt any definite view out of reverence for Scripture, as they put it, because it does not make any very definite statement on the point. On this account they neither accord to Him divine adoration nor do they refuse it to Him, and thus take a middle road, but which is really a very bad path. Of those again who hold Him to be God, some keep this pious belief to themselves, while others state it openly. Others to a certain degree measure the Godhead since like us they accept the Trinity, but they put a great distance between the three by maintaining that the first is infinite in substance and power, the second in power, but not in substance, while the third is infinite in neither of these two respects." For the details see Ullmann, p. 264 f.; at pages 269-275 he has set forth the doctrine of Gregory regarding the Holy Spirit, together with the Scriptural proofs.
[252] Gregory of Nazianzus has consequently (Orat. 31.2) to begin by remarking that he had been accused of introducing a Theos xenos kai agraphos. He himself practically admits the want of any explicit Scriptural proof, and has recourse to the plea (c. 3) that "love of the letter is a cloak for impiety." Basil undoubtedly appealed (de s. s.
29) to Irenæus, Clemens Alex., Origen, and Dionysius of Rome in defence of his doctrine, but he felt all the same that there was little evidence in support of it. Gregory made a similar admission.
[253] Cf. also the remarkable words of Gregory of Naz. Vol. III., p.
230. The striking utterances of the Cappadocians regarding the letter of Holy Scripture, tradition kerygma, and dogma all owe their origin to the troublesome situation created by the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. The Greeks of later days no longer found themselves in such a predicament of this kind, and consequently they did not require to repeat the bold statements regarding tradition.
[254] See also the work of Didymus, peri triados, edid. Mingarelli, particularly the Second Book, c. 6 sq., written about 380, which contains the fullest Fourth Century proof of the complete Godhead of the Holy Spirit which we possess. Previous to this Didymus had already composed a tractate "de spiritu sancto". Of special interest further is the "oikonomia", that is, the pædagogic or politic reticence which the Cappadocians permitted themselves and others in connection with the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. According to Gregory of Naz. God Himself merely indicated the Godhead of the Holy Spirit in the N. T. and did not plainly reveal it till later on in order not to lay too great a burden on men (!)--a theory which over-throws the whole Catholic doctrine of tradition. It is thus also permitted to the faithful now to imitate this divine "economy" and to bring forward the doctrine of the Spirit with caution and to introduce it gradually. "Those who regard the Holy Spirit as God are godly men illuminated with knowledge, and those who say that He is God, when this is done in presence of well-disposed hearers, have something heroic about them, but if it be done in presence of the vulgar-minded it shews that they do not possess the true teaching wisdom (ei de tapeinois, ouk oikonomikoi), because they are casting their pearls into the mud, or are giving strong meat instead of milk," and so on (Orat. 41.6). Gregory defends the conduct of Basil also, who, watched by the Arians in his lofty post in Cæsarea, guarded against openly calling the Holy Spirit "God" because the gumne phone that the Holy Spirit is God would have cost him his bishopric. (Orat. 43.68.) He acknowledged the Godhead of the Spirit "economically" only, i.e., when the time was suitable for so doing. He was sharply blamed for this conduct by the rigidly orthodox clerics, as Gregory tells us (Ep. 26, al. 20). They complained that while Basil expressed himself admirably regarding the Father and the Son, he tore away the Spirit from the divine fellowship as rivers wash away the sand on their banks and hollow out the stones; he did not frankly confess the truth, but acted rather from policy than from truly pious feeling, and concealed the ambiguity of his teaching by the art of speech. Gregory who was regarded as a suspected person himself, stood up for his friend; a man, he said, occupying such an important post as Basil did, must surely proceed with some prudence and circumspection in proclaiming the truth (beltion oikonomethenai ten aletheian) and make some concession to the haziness of the spirit of the time so as not to still further damage the good cause by any public pronouncement. The difference between Athanasius and the religious-orthodox on the one hand, and the theological-orthodox on the other, comes out here with special clearness. Athanasius would have indignantly rejected that "oikonomethenai ten aletheian", because he did not regard God Himself as a politician or a pedagogue, who acts kat' oikonomian, but as the Truth. If he had ever acted as the Cappadocians did, the Homoeans would have been the victors. Still, on the other hand, we ought not to judge the Cappadocians too severely. As followers of Origen they regarded the loftiest utterances of the Faith as Science; but Science admits, in fact often demands a pedagogic and economic or accommodating method of procedure. Just as Basil made a distinction between kerugmata and dogmata, so Gregory (Orat. 40) concluded his Decalogue of Faith with the words: echeis tou musteriou ta ekphora, kai tais ton pollon akoais ouk aporreta; ta de alla eiso mathese, tes triados charizomenes, ha kai krupheis para seauto sphragidi kratoumena.
