{"author":"Historical editor/translator (individual note author unspecified)","date_end":1892,"date_label":"1892 (historical English edition; transcription printing date uncertain)","date_start":1892,"edition_year":1892,"edition_year_basis":"Historical NPNF II IV copyright 1892; original printed default and per-work translation credits replayed; transcription printing date and individual note authors uncertain","id":"ws-library-full-note:c53982171e6b63a867e7:cite_note-21","is_genuine_commentary_verified":false,"license_url":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:Reusing_Wikisource_content","public_import_allowed":true,"publication_location":"source-library","record_type":"editorial-footnote","references":[],"rights_approved":true,"section":"Chapter uncertain; original source section: Section 3a, editorial note cite_note-21","semantic_kind_reviewed":false,"source_context":["This brings us to the question in what sense οὐσία is used in the Nicene definition. We must remember the strong Western and anti-Origenist influence which prevailed in the council (above, p. xvii.), and the use of ὑπόστασις and οὐσία as convertible terms in the anathematism (see Excursus A, pp. 77, sqq. below). Now going back for a moment to the correspondence of the two Dionysii, we see that Dionysius of Rome had contended not so much against the subordination of the Son to the Father as against their undue separation (μεμερισμέναι ὑποστάσεις). In other words he had pressed the ὁμοούσιον upon his namesake in the interest rather of the unity than of the equality of the Persons in the Holy Trinity. At Nicæa, the problem was (as shewn above) to explain (at least negatively) how the Church understood the Generation of the Son. Accordingly we find Athanasius in later years explaining that the Council meant to place beyond doubt the Essential Relation of the Divine Persons to one another (τὸ ἴδιον τῆς οὐσίας, ταὐτότης, see de Decr. pp. 161, 163 sq., 165, 168, 319; of course including identity of Nature, pp. 396, 413, 232), and maintaining to the end (where he expresses his own view, p. 490, &c.) the convertibility of οὐσία and ὑπόστασις for this purpose. By the word ὁ θεός or θεός he understands οὐδὲν ἕτερον ἢ τὴν οὐσίαν τοῦ ὄντος (de Decr. 22). The conclusion is that in their original sense the definitions of Nicæa assert not merely the specific identity of the Son with the Father (as Peter qua man is of one οὐσία with Paul, or the Emperor’s statue of one form with the Emperor himself, p. 396), but the full unbroken continuation of the Being of the Father in the Son, the inseparable unity of the Son with the Father in the Oneness of the Godhead. Here the phrase is ‘balanced’ by the ἐκ τῆς [ὑποστάσεως ἢ] οὐσίας τοῦ Πατρὸς, not as though merely one οὐσία had given existence to another, but in the sense that with such origination the οὐσία remained the same. This is a ‘first approximation to the mysterious doctrine of the περιχώρησις’ coinherence, or ‘circuminsessio,’ which is necessary to guard the doctrine of the Trinity against tritheism, but which, it must be observed, lifts it out of the reach of the categories of any system of thought in which the workings of human intelligence have ever been able to organise themselves. The doctrine of the Holy Trinity vindicated by the Nicene formula on the one hand remains, after the exclusion of others, as the one direction in which the Christian intellect can travel without frustrating and limiting the movement of faith, without bringing to a halt the instinct of faith in Christ as Saviour, implanted in the Church by the teaching of S. Paul and of S. John, of the Lord Himself: on the other hand it is not a full solution of the intellectual difficulties with which the analysis of that faith and those instincts brings us face to face. That God is One, and that the Son is God, are truths of revelation which the category of ‘substance’ fails to synthesise. The Nicene Definition furnishes a basis of agreement for the purpose of Christian devotion, worship, and life, but leaves two theologies face to face, with mutual recognition as the condition of the healthy life of either. The theology of Athanasius and of the West is that of the Nicene formula in its original sense. The inseparable Unity of the God of Revelation is its pivot. The conception of personality in the Godhead is its difficulty. The distinctness of the Father, Son, and Spirit is felt (ἄλλος ὁ Πατήρ ἄλλος ὁ υἱ& 231·ς), but cannot be formulated so as to satisfy our full idea of personality. For this Athanasius had no word; πρόσωπον meant too little (implying as it did no more than an aspect possibly worn but for a special period or purpose), ὑπόστασις (implying such personality as separates Peter from Paul) too much. But he recognised the admissibility of the sense in which the Nicene formula eventually, in the theology of the Cappadocian fathers, won its way to supremacy in the East. To them ὑπόστασις was an appropriate term to express the distinction of Persons in the Godhead, while οὐσία expressed the divine Nature which they possessed in common (see Excursus A. p. 77 sqq.). This sense of οὐσία approximated to that of species, or εἶδος (Aristotle’s ‘secondary’ οὐσία), while that of ὑπόστασις gravitated toward that of personality in the empirical sense. But in neither case did the approximation amount to complete identity. The idea of trine personality was limited by the consideration of the Unity; the περιχώρησις was recognised, although in a somewhat different form, the prominent idea in Athanasius being that of coinherence or immanence, whereas the Cappadocians, while using, of course, the language of John xiv. 11, yet prefer the metaphor of successive dependence ὥσπερ ἐξ ἁλύσεω. (Bas. Ep. 38, p. 118 D). To Athanasius, the Godhead is complete not in the Father alone, still less in the Three Persons as parts of the one οὐσία, but in each Person as much as in all. The Cappadocian Fathers go back to the Origenist view that the Godhead is complete primarily in the Father alone, but mediately in the Son or Spirit, by virtue of their origination from the Father as πηγή or αἰτία τῆς θεότητος. To Athanasius the distinct Personality of Son and Spirit was the difficulty; his difference from Origen was wide, from Marcellus subtle. To the Cappadocians the difficulty was the Unity of the Persons; to Marcellus they were toto cælo opposed, they are the pupils of Origen. Accordingly when Basil makes a distinction between οὐσία and ὑπόστασις in the Nicene anathematism, he is giving not historical exegesis but his own opinion."],"source_library_url":"/library/c53982171e6b63a867e7/#ws-library-full-note:c53982171e6b63a867e7:cite_note-21","source_url":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Nicene_and_Post-Nicene_Fathers:_Series_II/Volume_IV/Prolegomena/Life/Section_3a#cite_note-21","translator":"Archibald Robertson (historical edition translation and editorial credit)","verification":{"proof_file":"raw/review/source-library-note-batch-0063/proof-records.jsonl","proof_file_sha256":"7ea58a3a636042cb9a479725b70a7c60b8b607c9d28864957d21ef1237735f5d","proof_record_id":"ws-library-full-note:c53982171e6b63a867e7:cite_note-21"},"verified":true,"work":"Prolegomena","work_id":"ws-athanasius-supported-1892-c53982171e6b63a867e7"}