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Dogmatic Development Three:
Marius Victorinus and Consubstantiality The Co-Equality of Father and Son
(Circa 281/291-370 A.D.)
“(3) The doctrine of the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father.
“This was affirmed against Arianism at Nicaea, where the concept—if not as
yet the actual term—homoousios [a philosophically defined term that was borrowed
from the Enneads of the pagan philosopher Plotinus] (...) as applied to
the eternal Son was amply vindicated. As Athanasius taught, in jealous
regard for the divineness of the Christian incarnation and redemption, there was
an absolute likeness between the Father and the Son, and also a co-inherence or
mutual immanence (...) of their Persons [Jn 17:21]” (Fulton, Trinity,
Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, p. 459).
“It is interesting to note that the principal term for substance in the
writings of Aristotle is ousia, a word which in earlier Greek writers
means “property” in the legal sense of the word, that which is owned.
(This sense is familiar in English in the old-fashioned expression “a man of
substance.”) The word ousia also occurs in philosophical writings
before Aristotle as a synonym for the Greek word physis [nature], a term
which can mean either the origin of a thing, its natural constitution or
structure, the stuff of which things are made, or a natural kind or species.
The Latin word substantia, from which the English term [substance] is
derived, is a literal translation of the Greek word hypostasis [usually
translated person in the New Testament] (“standing under”). This term
acquired its philosophical connotations in later Greek and occurs principally in
controversies among early Christian theologians about the real nature of
Christ....” (Substance and Attribute, The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, p.
36).
“Thus, what the Greeks call nature [physis or physica, i.e.
physics or natural philosophy. See Catherine Osborne, Rethinking Early
Greek Philosophy: Hippolytus of Rome and the Presocratics, Cornell
University Press, 1987, pp. 29, 387] , Victorinus calls substance [substantia],
and what the Greeks call hypostasis, Victorinus calls existence.
Apparently a substance has individuality by the character of its action, and so
action is self-revelatory. The term consubstantial is used by Victorinus
to safeguard the divine equality. But even substantia although the common
name for Father, Son and Spirit, may be used as a synonym for existentia
[existence], for in Victorinus the common names are also the predominant names
of each of the Three. Indeed, he tries to show that each divine Person is
the Three, rather than following the more usual way of arguing that all Three
are one or even that one God is in three Persons” (Clark, Marius Victorinus:
Theological Treatises on the Trinity, p. 42).
“The use to which Victorinus put the word substantia as referring
primarily to the pure “To Be [i.e. pure Act transcending every form, the
potentiality of the being—the One]” of God necessitated his use of a new word
existentia
to refer to esse [i.e. to be, a being actualized—the Many or the Father, the Son
and the Holy Spirit revealed] that is determined by a form. Of course,
substantia is not understood by him in the Aristotelian sense of what is
opposed to accidents and qualities. Substance for him means a concrete
being, and this seems to be one of his Plotinian reminiscences (Enn(eads),
6.1.3; 12.8; ch. adv. Ar. I 30). This may be the individual
substance later used by Boethius to define person. For Victorinus,
however, this substantia was pure esse (cf. Adv. Ar. II
4,23), and therefore designated the commonness of the Three Persons. It is
thus used to designate Esse improperly, but the word Esse is used
as the proper name of the Father” (Clark, Marius Victorinus: Theological
Treatises on the Trinity, p. 41).
“In view of the above, Victorinus found it necessary to make use of
existentia
to indicate what stands outside the commonness. Hence, existentia
means “to be” [the Many] with form or determination and is used to distinguish
each of the Three: one substance [the One] and three existences [the
Many]. And so when he is speaking strictly of his own Trinitarian
doctrine, Victorinus has bypassed hypostasis and persona (used freely by
Hilary of Poitiers [bishop of Poitiers ca. 315-367 A.D.]), perhaps to keep his
doctrine distinguished from the Plotinian triad and perhaps because the
Sabellians conceived God as triprosopos (of three [non-distinct] persons).
It is not quite certain that Victorinus is the first to use subsistentia.
