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Doctrine of the Trinity Doctrine of the Trinity Doctrine of the Trinity the of Doctrine Doctrine of the Trinity ST506 LESSON 13 of 24 Athanasius and Orthodoxy Peter Toon, DPhil Cliff College Oxford University King’s College University of London Liverpool University I want to begin with the Lord’s Prayer, but in the version used in the patristic period and since then in the Greek-speaking churches. Our Father, who art in heaven, hollowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit now and ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen. Maybe you haven’t heard that version of the “Our Father” before, but if you were to attend any of the ancient Orthodox churches, Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, Serbian Orthodox, and so on, and you went to the liturgies and you were able to understand the language, you would find that that is the normal version of the “Our Father” where the doxology at the end is ascribed to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit. We press on in this lecture with the development of doctrine, the historical development between the Council of Nicea and the Council of Constantinople, and we’re going to focus particularly in this lecture upon that great Alexandrian theologian, its bishop for most of this period, that is, Bishop Athanasius (or as we say, Athanasius [different pronunciation]). And what I want to do is to concentrate on two important lines of development without which we cannot in the next lecture when it comes understand or appreciate fully the contribution of those who are called the Cappadocian fathers. That is, Basil the Great, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa, and neither can we understand the contribution in the West in the Latin-speaking churches of Augustine of Hippo. So today then we pick up on this line of development which is the conversion, and we referred to it in the last lecture, of the great body of those who were called the homoiousian churchmen to the acceptance of the homoousian. Transcript - ST506 Doctrine of the Trinity 1 of 11 © 2019 Our Daily Bread University. All rights reserved. Lesson 13 of 24 Athanasius and Orthodoxy The figures who are largely instrumental in the bringing of this convergence and the bringing of these churchmen into the homoousios theology are first of all Athanasius and secondarily Hilary of Poitiers. You may know the career, the ministry of Hilary, but he spent the years 356 to 359 in exile in Asia Minor and for the first time there found himself in direct contact with the eastern part, the eastern end of the theological debate concerning who is Jesus and what is His relation to the Father. But it was the case that as the years moved on and we got around the year 360 that both Athanasius and Hilary realized that the gap between the homoiousians and the Nicene party which they represented was extremely narrow, and so they worked for a [rapprochement] between them. And therefore in his book on synods in 359, Athanasius made what we could call a conciliatory gesture. He saluted these who were called the homoiousians as brothers in the faith. “Because since they recognized,” said he, “that the Son was out of the Father’s ousia, substance, and not from another hypostasis. That is, his authentic offspring and coeternal Son was with Him. In that they said this, they were near enough,” thought Athanasius, “to admitting the homoousian,” which, believed Athanasius and Hilary, alone expressed with precision the truth which they believed was the truth of sacred Scripture and the truth for all to accept. Athanasius conceded that the homoousian, unless safeguarded by a proper emphasis on the distinctions between the persons of the ingenerate Father and the generate Son lent itself to Sabellian or modalistic interpretations, and you will recall that we have referred to that on several occasions. In fact, Athanasius went so far as to allow the propriety of the word homoiousious, especially in view of its anti-Sabellian emphasis on the three person since it had to be understood in the sense of perfect equality and that strictly entailed unity of nature. And so his conclusion in his book, De Synodis, was that since they (that is, the people he was seeking to bring [concord] with) acknowledge the distinction of persons, he on behalf of the Catholics, that is, the Nicenes, could not deny their place, could not deny that they were as it were on the right road and in the right direction. And, therefore, it is not surprising for us to learn that a further important step, which looking back was a step of great importance, was taken in 362 when the bishop of Alexandria, Athanasius, called what became known as the Council of Alexandria of which he was the president, and it was possible to have this because of the death of Constantius the emperor in 361, and the accession of Julian the Apostate, who you know had no love or care for the church at all. Transcript - ST506 Doctrine of the Trinity 2 of 11 © 2019 Our Daily Bread University. All rights reserved. Lesson 13 of 24 Athanasius and Orthodoxy So this council met in 362, and it was formally recognized there that what mattered was not in the first place the language being used, the words being used, but the meaning underlying these words. And so there was naturally a discussion about these words which were subject to misunderstanding—apotheosis, hypostasis, and ousia—and it is a rather involved account to go into all those discussions, but the fact was that at the end of this council, it was decided by those present that the formula which was the best formula to convey what was believed to be the truth of sacred Scripture was the formula which ran one ousia, three hypostases; one ousia, three hypostases. You will recognize that although it’s in Greek, as being much the same as the formula which Tertullian came up with way back in the third century where he spoke of one substance and three persons. Let me read to you now a couple of paragraphs from the book which I mentioned in my last lecture and which I highly value, the book by T. F. Torrance on The Trinitarian Faith. He is a great admirer of the Greek fathers; in fact, I don’t know anyone who loves the Greek fathers a much as does Professor Torrance, who is an elder statesmen of the Scottish National Presbyterian Church. But here is what he says, and it seems to me to be so precise and to be so accurate: “The Trinitarian theology of Athanasius carried with it a profound revision in the meaning of ousia and hypostases as used in Christian theology, which was signaled by an agreement on the formula: one ousia; three hypostases, reached at the council by Athanasius in 362 and which he later explained in his book Tomus Ad Antiochenos.” And then he quotes the English scholar G. L. Prestige. As G. L. Prestige expressed it, “While hypostasis lay stress on concrete independence, ousia lays it on intrinsic constitution. The one word denotes God as manifest; the other connotes God as being.” Athanasius taught that in God one and the same identical substance or object without any division, substitution, or differentiation of content is permanently presented in three distinct objective forms. In some contexts, when speaking of the being of God, Athanasius used the term ousia in its simplest sense as that which is and subsists by itself, and as more or less equivalent to hypostases in its simplest sense. You’ll remember that was the sense that we encountered in the last of the anathemas of the original Nicene Council. “But,” says Professor Torrance, Transcript - ST506 Doctrine of the Trinity 3 of 11 © 2019 Our Daily Bread University. All rights reserved. Lesson 13 of 24 Athanasius and Orthodoxy Although that usage had historical tradition with it, that had to be changed. That usage and meaning had to be deepened in the light of God’s self-revelation as the Creator who is beyond all created being or beyond ousia and who alone is Ousia in the strict sense, for He is the only one who really and truly is. This change was especially necessary in view of the fact that God reveals Himself to us through the Son and the Spirit who inhere in His own eternal being. He thus gives us such access to Himself through Christ Jesus and in one Spirit that we may know God in some measure as He really is in Himself in the inner relations of His own triune being. Thus when associated with God’s self-revelation in three distinct objective hypostasis as the Father, the Son, and Holy Spirit, ousia signifies the one eternal being of God in the indivisible reality and fullness of His intrinsic personal relations as the Holy Trinity. Thus far from being an abstract or general notion, therefore, ousia, as applied to God, had an intensely personal and concrete meaning, an internally and intensely personal and concrete meaning. That contains some rather heavy thinking, and maybe you will want to play that over and listen again to the very carefully chosen and condensed words of the learned T.
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