[255] Their leaders, in addition to Macedonius, were Eustathius of Sebaste, Eleusius of Cyzikus, and probably also Basil of Ancyra. In Marathonius of Nicomedia the party had a member who was held in high honour both because of his position and his ascetic life. The Macedonians in general made a deep impression on their contemporaries by their ascetic practices and by their determined struggle against the Homoeans. In the countries on the Hellespont they were the most important party.
[256] The most important utterances are the Epistle of the Alexandrian Council of 363, the declarations of the Westerns under Damasus in the years 369, 376, 377, the resolution of an Illyrian Council, (given in Theodoret IV. 9), the Council at Antioch in 379, which is decisive as regards the East in so far as those present avowed their belief in the Western doctrine including the doctrine of the Spirit. Compare, besides, the Confession of Basil (Hahn, § 121): baptizomen eis triada homoousion, that of Epiphanius in the Ancorat. (374): pneuma aktiston, and that produced by Charisius (Hahn, § 144): pneuma homoousion patri kai huio.
[257] See Socr. V. 8; Sozom. VII. 7, 9; Theodoret V. 8.
[258] It follows from a communication of the Council held at Constantinople in 382, that the Council issued a "tomus" on the doctrine of the Trinity. That the formula in reference to the Holy Spirit which is given in the so-called Creed of Constantinople, did not proceed from the Council of 381 and cannot have proceeded from it, since it is not sufficiently different from the view of the Macedonians, has been shewn above, p. 93.
[259] Theodoret V. 9.
[260] C. 16 f., see Theodoret V. 11.
[261] Athanasius prepared the way in his letters ad Serapionem.
[262] As is proved by his correspondence with Basil and as his own writings shew, Apollinaris was the first who completely developed the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity. He was, however, more strongly influenced by Aristotle than the Cappadocians were, and accordingly in his case the conception of the one divine substance was a shade nearer the idea of a mere generic conception than with them, although he too was in no way satisfied with the genuine conception (see above p. 84). Apollinaris further retained the old image of auge, aktis, helios, not, however, as it would appear, in order by it to illustrate the unity, but rather the difference in the greatness of the persons (peri triad. 12, 17). (The Logos had already a side turned in the direction of finitude.) His followers afterwards directly objected to the doctrine of the Cappadocians and vice versa. We are now better acquainted with Apollinaris's doctrine of the Trinity than formerly, since Dräseke (Ztschr. f. K.-Gesch. VI., p. 503 ff.) has shewn it to be very probable that the pseudo-Justinian Ekthesis pisteos etoi peri triados is by him, and that the detailed statements of Gregory of Nazianzus in the first letter to Kledonius refer to this work (op. cit., p. 515 ff.). From the work, kata meros pistis, which Caspari has rightly claimed for Apollinaris (Alte and neue Quellen, 1879, p. 65 f.), and which represents a dogmatic advance as compared with the tractate peri triados, it likewise follows that Apollinaris is to be reckoned amongst the founders of the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity,--also because of his advanced doctrine of the Holy Spirit in which he teaches the homousia--and that in fact he ought to be called the very first of these.
[263] Gregory designates as opponents of the correct doctrine of the Trinity (1) the Sabellians, (2) the Arians, (3)--this is extremely remarkable--the hyper-orthodox who teach the doctrine of three Gods equal in substance (hoi agan par' hemin horthodoxoi, Orat. 2, 37). The true orthodoxy is always represented as the middle path. For details, see Ullmann, pp. 232-275.
[264] The theology of Origen was transplanted into the Pontus country by Gregorius Thaumaturgus. It is thus that Marcellus also probably became acquainted with it and combatted it.