He generally uses “subsistence” to denote the individual indicated by
existentia; thus, subsistentia is properly used of the Son because it
designates Esse cum forma (“To Be” with Form)” (Clark, Marius
Victorinus: Theological Treatises on the Trinity, pp. 41-42).
The Nicaean Council (325 A.D.)
“At Nicaea (A.D. 325) the Council Fathers had expressed in the language of
reason [philosophy] what Scripture said of the Son’s equality [homoousion
in Greek Neoplatonic Philosophy and consubstantialitas in Latin
Neoplatonic Philosophy and consubstantial in English] with the Father and, his
status as true Son really begotten by the Father in the way in which spirits
beget. That the Son is consubstantial [although they had no philosophic
construct for the concept] with the Father was declared at the Council of
Nicaea. It does not follow that this statement was clearly understood.
There was no ready-made philosophy to clarify it. The word homoousion
appears in the Enneads of Plotinus [a third century Chaldean
Philosopher], but there it refers to the Intelligible Triad [the Many], not to
the One. Victorinus translated the Greek word homoousion [homoousion
is a philosophic construct and as such is not found in the New Testament] used
at Nicaea into the Latin word consubstantialitas. The word
homoousion was used to express the relations of the Father and the Son
within the Godhead in order to exclude the Arian heresy, which denied the
divinity of the Son. Arius [ca. 250-336], a Libyan by birth and ordained
at Alexandria, championed a subordinationist [hierarchical] teaching which was
condemned, first at Alexandria, then at Nicaea. Arianism held that the Son
of God was not eternal but created by the Father from nothing as an instrument
for the creation of the world; although a changeable creature, the Son was
dignified with the title of Son because of his righteousness. The Arians
divided into three groups: the Anomoeans (dissimilar) spoke of the
Son as unlike the Father; the Homoeans (similar) spoke of the Son as like
the Father in all things according to the Scriptures; the semi-Arians or
Homoiousians (of similar substance [with the Father]) thought that
similarity rather than consubstantiality left more room for distinctions in the
Godhead” (Clark, Marius Victorinus: Theological Treatises on the
Trinity, pp. 10-11).
In a footnote the author adds: “Three Greek roots underlie the
terminology, ancient and modern, concerned with the Son’s relationship with the
Father. (1)
homo, same; (2) homoi- (or homeo-), similar; (3) ousia,
being (as a noun) [in the Greek New Testament ousia is used either as a
masculine, feminine or neuter present participle of the verb eimi but not
as a noun] or substance. The first root plus the third yields
homoousios-homoousion,
signifying identity in substance [with the consequence that the gods are
co-eternal and co-equal]. The second root plus the third yields
homoiousios-homoiousion
or homoeousios-homoeousion, signifying similarity in substance [with the
consequence that one God is subordinate to another—in divine hierarchical
fashion]. These terms apply either to the Son himself or to a doctrinal
position concerning him in relation to the Father. The theologians and
their followers who espouse these terms with their theological implications are
called Homoousians, those holding identity in substance [Athanasius of
Alexandria and his supporters], or Homoiousians (Homoeousians), those
holding similarity in substance [Arius of Alexandria and his supporters].
Furthermore, the ousia element can be left out, yielding Homoeans (Homoians).
Those who hold total dissimilarity in substance are called
Anomoians, a word formed by combining a negative prefix with homo”
(Clark, Marius Victorinus: Theological Treatises on the Trinity, p.
10).
The Syncretistic Nature of the Nicaean and Athanasian Creeds
“The trinitarian doctrine of the Christians was neither an outright adoption
of the philosophic triads popular among the Middle and Neoplatonists, nor was it
any mere adaptation of triadic thought. At the moment of the Nicene formulation
the acceptance of the Christian dogma of the Trinity meant a rejection of the
philosophic triads as they were understood. Arius did not rise to this
rejection. The statements he offered were reasonable [that is, they
conformed completely with recognized and accepted Neoplatonic principles of
logic] but were contrary to the mystery revealed in Scripture [actually,
contrary to the Chaldean mysteries]. Victorinus found nothing ready at
hand within his philosophical milieu that did not require some good, hard,
creative interpretation on his part. When he tried to interpret, he turned
to the tradition of Neoplatonism, where many of the best insights in Platonism,
Aristotelianism and Stoicism had come together. In some Neoplatonic source
he found a reconciliation of Plotinus and Numenius, and it was Numenius who had
influenced the ‘Chaldaean Oracles’ “ (Clark, Marius Victorinus:
Theological Treatises on the Trinity, pp. 17-18).
