![]() ![]() From these doubtful theorizings and kept aloof. Petavius construed the same expressions in a reprehensible sense but the Anglican Bull defended them as orthodox, not without difficulty.Įven if metaphorical, such language might give shelter to unfair disputants but we are not answerable for the slips of teachers who failed to perceive all the consequences of doctrinal truths really held by them. ![]() Newman held that their view, which is found clearly in Tertullian, of the Son existing after the Word, is connected as an antecedent with Arianism. Five ante-Nicene Fathers are especially quoted: Athenagoras, Tatian, of Antioch, Hippolytus, and Novatian, whose language appears to involve a peculiar notion of Sonship, as though It did not come into being or were not perfect until the dawn of creation. ![]() That there was only one and the Trinity, that this Absolute One existed in three distinct subsistences and the Circuminession, that Father, Word, and could not be separated, in fact or in thought, from one another yet an opening was left for discussion as regarded the term 'Son,' and the period of His 'generation' ( gennesis ). They approached, in strict argument, to the heretical extreme but many of them held the orthodox faith, however inconsistently their difficulties turned upon language or local prejudice, and no small number submitted at length to teaching.Īmong the ante-Nicene writers, a certain ambiguity of expression may be detected, outside the school of Alexandria, touching this last head of doctrine. These men of the Via Media were named Semi-Arians. But a view so unlike tradition found little favour it required softening or palliation, even at the cost of and the school which supplanted from an early date affirmed the likeness, either without adjunct, or in all things, or in substance, of the Son to the Father, while denying His co-equal dignity and co-eternal existence. They are also termed the Exucontians ( ex ouk onton ), because they held the of the Son to be out of nothing. And they defined as simply the Unoriginate. These consequences follow upon the principle which maintains in his letter to Eusebius of Nicomedia, that the Son 'is no part of the Ingenerate.' Hence the Arian sectaries who reasoned logically were styled Anomoeans: they said that the Son was 'unlike' the Father. And of these wranglings the rationalist would take advantage in order to substitute for the ancient his own inventions. That disputes should spring up even among the orthodox who all held one faith, was inevitable. The adaptation of a vocabulary employed by Plato and to was a of it could not be done in a day and when accomplished for the Greek it had to be undertaken for the Latin, which did not lend itself readily to necessary yet subtle distinctions. But the technical terms of doctrine were not fully defined and even in Greek words like essence ( ousia ), ( hypostasis ), ( physis ), ( hyposopon ) bore a variety of meanings drawn from the pre-Christian sects of philosophers, which could not but entail misunderstandings until they were cleared up. They worshiped Him with divine honours they would never consent to separate Him, in or reality, from the Father, Whose Word, Reason, Mind, He was, and in Whose Heart He abode from eternity. Catholics had always maintained that was truly the Son, and truly God. Under these circumstances, when Gnostic had passed away with their 'conjugations' of Divine powers, and 'emanations' from the Supreme unknowable (the 'Deep' and the 'Silence') all was thrown into the of an inquiry touching the 'likeness' of the Son to His Father and 'sameness' of His Essence. ![]()
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