[265] Owing to the importance of the matter it may be allowable here to go back again to Tertullian (see Vol. ii., p. 258 f.). The crude part of his doctrine and the points in which it diverges from Cappadocian orthodoxy are indeed sufficiently obvious. Son and Spirit proceed from the Father solely in view of the work of creation and revelation; the Father can send forth as many "officiales" as He chooses (adv. Prax. 4); Son and Spirit do not possess the entire substance of the Godhead, but on the contrary are "portiones" (9); they are subordinate to the Father (minores); they are in fact transitory manifestations: the Son at last gives everything back again to the Father; the Father alone is absolutely invisible, and though the Son is indeed invisible too, He can become visible and can do things which would be simply unworthy of the Father, and so on. All these utterances along with other things shew that Tertullian was a theologian who occupied a position between Justin and Origen. But the remarkable thing is that at the same time we have a view in a highly developed form which coincides with the Cappadocian view, and--this is genuinely Western--in some points in fact approaches nearer Modalism and the teaching of Athanasius than that of Gregory and has a strong resemblance to the doctrine of an immanent Trinity, without actually being such: the Godhead in substantia, status, potestas, virtus, is one (2 ff.), there is only one divine substance and therefore there are not two or three Gods or Lords (13, 19). In this one substance there is no separatio, or divisio, or dispersio, or diversitas (3, 8, 9), though there is indeed a distributio, distinctio, dispositio, dispensatio (9, 13), an oikonomia in short, a differentia per distinctionem (14). Accordingly the unitas substantiæ is not in any way a singularitas numeri (22, 25)--God is not unicus et singularis (12)--but it comprises three nomina or species, formæ gradus, res, personæ, (Tertullian here, however, usually avoids the use of all substantives), see 2, 8 etc. No one of these is a mere attribute, on the contrary each is a substantiva res ex ipsius dei substantia (26); there are thus tres res et tres species unius et indivisæ substantiæ (19); these, however, are most intimately connected together (conjuncti 27); they are tres cohærentes (8, 25) without, however, being one (masc.) [rather are they one (neut. 22, 25)], because the second and the third spring ex unitate patris (19) and are accordingly God as He is, individui et inseparati a patre (18). In the divine substance there are in fact conserti et connexi gradus (8). These three gradus or persons are different from each other in proprietas and conditio, but not in substance (8, 11, 14, 15, 17, 18, 24, 25). The peculiar property of the Father is that He is a nullo prolatus et innatus (19) and also absolutely invisible. The Son is also invisible in virtue of the substance, but visible as to his conditio (14). In virtue of the substance there is in fact a perfect societas nominum; even the Son in accordance with this is "almighty" (17, 18). It is thus necessary to believe in the unitas ex semetipsa derivans trinitatem. This has already become an established truth as against Jews and heathen. What is most instructive of all, however, is to notice Tertullian's use of "persona" as distinguished from "substantia", because it is here that he has most plainly prepared the way for the later orthodox phraseology. The Latin Bible supplied Tertullian with the word "persona"; for (adv. Prax. 6) in Proverbs VIII. 30 it had "cottidie oblectabar in persona ejus" and in Lamentations IV. 20 (adv. Prax. 14) "spiritus personæ ejus Christus dominus." (The LXX. has prosopon in both passages.) Both passages must have attracted special notice. But Tertullian was further a jurist, and as such the conceptions "persona" and "substantia" were quite familiar to him. I accordingly conjecture--and it is probably more than a conjecture--that Tertullian always continued to be influenced in his use of these words by the juristic usage, as is specially evident from his naïve idea of a substantia impersonalis and from the sharp distinction he draws between persona and substantia. From the juristic point of view there is as little objection to the formula that several persons are possessors of one and the same substance or property, that they are in uno statu, as to the other formula that one person possesses several substances unmixed. (See Tertullian's Christology adv. Prax. 27; Vol. ii., p. 281.) The fact that Tertullian, so far as I know, never renders "substance" by "natura"--although he takes the latter to include substance--seems to me as conclusively in favour of my view as the other fact that, in the introduction to his work (3), he attempted to elucidate the problem by making use of an image drawn from the spheres of law and politics. "Monarchy does not always require to be administered by one despot; on the contrary he may name proximæ personæ officiales, and exercise authority through them and along with them; it