The Nicaean Creed Violated an Absolute Principle of Neoplatonism
“...in quarrels concerning the nature of the Trinity—which set Arius and his
supporters, who believed that the Son was a creation of the Father, against
orthodox [Catholic] Christians, such as St. Athanasius [of Alexandria, Egypt]
and the Cappadocians [of Asia Minor], who accepted the consubstantiality of the
persons—it seems that the question posed is completely alien to philosophy.
Generation and procession, words used by the Christians to designate relations
between the Son or Spirit and the Father, by no means retain the precise meaning
that they have for Plato and the Platonists. This meaning, if preserved,
would imply a doctrine such as Arianism since one of the absolute principles of
Neo-Platonism is that the reality that proceeds is inferior to the reality from
which it proceeds. But belief in the divinity of Jesus Christ contradicts
this principle and prescribes a dogma that no longer has the slightest
affiliation with philosophical speculation” (Brehier, The History of
Philosophy: The Hellenistic and Roman Age, pp. 245-246).
Relating the Three Dogmatic Developments to the Trinitarian Formulation:
(3) The Consubstantiality of the Son
“There are then (as the statement may run) three Persons (Hypostases)
or real distinctions in the unity of the divine Nature or Substance, which is
Love. The Persons are co-equal, inasmuch as in each of them the divine
Nature is one and undivided, and by each the collective divine attributes are
shared. As a ‘person’ in Trinitarian usage is more than a mere aspect of
being, being a real ground of experience and function, each divine Person,
while less than a separate individuality, possesses His own hypostatic character
or characteristic property (...).”
(1) The Philosophic Logos of the Greeks
“The hypostatic characters of the Persons may be viewed from an internal and
an external standpoint, i.e. with reference to the inner constitution of the
Godhead or to the Godhead as related to the cosmos or world of manifestation. “
(2) The Philosophic Eternal Generation of the Logos
“Viewed ab intra, the hypostatic character of the Father is ingeneration
(...), of the Son; filiation, of the Spirit procession; wherefore, ‘the Father
is of none, neither begotten nor proceeding; the Son is eternally begotten of
the Father; the Holy Ghost eternally proceeding from the Father and the Son.’ [Westminster
Confession, ii,3]. Viewed ab extra (for Love functions externally as
well as internally, is centrifugal as well as centripetal [Cf. S.A. McDowall,
Evolution and the Doctrine of the Trinity, Cambridge, 1918, p. 53 f.], the
hypostatic character of the Father is made manifest in creation, whereby a world
is provided for beings who should be capable of experiencing fellowship with the
divine Love; the hypostatic character of the Son in redemption, whereby the
alienating power of sin is overcome; and the hypostatic character of the Spirit
in sanctification, whereby human nature is quickened and renewed and shaped to
the divine likeness. Yet, while this is said, as there is no separation in
the unity of the Godhead, so the one God is manifested in the threefold work of
creation, redemption, and sanctification; moreover, each of the Persons as
sharing the divine attributes is active in the threefold work, if with varying
stress of function. Verily the doctrine of the Trinity exit in
mysterium” (Fulton, Trinity, Encyclopedia of Religion and
Ethics, pp. 459-460).
Dogmatic Development Four:
Basil of Caesarea Cappadocia Gregory of Nyssa Cappadocia Gregory of
Nazianzus Cappadocia
(Circa 330-395 A.D.)
“(4) The doctrine of eternal distinctions within the divine Nature,
according to the formula of ‘three Hypostases [persons in the philosophic, not
the natural or legal sense] in one Ousia or Substance’ (...).
