Catholic believer. St. Jerome 1 accuses him of Arianism, and the brilliant defense of Origen's orthodoxy by Pamphilus, Gregory Thaumaturgus, and Eusebius, and among modern writers by Vincenzi, has not fully dispelled this indictment. In his writings, Origen appears in a twofold rôle. Whenever he speaks as a simple witness to ecclesiastical Tradition, he voices the Catholic truth; 62 but when he speaks as a philosopher endeavoring to clear up the mysteries of the faith, he does not scruple to represent the Son of God as a κτίσμα Θεοῦ and as a God" (SeÚTEρos cós) — a name which Plato had applied "second to the world as fashioned by the Demiurge. To do full justice to Origen's position, it will be well to distinguish, as Athanasius does, between what he states OETIK@s, as a witness to Tradition, and what he writes yvμvaσtik@s, θετικῶς, as a philosopher “inquiring and exercising himself," as Newman renders the term. The Tractatus Origenis de Libris SS. Scripturarum, consisting of twenty homilies which have reached us in an Orleans manuscript of the tenth, and in another of St. Omer belonging to the twelfth century, discovered and edited by Batiffol in 1900, are not the work of Origen nor of Novatian. The well-developed Trinitarian terminology of these homilies clearly indicates a Post-Nicene composition. Weyman has shown that the Latin text is original, but the true author has not yet been ascertained.65 61 Ep. 94 ad Avit. 63 62 Cfr. In Ioa., tr. 2, apud Migne, P. G., XIV, 128: "Didicimus credere (in Deo) esse tres hypostases: Patrem et Filium et Spiritum Sanctum." In Ep. ad Rom., VII, 5, (apud Migne, 1. c., 1115) he says: Quomodo enim inferior dici potest, " qui Filius est et omnia est, quae 63 De Decret. Nicaen. Syn., 27. 65 Cfr. Bardenhewer-Shahan, Pa- READINGS: On the Trinitarian teaching of the Ante-Nicene Fathers, see especially *Franzelin, De Deo Trino, thes. 10-11, Romae 1881; Heinrich, Dogmatische Theologie, Vol. IV, §§ 231-232, Mainz 1885; Kuhn, Christliche Lehre von der hl. Dreieinigkeit, §§ 12-18, Tübingen 1857; *Duchesne, Les Témoins Anténicéens du Dogme de la Trinité, Paris 1882; Petavius, De Trinitate, lib. I, c. 3-5, and the "Praefatio"; Thomassin, De Trinitate, c. 37-47; *Prud. Maranus, De Divinitate Domini Nostri Jesu Christi, 11. 2-4; B. Jungmann, Dissertationes Selectae in Historiam Ecclesiasticam, Vol. I, pp. 358 sqq., Ratisbonae 1880; B. Heurtier, Le Dogme de la Trinité dans l'Épître de St. Clément de Rome et le Pasteur d'Hermas, Lyon 1900; J. Tixeront, History of Dogmas, English tr., Vol. I, St. Louis 1910; E. Krebs, Der Logos als Heiland im ersten Jahrhundert. Ein religions- und dogmengeschichtlicher Beitrag zur Erlösungslehre, Freiburg 1910; F. Diekamp, Über den Ursprung des Trinitätsbekenntnisses, Münster 1910. ARTICLE 3 THE NICENE AND POST-NICENE FATHERS I. THE DOGMATIC TEACHING OF THE FATHERS AGAINST ARIUS AND MACEDONIUS. a) The sensation caused throughout Christendom by the first appearance of the Arian heresy can be explained only on the assumption that the truth had been in quiet possession for three full centuries. The Bishop of Alexandria, Alexander, at a synod held in his episcopal city about the year 320, excommunicated Arius. He explained the motives for this step in a lengthy letter to Bishop Alexander of Constantinople. "Quis unquam talia audivit?" he said among other things, "aut quis nunc audiens non obstupescat et aures obstruat, ut ne talium verborum sordes auditum contaminent? - Who ever yet heard such language? and who that hears it now, but is shocked and stops his ears, that its foulness should not enter into them?" 66 This utterance clearly proves that the heresy of Arius, which attacked the very foundations of the dogma of the Divine Trinity, by asserting that the Logos-Son (Christ) is a mere creature, was at the beginning of the fourth century regarded as an intolerable innovation. St. Athanasius himself took a leading part in the Arian