does not cease to be one government, especially when the Son is the co-administrator. Son and Father are, however, consortes substantiæ patris." Tertullian's exposition of the doctrine in which he hit upon the spirit of the West was, however, hardly understood in the East. In the East the question was taken up in a philosophical way, and there the difficulties first made themselves felt, which in the juristic way of looking at the matter bad been kept in the background. In the latter "persona" is sometimes manifestation, sometimes ideal subject, sometimes fictive subject, sometimes "individuum", and "substantia" is the property, the substance, the Real, the actual content of the subject as distinguished from its form and manifestation (persona). It is significant that Tertullian is also able to use nomen, species, forma, gradus, and in fact even res for "persona", so elastic is the conception, while for "substantia" he has deitas, virtus, potestas, status. On the other hand, when the question is viewed philosophically it is difficult, it is in fact actually impossible to distinguish between nature and person. The following passages will illustrate Tertullian's use of words, (ad v. persona): adv. Valent. 4: "personales substantiæ", sharply distinguished from "sensus, affectus, motus"; adv. Prax. 7: "filius ex sua persona profitetur patrem"; ibid: "Non vis eum substantivum habere in re per substantiæ proprietatem, ut res et persona quædam videri possit" (scil. Logos); ibid: "quæcumque ergo substantia sermonis (tou logou) fuit, illam dico personam"; 11: "filii personam . . . sic et cetera, quæ nunc ad patrem de filio vel ad filium, nunc ad filium de patre vel ad patrem, nunc ad spiritum pronuntiantur, unamquamque personam in sua proprietate constituunt"; 12: "alium autem quomodo accipere debeas jam professus sum, personæ, non substantiæ, nomine, ad distinctionem non ad divisionem"; 13: "si una persona et dei et domini in scripturis inveniretur, etc."; 14: "si Christus personæ paternæ spiritus est, merito spiritus, cujus personæ erat, id est patris, eum faciem suam ex unitate scilicet pronuntiavit"; 15: "manifesta et personalis distinctio conditionis (this too is a juristic conception) patris et filii"; 18: "pater prima persona, quæ ante filii nomen erat proponenda"; 21: "quo dicto (Matt. XVI. 17) Christus utriusque personæ constituit distinctionem"; 23: (on John XII.
28) "quot personæ tibi videntur, Praxea?" . . . "Non propter me ista vox (John XII. 30) venit, sed propter vos, ut credant et hi et patrem et filium in suis quemque nominibus et personis et locis"; 24: "duarum personarum conjunctio (in reference to John XIV. 10 "apparet proprietas utriusque personæ"); 26: "nam nec semel sed ter ad singula nomina in personas singulas tinguimur"; 27: "Father and Son must not be distinguished in una persona"; c. 27: "videmus duplicem statum non confusum sed conjunctum in una persona, deum et hominem Jesum"; 31: "sic voluit deus renovare sacramentum, ut nove unus crederetur per filium et spiritum, ut coram iam deus in suis propriis nominibus et personis cognosceretur."
[266] Natural theology also exercised an influence here and did good service to the Homousios. If it is certain that man has been created kath' homoiosin of God, and if the view--a view which was indeed rejected--could even suggest itself, that his spirit is a portio dei (substantia divina), then the Logos appeared to have no advantage over man if the Homoousia were not attributed to Him.
[267] Ouk esti phusis anupostatos--said both Monophysites and Nestorians in setting forth their Christology. This was applied to the Trinity. But the orthodox too in so far as they were Aristotelians, shunned the platonic--which was also the juristic--fiction of a phusis anupostatos, and this was bound to create difficulties in connection with their doctrine of the Trinity. The Theopaschian controversy is connected with this; see Chap. III.
[268] Of the Monophysite Tritheists the most important are Askusnages, Johannes Philoponus against whom Leontius of Byzantium wrote "de sectis", and Peter of Kallinico. On the works of John, see the article in the Dict. of Christ. Biogr.; an important fragment in Joh. Damasc., de hær. 83 from the "Diætetes" of John. Here it may be plainly seen that Christology determined the form of John's doctrine of the Trinity, but that he sought to give out as Church doctrine his Aristotelian conception of the Hypostasis, viz., Nature reaching manifestation in an "individuum", Nature itself existing only in the single substance, or in the Idea. From Leontius we gather that John spoke of treis merikai ousiai and accepted the notion of an ousia koine which, however, exists only in conception. This doctrine caused divisions amongst the Monophysites, and these led the Coptic patriarch Damian to emphasise so strongly the reality of the one substance, that he could be represented as a Tetradite, although at the same time he probably took away from the independence of the persons. Cf. the Art. "Tritheisticher Streit" by Gass in the R.-Encykl.