“To the Cappadocian theologians (Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of
Nyssa) we owe the final settlement, for which this formula stands, of the
dogmatic terminology. In distinguishing between hypostasis and
ousia, the former denoting a real principle of distinction [but not a being
with personality] within the divine Nature and the latter the divine Substance
or Nature (ousis) itself, they sought to lift the orthodox doctrine out
of the Sabellian modalism which recognized no distinction in reality between the
Father and the Son, so impairing the significance of the historical Christ, and
at the same time to vindicate it against the opposite error of heathen
polytheism (tritheism) [the belief in three indistinguishable Gods in the
Godhead], of which it was so often accused. Moreover, the Cappadocians
gave to the third member of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, the definite place and
character which He now possesses in Eastern orthodoxy, as being also a
Hypostasis in the Godhead, consubstantial with the Father, and proceeding from
the Father through the Son” (Fulton, Trinity, Encyclopedia of
Religion and Ethics, p. 459).
Concerning the error of linking a plurality of Gods in the Godhead with
heathen polytheism, remember what we have already studied. It is not
polytheistic to believe in more than one God in the Godhead. Notice again:
“The notion of unity has appeared in Chapter IV, where I discussed some
theoretical implications of Aristotle’s theology. It remains to consider
how this notion was actually treated by the early Christian writers and their
pagan contemporaries; and this for two reasons; first, because unity was
considered to be an important property, or even the distinctive property, of the
godhead; and secondly, because discussions of God’s ‘substance’ were
increasingly influenced by the claim that one substance was common to the three
divine persons.
“Christians of course discovered the notion of unity in the Bible; the Old
Testament claims that God is one; the New Testament endorses this claim, but
also lays down that there is only one Lord Christ, and refers to the unity of
the Christian fellowship in the Holy Spirit. There is no need to review
this biblical material, which is no doubt familiar; in particular, the emergence
of monotheism in Israelite and other religions has been thoroughly investigated.
But it is perhaps worth noting that there seem to be in principle two ways in
which a monotheistic belief can replace an earlier polytheism. Polytheism
rarely implies a strictly equal society of gods; some divinities will normally
be greater and more powerful than others. Thus it is possible for one
divine being to take the lead so decisively that the others are degraded to the
status of attendant spirits, or of mere manifestations or powers of the supreme
god. He then is ‘the one God’ in the sense of the only being who can
rightfully claim this dignity” (Stead, Divine Substance, pp. 180-181).
Relating the Four Dogmatic Developments to the Trinitarian Formulation:
(4) The Philosophic Eternal Distinctions of Pater, Logos and Pneuma
in the Trinitarian Formulation
“There are then (as the statement may run) three Persons (Hypostases)
or real distinctions in the unity of the divine Nature or Substance [ousia],
which is Love.”
(3) The Philosophic Consubstantiality of the Logos in the Trinitarian
Formulation
“The Persons are co-equal, inasmuch as in each of them the divine Nature is
one and undivided, and by each the collective divine attributes are shared.
As a ‘person’ in Trinitarian usage is more than a mere aspect of being, being a
real ground of experience and function, each divine Person, while less than a
separate individuality, possesses His own hypostatic character or characteristic
property (...).”
(1) The Logos of Greek Philosophy in the Trinitarian Formulation
“The hypostatic characters of the Persons may be viewed from an internal and
an external standpoint, i.e. with reference to the inner constitution of the
Godhead or to the Godhead as related to the cosmos or world of manifestation. “
(2) The Philosophic Eternal Generation of the Logos in the
Trinitarian Formulation
“Viewed
ab intra, the hypostatic character of the Father is ingeneration (...),
of the Son filiation, of the Spirit procession; wherefore, ‘the Father is of
none, neither begotten nor proceeding; the Son is eternally begotten of the
Father; the Holy Ghost eternally proceeding from the Father and the Son.’ [Westminster
Confession, ii,3]. Viewed ab extra (for Love functions
externally as well as internally, is centrifugal as well as centripetal [Cf.
