Chapter I.
But since our system of religion is wont to observe a distinction of
persons in the unity of the Nature, to prevent our argument in our
contention with Greeks sinking to the level of Judaism there is need
again of a distinct technical statement in order to correct all error
on this point.
For not even by those who are
external to our doctrine is the Deity held to be without Logos1942
| 1942 the Deity…without Logos. In
another treatise (De Fide, p. 40) Gregory bases the argument for
the eternity of the Λόγος on
John i.
1,
where it is not said, “after the beginning,” but “in
the beginning.” The beginning, therefore, never was without
the Λόγος. |
. Now this admission of theirs will quite
enable our argument to be unfolded. For he who admits that
God is not
without Logos, will agree that a being who is not without Logos (or
word) certainly possesses Logos. Now it is to be observed that the
utterance of man is expressed by the same term. If, then, he should say
that he understands what the Logos of
God is according to the analogy
of things with us, he will thus be led on to a loftier idea, it being
an absolute necessity for him to believe that the utterance, just as
everything else, corresponds with the
nature. Though, that is, there is
a certain sort of force, and
life, and
wisdom, observed in the human
subject, yet no one from the similarity of the terms would suppose that
the
life, or
power, or
wisdom, were in the case of
God of such a sort
as that, but the significations of all such terms are lowered to
accord
with the standard of our
nature. For since our
nature is liable to
corruption and
weak, therefore is our
life short, our
strength
unsubstantial, our word unstable
1943
| 1943 unstable: ἀπαγὴς (the
reading ἅρπαγις is manifestly wrong). So afterwards human speech is called
ἐπίκηρος. Cf. Athanasius (Contr. Arian. 3): “Since man came
from the non-existent, therefore his ‘word’ also has a
pause, and does not last. From man we get, day after day, many
different words, because the first abide not, but are
forgotten.” |
. But in that
transcendent
nature, through the greatness of the subject contemplated,
every thing that is said about it is elevated with it. Therefore though
mention be made of
God’s Word it will not be thought of as having
its realization in the utterance of what is spoken, and as then
vanishing away, like our
speech, into the nonexistent. On the contrary,
as our
nature, liable as it is to come to an end, is endued with
speech
which likewise comes to an end, so that, imperishable and ever-existing
nature has
eternal, and substantial
speech. If, then, logic requires
him to admit this
eternal subsistence of
God’s Word, it is
altogether necessary to admit also that the subsistence
1944
| 1944 ὑπόστασιν. About this oft repeated word the question arises whether
we are indebted to Christians or to Platonists for the first skilful
use of it in expressing that which is neither substance nor
quality. Abraham Tucker (Light of Nature, ii. p. 191)
hazards the following remark with regard to the Platonic Triad,
i.e. Goodness, Intelligence, Activity, viz. that quality
would not do as a general name for these principles, because the ideas
and abstract essences existed in the Intelligence, &c., and
qualities cannot exist in one another, e.g. yellowness cannot be
soft: nor could substance be the term, for then they must have
been component parts of the Existent, which would have destroyed the
unity of the Godhead: “therefore, he (Plato) styled them
Hypostases or Subsistencies, which is something between substance and
quality, inexisting in the one, and serving as a receptacle for the
other’s inexistency within it.” But he adds, “I do
not recommend this explanation to anybody”; nor does he state the
authority for this Platonic use, so lucidly explained, of the word.
Indeed, if the word had ever been applied to the principles of the
Platonic triad, to express in the case of each of them “the
distinct subsistence in a common οὐσία,”
it would have falsified the very conception of the first, i.e.
Goodness, which was never relative. So that this very word seems
to emphasize, so far, the antagonism between Christianity and
Platonism. Socrates (E. H. iii. 7) bears witness to the absence
of the word from the ancient Greek philosophy: “it appears to us
that the Greek philosophers have given us various definitions of
οὐσία, but have not taken the slightest notice of ὑπόστασις.…it is not found in any of the ancients except
occasionally in a sense quite different from that which is attached to
it at the present day (i.e. fifth century). Thus Sophocles in
his tragedy entitled Phœnix uses it to signify
‘treachery’; in Menander it implies ‘sauces’
(i e. sediment). But although the ancient philosophical writers
scarcely noticed the word, the more modern ones have frequently used it
instead of οὐσία.”