[269] See on this Bach, DG. des MA. I., pp. 53 ff., 67 ff. In the Tritheistic propositions and in the counter-movement we have the beginning of the mediæval controversy regarding Realism and Nominalism.
[270] On the other hand the fact that the most distinguished teacher of the East propounded a doctrine of the Trinity which seems to be akin to that of Augustine was of importance for Western theology. We cannot assume that Augustine influenced John. Moreover, after this theologians were still to be found in the East who, perhaps under the influence of Mohammedanism, worked out the doctrine of the Trinity in a modalistic way. Thus in the eleventh century Elias of Nisibis in his book "On the proof of the truth of the Faith", written against the Mohammedans, says (Horst, 1886, p. 1 f.); "Wisdom and Life are two attributes of God, which no one except Him possesses. For this reason Christians also say that He is three persons, i.e., possesses three essential attributes--namely, Essence, Wisdom which is His Word, and Life; He is, however, a single substance . . . Three persons' expresses the same as is expressed by the statement--the Almighty is God, wise, and living. The Essence is the Father, the Wisdom is the Son, the Life is the Holy Spirit." God is thus purely a single being. I am not able to say whether Elias is alone amongst the Nestorians in teaching this heterodox doctrine.
[271] The addition "and rests in the Son" does not require to be taken account of; see Langen, Joh. v. Damaskus, p. 283 ff.
[272] John expressly rejects the view (l.c.) that the Spirit is from the Son or that it has its huparxis from the Son (Hom. de Sabb. s.).
[273] Para tou huiou or dia tou huiou was the expression used; i.e., it was assumed from what was stated in Holy Scripture that there was a mesiteia on the part of the Son in connection with the ekporeusis of the Spirit; e.g., Athan. ad Serap. I. 20, so that Athanasius himself could say, "what the Holy Spirit has, it has from (para) the Son" (Orat. IV. 24), but the Father alone is the cause of the Spirit; cf. Basil. ep. 38. 4, de sp. s. 6 f.; Gregor., Naz., Orat. 31. 7, 8, 29; Gregor., Nyss., Orat. cat. 3 and many passages in his work against Eunomius. This system of doctrine continued to be the dominant one, and it makes no difference to it that a passage has always been pointed to in Epiphanius and Cyril according to which the Spirit is ex amphoin. Marcellus had already expressed himself on this point in his own fashion when he wrote (Euseb., de eccl. theol. III. 4): Pos gar, ei me he monas adiairetos ousa eis triada platunoito, enchorei, auton peri tou pneumatos pote men legein, hoti ek tou patros ekporeuetai, pote de legein, ekeinos ek tou emou lepsetai kai anangelei humin. In reference to this point the dominant theology found it possible only to distinguish between the immanent processio and the processio in the historical revelation, or to analyse the "para" into "ek" (Father) and "dia". In the Nestorian controversy the use of the proposition that the Spirit proceeds from the Son was formally disallowed. Theodoret, it is true, maintained in opposition to Cyril the view that the Holy Spirit is idion huiou, but he declared it to be an impiety to teach that the Holy Spirit is ex huiou or has di' huiou ten huparxin (Opp. V. p. 47 ed. Schultze). Maximus Confess. further repeated this in the ep. ad Marinum, and so too did Joh. Damasc. It is to be found also in the Confession of Theodore v. Mops. (Hahn, § 139, p. 230).
[274] Photius, Mystag. (ed. Hergenröther) p. 15: Ei duo aitiai en te thearchike kai huperousio triadi kathoratai, pou to tes monarchias poluumneton kai theoprepes kratos; The tracing back of the Holy Spirit to the Father and the Son is compared to Manichean dualism. The controversial works are innumerable and those in the Slav languages are also very numerous, dating chiefly from the ninth, eleventh, thirteenth, (Council of Lyons) fifteenth (Synod of Florence) and seventeenth (Cyrillus Lucaris) centuries. In our own day, owing to the Old-Catholic movement and its projects of Union, the question has again been revived. For the carrying out of their plans of Union with Eastern Churches, which have already been in a large measure successful, the Romans have always found it necessary to have controversialists of a conciliatory disposition, e.g., Leo Allatius; while for their condemnation of the obstinate Greeks they have always required fanatical controversialists. The Greeks in order to protect themselves against the threatening encroachment on the part of the Romans, still continue to lay great stress on dogmatic controversy, as is proved by the existence of numerous works and essays, and even by the Greek newspapers which appear in Constantinople. Besides the large works on the Schism by Pichler, and on Photius by Hergenröther, cf. Walch, Hist. controv. de process. s. s. 1751; Theophanes, de process. s. s. 1772; Gass, Symbolik d. griech. K. p. 130 ff.; Kattenbusch, op. cit. I., p. 318 ff.; Vincenzi, op. cit.; Langen, Die trinitar. Lehrdifferenz, 1876; Swete, On the History of the Procession of the Holy Spirit, 1876; Stanley, The Eastern Church, 1864; Kranich, Der h. Basil, i. s. Stellung z. filioque, 1882; Pawlow, Kritische Versuche zur Geschichte der ältesten griechish-russischen Polemik gegen die Lateiner (Russian) 1878; Bach, Dogmengesch. des M.-A. II. p. 748 ff.