S.A. McDowall, Evolution and the Doctrine of the Trinity, Cambridge,
1918, p. 53 f.], the hypostatic character of the Father is made manifest in
creation, whereby a world is provided for beings who should be capable of
experiencing fellowship with the divine Love; the hypostatic character of the
Son in redemption, whereby the alienating power of sin is overcome; and the
hypostatic character of the Spirit in sanctification, whereby human nature is
quickened and renewed and shaped to the divine likeness. Yet, while this
is said, as there is no separation in the unity of the Godhead, so the one God
is manifested in the threefold work of creation, redemption, and sanctification;
moreover, each of the Persons as sharing the divine attributes is active in the
threefold work, if with varying stress of function. Verily the doctrine of
the Trinity exit in mysterium” (Trinity,
Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, pp. 459-460).
Dogmatic Development Five: St. Augustine of Hippo (Circa 354-430 A.D.)
“(5) The doctrine of the double procession from the Father and the
Son (the filioque clause, added to the Nicaeno-Constantinopolitan Creed on
canonically indefensible grounds)
“—a doctrine which represents the difference between Western orthodoxy and
Eastern (with its view of procession as from the Father alone, the unitary
source of deity); which was conceived, in the interests of the divine unity,
as counteractive of the subordinationism contained in the Eastern formulas;
and which under Augustine’s influence found its way into the Athanasian
Creed. Curiously enough, the Athanasian Creed (so called) thus differs
theologically from the Nicaeno-Constantinopolitan Creed in its original
Eastern form on a point on which Athanasius’s own sympathies would have lain
with the Eastern symbol. The Greek (Athanasian) theology found the
divine unity, in the Father, the one fountainhead of Son and the Spirit as
subordinate to the Father. The Roman (Augustinian) theology found the
divine unity in the divine Nature or Substance, with the result that, as the
distinctions between the three Hypostases or Persons became weakened under
the doctrine of the co-inherence, so attractive to the non-metaphysical
Westerns, there remained no proper foothold—so to speak—for the doctrine of
subordination” (Trinity, Encyclopedia of Religion and
Ethics, p. 459).
Relating the Five Dogmatic Developments to the Trinitarian Formulation:
(4) The Philosophic Eternal Distinctions of Pater, Logos and Pneuma
in the Trinitarian Formulation
“There are then (as the statement may run) three Persons (Hypostases)
or real distinctions in the unity of the divine Nature or Substance [ousia],
which is Love.”
(3) The Philosophic Consubstantiality of the Logos in the
Trinitarian Formulation
“The Persons are co-equal, inasmuch as in each of them the divine Nature is
one and undivided, and by each the collective divine attributes are shared.
As a ‘person’ in Trinitarian usage is more than a mere aspect of being,
being a real ground of experience and function, each divine Person, while
less than a separate individuality, possesses His own hypostatic character
or characteristic property (...).”
(1) The Logos of Greek Philosophy in the Trinitarian Formulation
“The hypostatic characters of the Persons may be viewed from an internal
and an external standpoint, i.e. with reference to the inner constitution of
the Godhead or to the Godhead as related to the cosmos or world of
manifestation.”
(2) The Philosophic Eternal Generation of the Logos in the
Trinitarian Formulation
“Viewed
ab intra, the hypostatic character of the Father is ingeneration (...),
of the Son; filiation, of the Spirit procession; wherefore, ‘the Father is
of none, neither begotten nor proceeding; the Son is eternally begotten of
the Father; the Holy Ghost eternally proceeding from the Father and the
Son.’ [Westminster Confession, ii, 3].”
(5) The Philosophic Double Procession in the Trinitarian Formulation
“Viewed
ab intra, the hypostatic character of the Father is ingeneration (...),
of the Son; filiation, of the Spirit procession; wherefore, ‘the Father is
of none, neither begotten nor proceeding; the Son is eternally begotten of
the Father; the Holy Ghost eternally proceeding from the Father and the
Son.’ [Westminster Confession, ii, 3].”
