Orthodox Apologetics

The link:
The Road to Nicea
by John Anthony Mcguckin

Creed and Catchword

The origin of these "confessional acclamations" of Christ ("God from God, Light from Light" etc.) was Alexander's party, but since it had become clear in years of wrangling that even their opponents could accept Christ's title as "god from God" (as meaning a nominal, inferior deity from the superior, absolute deity), many of the Alexandrians demanded a firmer test of faith. It was possibly Ossius [see Saints and Heretics], the theological adviser of the emperor, who suggested that the magic word to nail the Arian party would be homoousios. 

The term meant "of the same substance as," and when applied to the Logos it proclaimed that the Logos was divine in the same way as God the Father was divine (not in an inferior, different, or nominal sense). In short, if the Logos was homoousios with the Father, he was truly God alongside the Father. The word pleased Constantine, who seems to have seen it as an ideal way to bring all the bishops back on board for a common vote. It was broad enough to suggest a vote for the traditional Christian belief that Christ was divine, it was vague enough to mean that Christ was of the "same stuff" as God (no further debate necessary), and it was bland enough to be a reasonable basis for a majority vote. It had everything going for it as far as the politically savvy Constantine was concerned, but for the die-hard Arian party, it was a word too far. They saw that it gave the Son equality with the Father without explaining how this relationship worked. (In fact, it would be another 60 years before anyone successfully articulated the doctrine of the Trinity) Therefore they attacked it for undermining the biblical sense of the Son's obedient mission. The intellectuals among the group (chiefly Eusebius of Nicomedia) also attacked it for its crassness—it attributed "substance" (or material stuff) to God, who was beyond all materiality. Moreover, the term was unsuitable because it was "not found in the Holy Scriptures," and indeed this did disturb many of the bishops present for the occasion.

The great majority of bishops still endorsed the idea, however, and so with Constantine pressing for a consensus vote the word entered into the creed they published. It was not that the bishops at Nicaea were themselves simply looking for a convenient consensus in the synod's vote. Many synods had been held before this extraordinarily large one at Nicaea, and ancient bishops predominantly worked on the premise that decisions of the Church's leadership required unanimity. Their task was to proclaim the ancient Christian faith against all attacks, and this was not something they felt they had to seek out or worry over—they simply had to state among themselves a common and clear heritage, one that could be proclaimed by universal acclamation. They believed that they were the direct continuance of the first apostolic gathering at Jerusalem, when the Holy Spirit led all the apostles to the realization of the gospel truth. Because of this, when a few bishops dissented and refused their vote, the remaining bishops excommunicated and deposed them, accusing them of having refused to be part of the family of faith. Among this group was Eusebius of Nicomedia. All of the deposed bishops received harsh sentences from the emperor (although Eusebius was confident he could wiggle out of his disgrace, as soon he did).

To read the rest please visit the  link

From the book Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church by John D. Zizioulas


>

""As is known, the final formulation of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity speaks of  "one substance, three persons" (μία ουσία τρία άτομα). One would therefore have said that the unity of God, the "ontology" of God, consists in the substance of God. This would bring us back to the ancient Greek ontology: God first is God (His substance or nature, His being), and then exists as Trinity, that is, as persons. This interpretation in fact prevailed in Western theology and unfortunately entered into modern Orthodox dogmatics with the arrangement in the dogmatic handbooks of the headings "On the One God" followed by "On the Trinity." The significance of this interpretation lies in the assumption that the ontological "principle" of God is not found in the person but in the substance, that is, in the "being" itself of God. Indeed the idea took shape in Western theology that that which constitutes the unity of God is the one divine substance, the one divinity; this is, as it were, the ontological "principle" of God.

But this interpretation represents a misinterpretation of the Patristic theology of the Trinity. Among the Greek Fathers the unity of God, the one God, and the ontological "principle" or "cause" of the being and life of God does not consist in the one substance of God but in the hypostasis, that is, the person of the Father. The one God is not the one substance but the Father, who is the "cause" both of the generation of the Son and of the procession of the Spirit. Consequently, the ontological "principle" of God is traced back, once again, to the person. Thus when we say that God "is," we do not bind the personal freedom of God - the being of God is not an ontological "necessity" or a simple "reality" for God - but we ascribe the being of God to His personal freedom.