[275] The larger histories of dogma go very fully into Augustine's doctrine of the Trinity. For the history of dogma, however, it is sufficient to get a knowledge of the main outlines of this doctrine. The chief source is the great work "de trinitate", the letters Nos. 11 and 120 are specially instructive; the former because, written immediately after Augustine's conversion, it nevertheless already contains his fundamental thought, although still in a simple form and accompanied by a confidence in the power of sanctified reason to understand the mystery; letter 120, because in a proportionately brief form it sets forth the doctrine in its matured shape. (The Quaternity is rejected in c. 7, 13.) Besides this, attention should be given to lib. XI. 10 de civit. dei, amongst other passages; cf. the monographs by Bindemann and Dorner jun., and also Gangauf, Augustin's specul. Lehre v. Gott., 1865. According to Augustine it is not the divine substance or the Father that is the monarchical principle, but, on the contrary, the Trinity itself is the one God (unus deus est ipse trinitas, pater et filius et spiritus s. est unus deus; see de trin. V. 9, c. serm. Arian. c. 4). Consequently the equality and unity are conceived of by him in a much stricter fashion than by the Cappadocians. He is not afraid of the paradox that two persons are equal to three, and again that one is equal to three (VII. 11, VI. 10); for "singula sunt in singulis et omnia in singulis et singula in omnibus et omnia in omnibus et unum omnia." Accordingly the Son too takes an active part in His own sending (II. 9: "a patre et filio missus est idem filius, quia verbum patris est ipse filius"); the immanent function of the persons as well as their economic function are never to be thought of as separated, for "sunt semper unicem, neuter solus" (VI. 7); it is therefore true that the Trinity--in the O. T.--has also been seen (II.), a fact which the Greeks denied, and that the unity is actually a numerical one. It is accordingly also self-evident that the equality is a perfect one; the Father in all His acts is no less dependent on the Son than the Son is on Him (c. serm. Arian. 3: 1. C. 4 is therefore striking: "solus pater non legitur missus, quoniam solus non habet auctorem, a quo genitus sit vel a quo procedat"); the special qualities do not establish anything in the way of superiority or inferiority. Nor are the persons to be conceived of as independent substances or as accidents, but as relations, in which the inner life of the Godhead is present (V. 4, VII. 11, VI. 60, V. 5: "in deo nihil quidem secundum accidens dicitur, quia nihil in eo mutabile est; nec tamen omne quod dicitur, secundum substantiam dicitur. Dicitur enim ad aliquid, sicut pater ad filium et filius ad patrem, quod non est accidens, quia et ille semper pater et ille semper filius" etc. V. 6: amplification of the "relative", see also ep. 233). We can see that Augustine only gets beyond Modalism by the mere assertion that he does not wish to be a Modalist, and by the aid of ingenious distinctions between different ideas. His strength and the significance of his book consist in the attempts he makes to base the doctrine of the Trinity on analogies, together with these distinctions in thought. In connection with these Augustine has given us some extraordinarily acute and valuable discussions on psychology, the theory of knowledge, and metaphysics, which supplied the subsequent centuries with philosophical education. The Scholastics made use of these investigations not only in connection with the doctrine of the Trinity, in discussing which they do not get beyond Modalism--but also in connection with the conception of God in itself and theology generally. It is impossible, however, to understand the labyrinths of the work "de trinitate", on which Augustine was occupied for fifteen years, if we do not keep the fact in view that the great thinker has attempted to express in his formula for the Trinity a thought which this formula not only does not contain, but, on the contrary, implicitly disowns--namely, that the Godhead is personal and is consequently one person, that theotes and Theos mean the same thing. Obliged to believe in "the three persons in the one essence" by tradition, but obliged also by his Christian experience to believe in the single personality of God (see the Confessions), spite of the value which he too puts upon the "Essence" this situation could only result in a contradiction. Had Augustine been able to make a fresh start in putting the