My House, Caronport Saskatchewan
Attempting to digest reading, 12:44 AM
Weather = Cold and White and Windy
Where do I begin?
I am working through the post course work for my Theology of God and Creation mod. I am doing a research paper on why Athanasius insisted that the non-biblical word 'homoousios' was so crucial to the Church's understanding of the Trinity.
Well... I have just finished slogging through some of the toughest reading that I have ever done. I have been reading about one of the most difficult doctrines of Christian faith which was originally created using words and concepts that we don't have any more, translated into English and written about by the biggest theological heavy weights of our time (the likes of Karl Barth and T.F. Torrance). Before you start to be impressed by this accomplishment please keep in mind that it took me about 4 hours to get through 18 pages.
Here is my attempt to reformulate what I have learned to better understand it.
There are two angles that I could tackle this paper from. On the one hand I could focus on how the word 'homoousios' acted as an equivalent word that describes what all of Scripture is saying or on the other hand I could focus on how Athanasius use of 'homoousios' was a safeguard against the false ideas and heresies of his day. I will need to address both and maybe the focus should be spread between them, like a two part paper or something.
Anyway, I guess I should begin my discourse.
Homoousios means 'the same essence' or 'of one essence.' His understanding of the Trinity was that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are 'made up' of the same 'stuff,' as in they are the same being. To speak of The Father is to also speak of The Son and The Holy Spirit. The three divine persons co-inhabit each other.
The problem with 'homoousios' was that it was an unbiblical word. The word is never once mentioned in all of Scripture and Athanasius was asking the council to make it nominative for all Christianity! It was using a term that was never part of God's written or spoken revelation to describe not just a doctrine, but the very essence and being of God Himself!
But why did he think that this was so important?
To answer the question most simply Athanasius insisted that 'homoousios' was crucial to the understanding of the Trinity because he felt that it best described the self-revelation of God. He uses the writings of St. John to show his point where Jesus says "I and the Father are one" or that everything that The Father has he gives to The Son. I have a pile of Bible verses to draw on but I'm not going to look for them and pull them out at this hour.
Suffice it to say, his point is that this 'homoousios' is illustrated throughout Scripture and that it is a more accurate and faithful understanding of God than the other ideas. What other ideas? Well, the Arians believed that Jesus was a created being because they misinterpreted the Scriptures in light of Platonic thought. This is a flat out denial of everything Christianity stands for. Faith in the Christ, faith in God, the God who gives himself as the gift. If Jesus is a created being then we should not worship him but we are called to worship him and Jesus himself did not condemn his disciples when they worshiped him.
To prove this point Athanasius illustrates how The Son is in The Father and how everything that The Father has he gives to The Son and that everything that is said about The Son is also said of The Father. This is the bedrock of the doctrine of the Trinity right here. Read it again if you need to, I had to read it some 20 odd times in different places before I finally understood what it meant. The Son is 'homoousios' (of the same essence) as The Father!
Arianism was a direct and obvious error, but 'homoousios' also combated against more subtle heresies that were thriving in early Christianity. First of all it rejected Platonism which stated that 'an effect is never greater than its cause.' It is understood within the economy of the Trinity that the Father is the source of the Son and the Holy Spirit. The Father begets the Son and sends the Spirit. It is easy to make the logical distinction that since the Father is the source of the Son and the Spirit that the Father is the original 'God' and that the Son and the Spirit are lesser emanations, still divine 'God(s)' but lesser than the Father. 'Homoousios' rejects this idea and says that all three divine persons are completely equal.
Another thing it does is center the Godhead on the triune interrelationship of the three divine persons where previously the Godhead was thought to exist solely in the Father (Arius, Origen). Since the Father is in the Son and the Holy Spirit the source of deity is in them too. This was an especially difficult pill to swallow for the Eastern church which sought to preserve the monarchy of the Father.
The term also had cosmological consequences as well. In stating that all three divine persons are of the same essence required the rejection of Origen's theory of an eternal creation. It drew a thick line that divided Creator and creation with no intermediary phases in between. This is the norm for all Christian theology now.
In the end the council of Nicea agreed with Athanasius, although the flavor of 'homoousios' and how it should be used has created its own disagreements and issues over church history.
So that's my brief regurgitation on my studying of Athanasius.
Greg Out
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