Just briefly touching down after lecturing at Parkminster today and before going on to an appointment in London with an old friend.Today we reached Arius in the course on the Trinity. It is quite fascinating to see the various attempts made by fathers, ecclesiastical writers and heretics, to address the problem of how there can be only one God and yet there can also be Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. Tertullian came up with the term "Trinitas" and there were various more or less successful attempts to say how the Son or the Word could be distinct from the Father and yet be God.
Some thought that the Son was an emanation from the Father, perhaps a secondary God, or that he was God and therefore the same as the Father, so that the Father also suffered on the Cross. Others said that he was like a ray from the light source, that he was God in a sense but not the true God. Arius said that he was created, not eternally begotten, and that he was of a different kind of thing from the Father, not of the same substance.
In the next session, we will take a look at the response of the Fathers of Nicea and the Creed which we say or sing at Mass. Knowing something of the struggle to express the faith in words, it is thrilling to affirm in the words of those Fathers in 325:
And [we believe] in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God,
Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
consubstantial with the Father.
9 comments:
:-D Quite some years ago, I remember mentioning to my priest that though I'd always believed in the Trinity, I didn't understand quite why it was "necessary" to have a Holy Spirit. I would have thought the "Father" and the "Son" would have had it covered, and then Father gave the simplest and best answer of all: "Because he didn't decide to 'be' He just is that way because He always was that way." Very satisfying answer, and the "obvious" one.
Father, as you know, the ''original'' Nicene Creed goes on to say: And those who say ''There was when He was not,'' and ''Before His generation He was not,'' and ''He came to be from nothing,'' or those who pretend that the Son of God is ''Of other hypostasis or substance,'' or ''created,'' or ''alterable,'' or ''mutable,'' the Catholic and Apostolic Church anathematizes.
I find the heresies of the Early Church fascinating - wonder why none of them originated in the West?
I recall with amusement my days at University, with a fellow student describing Arius going around proclaiming, "Ην ποτε οτε ουκ ην."
I don't imagine it was quite like that...
Oddly enough, this is exactly what I'm teaching the second years in Church History right now.
Looking forward to more.
You seen yourself here, Fr?:
http://nowyruchliturgiczny.blogspot.com/2008/12/abc-summorum-pontificum-w-parafii-cz-1.html
Thanks, Berenike - yes, I saw that and was both flattered and slightly amused to think of my article being translated into Polish!
Paddy - Pelagianism?!
I have problems with the new consubstantial ; it doesn't mean the same in english as it does in Latin.
If you think I'm being specious ; well what about consubstantiation ?
Like most ; I'm a vociferous critic of the present ICEL's failings ; but it's deeply regrettable that merely because the US had the reprehensible, verging-on-the-heretical 'One in being with the Father' ; we have to lose a near-perfect rendition of the theological symbolisation of the dogmatic order with our "Of One Being with the Father' - something significantly more congruent to homoousios than the english consubstantial ; which has lost almost all connotations of 'substantiation' and implies the material rather than the ontological essence.
I just think the average catholic is going to have problems with consubstantial; and if catechesis is limited - I think it's quite feasible that many catholics out there could become inadvertently arian-by-default !
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