Autor: Murray, John

Buch: The Problem of God: Yesterday and Today

Titel: The Problem of God: Yesterday and Today

Stichwort: Konzil von Nizäa (Nicaea); zwei Anmkerkungen; Notwendigkeit, über die Formulierung der Schrift hinauszugehen; Arius - Eusebius (Linke und Rechte); Synode von Sirmium

Kurzinhalt: A passage has been made from a conception of what Christ the Son is-to-us to a conception of what the Son, Christ, is-in-himself; left-win

Textausschnitt: 45b Two aspects of the Nicene dogma call for comment. It was not new, and it was new. (Fs)

It was not a new truth, not a new revelation. The intention of the Nicene Fathers was simply to state the sense of the Scriptures against the Arian dialectical distortion. Athanasius is explicitly clear on this point. The difficulty was that the sense of the Scriptures with regard to what the Son is was scattered in a multiplicity of affirmations about him. It was contained in all the titles given him, in all the symbols and images used of him, in all the predicates that describe his role and function concerning our salvation. All that Nicaea did was to reduce the multiplicity of the scriptural affirmations to the unity of a single affirmation. The Son, begotten from the Father, not made by him, is consubstantial with the Father- this was the sense of everything that the Scriptures had to say about the Son. Therefore it was nothing new. It had already been said. (Fs)

46a The Nicene dogma was new, however, in that it stated the sense of the Scriptures in a new mode of understanding that was not formally scriptural. The Scriptures had affirmed that Jesus Christ, the Son, is here with us as Lord of us. Nicaea affirmed that the Lord Jesus Christ is the consubstantial Son. The sense of both affirmations is the same, but the mode of conception and statement is different. A passage has been made from a conception of what Christ the Son is-to-us to a conception of what the Son, Christ, is-in-himself. The transition is from a mode of understanding that is descriptive, relational, interpersonal, historical-existential, to a mode of understanding that is definitive, explanatory, absolute, ontological. The alteration in the mode of understanding does not change the sense of the affirmation, but it does make the Nicene affirmation new in its form. (Fs) (notabene)

46b At the Council itself the reason for the passage to the new ontological mode of conception and statement was altogether practical. Athanasius is again explicit on this point. The old efforts to state the doctrine of the Son and Logos used scriptural formulas; this had been the traditional practice, visible in all the earlier creeds. The trouble was that the Arian party was quite willing to recite the scriptural affirmations at the same time that it read into them an Arian understanding, the conception of the Son as a creature. The Fathers had, therefore, to go beyond the letter of the scriptural formulas to their sense. They stated the sense in new formulas, "out of the substance of the Father," "consubstantial with the Father." These formulas would not bear the Arian understanding. The latter was excluded from the formulas by the new mode of understanding the Scriptures that the formulas embodied. (Fs) (notabene)

46c The new formulas were not adopted without opposition, either at the Council or in the course of the long controversy that ensued. They were opposed, of course, by the men of the radical Arian Left and by their leftist successors, the so-called Half-Arians. But they were also opposed by the men of the conservative Right, the "men around Eusebius of Caesarea," and later by the party led by Acacius, the successor to Eusebius in the see of Caesarea. The essential refusal of the Right can be seen, for instance, in the so-called "Dated Creed," which was the formula published by the Fourth Synod of Sirmium in 359. This document forbids all mention of ousia (substance) when there is question of the Catholic faith, on the ground that "nowhere in the Scriptures is there mention of ousia in regard of Father and Son." The conservative position is stated thus: "We say that the Son is like (homoios) in all things to the Father, just as the Scriptures say and teach." The same essential conservative position is visible in the formula of the Synod of Constantinople in 361. The homoousion, it said, is not a scriptural word; therefore the Nicene formula cannot be a formula of faith. (Fs) (notabene)