Christian religion into a doctrinal system, he would have been the last to have thought of the Greek formula. One who could write (V. 9) "dictum est tres personæ' non ut illud diceretur, sed ne taceretur," would not have discovered the three persons in the one substance! But though thus involved in contradiction this great mind was nevertheless able to instruct posterity in a hundred ways, for Augustine employed the whole resources of his philosophy in the endeavour to overcome the contradiction which could not be overcome. It is moreover, of importance that his acquaintance with the Cappadocian theology was of such a very superficial kind. When (V. 9) he translates the formula, mian ousian treis hupostaseis, by "una essentia tres substantiæ" it is evident that he had not entered into the spirit or grasped the point of view of that theology. The addition, however, "sed quia nostra loquendi consuetudo iam obtinuit, ut hoc intelligatur cum dicimus essentiam, quod intellegitur cum dicimus substantiam, non audemus dicere: unam essentiam tres substantias, sed unam essentiam vel substantiam, tres autem personas, quemadmodum multi Latini ista tractantes et digni auctoritate dixerunt, cum alium modum aptiorem non invenirent, quo enuntiarent verbis quod sine verbis intellegebant," proves that spite of the agreement come to with the East, the West was not yet conscious of possessing a common terminology. The studies of Reuter (Ztschr. f. K. G. V., p. 375 ff., VI. p. 155 ff.) have thrown light on Augustine's relation to the Trinitarian conclusions of the East. We may assent to his thesis (p. 191) "In his discussion of the doctrine of the Trinity Augustine seldom expressly falls back on the formulæ of the Nicene Creed. His doctrine is not anti-Nicene, but neither is it for the most part Nicene in its wording. He made very little use of the discussions of Greek or even of Latin authors." The Nicene Creed is not once mentioned in the work "de trinitate". We ought not in fact to measure the acquaintance which the West had with the theological development in the East by the careful attention given to it by the Roman bishops. Reuter is right in saying (p. 383 f.) that it is not so much the Nicene Creed or indeed any formula whatever which Augustine takes for granted as expressing the Church doctrine of the Trinity, but rather a fixed series of fundamental thoughts. The West was never so deeply impressed by the Nicene Creed as the East had been. In the writings of Tertullian, Novatian, Dionysius of Rome amongst others, it possessed the "series of fundamental thoughts" which proved sufficient and in which was still contained a trace of that hen prosopon maintained by Calixt. (Philos. IX. 12) and the presence of which is still manifested in the "non ut illud diceretur [to wit, tres personæ']" of Augustine. Just for this very reason the West did not require the Nicene Creed, or required it only when it came to close quarters with Arianism, as we may gather from what is said by Ambrose. We have finally to refer to an important element in the position of Augustine in reference to the doctrine of the Trinity. Augustine was positively and negatively influenced by Neo-Platonism as represented by Plotinus and Porphyry. Negatively, in so far as he was there confronted with a doctrine of the Trinity, but with one which was based on a descending series of emanations; positively, in so far as he took over from Plotinus the thought of the simplicity of God and attempted actually to make use of it. To Augustine as a philosopher the construction of a doctrine of the Trinity was already a matter of course. All the more was it necessary for him to strive to construct a peculiarly Christian doctrine of the Trinity, and, because of the idea of simplicity which could no longer be referred to the Father alone, to bring the other two persons into unity with the Father. With the philosophical postulate of the simplicity of God was blended the religious postulate of the personality of God, a point regarding which indeed Augustine never got to have theoretically clear views. Here accordingly the other two "persons" had to be fused, and in this way originated the logical work of art represented by his doctrine of the Trinity, which no one had taught him and which appeared even to himself to be so difficult that he did not count on its being understood by outsiders (Reuter, p. 384). Prudentius (see, e.g., Cath. XI. 13 sq.) has a very ancient doctrine of the Trinity, which partly recalls that of Tertullian and partly that of Marcellus.