In a more analytical way this means that God, as Father and not as substance, perpetually confirms through "being" His free will to exist. And it is precisely His Trinitarian existence that constitutes this confirmation: the Father out of love - that is, freely - begets the Son and brings forth the Spirit. If God exists, He exists because the Father exists, that is, He who out of love freely begets the Son and brings forth the Spirit. Thus God as person - as the hypostasis of the Father - makes the one divine substance to be that which it is: the one God. This point is absolutely crucial. For it is precisely with this point that the new philosophical position of the Cappadocian Fathers, and of St. Basil in particular, is directly connected. That is to say, the substance never exists in a "naked" state, that is, without hypostasis, without "a mode of existence." And the one divine substance is consequently the being of God only because it has these three modes of existence, which it owes not to the substance but to one person, the Father. Outside the Trinity there is no God, that is, no divine substance, because the ontological "principle" of God is the Father. The personal existence of God (the Father) constitutes His substance, makes it hypostases. The being of God is identified with the person.

3. What therefore is important in Trinitarian theology is that God "exists" on account of a person, the Father, and not on account of a substance. Because it's significance is not simply theoretical or academic but profoundly existential, ..........................."" [1]

"The manner in which God exercises His ontological freedom, that precisely which makes Him ontologically free, is the way in which He transcends and abolishes the ontological necessity of the substance by being God as Father, that is, as He who "begets" the Son and "brings forth" the Spirit. This ecstatic character of God, the fact that His being is identical with an act of communion, ensures the transcendence of the ontological necessity which His substance would have demanded - if the substance were the primary ontological predicate of God - and replaces this necessity with the free self-affirmation of divine existence. For this communion is a product of freedom as a result not of the substance of God but of a person, the Father - observe why this doctrinal detail is so important - who is Trinity not because the divine nature is ecstatic but because the Father as a person freely wills this communion." [2]<>

[1] pages  40-42 from the book Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church by John D. Zizioulas

[2] page 44 from the book Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church by John D. Zizioulas

From the book The Person in the Orthodox Tradition by Metropolitan of Nafpaktos Hierotheos, and translated by Esther Williams

""1. The theology of the person

It must be said from the very beginning that the holy Fathers used the term 'prosopon', (person), first and foremost in referring to God, and particularly the three Persons of the Holy Trinity. A whole process had to be gone through in order to arrive at the formulation that the Triune God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are particular Persons-Hypostases, but have a common essence or substance. The common substance does not remove the particularity of the Persons-Hypostases, and the Persons-Hypostases do not remove or break the oneness of the substance.

In ancient Greece the word 'prosopon', which now means 'person', had more the meaning of the mask which the actors used to play different roles on the stage. There is a whole history surrounding the development of the mask into person. Through a long process the word that was used to mean 'mask' finally came to mean not simply something that one puts on, but what makes one a real human being(1).

The holy Fathers did this work chiefly in the fourth century, in their effort to confront various heretics who, in using Greek philosophy, were distorting Christ's teaching about the Persons of the Holy Trinity. Thus we can say that real orthodox theology is experiential and ascetic, while dogmatic theology is mainly "polemic", which means that the Fathers applied various terms from philosophy, not in order to understand and increase or improve the orthodox faith, which is revelation, but in order to express it in the terms of their time and to protect it from various distortions.

In what follows I would like us to take a look at how the holy Fathers came to apply the term 'Prosopon' to the Trinitarian God.

Various philosophising theologians, in their attempt to clarify the relationship between the Father and the Son, ended in a variety of dangerous and heretical teachings. In opposition to the gnostic polyarchy there developed two 'monarchian' parties: the patropaschites and the adoptionists. The former teach that the Son is identical with the Father, while the latter deny the divinity of the Son or Word.
The heresy of the patropaschites was shaped and developed further by Sabellios, who maintained that the Christian God is one, but at times He took on a different prosopon, a different mask. So in the Old Testament he is presented as Father, and in the New Testament as Son and in the period of the Church as Holy Spirit. In reality Sabellios was identifying the substance with the hypostasis. This teaching overturns and distorts the revealed truth about the Trinitarian God. And if it had prevailed, it would have had dreadful consequences for theology, the Church and for man's salvation(2).

The holy Fathers confronted this heresy, which confused the hypostatic characteristics of the Persons of the Holy Trinity and in effect broke up the Trinitarianness of God. I should like to effect briefly to the teaching of st. Basil the Great on this subject so as to show the process by which the theology of the person was settled.
In his texts Basil the Great refers many times to the teaching of Sabellios. He writes that Sabellios regarded God as one, but transformation by different masks: ".....that the same God, though one in substance, is transformed on every occasion according to necessary circumstances, and is spoken of now as Father, and now as Son, and now as Holy Spirit"(3)

Thus the persons of the Trinitarian God are really without substance, they lack ontology. Commenting on this, Basil the Great observes: "For not even Sabellius rejected the non-subsistent representation of the Persons"(4).
Also in other texts of Basil the Great we can find this teaching of Sabellius which regards the persons as a mask which is not connected with the hypostasis(5).

