Autor: Murray, John

Buch: The Problem of God: Yesterday and Today

Titel: The Problem of God: Yesterday and Today

Stichwort: Athanasisus; Konzil von Nizäa (Nicaea); soteriologisches Argument; Glaubensbekenntnis; homoousion; ontologische Kategorie der Substanz

Kurzinhalt: Its premise was the doctrine, as old as the Old Testament itself, that only God can save us "Begotten, not made"; "Consubstantial (homoousion) with the Father"

Textausschnitt: 43c All through the Arian controversy runs the soteriological argument for the full divinity of the Son. Its premise was the doctrine, as old as the Old Testament itself, that only God can save us. Only he is the Power that can rescue us from death in all the forms that death takes and bring us to life in the land of integrity and peace that he has promised to the faithful. Hence, from Athanasius onward, the Fathers argue that, if the Son is not God, fully the Pantokrator, wholly situated within the order of the divine power and being, then he is not our Savior and we are not saved. It was clear to the Fathers that there was no salvation in the Arian Son, a time-bound creature such as we are, out of the Father by a making as we are, Son only by a grace that holds no grace for us. (Fs) (notabene)

44a The imperious Arian question received its definitive answer at the Council of Nicaea in 325, at the hands of the Fathers assembled in the legendary number of three hundred and eighteen. Their complicated preliminary debates need not detain us. In the end they composed the creed that is familiar to the whole Christian world. "We believe," they wrote, "in one God the Father, the Pantokrator, Maker of all things visible and invisible; and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten out of the Father, the Only-begotten." So far one hears only the echo of earlier creeds, themselves the echo of the scriptural formulas. Then comes the cutting edge of the Nicene dogma that thrust through all the Arian evasions to the essential issue: "Begotten out of the Father, that is, out of the substance of the Father, God out of God, Light out of Light, true God out of true God." The Son is not out of the Father's will, as the creature is, but out of his substance, by a unique mode of origination radically different from the creative act. The Christian alternative in the Arian dichotomy, God or creature, is selected and posited: "Begotten, not made." The Son is not the perfect creature, placed, by a making, outside of the divine order. He is begotten within the divine order and he remains within it. His being is untouched by createdness. Finally, there comes the famous word to which a century of argument had inevitably moved: "Consubstantial {homoousion) with the Father." (Fs) (notabene)

45a In the adjective homoousion the Nicene problem of God finds its definitive answer. The answer is given, as it had to be given, not in the empirical categories of experience, the relational category of presence, or, even, the dynamic categories of power and function but in the ontological category of substance, which is a category of being. Nicaea did not describe; it defined. It defined what the Son is, in himself and in his relation to the one God the Father. The Son is from the Father in a singular, unshared way, begotten as Son, not made as a creature. The Son is all that the Father is, except for the Name of Father. This is what homoousion means. This is what the Son is. (Fs) (notabene)