Autor: Murray, John

Buch: The Problem of God: Yesterday and Today

Titel: The Problem of God: Yesterday and Today

Stichwort: Eusebius, Konservativismus, Fundamentalisten, biblische Positivisten; sola scriptura; Fehler des Archaismus und Futurismus

Kurzinhalt: Eusebian; fundamentalists, or biblical positivists; the first proponents of the maxim, "Sola Scriptura"; fallacy of archaism / futurism

Textausschnitt: 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)


47a The prime objection of the Right was to the word, but the issue went much deeper, below the level of language, to an issue of most weighty substance. The real issue concerned development in the understanding of the Christian revelation and faith. It concerned progress within the tradition. This was the issue that the Eusebians, after the immemorial custom of conservatives, failed to see or, perhaps, refused to see. They pretended to be the protagonists of the tradition. In fact, they were only defenders of the status quo, which is quite a different thing. They were fundamentalists, or biblical positivists. They were in their own way the first proponents of the maxim, "Sola Scriptura," in their insistence that only in the formulas of Scripture may the Christian faith be proposed. (Fs)nb

47b Some of them, like Eusebius of Caesarea, were scholars, but he, for all his historical learning, was a muddle-headed old man, as he has been rightly called. His head was muddled largely by his politics. He was, as the fifth-century Church historian Socrates called him, "two-faced," one face looking to the Emperor, the other to the Church. The majority of the Right were not scholars but practical men, like Acacius. He was trying to run a diocese in a troubled time within the Empire, and he chiefly wanted peace. Let us agree, he said in effect, to say what the Scriptures say and have done with it. Since he was only a practical man, with no great theological or exegetical mind, it did not occur to him that what he and his followers were saying at the Synod of Constantinople-that the Son is "like in all things to the Father"-was not, in point of fact, what the Scriptures said. As the orthodox Center rightly insisted, the Scriptures say that the Son is consubstantial with the Father. This is identically the sense of the scriptural affirmation, though the Scriptures state it only in the distinctively scriptural mode of understanding. It was the Center, Athanasius and his party, that stood for the tradition by standing for progress within the tradition, for an orderly growth of the tradition, for a higher and more exact understanding of what the tradition affirms. The Right, in contrast, was reactionary, or, to put it more elegantly, they were victims of the fallacy of archaism. (Fs) (notabene)

48a At the root of the fallacy is the rejection of the notion that Christian understanding of the affirmations of faith can and indeed must grow, at the same time that the sense of the affirmations remains unaltered. Archaist Eusebian thought wanted to cling to the earlier stage of understanding contained in the letter of Scripture, as later archaist thought would want to return to it-return from the complexities of conciliar dogma to the "simple faith of the fishermen of Galilee." The trouble is that one cannot thus put back the clock of thought. The Eusebians were trying to meet today's question with yesterday's answer, but the question of the day was new. Arius had cast the old question in a new mode of conception, the ontological mode. It was no longer to be answered simply by repeating the formulas of Scripture, which did not directly meet the new issue because their affirmations were made in a different mode of understanding. Nor would it suffice to evade the Arian issue by recourse to ambiguous formulas like the ho-moios, the notion that the Son is "like" the Father. (Fs)

49a What the Eusebians further failed to see was that the fallacy of archaism inevitably breeds its contrary, which is the fallacy of futurism. The futurist fallacy rests on the notion that the affirmations of Christian faith never have a final sense. They are constantly subject to reinterpretation in terms of any sort of contemporary philosophical thought. Development in the understanding of them is altogether open-ended. It may move in any direction, even to the dissolution of the original sense of the Christian affirmations. It was the merit of the Athanasian Center that it saw how dangerous the archaism of the Eusebians was. The Athanasians perceived that it opened the way to the futurism of Arius, who reinterpreted the scriptural affirmations-that the Father is Unoriginate and that the Son originates from the Father-in terms of a rationalist dialectic to the destruction of the sense of the scriptural faith. (Fs)

49b The Nicene homoousion avoids both fallacies, archaism and futurism. It transposes the scriptural affirmations concerning the Son into a new mode of understanding-what we now call the Nicene or dogmatic mode for the reason that the Nicene dogma was its first historical illustration. But there is no discontinuity or incoherence between the dogmatic mode and the scriptural mode. The transition from one to the other was not made violently-from the descriptive, relational, interpersonal, historical-existential, scriptural mode, to the definitive, absolute, explanatory, ontological, dogmatic mode. The passage was made with ease and naturalness on the internal authority that it is in accord with the native dynamism of intelligence. Between the two modes there is harmony, even homogeneity. The sense of the affirmation, as made in both modes, is identical. The sense of Scripture, that Jesus, the Son, is present as our Lord, is identically the sense of Nicaea, that Jesus, our Lord, is consubstantially the Son. The tradition is maintained. But there has been progress within it, growth in the understanding of it. The homoousion formulates the traditional faith; it is a formula of faith. But the faith is so formulated as now to be more fully understood. The Christian who affirmed that Christ is with us as the Lord still makes this affirmation, only now he has come to understand more fully what Christ, the Lord with us, is. He has transcended archaism, and, in so doing, he has also avoided futurism. (Fs) (notabene)