Basil the Great, however, is not content simply to present the teaching of Sabellios, but he refutes it and at the same time expresses the revealed truth in the terms of his time. In what follows I should like us to look at the theological views of Basil the Great relating to the Person of God.

He writes that just as anyone who does not accept the common essence falls into polytheism, so also anyone who discards "the distinction of hypostases", is led to Judaism(6).
We as Christians believe in the Triune God, who has a common essence and distinct hypostases. But in order to reach this point and express himself as perfectly as possible, Basil the Great does two very important things.
First he separates the essence (ousia) from the hypostasis. Until then the essence was identified with the hypostasis, and this still appears also in the dogmatic formulation of the First Ecumenical Council. Basil the Great says that the essence or nature is what held is common in the Trinitarian God and that the hypostases are the particular ways of being of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

On this subject he says: "substance and person have the distinction that the general has with reference to the particular; for example, just as 'a living creature' has with reference to 'a particular man'.
For this reason we confess one essence for the Godhead, so as not to hand down variously
the definition of Its existence, but we confess a person that is particular, in order that our conception of Father and Son and Holy Spirit will be distinct and perfectly clear to us"(7).
Making this distinction was a great effort, and I might say that it was a great "revolution", which finally prevailed, thanks to the great influence of the personality of Basil the Great.

Secondly, Basil the Great identified the hypostasis with the person. Thus while until that time 'person' had meant something "unreal", the mask, from the time of Basil the Great, and thanks to his own efforts, the person has acquired ontology and substance. The person is identified with the hypostasis, and is not something abstract, it is not a mask. St. Basil the Great, Bishop of Caesarea, writes characteristically: "For it is not sufficient to enumerate the difference in the Persons, but it is necessary to confess that each Person subsists in a true hypostasis"(8).

Referring to the term 'homoousios', he says that it is the most suitable for expressing the relationship of the Son to the Father: "This term also sets aright the error of Sabellios; for it does away with the identity of person ('hypostasis') and introduces a perfect notion of the Persons of the Godhead"(9).
Thus the 'prosopon'- when identified with the hypostasis- which is the essence with the particular peculiarities- takes on great value, losing its impersonal and abstract character and acquiring ontology.

These two elucidations, that is to say the separating of the essence from the hypostasis and the identifying of hypostasis with person, were necessary in order to combat the heresies about the Trinitarian God. Anyone who identifies essence with hypostasis necessarily accepts the teaching of Sabellios. Basil the Great writes felicitously: "Those who say that substance and persons are the same are forced to confess different Persons only, and in hesitating to speak of three Persons, they find that they fail to avoid the evil of Sabellius, who even himself, although often confusing his notions, tried to distinquish the Persons by saying that the same Person changed its appearance according to the need arising on each occasion"(10).

Since the fourth century, then, person has been identified with hypostasis, and essence with nature. These terms are suitable for expressing the dogma of the Holy Trinity. Of course we must add that they do not help us to understand the mystery of the Holy Trinity. As the expression "mystery of the Holy Trinity" bears witness, we cannot understand this great mystery with our reason, but we can formulate it in these terms, even though they are completely inadequate, and therefore we often use apophatic expressions. Thus we can understand logically the dogma about the mystery of the Holy Trinity and not the mystery in itself, which transcends human reason and is a subject of revelational experience.""

Pages  68 - 73 from the book The Person in the Orthodox Tradition by Metropolitan of Nafpaktos Hierotheos, and translated by Esther Williams






.

The Arian heresy was decisively fought at the First Ecumenical Synod, which was summoned at Nicea in Bithynia in the summer of 325, at which Athanasius was present, accompanying his spiritual master Alexander of Alexandria. Although he was merely a deacon, Athanasius was active in the deliberations of the Synod.(16) His later successor, the resourceful Patriarch Cyril, relates that: Athanasius was so brilliant and celebrated and was admired by all even in that holy and great Synod, the one of Nicea, which was summoned in critical times. He did not yet hold the office of the bishop, but rather belonged to the class of the clerics, and yet, because of his sagacity and gentleness besides, and because of his exceedingly subtle and incomparable mind, he was at that time, taken as his companion by Alexander, the bishop of blessed memory. He was as close to the old man as a son is to his father, leader in everything helpful, and the one who showed the way right well in all things, which were to be done.(17)