But it was, as far as can be traced, the unerring genius of Origen that
first threw around the Λόγος that
atmosphere of a new term, i.e. ὑπόστασις, as well as ὁμοούσιος, αὐτόθεος, which afterward made it possible to present the Second
Person to the Greek-speaking world as the member of an equal and
indivisible Trinity. It was he who first selected such words and saw
what they were capable of; though he did not insist on that fuller
meaning which was put upon them when all danger within the Church of
Sabellianism had disappeared, and error passed in the guise of Arianism
to the opposite extreme. |
of that word consists in a living
state; for
it is an impiety to suppose that the Word has a soulless subsistence
after the manner of
stones. But if it subsists, being as it is
something with intellect and without body, then certainly it lives,
whereas if it be
divorced from
life, then as certainly it does not
subsist; but this idea that the Word of
God does not subsist, has been
shown to be blasphemy. By consequence, therefore, it has also been
shown that the Word is to be considered as in a living condition. And
since the
nature of the Logos is reasonably believed to be simple, and
exhibits in itself no duplicity or combination, no one would
contemplate the existence of the living Logos as dependent on a mere
participation of
life, for such a supposition, which is to say that one
thing is within another, would not exclude the idea of compositeness;
but, since the simplicity has been admitted, we are compelled to think
that the Logos has an independent
life, and not a mere participation of
life. If, then, the Logos, as being
life, lives
1945
| 1945 lives. This doctrine is far removed
from that of Philo, i.e. from the Alexandrine philosophy. The
very first statement of S. John represents the Λόγος as
having a backward movement towards the Deity, as well as a forward
movement from Him; as held there, and yet sent thence by a force which
he calls Love, so that the primal movement towards the world does not
come from the Λόγος, but from
the Father Himself. The Λόγος here is
the Word, and not the Reason; He is the living effect of a
living cause, not a theory or hypothesis standing at the gateway of an
insoluble mystery. The Λόγος speaks
because the Father speaks, not because the Supreme cannot and will not
speak; and their relations are often the reverse of those they hold in
Philo; for the Father becomes at times the meditator between the
Λόγος and the world drawing men towards Him and subduing portions
of the Creation before His path. Psychology seems to pour a light
straight into the Council-chamber of the Eternal; while Metaphysics had
turned away from it, with her finger on her lips. Philo may have used,
as Tholuck thinks, those very texts of the Old Testament which support
the Christian doctrine of the Word, and in the translation of which the
LXX. supplied him with the Greek word. But, however derived, his
theology eventually ranged itself with those pantheistic views of the
universe which subdued all thinking minds not Christianized, for more
than three centuries after him. The majority of recent critics
certainly favour the supposition that the Λόγος of Philo
is a being numerically distinct from the Supreme; but when the relation
of the Supreme is attentively traced in each, the actual antagonism of
the Christian system and his begins to be apparent. The Supreme of
Philo is not and can never be related to the world. The Λόγος is a logical necessity as a mediator between the two; a
spiritual being certainly, but only the head of a long series of such
beings, who succeed at last in filling the passage between the finite
and the infinite. In this system there is no mission of love and of
free will; such beings are but as the milestones to mark the distance
between man and the Great Unknown. It is significant that Vacherot, the
leading historian of the Alexandrine school of philosophy, doubts
whether John the Evangelist ever even heard of the Jewish philosopher
of Alexandria. It is pretty much the same with the members of the
Neoplatonic Triad as with the Λόγος of Philo.
The God of Plotinus and Proclus is not a God in three hypostases: he is
simply one, Intelligence and Soul being his necessary emanations; they
are in God, but they are not God: Soul is but a hypostasis of a
hypostasis. The One is not a hypostasis, but above it. This
“Trinity” depends on the distinction and succession of the
necessary movements of the Deity; it consists of three distinct
and separate principles of things. The Trinity is really peculiar to
Christianity. Three inseparable Hypostases make equally a part of the
Divine nature, so that to take away one would be to destroy the whole.
The Word and Spirit are Divine, not intermediaries disposed in a
hierarchy on the route of the world to God. As Plotinus reproached the
Gnostics, the Christian mysticism despises the world, and suppressing
the intermediaries who in other doctrines serve to elevate the soul
gradually to God, it transports it by one impulse as it were into the
Divine nature. The Christian goes straight to God by Faith. The
Imagination, Reason, and Contemplation of the Neoplatonists,
i.e. the three movements of the soul which correspond to their
lower “trinity” of Nature, Soul, Intelligence, are no
longer necessary. There is an antipathy profound between the two
systems; How then could the one be said to influence the other?
