Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 15.djvu/81

 TRINITY

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TRINITY

ihr Personality. Hence, because God's Nature is nni'. He is known to us as One God before He can 1m known as Three Persons. And when theologians speak of God without special mention of a Person, thi V conceive Him under this aspect. This is en- iiivly different from the Greek point of view. Greek th'Hitiht fixed primarily on the Three distinct Per- .-.oiis: the Father, to Whom, as the source and origin <>l all, the name of God (e£6s) more especially be- I'ihli.-*; the Son, proceeding from the Father by an el' rnal generation, and therefore rightly termed God al-i; and the Divine Spirit, proceeding from the lather through the Son. The Personality is treated as logically prior to the Nature. Just as human nature is something which the individual man po.s- sessis. and which can only be conceived ;is belonging to and dependent on the individual, so the Divine Nature is .something which belongs to the Persons atiil cannot be conceived independently of Them.

The contrast appears strikingly in regard to the • 1 lest ion of creation. All Western theologians teach tint creation, like all God's external works, proceeds li iiii Him as One: the separate Personalities do not (tiler into consideration. The Greeks invariably speak as though, in all (he Divine works, each Per- SMii e.\erci.ses a separate office. Irena?us replies to the Gnostics, who held that the world was created li\ a demiurge other than the supreme God, by allirming that God is the one Creator, and that He iiiaile all things by His Word and His Wisdom, the Soil and the Spirit (Adv. haer., I, xxii; II, iv, 4, 5, xx\. 9; IV, XX, 1). A formula often found among 111' Greek Fathers is that all things are from the 1 iiher and are effected by the Son in the Spirit 1 \thanasius, "Ad Serap.", 1, xxxi ; Basil, " De Spiritu .^aiicto", n. 38; Cyril of Alexandria, "De Trin. dial.", \ I. P. G., LXXV, 1053). Thus, too, Hippolytus (Cim. Noet., x) says that God has fashioned aU ii. ,,,rs by His Word and His Wisdom, creating them II is Word, adorning them by His Wisdom (wivTa 'a yivb^va 5ta A670U Kal wO0ms nx^^-^^'^^^t Xf>yt^ f.Ti^u>v I,oipt<f Si Koaiidv). The Nicene Creed stili preserves for us this point of view. In it \'.' ~till profess our belief "in one God the Father .\li]iit;hty. Creator of heaven and earth ati I in one Lord Jesus Christ ... by Whom all things were made . . . and in the Holy

Cle.st".

IV The Diinne Unity. — The Greek Fathers did not iiailect to safeguard the doctrine of the Divine Unity, tie High manifestly their standpoint requires a differ- eiii treatment from that employed in the West. I le I onsubstantiality of the Persons is asserted by s Ircna-us when he telLs us that God created the ■ ill by His Son and His Spirit, "His two hands" \'l>. hir., IV, XX, 1). The purport of the phrase 1- e\ idently to indicate that the .Second and Third I'ersdns are not substantially di.stinct from the 1 ii-t. A more philo.sophical description is the doc- trine of the Recapitulation (avyKtcptxKiiluxns). This iis to be first found in the correspondence between I )( nis of Alexandria and St. Dionysius of Rome. ILe former writes: "We thus [i.e., by the twofold procession] extend the Monad [the First Person] to the Trinity, without causing any division, and we recapitulate the Trinity in the Monad without caus- ing diminution" (oeroi ixiv r)fi(U eh Tt TT)>' Tp/a5a Tr)v ^Xbvtxha, 7rXaTi)fo;x€r doiaiperof, KoX Ty)v Tpia5a Trd\iv diuMToi' fh TT)!- .M6ra5a a\<iiovii($<i. — P. Q., XXV, .TO4). Here the consubstantiality is affirmed on the ground that the Son and Spirit, proceeding from the Father, are nevertheless not separated from Him; while they again, with all their perfec- tions, can be regarded as contained within Him.

This doctrine supposes a point of view very differ- ent from that with which we are now familiar. The Greek Fathers regarded the Son as the W'i.sdom and

Power of the Father (I Cor., i, 24) in a formal sense, and in like manner, the Spirit as His Sanctity. Apart from the Son the Father would be without His Wisdom; apart from the Spirit He would be without His Sanctity. Thus the Son and the Spirit are termed "Powers" (Aura^eis) of the Father. But while in creatures the powers and faculties are mere accidental perfections, in the Godhead they are sub- sistent hj'postases. Denis of .Alexandria regarding the Second and Third Persons as the Father's "Pow- ers", speaks of the P'irst Person as being "extended" to them, and not divided from them. And, since whatever they have and are flows from Him, this writer asserts that if we fix our thoughts on the sole source of Deity alone, we find in Him undiminished all that is contained in them.

The Arian controversy led to insistence on the Homousia. But with the Greeks this is not a start- ing-point, but a conclusion, the result of reflective analysis. The sonship of the Second Person implies that He has received the Divine Nature in its fullness; for all generation implies the origination of one who is like in nature to the originating principle. But here mere specific unity is out of the question. The Divine Essence is not capable of numerical multiph- cation; it is therefore, they reasoned, identically the same nature which both possess. A similar line of argument establishes that the Divine Nature as com- municated to the 1I(>1,\' Spirit is not specifically, but numerically, one with that of the Father and the Son. Unity of nature was understood by the Greek Fathers as involving unity of will and unity of action {ivipyeia). This they declared the Three Persona to possess (Athanasius, "Adv. Sabell.", xii, 13, P. G., XXVIII, 117; Basil, "Ep. clx.xxix," n. 7, P. G., XXXII, 693; Gregory of Nyssa, "De orat. dom.",P. G., XLIV, 1160; John Damascene, "De fide orth.", Ill, xiv, P. G., XCIV, 1040). Here we see an im- portant advance in the theology of the Godhead. For, as we have noted, the earlier Fathers invariably conceive the Three Persons as each exercising a dis- tinct and separate function.

Finally, we have the doctrine of Circuminsession {Tepixiipvo'ii) . By this is signified the reciprocal inexistence and compenetration of the Three Persons. The term Trepixup-ni^is is first used by .'^t. John Damas- cene. Yet the doctrine is found much earlier. Thus St. Cyril of Alexandria says that the Son is called the Word and Wisdom of the Ftither "because of the reciprocal inherence of these and the mind" (SiA. ttiv €ls fiXXi/Xa. , ws di/ ctiroi Tts, a.vrep.j3o\iiv

— P. G., LXXIII, 81). St. John Dama.scene assigns a twofold basis for this inexistence of the Persons. In some passages he explains it by the doctrine already mentioned, that the .Son and the Spirit are dvpd/uit of the Father (cf. "De recta .seiitentia", P. G., XCIV, 1424). Thus understood, the Circuminses- sion is a corollary of the doctrine of Recapitulation. He also understands it as signifying the identity of essence, will, and action in the Persons. Wherever these are peculiar to the individual, as is the case in all creatures, there, ho tells us, we have separate existence (itex^P"'*'-^''"' ehai.). In the Godhead the essence, will, and action are but one. Hence we have not separate existence, but Circuminsession (irep^X<ipv<"f) (Fid. orth., I, \-iii, P. G., XCIV, 828). Here, then, the Circuminsession has its basis in the Homoiisia.

It is easy to see that the Greek sy.stem was less well adapted to meet the cavils of the Arian and Mace- donian heretics than was that subsequently developed by .St. -Vugustine. Indeed the controversies of the fourth century brought some of the Greek Fathers notably nearer to the positions of Latin theology. We have seen that they were led to aflSrm the action of the Three Persons to be but one. DidjTnus even employs expressions which seem to shew that he,