[276] The Father Himself is only relatively principium, the Son and the Holy Spirit are also to be termed principium; but they form together one principium (V. 13). The statement accordingly holds good: "fatendum est, patrem et filium principium esse spiritus sancti, non duo principia." It is, however, worthy of note that Augustine in this very place (V. 14) rejects the view that the Son was born of the Holy Spirit also.
[277] It seems to have appeared again in the teaching of Priscillian as avowed Modalism; see the Anathemas of the Spanish Synod of 447 in Hefele, op. cit. II., p. 307 f., and Leo I., ep. ad Turibium.
[278] See the Acts of the Council in Mansi IX., pp. 977-1010, Gams, K. Gesch. Spaniens II. 2, p. 6 ff., Hefele III., p. 48 ff. Rösler (Prudentius, p. 362 ff.) regards the Confession in question as being that of the Council of 400.
[279] The first controversy, (with the Easterns,) arose at the Council of Gentilly in the year 767. Already in the libri Carolini the East is censured for not accepting the filioque.
[280] See Abelard, Sic et Non IV., p. 26 sq. ed. Cousin, and the works cited above; in addition Köllner, Symbolik I., p. 1 f., p. 28 ff.
[281] See Erigena's doctrine of the Trinity, which is entirely drawn from Augustine, de div. nat. I. 62, II. 32, 35, homil. in prolog. ev. sec. Joann.
[282] For the older works on the Athanasian Creed which begin with the disquisition of Voss (1642), see Köllner, Symbolik I., p. 53 ff. In more recent times, besides Caspari, the English, who use the Creed at divine service and nevertheless have come to feel it to be inconvenient, have published valuable discussions on it; see Ffoulkes The Athan. Creed, 1871; Swainson, The Nicene and Apost. Creeds, etc., 1875; Ommaney, Early History of the Athan. Creed, 1875; two prize-essays by Peabody and Courtney Stanhope Kenny, 1876, which are known to me only from the Jena Lit. Ztg., 1877, No. 21. In addition the discussions on the Utrecht Psalter by Hardy (1874), Aratz (1874), and Springer (1880). It is since the non-Athanasian origin of the Creed has been established beyond doubt both on internal and external grounds, that positive work has begun to be done, and this has not yet been brought to a conclusion. The question as to how far its transmission in writing takes us back has already been the subject of important controversies. It is doubtful if the manuscript takes us back as far as the time of Charles the Great or Charles the Bald. But the question of origin cannot be decided by the settlement of this point. Swainson gives 850 as the date of its origin--amongst the Neustrian clergy--and sees in it a piece of intentional deception. Ffoulkes endeavours to prove that it originated at the end of the eighth century and is also inclined to believe there was deception in the matter; Caspari suggests the sixth century; others go as far back as the fifth, beyond the middle of which, at any rate, we cannot, for internal reasons, go. The question of origin is a complicated one since the Rule of Faith originated by stages and only gradually came to he authoritative. There is no reason for thinking of deception. What I have given in the text is based on independent studies, but to describe these at length would take us too far. The most certain traces seem to me to point to Southern Gaul, and North Africa may also have had something to do with it. The Athanasian Creed does not belong to the same category as the pseudo-Isidorian Decretals as Swainson holds; nor was it set up by Charles the Great as a sharp boundary line between East and West, which is the view of Ffoulkes; on the contrary, it was a syllabus of instruction based on the doctrine of Athanasius, which in uncritical times was turned into a creed of Athanasius. The necessity for a detailed creed of this kind was coincident with the desire to possess a compendium of the sacred paradoxes of Augustine and at the same time a sharp weapon against the Trinitarian, i.e., Arian, errors which had for so long haunted the West.
[283] The Armenian Church possesses a Creed which is closely akin to the Creed of Constantinople, but not identical with it.
[284] The Creed is in Hahn, § 81. Careful attention has been bestowed on the separate statements by those who have investigated the subject, and their origin has been ascertained. The verses 9-12 are not to be directly traced to Augustine. Four times over in the Creed salvation is made dependent on carefully defined belief. This is not like Augustine; see ep. 169. 4. He did not intend his amplifications of Trinitarian doctrine to be taken as Church doctrine (de trin. I. 2). The most recent work on the Creed is in Lumby's History of the Creeds, third ed., 1887. Lumby comes to the conclusion based on a very careful examination of the MSS., and tradition, that the Creed in its present shape is not older than the time of Charles the Bald. __________________________________________________________________