as to the heterodox language, implying often heterodox notions about the Holy Trinity, which many anteNicene writers use.' The fact that, in an elaborate treatise on the Holy Ghost, written expressly against heretics, St. Basil studiously refrains from giving Him the name of God (which was first done by the Council of Alexandria in 363) would alone indicate this. So again, Justin Martyr speaks of the Son as inferior to the Father, in His Divine Nature. Athenagoras and Theophilus of Antioch use language about His Eternal Generation, which sounds thoroughly Sabellian. Origen, who first brings out the reality of our Lord's Human Soul, teaches also its preëxistence, and the final absorption of His human nature into the Divine; Hilary and Epiphanius deny the union of His Divine Nature with His Body during the period between death and resurrection: St. Ambrose, relying on a mistaken reading of Col. ii. 15, also denies its union with the Human Soul, though both are implied in the Apostles' Creed. Many Fathers, both Greek and Latin, in arguing with the Arians, treat the unity of Persons in the Holy Trinity as specific rather than nume 4 Petav. De Trin. i, 3-5. No candid critic in the present day would deny the substantial correctness of Petavius's estimate. If he errs, it is rather in exaggerating than in depreciating the accuracy of theological statement in the early Greek Fathers, especially as regards the doctrines of grace. It is no disparagement to the general merits of the Defensio to say that the learned author has sometimes allowed himself to become too much of a special pleader,-a common fault of his day among theologians. A recent Anglican writer observes; “I am bound to state candidly, that, while I sympathize with the intention of Bull, I incline practically to the judgments of Petavius. It requires a thorough going advocate to accept Bull's expurgated edition of Ante-Nicene theology." Owen's Introd. to the Study of Dogmatic Theology. London, 1858. rical. Cudworth not only says this with especial, though not exclusive, reference to Cyril of Alexandria, Gregory Nyssen, Anastasius, Maximus the Martyr, and John of Damascus, but roundly accuses them of teaching a "Trinity no other than a kind of tritheism," while he charges several others with denying a coequality of Persons.' To quote the words of a great living writer, who had not at the time adopted any theory of development:-"Some said that there was but one vπóσTασis (substance) in the Godhead; others three πоσтáσELS (substances or persons), and one ovoía (substance); others spoke of more than one ovoía. Some allowed, some rejected the terms προβολὴ and ὁμοιούσιον, according as they were guided by the prevailing heresy of the day, and their own judgment condemning the mode of meeting it. Some spoke of the Son as existing from everlasting in the Divine Mind; others implied that the Logos was everlasting, and became the Son in time. Some asserted His avapxov, others denied it. Some, when interrogated by heretics, taught that He was begotten by the Father, θελήσει; other, φύσει καὶ μη ἐκ βουλήσεως ; others, οὔτε θέλοντος τοῦ πατρὸς οὔτε μὴ θέλοντος, ἀλλὰ ἐν τῇ ὑπὲρ βουλὴν φύσει ; others spoke of a σύνδρομος θέλησις. Some declare that God is ἀριθμῷ τρεῖς ; others, numerically One; while to others it might appear more philosophical to exclude the idea of number altogether, in the discussion of that Mysterious Nature, 1 Cudworth's Intellectual System, vol. iii., ch. iv. See especially, pp. 131, 146-50. which is beyond comparison, whether viewed as One or Three, and neither falls under nor forms any conceivable species." A late Theological Professor of Cambridge, who had made the early Fathers his special study, has undertaken to illustrate the doctrine of the Athanasian Creed from their writings, mainly from the works of Irenæus, Justin Martyr, Origen, and Tertullian. But what his argument comes to is precisely what is here insisted on, that the Ante-Nicene Fathers on the whole supply a legitimate basis for the Nicene development; to use his own words "so many elements of evidence for a Trinitarian creed are afloat in patristic theology;" and again, "we must be prepared to see in them (the early Fathers) the doctrine in the ore, if I may so speak, encumbered with dross." He himself quotes several passages of an opposite tendency, and his explanation of them is confined to the case of Origen, while he elsewhere expressly admits that "the notions of the early Fathers about the Fall are often even contradictory." The point I am insisting upon is not of course that the Nicene dogma is not a legitimate development from the teaching of earlier Fathers -which it must be if true-but simply that it is a development. It is no answer to the argument of Petavius to say, with one of my critics, that the "Arian scheme is inconsistent with their belief," or to speak of their "substantial orthodoxy." This is allowed on 712 1 Newman's Arians of Fourth Century, p. 240. "Blunt's Lectures on Right Use of the Fathers, pp. 490, 509, 585. all hands. Unless the Arian scheme had been a wrong development of their belief, the Nicene creed would not have been the right one. The importance of the point leads me to adduce the testimony of another distinguished Anglican writer, who speaks even more strongly than Dr. Blunt as to the fact of developments in the early Church. Speaking of the Christian dogma in the age of the Apologists, Mr. Merivale says that "the time was not yet ripe for its full and consistent exposition . . the discrimination of the Persons of the Godhead was as yet unsteady and fluctuating. Christ was commonly regarded as man's champion against the devil, or his raiser from the Fall, rather than his Redeemer from sin and Reconciler with his Judge; grace was extenuated too much as a universal inheritance, instead of being proclaimed as the special gift of the Spirit to them that believe." He adds in reference to the Incarnation, what we shall find in a later portion of this work to be substantially correct, that "the utterances of the earlier Fathers were fewer, less distinct, less uniform and consistent. There was as yet no technical language on the subject; the age had not required it, and no one had been impelled to offer it. The Church, in its corporate capacity, had been content with its implicit belief, shadowed forth in prayers and liturgies, not embodied in dogmatic treatises." But when, in the fourth century, "circumstances led to a full and anxious appreciation of the texts bearing on Christ's divinity, the way had been prepared, the Church . . . could speak the thoughts that were in her, imbued with the deepfelt teaching of her immemorial traditions." It would not be difficult to add further evidence that the oμoovσios of Nice was fully as much an epoch in the development of doctrine as the Lateran definition of the Eucharist. And we have seen that many early writers are equally vague, to say the least, on other matters besides the doctrine of the Trinity. Thus, no Greek Father, before the rise of the Pelagian heresy, speaks of grace in terms that would necessarily discriminate it from aids of the natural order, and all before St. Augustine are silent or indistinct on the nature of original sin. To come to the special subject of this volume, St. Anselm's Cur Deus Homo is the first systematic attempt to explain the Atonement in its relation to the Divine Attributes. The question has indeed been asked whether the Ante-Nicene writers were really heterodox in their belief. If this refers to their formally and consciously holding opinions inconsistent with Catholic doctrine, the answer must of course be in the negative. But if it is intended to inquire whether they had the same clear and accurate conception of truths brought into controversy by the heresies of the fourth and fifth centuries, and finally settled by the definitions of the contemporary Councils, which subsequently became the common heritage of the faithful, it is impossible to give any general reply. The question is one of detail, and each separate case must be considered on its own merits. Nor is it im 1 Merivale's Conversion of the Northern Nations, pp. 19, 20. |