Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J. F.

Buch: The Way to Nicea

Titel: The Way to Nicea

Stichwort: Unterschied: Tertullian, "von einer Substanz", Geist als "Körper sui generis - Athanasius, homoousion; dem Sohn kommt alles zu ...

Kurzinhalt: ... difference between the meaning of the phrase, "of one substance", as used by Tertullian, and that of "homoousion", as used by Athanasius ... "All that is said of the Father is also to be said of the Son ...

Textausschnitt: 3. The next point is to grasp the difference between the meaning of the phrase, "of one substance", as used by Tertullian, and that of "homoousion", as used by Athanasius. For both Tertullian and Athanasius set out to establish the same thesis, namely that the Father is God, that the Son is also God, and that there is only one God. Equally, each of them makes use of images as a means of eliciting some understanding of this thesis. Athanasius, however, inquires so diligently, piously and soberly-to use the phrase of the first Vatican council-that his reason, illumined by faith, discovers the following rule: "All that is said of the Father is also to be said of the Son, except that the Son is Son, and not Father". On the other hand, Tertullian's mind is so immersed in the sensible that for him a spirit is a body sui generis; so confined is he to the sphere of the imagination that he explains the unity of the divine substance in terms of the concord of a monarchy, and a kind of organic undividedness and continuity. (Fs)

47b However, it is not our purpose to blame the ante-Nicene Christian authors for lacking the philosophical development that would have enabled them to shift from a naive to a critical realism, but rather to draw attention to the consequences of this lack. For it is not just that Tertullian had an inadequate conception of the unity of the divine substance; he even said some things that contradicted his own fundamental thesis. For he held that the Son was temporal: "There was a time when there was neither sin to make God a judge, nor a son to make God a Father".1 He may also have held that the Father and the Son were not, each in the same way, the divine substance: "... for the Father is the whole substance, whereas the Son is something derived from it, and a part of it, as he himself professes when he says, For the Father is greater than I".2 He also taught that the Son is subordinate to the Father: "... the one commanding what is to be done, the other doing what has been commanded".3 These positions stand in clear opposition to the principal thesis. For if the Son is God, and God is eternal, then the Son also is eternal; if the Son is God, and God is the whole divine substance, then the Son also is the whole divine substance; if the Son is God, and God commands, then the Son also commands. (Fs) (notabene)