Neoplatonism may have tinged Christianity, while it was still seeking
for language in which to express its inner self: but it never
influenced the intrinsically moral character of the Christian Creeds.
The Alexandrine philosophy is all metaphysics, and its rock was
pantheism; all, even matter, proceeds from God necessarily and
eternally. The Church never hesitated: she saw the abyss that opens
upon that path; and by severe decrees she has closed the way to
pantheism. |
,
it certainly has the faculty of will, for no one of living
creatures is without such a faculty. Moreover that such a will has also
capacity to act must be the conclusion of a
devout mind. For if you
admit not this potency, you
prove the reverse to exist. But no;
impotence is quite removed from our conception of
Deity. Nothing of
incongruity is to be observed in connection with the
Divine nature, but
it is absolutely necessary to admit that the
power of that word is as
great as the purpose, lest mixture, or concurrence, of contradictions
be found in an existence that is incomposite, as would be the case if,
in the same purpose, we were to detect both impotence and
power, if,
that is, there were
power to do one thing, but no
power to do something
else. Also we must suppose that this will in its
power to do all things
will have no tendency to anything that is
evil (for impulse towards
evil is
foreign to the
Divine nature), but that whatever is good, this
it also wishes, and, wishing, is able to perform, and, being able, will
not
fail to perform
1946
| 1946 will not fail to perform; μὴ
ἀνενεργητον
εἶναι. This is a
favourite word with Gregory, and the Platonist Synesius. |
; but that it will
bring all its proposals for good to effectual accomplishment. Now the
world is good, and all its contents are seen to be wisely and
skilfully ordered. All of them, therefore, are the works of the Word,
of one who, while He lives and subsists, in that He is
God’s
Word, has a will too, in that He lives; of one too who has
power to
effect what He wills, and who wills what is absolutely good and
wise
and all else that connotes superiority. Whereas, then, the
world is
admitted to be something good, and from what has been said the
world
has been shown to be the
work of the Word, who both wills and is able
to effect the good, this Word is other than He of whom He is the Word.
For this, too, to a certain extent is a term of “relation,”
inasmuch as the
Father of the Word must needs be thought of with the
Word, for it would not be word were it not a word of some one. If,
then, the
mind of the hearers, from the relative meaning of the term,
makes a distinction between the Word and Him from whom He proceeds, we
should find that the
Gospel mystery, in its
contention with the
Greek
conceptions, would not be in
danger of coinciding with those who prefer
the beliefs of the
Jews. But it will equally
escape the absurdity of
either party, by acknowledging both that the living Word of
God is an
effective and creative being, which is what the
Jew refuses to receive,
and also that the Word itself, and He from whom He is, do not differ in
their
nature. As in our own case we say that the word is from the
mind,
and no more entirely the same as the
mind, than altogether other than
it (for, by its being from it, it is something else, and not it; still
by its bringing the
mind in evidence it can no longer be considered as
something other than it; and so it is in its essence one with
mind,
while as a subject it is different), in like manner, too, the Word of
God by its self-subsistence is distinct from Him from whom it has its
subsistence; and yet by exhibiting in itself those qualities which are
recognized in
God it is the same in
nature with Him who is recognizable
by the same distinctive marks. For whether one
adopts goodness1947
| 1947 goodness. “God is love;”
but how is this love above or equal to the Power? “Infinite
Goodness, according to our apprehension, requires that it should
exhaust omnipotence: that it should give capacities of enjoyment and
confer blessings until there were no more to be conferred: but our idea
of omnipotence requires that it should be inexhaustible; that nothing
should limit its operation, so that it should do no more than it has
done. Therefore, it is much easier to conceive an imperfect creature
completely good, than a perfect Being who is so.…Since, then, we
find our understanding incapable of comprehending infinite
goodness joined with infinite power, we need not be surprised at
finding our thoughts perplexed concerning them…we may presume
that the obscurity rises from something wrong in our ideas, not from
any inconsistencies in the subjects themselves.” Abraham
Tucker, L. of N., i. 355. |
, or
power, or
wisdom, or
eternal existence,
or the incapability of vice,
death, and decay, or an entire perfection,
or anything whatever of the kind, to mark one’s conception of the
Father, by means of the same marks he will find the Word that subsists
from Him.
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