Part II: Unity in Trinity — Chapter I: Oneness of Nature — Section 2: The Teaching of Revelation

SECTION 2: THE TEACHING OF REVELATION

1. Sacred Scripture

Though we have repeatedly spoken of the Consubstantiality of the Three Divine Persons, it remains for us to prove from Scripture that this Consubstantiality is not to be conceived after the manner of the harmony of thought and sentiment that sometimes unites intimate friends, nor yet in a merely generic way, as if there were “one Godhead in three Gods,” but strictly as identity of nature or ταὐτουσία. Taken in this sense the unity of the Divine Nature forms a special chapter of the revealed teaching on the Trinity.

a) Monotheism is the fundamental dogma of the Old Testament, and it has not been abrogated, but re-affirmed and re-inculcated in the New.¹ In such passages as 1 Cor. VIII, 6,² and Deut. XXXII, 39,³ Holy Scripture denies the possibility of Tritheism or any other species of polytheism. There is but one alternative: Either the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost subsist in three separate and distinct natures, or in one nature only. If they subsisted in three separate and distinct natures, there would be three Gods, — a belief which the Bible unmistakably condemns. If they subsist in one Divine Nature, we have the Christian Trinity as unequivocally taught throughout the New Testament. Consequently Tritheism is unscriptural. Let no one object that the term “unus Deus” admits of being interpreted in a specific or a generic sense. For wherever several individuals of the same species or genus coexist, none of them can truthfully assert: I alone am and there is none other besides me.

b) A special argument for our thesis can be derived from Christ’s sermon “in Solomon’s porch,” which culminates in the words: “Ego et Pater unum sumus — I and the Father are one.”⁴ This was a favorite quotation with the Fathers. Thus St. Augustine says in the thirty-sixth of his Homilies on the Gospel of St. John: “Quod dixit ‘unum,’ liberat te ab Ario; quod dixit ‘sumus,’ liberat te a Sabellio — The word ‘one’ in this passage excludes Arianism; the word ‘are’ excludes Sabellianism.”⁵ In order to understand what kind of unity Christ means when He says, “I and the Father are one,” we must examine the context.

α) The outstanding thought of the preceding verses is that Christ gives life everlasting to His sheep by virtue of His own personal dominion and power, and that “no one shall pluck them out of [His] hand.” To justify this claim He affirms: “That which my Father hath given me, is greater than all,” and He proceeds to explain by first stating a truth which the Jews were quite ready to admit — viz.: that “no one can snatch” His sheep “out of the hand of [His] Father.” Then, after the manner of a minor premiss in a syllogism, follows the verse: “I and the Father are one,” by which Christ evidently means to say: I and the Father have the same nature, and consequently possess the same power. The conclusion, which figures as a sort of thesis at the head of the argument, is evident, viz.: Therefore, “I give [my sheep] life everlasting; … and no man shall pluck them out of my hand.”

It is worth while to con this important text somewhat more minutely. The preceding portion of the context reads: “Et ego vitam aeternam do eis [scil. ovibus meis], et non peribunt in aeternum, et non rapiet eas quisquam de manu mea. Pater meus quod dedit mihi, maius omnibus est: et nemo potest rapere de manu Patris mei. Ego et Pater unum sumus — And I give them [i. e., my sheep] life everlasting; and they shall not perish for ever, and no man shall pluck them out of my hand. That which my Father hath given me is greater than all: and no one can snatch them out of the hand of my Father. I and the Father are one.”⁶ “That which my Father hath given me is greater than all,” is here alleged as the reason why Christ can give life everlasting to His sheep and prevent any one from plucking them out of His hand. Now, we know from numerous parallel passages,⁷ that the predicate expressed in the phrase “maius omnibus” can mean nothing else than the Divine Nature (summa res infinite perfecta), in so far as it is communicated, immediately and undiminished, by the begetting Father to His begotten Son. “Dedit mihi” is therefore synonymous with “gignendo mihi communicavit.” Consequently, the Son, by this communication to Him of the Divine Essence on the part of the Father, has precisely the same power as the Father, with this sole difference, that the Father has the Divine Nature and power of Himself, while the Son derives it from the Father. Taking this truth for the antecedent of an enthymeme, the conclusion: “I and the Father are one,” can only mean that the Father and the Son, as possessing the same Nature and the same power, are absolutely consubstantial, i. e., identical in essence. St. Athanasius called particular attention to this when he said: ”… ut scilicet eandem amborum divinitatem (ταὐτότητα τῆς θεότητος) unamque naturam (ἑνότητα τῆς οὐσίας) esse doceret — In order to show the identity of Godhead in both, and the unity of Nature.”⁸

This argument is not weakened by the circumstance that the textus receptus has: Ὁ πατήρ μου, ὃς δέδωκέ μοι, πάντων μεῖζών ἐστι. For, as the explanation given by St. Chrysostom⁹ shows, this variant affects merely the form, and not the substance of the argument based upon John X, 29.