Athanasius himself explains the argumentation of the Arians in his letter on the Synod of Nicea and the objections of the Fathers. The Arians put forward biblical words and phrases in order to cover up their particular viewpoint. The Fathers, however, stressed the meaning of the biblical data and did not hesitate to make use of literally non-biblical terms, just as the Arians did, in order to clear up the orthodox meaning of the former. Thus, the fathers clarified the biblical statement that The Son was From the Father, saying that, He was from the essence (being) of the Father, over against the Arian claim that, The Son was out of nothing and, therefore, a creature; and in order that the phrase From the essence might not imply division, the Fathers also added the term Co-essential (Homoousios) to the Father in order to specify the unity of the one and undivided Essence of the Father and the Son. The Great Athanasius was, through his writings, the defender and supporter, par excellence, of these dogmatic decrees of the Synod of Nicea, i.e. of the From the Essence and Co-essential.

Pages 196 - 197 from the book Saint Athanasius of Alexandria: Original Research and New Perspectives (Patristic Theological Library) by ProtoPresbyter George Dion. Dragas

Patriarch/Pope Alexander of Alexandria from 313 A.D. to 328 A.D.

Most of the Theology of the original Nicene Creed can be seen in the works of Saint Alexander of Alexandria(most of which was probably written by Saint Athanasius on his behalf). Also, a form of numeric unity as seen in the Nicene-Constantinople-1 Creed can also be seen in his works when he stresses how the Father and Son are inseparable. In another work before the time of the council of Nicea, Saint Athanasius wrote on his behalf a letter that stressed the doctrine of perichoresis between Father and Son. Also, the idea of Will being a function of Nature can also be seen in some of his letters.


The link:
http://www.fourthcentury.com/index.php/urkunde-14

 The hypothesis that the Son came into being “out of nothing” is clearly impious: the Father must always be a father. He is always Father of a Son who is present, on account of whom he is called Father. Only if the Son is always present with him is he always a completed Father, lacking in nothing good. He could not, therefore beget his only Son in time, or in any interval of time, nor out of that which had no previous existence. (27.) Is it not then impious to say, “There was a time when the wisdom of God was not?” The very Wisdom who says, “I was by him as one brought up with him: I was daily his delight?” [Prov 8:30] Is it not also impious to say that at one time the power of God was not, or his Word, or anything else by which the Son is known, or the Father designated? To assert that the brightness of the Father’s glory [Heb 1:3] “once did not exist,” destroys also the original light of which it is the brightness. If there ever was a time in which the image of God [2 Cor 4:4] was not, it is plain that God, whose image he is, is not always. (28.) No, if the express image of God’s Person did not exist, then he was separated from the one of whom he is ever the express image. Hence it may be seen, that the sonship of our Savior has not even anything in common with the sonship of men. (29.) It has been shown that the nature of his existence cannot be expressed by language, and infinitely surpasses in excellence all things to which he has given being. So also his sonship, naturally partaking in his Father’s Divinity, is unspeakably different from the sonship of those who, by his appointment, have been adopted as sons. He is by nature unchangeable, perfect, and all-sufficient, whereas men are liable to change, and need his help. (30.) What further advance can be made by the wisdom of God [1 Cor 1:24]? What can the very Truth, or God the Word, add to itself? How can the Life or the True Light [John 14:6; 1:4, 9] be bettered in any way? And is it not still more contrary to nature to suppose that wisdom can be susceptible to folly? That the power of God can be united with weakness? That reason itself can be dimmed by unreasonableness, or that darkness can be mixed with the true light? Does not the Apostle say, “What communion has light with darkness? And what harmony has Christ with Belial?” [2 Cor 6:14-15] and Solomon, that “the way of a serpent upon a rock” [Prov 30:19] was “too wonderful” for the human mind to comprehend, which “rock,” according to St. Paul, is Christ [1 Cor 10:4]. Men and angels, however, who are his creatures, have received his blessing, enabling them to exercise themselves in virtue and in obedience to his commands, that thus they may avoid sin.

To read the rest please visit the link!

Thanks to David for posting this on his blog. Saint Basil the Great gives a great explanation of his Person(particular) vs Nature(common) distinction.

Letter XXXVIII (PDF)

A Cappadocian interpretation of the original Nicene Creed

The link:
http://archive.org/details/letterswithengli02basiuoft

Defence of the Nicene Definition

 
Defence Against the Arians


On the Incarnation of the Word