imperishable freshness of the ecclesiastical Tradition touching the dogma of the Blessed Trinity. a) Prov. VIII, 22 reads: "Dominus possedit me in initio viarum suarum - The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his ways." The Septuagint has: ěktiσé μe ἔκτισέ με ἀρχὴν ὁδῶν αὐτοῦ. This text was considered by the Arians as the weak spot in the Catholic armor. Catholics did not deny that the passage referred to the Logos, and the Arian contention that the Septuagint offered sufficient warrant for taking Christ to be κτίσμα Θεοῦ· a creature of God. seemed well founded. It was a Gordian knot, which the Fathers, each in his own way, tried hard to unravel. Some suggested that the Septuagint text had been practiced upon by the Arians. Others referred the difficult passage to our Lord's sacred Humanity, while others again thought it applied to His Divinity. On one point, however, all were unanimously agreed, viz., in holding that Christ was God and the Second Person of the Divine Trinity. Those among the Fathers who (wrongly) believed that EKTIσe was an Arian forgery for ἔκτησε = ἐκτήσατο (from κτάομαι = acquiro, possideo) were guided by the thought that, since Eve said after the birth of Cain: "Possedi ( from possedit) hominem per Deum-I have gotten a man through God," the Hebrew text of Proverbs must have read, as our Latin Vulgate reads: "Dominus possedit me (p, i. e., generatione habet me; ekтησe or EKTησató μe). This interpretation was favored by Epiphanius, Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, and Jerome. Most of the other Fathers, however, notably Athanasius and Nazianzen, in view of a parallel passage in Ecclesiasticus," = tio et ante saecula creata (ĔKTIσE) sum." 978 referred Prov. VIII, 22 to the Humanity of Christ and interpreted it thus: "The Lord created me in my human nature as the beginning [åpx = principle] of his ways.' There was a third group of Fathers who did not hesitate to apply Prov. VIII, 22 to Christ's Divine Nature. They interpreted the verb Kтíže generically as producere gignere, or looked upon it as a drastic term calculated to throw into relief the hypostatic self-existence of the Logos in contradistinction to the Father.80 The dogma of the Divinity of Christ, and consequently that of the Blessed Trinity, was safeguarded in any event.81 = 79 The New Testament pièce de resistance of the Arian heretics was Christ's own declaration, recorded in John XIV, 28: "Pater maior me est- The Father is greater than I." Here, they alleged, Christ Himself attests His subordination to the Father. This objection, too, was met differently by different Fathers. While the Latins were inclined to limit John XIV, 28 to Christ's Humanity (in which hypothesis the Arian argument simply collapsed), most of the Greek Fathers, notably Athanasius and Nazianzen, preferred the somewhat strained assumption that Christ is subject to the Father even in His Divine Nature, i. e., that the Father, by virtue of His being the First Person (avτóleos avapxos), is at the same time the principle of the Son, who must therefore be conceived essentially as "Deus de Deo." According to this theory the expression "maior me" signifies Christ's immanent succession with 78 For further details, see Petavius, De Trinitate, II, 1, 3. 79 Thus St. Ephrem. 80 This was the opinion of St. Hilary. = 81 On these various interpretations, cfr. especially Ruiz, De Trini tate, disp. 96; also St. Thomas, S. Theol., 1a, qu. 41, art. 3. regard to origin in the Godhead, not a difference in rank or power. The difficulty based on Christ's primogeniture was tersely and effectively refuted by St. Ambrose: "Legimus primogenitum, legimus unigenitum: primogenitus, quia nemo ante ipsum; unigenitus, quia nemo post ipsum We read the First-born,' and we read the Onlybegotten' He is the First-born, because there was no one before Him; He is the Only-begotten, because there is no one after Him.” 82 b) Besides a large number of philosophical fallacies, the Macedonians marshalled against the dogma of the Divinity of the Holy Ghost a series of Scriptural texts, which were loyally and learnedly restored to their true meaning by the Fathers. From Rom. VIII, 26: “Ipse Spiritus postulat pro nobis gemitibus inenarrabilibus — The Spirit himself asketh for us with unspeakable groanings," these heretics concluded: One who prays to God with unspeakable groanings cannot be Himself God; therefore the Holy Ghost is a mere creature. Without pointing to the evident anthropomorphism in this text, St. Augustine refutes the false interpretation of the Macedonians by the simple remark: “Dictum est 'interpellat,' quia interpellare nos facit nobisque interpellandi et gemendi inspirat affectum - The Bible says, the Spirit intercedes for us, because He makes us intercede and puts it into our hearts to intercede and groan." 83 I Cor. VIII, 6, where, strangely enough, the name of the Holy Ghost does not occur at all, was cited by the Pneumatomachians in favor of their 82 Ambros., De Fide, I, 7. Cfr. Newman, Tracts Theological and Ecclesiastical, pp. 199 sqq., new ed., London 1895. Other Arian difficulties of less importance are canvassed by Kleutgen, De Ipso Deo, pp. 458 sqq., Ratisbonae 1881; cfr. also Schwane, Dogmengeschichte, 2nd ed., Vol. II, § 12, Freiburg 1895. 83 Aug., Ep., 194 (al. 105), n. 6. heretical tenet that the Third Person is a creature and therefore cannot be God. But, as St. Athanasius effectively retorted: "The Holy and Blessed Trinity is so indivisibly united with itself, that when the Father is named, His Logos is included, and in the Logos also the Spirit. And when the Son is named, the Father is in the Son, nor is the Spirit outside the Logos, inasmuch as there is but one grace, which is perfected out of the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Ghost." 84 READINGS:- - Petavius, De Trinitate, I, 7 sqq.; George Bull, Defensio Fidei Nicaenae (against Petavius, I, 3 sqq.), Oxon. 1685 (On Bull's work and its unmerited reputation, cfr. Hunter. Outlines of Dogmatic Theology, Vol. II, pp. 206 sq.); *Möhler, Athanasius der Grosse, 2nd ed., Vol. I, pp. 1-116, Mainz 1844; Hergenrother, Die Lehre von der göttlichen Dreieinigkeit nach Gregor von Nazianz, Ratisbon 1850; Atzberger, Die Logoslehre des hl. Athanasius, Freiburg 1880; A. Beck, Die Trinitätslehre des hl. Hilarius von Poitiers, Mainz 1903; J. Bilz, Die Trinitätslehre des hl. Johannes von Damaskus, Paderborn 1909. On the apologetical aspects of the subject, see Hettinger, Apologie des Christentums, 9th ed., Vol. III, Freiburg 1907. 84 Ep. I ad Serap. 14. For further information on this aspect of the matter, see Kleutgen, De Ipso Deo, pp. 490 sqq., and Th. Scher mann, Die Gottheit des Hl. Geistes nach den griechischen Vätern des vierten Jahrhunderts, Freiburg 1901. CHAPTER III THE PRINCIPLE OF THE BLESSED TRINITY, OR THE SIONS IN THE GODHEAD PROCES Divine Revelation tells us that there are Three Persons in the Godhead. It also points out the cause of this difference, viz.: the fact of the Divine Processions. It is these Processions that properly constitute the mystery of the Blessed Trinity and furnish the basis for the distinction of three real Hypostases,-Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. By "Procession" we understand "the origination of one Divine Person from another." There are two such Processions, viz., Generation (generatio, yévmous) and Spiration (spiratio, πνεῦσις). We shall treat them separately. |