β) The verses which follow (John X, 34 sqq.) positively confirm the argument. The Jews obviously understood Christ’s dictum, “I and the Father are one,” to mean perfect consubstantiality; for they “took up stones to stone him for blasphemy.” “For a good work we stone thee not,” they explained, “but for blasphemy and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God.”¹⁰ How did Jesus meet this accusation? Did He retract what He had said? Did He tell the Jews that they misunderstood Him? No; He repeated His previous statement and confirmed it by an argumentum a minori ad maius. “Is it not written in your law,” He asks, “‘I said, you are gods’? If he called them gods, to whom the word of God was spoken, and the Scripture cannot be broken; do you say of him whom the Father hath sanctified and sent into the world: ‘Thou blasphemest,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’?”¹¹ In corroboration of His claim, Christ points to His miracles: “If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not. But if I do, though you will not believe me, believe the works: that you may know and believe that the Father is in me, and I in the Father.”¹² By thus accentuating His immanence in the Father (Perichoresis), He merely repeats in other words what He had said before: “I and the Father are one.” It is because He clearly asserted His consubstantiality with God the Father, that the Jews became convinced that He blasphemed; and to emphasize His consubstantiality with the Father He repeated His assertion in the words: “I am the Son of God.” This also explains why His adversaries “sought to take him,” so that He found it advisable to “escape out of their hands.”¹³ This interpretation has ample support in the writings of the Fathers. “Had they [the Father and the Son] been two,” says St. Athanasius, “He [Christ] would not have said: ‘I and the Father are one,’ but ‘I am the Father,’ or ‘I and the Father am’; … the word ‘I’ declares the Person of the Son, and the word ‘Father’ as evidently expresses him who begat the Son, and the word ‘One’ the one Godhead and His consubstantiality.”¹⁴

2. Tradition

Faydit, Cudworth, Placidus Sturmer, O. S. B., and others, have accused the Nicene Fathers of Tritheism, because, as they claimed, these Fathers in their naive ignorance had understood the term ὁμοούσιον as denoting a merely generic unity. Following the example of Sabinus of Heraclea, who was a Macedonian heretic,¹⁵ Adolph Harnack boldly charged the Bishops assembled at Nicaea with intellectual incapacity. He says there were no really able theologians among them, and adds: “The unanimous adoption of the synodal decree can be explained only on the assumption that the question at issue exceeded the mental capacity of most of the Bishops present.”¹⁶ This utterance is not surprising in the mouth of a writer who is satisfied that “the Logos-monon formula simply leads to absurdity,” and that “Athanasius tolerated this absurdity, and the Council of Nicaea formally sanctioned it.”¹⁷ According to the theory of this school it was St. Augustine who invented the strictly monotheistic conception of the unity of the Godhead, and introduced it into what is properly called ecclesiastical Tradition. How unwarranted this theory is will appear from the following considerations.

a) The very method which the Nicene Fathers chose to defend the ὁμοούσιον against the attacks of Arianism, proves that they conceived the Consubstantiality of Son and Father as absolute identity of essence (ταὐτουσία). The Arian and Eunomian objections may be summarized thus: “Either God is one, or Father and Son are separate and distinct Persons. If God is one, then Sabellius is right in denying a distinction of Persons. If the Father and the Son are separate and distinct Persons, then the Godhead is divided by the act of Divine Generation, and we have Ditheism. Consequently the Son is not ὁμοούσιος with the Father.” Eunomius in particular insisted that οὐσία γεγονεν εἰς δυάδα. Had the Nicene Fathers been Tritheists, they would manifestly have accepted the Arian conclusion, instead of combating it so energetically. For no one who took ὁμοουσία to mean mere unity of species or genus, could consistently refuse to accept the logical inference that Generation and Spiration effect in the Divine Nature an intrinsic scission by which the Father is “God” other than the Son. The Nicene Fathers endeavor to show, on the contrary, that the act of Generation in no wise involves a multiplication of the Divine Nature, and therefore does not impair the absolute simplicity of essence proper to the Godhead. As a representative utterance, we may cite the subjoined passage from the writings of St. Athanasius: “The Fathers of the Council were compelled … to resay and rewrite more distinctly still, what they had said before, that the Son is consubstantial (ὁμοούσιον) with the Father; by way of signifying that the Son is from the Father, and not merely like (ὅμοιον), but is the same by likeness (ταὐτὸν τῇ ὁμοιώσει)… . For since the Generation of the Son from the Father is not according to the nature of men, but in a manner worthy of God, when we hear the word ὁμοούσιος, we must not follow the human senses, nor invent divisions and scissions, but, as when we conceive what is incorporeal, we will not rend asunder the unity of Nature and the identity of the light (τὴν ἑνότητα τῆς φύσεως καὶ τὴν ταὐτότητα τοῦ φωτός).”¹⁸