Viewed
ab extra (for Love functions externally as well as internally,
is centrifugal as well as centripetal [Cf. S.A. McDowall, Evolution and
the Doctrine of the Trinity, Cambridge, 1918, p. 53 f.], the hypostatic
character of the Father is made manifest in creation, whereby a world is
provided for beings who should be capable of experiencing fellowship with
the divine Love; the hypostatic character of the Son in redemption, whereby
the alienating power of sin is overcome; and the hypostatic character of the
Spirit in sanctification, whereby human nature is quickened and renewed and
shaped to the divine likeness. Yet, while this is said, as there is no
separation in the unity of the Godhead, so the one God is manifested in the
threefold work of creation, redemption, and sanctification; moreover, each
of the Persons as sharing the divine attributes is active in the threefold
work, if with varying stress of function. Verily the doctrine of
the Trinity exit in mysterium” (W. Fulton, Trinity,
Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, pp. 459-460).
The Chaldean Mystery of the One and the Many
“What lends a special character to the Christian doctrine of the Trinity is
its close association with the distinctive Christian view of divine
incarnation. In other religions [”...we meet with the trinitarian
group of Brahma, Siva, and Visnu; and in Egyptian religion with the
trinitarian group of Osiris, Isis, and Horus, constituting a divine
family,
like the Father, Mother, and Son in mediaeval Christian pictures” (W. Fulton,
Trinity, Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, p. 458)] and religious
philosophies [”...the Neo-Platonic view of the Supreme or Ultimate Reality,
which was suggested by Plato in the Timaeus; e.g., in the philosophy
of Plotinus the primary or original Realities (...) [Enn(eads), v.1, cited
by C. C. J. Webb, God and Personality (Gifford Lectures),
London, 1918, p. 43] are triadically represented as the Good or (in numerical
symbol) the One, the Intelligence or the One-Many, and the World-Soul or
the One and Many. The religious Trinity associated, if somewhat
loosely, with Comte’s [the father of modern Sociology—modern humanism]
philosophy might also be cited here: the cultus of humanity as the
Great Being, of space as the Great Medium, and of the earth as the Great
Fetish [Comte’s view of the Chaldean Many].”
While the philosophical connection of Trinitarianism with ancient Greece is
openly acknowledged by both historical and theological authors, the true
origin of that philosophy has been grossly overlooked and ignored. Few
have been honest or thorough enough in their research to trace this
so-called “Western philosophy” back to its original roots in the ancient
Near East. However, sufficient historical evidence can be found in
reference libraries to show that the highly acclaimed philosophers of
ancient Greece acquired their ideas of the nature of God and the Universe
from the Magi of Persia, who in turn received these teachings from the
Chaldeans. This Chaldean connection is clearly revealed in a study of
the life of the famous Greek philosopher Plato.
The Canaanite Ancestry of Plato
In 2189 B.C., Arcadius and Emathius, white sons of Canaan, began to move
their peoples into Greece under the leadership of Eber, father of the
Hebrews. Emathius settled his people in the region of Emathia in
Macedonia. He is the father of the Hamathites (Gen 10:18).
According to Trogus, early Macedonia was made up of many different tribes.
Their names were Emathia, Paeonia and Pelasgoi (Trogus, VII,1).
By 1707 B.C., the sons of Emathia had migrated south from Macedonia and had
settled in the Argolis of Peloponnese, where they became known as Achaeans.
The Achaeans settled with the Pelasgoi and Ionians in Attica, founding
Athens under Cecrops in 1556 B.C. Herodotus states that the
Pelasgoi were also the ancestors of the Aeolians (Herodotus 12, 231).
As the Achaeans, Ionians and Pelasgoi freely mixed or co-habited the same
regions, they are undoubtedly peoples of the same ancestor, Emathius.
In the 1100’s the Dorians [Midianites from Spain and Italy] forced the
Ionians to migrate into what became Achaia Peloponnese.
“Now these Ionians, during the time that they dwelt in the Peloponnese and
inhabited the land now called Achaea [which was before the arrival of Danaus
and Xuthus in the Peloponnese], were called, according to the Greek account,
Aegialean Pelasgi, or ‘Pelasgi of the Sea-shore’; but afterwards, from Ion
the son of Xuthus, they were called Ionians [western philosophy began with
these Ionians in the sixth century B.C. This beginning corresponds
with the arrival of the Persians and the Magi]” (Herodotus,
231).
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