controversies which for many years shook the entire Orient and even made their evil effects felt among the Germanic nations of the Western world, especially among the Vandals in Africa. Athanasius was Bishop of Alexandria and is deservedly called "the Great." He was ready to give up his life in defense of the Catholic truth that the Son is eternally begotten from the substance of the Father, and is consubstantial with Him, as defined by the Council of Nicaea. b) When (about 360) Macedonius began to undermine that other pillar of the dogma of the Blessed Trinity, viz.: the Divinity and Consubstantiality of the Holy Ghost, Athanasius again appeared in the arena and denounced his teach 66 Opera Athanas., tom. I, p. 398, Paris 1689; Newman, Select Trea tises of St. Athanasius, Vol. I, p. 5, 9th ed., London 1903. 67 ing as "impious" and "unscriptural." "It is impious," he said, "to call the Holy Ghost created or made (KTIσTÒV TOMTOν), seeing that both the (κτιστὸν ἢ ποιητόν), Old and the New Testament connumerate and glorify Him with the Father and the Son, because He is of the same Divinity (ovvapioμei kai δοξάζει, διότι τῆς αὐτῆς θεότητός ἐστιν.” St. Athanasius found powerful allies in the "three Cappadocians," Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, and particularly St. Basil, who in his work On the Holy Spirit 6s quotes a number of older writers in confirmation of the ecclesiastical Tradition.69 68 Honorable mention must also be accorded to St. Amphilochius, who was consecrated Bishop of Iconium, A. D. 374, and later became metropolitan of Lycaonia, (+ after 394). In the name of a synod of his Lycaonian suffragans he published a magnificent letter on the Divinity of the Holy Ghost.70 To Didymus the Blind, of Alexandria, “one 67 Cfr. St. Athanasius, De Incarnatione Dei Verbi, reprinted in Migne, P. G., XXVI, 998. 68" It has always been the standard work on the subject (Fortescue, The Greek Fathers, p. 81, London 1908), despite the reproach of "Economy' which attaches to it, because St. Basil avoided (as he himself admits) calling the Holy Ghost God. 69 A picturesque account of the lives of St. Gregory of Nazianzus and St. Basil will be found in A. Fortescue, The Greek Fathers, London 1908. For their works and an account of their teaching, as also of that of St. Gregory of Nyssa, cfr. Bardenhewer-Shahan, Patrology, pp. 286 sqq., pp. 295 sqq., and pp. 274 sqq. Note especially the passage from St. Gregory Nazianzen on the Trinity, ibid., p. 291. 70 Epistola Synod. contr. Pneumatomachos. of the most notable men of an age that abounded in great personalities," (+ about 395) we owe, besides an important work On the Trinity (TEрì Tpiádos), a lucid treatise entitled De Spiritu Sancto, which has reached us only in the sixty-three brief chapters of St. Jerome's Latin translation,"1 and which is indeed, as Bardenhewer says, "one of the best of its kind in Christian antiquity.' 74 9972 The most eminent defenders of the dogma in the West were St. Ambrose 73 and St. Augustine, who was the first to attempt a systematic exposition of the mystery of the Divine Trinity. His famous work On the Trinity became the starting-point of the Trinitarian speculations of medieval Scholasticism. St. Anselm adopted Augustine's profound considerations in his Monologium, whence they found their way into the Liber Sententiarum of Peter Lombard, and through this channel into the numerous theological Summae, among which that of St. Thomas Aquinas has ever held the place of honor.75 2. PATRISTIC POLEMICS.-The method which the Fathers chose to refute the Scriptural objections raised by the Arians and Semi-Arians furnishes a valuable argument for the purity and 71 Cfr. Bardenhewer-Shahan, Patrology, pp. 307 sqq. 72 Ibid., p. 308. On Didymus the Blind cfr. Bardy, Didyme l'Aveugle, Paris 1910. 73 De Spiritu Sancto ad Gratianum Augustum, in three books. 74 De Trinitate. 75 Cfr. St. Thomas, S. Theol., 1a, qu. 27 sqq. |