b) The orthodoxy of the post-Nicene Bishops manifested itself in a manner that might almost be called dramatic at a council held in Alexandria (A. D. 362) for the express purpose of restoring peace. At this council, when the assembled Fathers had got into a wrangle over the use of the terms οὐσία and ὑπόστασις, because some of them thought that the formula τρεῖς ὑποστάσεις savored of the heretical teaching embodied in the Latin phrase “tres substantiae,”¹⁹ St. Athanasius by a clever cross-examination brought out the fact that all really held the same faith. This led St. Gregory Nazianzen to observe: “It was indeed a ludicrous, or rather a regrettable incident; there appeared to be divergency of faith where there was merely a dispute about words.”²⁰ The Council finally permitted the use of both locutions (viz.: One Hypostasis and Three Hypostases), on condition that in employing the former phrase there be no imputation of Sabellianism, and in enunciating the latter, the Arian heresy of three separate and distinct Gods be expressly disavowed. But it soon became necessary to define the dogma still more clearly. St. Basil was the first who endeavored formally to justify the phrase “Three Hypostases,” and to give it universal currency.²¹

c) It is easy, in addition, to quote express Patristic texts showing that the Fathers understood ὁμοουσία to mean ταὐτουσία. St. Basil, for example, in rejecting Ditheism and Tritheism, writes: “Only one God the Father, only one God the Son, not two Gods, because the Son is identical with the Father (διὰ τὴν ταὐτότητα ἣν ἔχει ὁ υἱὸς πρὸς τὸν πατέρα). For I do not behold one Deity in the Father, and another in the Son, nor one Nature here, and another there.”²² St. Gregory of Nazianzus anticipates the scientific terminology of a later age when he says: “Neque enim Filius est Pater, nam unus Pater: tamen Filius est id, quod Pater. Nec Spiritus est Filius, quia ex Deo est, nam unus unigenitus; tamen Spiritus est id, quod Filius. Tres sunt unum deitate (ἓν τὰ τρία τῇ θεότητι), unum est tres proprietatibus (τὸ ἓν τρία τοῖς ἰδιώμασιν = ὑποστάσεσιν) — The Son is not the Father, for there is but one Father: yet the Son is that which the Father is. Nor is the Holy Ghost the Son, for the reason that He is from God, because there is but one Only-begotten; yet the Holy Ghost is that which the Son is. The Three are one Godhead, and the One Godhead is threefold with regard to its Properties [i. e., the Hypostases].”²³ The unknown author of the Libri XII de Trinitate (believed by some to be Vigilius of Tapsus, by others St. Athanasius), cries out in holy anger: “Maledictus, qui propter tria nomina personarum tres deos confitetur — Cursed be he who, because there are Three Personal Names, professes three Gods.”²⁴ A conclusive and definitive testimony, which expressly echoes the faith of the preceding ages, is this of St. Augustine: “Omnes, quos legere potui, qui ante me scripserunt de Trinitate, quae Deus est … hoc intenderunt secundum Scripturas docere, quod Pater et Filius et Spiritus Sanctus unius eiusdemque substantiae inseparabili aequalitate divinam insinuent unitatem, ideoque non sint tres dii, sed unus Deus — All those whom I have been able to read, who have written before me concerning the Trinity, who is God, have purposed to teach, according to the Scriptures, this doctrine, that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit intimate a divine unity of one and the same substance in an indivisible equality; and therefore that they are not three Gods, but one God.”²⁵ This declaration of the great Bishop of Hippo embodies one of the most telling arguments against Tritheism.

d) There seems to be one weak link in the Patristic chain of evidence, and that is the teaching of St. Gregory of Nyssa, who puts the essential unity of the Three Divine Persons on a level with the essential unity proper to three human beings. But if we consider that, as a philosopher, Gregory advocated Platonic ultra-realism and conceived the specific unity of human individuals as a genuine ταὐτουσία, we shall be inclined to consider the remarkable parallel this Saint has drawn between divine and human unity as a confirmation rather than an indictment of his orthodoxy. If it were true, as he held, that human nature is numerically the same in all men,²⁶ and that “many men” is said by an abuse of the term, not in its strict sense,²⁷ that, therefore, “Peter and Paul and Barnabas are but one man,”²⁸ it would be perfectly orthodox to say that “Igitur unus nobis confitendus est Deus iuxta Scripturae testimonium: Audi Israel, Dominus Deus tuus Dominus unus est,²⁹ etiamsi vox deitatis permeat sanctam Trinitatem.”³⁰

Readings

Hefele, Conciliengeschichte, Vols. III and V, 2nd ed., Freiburg 1877 and 1886. — Oswald, Trinitätslehre, § 10, Paderborn 1888. — Albert a Bulsano, Instit. Theologiae Dogmat. Specialis, ed. Gfr. a Graun, torn. I, pp. 174–200, Oeniponte 1893. — Kleutgen, De Ipso Deo, l. II, cap. 2, qu. 1–5, Ratisbonae 1881. — Hurter, Compendium, t. II, ed. 9a, thes. 114–116, Oeniponte 1896. — Scheeben, Dogmatik, Vol. I, § 112, Freiburg 1873. — H. P. Liddon, The Divinity of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, pp. 528 sqq., London 1867.