Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J. F.

Buch: The Way to Nicea

Titel: The Way to Nicea

Stichwort: Interpretation 1: Glaubensbekenntnis Nicäa (Nicea)

Kurzinhalt: In interpreting the decree of the council of Nicca one must distinguish between its explicit and its implicit content ...

Textausschnitt: 95a
7. In interpreting the decree of the council of Nicca one must distinguish between its explicit and its implicit content; with regard to its implicit content one must make a further distinction, between a merely logical implication, on the one hand, and on the other, a conclusion that was actually drawn. (Fs)

95b Now, the council of Nicea set itself in direct opposition to those who asserted that the Son was not God, but a creature. Explicitly, therefore, it affirmed its faith in one God, adding at once, the Father almighty; then it named the Son, calling him Lord, God of God, begotten, not made, of the Father's substance, and consubstantial with the Father (DS 125). However, the decree of the council does not teach, in so many words, that the substance of the Father and that of the Son is one and the same substance. (Fs) (notabene)

95c Still, the affirmation of a single substance is logically contained in the Nicene decree. For in the first place, the council Fathers were monotheists. But if there is only one God, and the Father is truly God, and the Son is also truly God, then it follows necessarily that the divinity of the Father, and that of the Son, is one and the same divinity. Secondly, according to Athanasius, the council Fathers at first thought of writing that the Son is the true image of the Father, in every way most like the Father, but then, having seen how the Arians could get around such phrases

"they were forced, first, to go back again to the scriptures, to establish their position, and then to state more unambiguously what they had stated before, and finally, to write that the Son is consubstantial with the Father, in order to signify that the Son is not just similar to the Father, but is the same thing in similitude out of the Father. ..."1

95d Athanasius thus testifies to the fact that the Nicene decree is intended to go beyond the affirmation of a mere similarity between the Father and the Son, to an affirmation of identity. (Fs)

95e However, where and when the identity in substance of the Father and the Son, which is logically implied by the Nicene decree, was actually deduced as a logical conclusion, can besettled only by historical investigation. [...]