|
Tritheism as such did not appear until the Middle Ages.
In the sixth century, however, John Philoponus, a
philosopher of Alexandria, prepared the way for
Tritheism when he identified person with nature and taught
that there were three natures in God and that there were
still three persons in one God. In other words, the
three divine persons participate in the divine nature as
three men participate in human nature. He was condemned
as a heretic in the Second Council of Constantinople
(the fifth ecumenical council).[57]
In the eleventh and twelfth centuries the controversy
about universals affected questions about the Trinity in
various ways. Roscellinus, the celebrated doctor of
Nominalism, taught that the divine essence could not be
common to three persons and that the three divine persons
were three distinct realities or substances, in much the
same way that three souls or three angels differ.
Nevertheless, he said, the three divine persons form a
certain unity inasmuch as they are endowed with one will
and the same power.
Roscellinus arrived at this conclusion because of his
Nominalism, according to which the universals have not
even a fundamental existence in things, that is to say,
the universals have no objective reference but are merely
words adopted into our speech. Positivists and modern
empiricists have returned to this view, refusing to admit
any essential difference between intellectual and sensitive
knowledge and reducing the idea to a composite image of the
phantasm to which a common name has been joined.
According to pure Nominalism, therefore, the universals
do not exist in things even fundamentally; the only things
that exist are the individuals. Thus humanity designates
the aggregate of men and not human nature, which is
specifically one. If, therefore, according to
revelation, there are three divine persons, the
Nominalists cannot conceive how they can have the same
divine nature, especially a divine nature which is
numerically one, nor do they admit one specific nature for
all men. St. Anselm attacked the Nominalism of
Roscellinus, and in 1092 it was condemned by the
Synod of Soissons.[58]
In the eleventh century Gilbert Porretanus, who
although he is often called a Nominalist is really a
realist, inclined to Tritheism in another way by teaching
that the divine relations are really distinct from the
divine essence. Extreme realism believes that the
universal exists formally apart from the thing, and
consequently Gilbert placed real distinctions where they
do not exist, for example, in man between the
metaphysical grades of being, substantiality,
corporeity, life, animality, rationality, unmindful of
the fact that all these things are reduced to one
comprehensive concept of man.
Similarly this extreme realism places a certain real
distinction, or at least more than a virtual distinction,
between the divine attributes, and also between the divine
essence and the divine persons. It thus inclines to
Tritheism because the "esse in" is
multiplied in the divine persons and in the divine
relations opposed to one another, while St. Thomas has
shown that the "esse in" in the divine
persons is not accidental but substantial and therefore is
not multiplied.[59]
Gilbert Porretanus was condemned by the Council of
Reims in 1148.[60] From his doctrine it would
have followed that the divine relations would be accidents
in God. St. Thomas' reply[61] is that in God,
who is pure act, no accident is found, and the relations
thus really distinguished from the divine substance like
accidents cannot constitute persons. As we shall see
below, the "esse in" of the relations in
God is something substantial and therefore not really
distinguished from the substance.
Thus Roscellinus and Gilbert Porretanus by different
routes reached Tritheism by placing in God real
distinctions which are not there. Finally, in the
twelfth century Abbot Joachim of Calabria fell into
Tritheism in an effort to correct Peter Lombard, whom
he had misunderstood. He feared that the teaching of
Peter Lombard would lead to a kind of quaternity inasmuch
as the divine essence was neither the Father nor the Son
nor the Holy Ghost. Trying to avoid this error he fell
into another: he taught that between the three divine
persons only a moral unity existed, arising from the
consent of the will, a unity such as exists between a
group of Christians. Consequently the divine nature
would not be unique or one numerically, but it would be
multiplied. This error of Abbot Joachim was condemned
by the Fourth Lateran Council: "We, however, with
the approbation of the sacred council, believe and confess
with Peter Lombard that the supreme entity is one,
incomprehensible and ineffable indeed, which is the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, the three
persons together and singly each of the three persons.
Therefore in God only a Trinity is found and not a
quaternity, since each of the three persons is that
entity, namely, the divine essence."[62] In this
definition the word "is" in the statement, "The divine
essence is the Father, " indicates, as in every
affirmative proposition, the real identity of the subject
and the predicate. The divine essence is the Father
without any real distinction; on the contrary the Father
is not the Son and between the two persons is found a real
distinction, a distinction which is antecedent to any
consideration of the mind and based, as was more clearly
expressed by the Council of Florence, on the opposition
of relation.[63] In the Council of Florence,
called to reconcile the schismatic Greeks to the Church,
was formulated the principle which illumines the whole
doctrine of the Trinity: "In God all things are one
and the same where no opposition of relation exists."
This opposition of relation exists between the divine
persons themselves but not between the persons and the
divine substance. The doctrine of the Church thus
appears as the apex of a pyramid rising above the heresies
opposed to each other which either deny the Trinity of the
divine persons or the numerical unity of the divine
nature. According to the judgment of the Church, these
heresies are false in what they deny, whereas something of
the truth remains in what they affirm. Whatever these
false teachings affirm positively, such as the unity of
nature and the Trinity of persons, is also affirmed by
the Church.
It should be noted that in the nineteenth century,
Gunther inclined to Tritheism when he defined personality
as the consciousness of oneself. He thought that if God
were conscious of Himself by His divine essence only one
person would be in God. Accordingly he placed three
distinct consciousnesses in God, distinguishing between
the subject of the consciousness (the Father), the
object of the consciousness (the Son), and the equality
of both conscious of itself (the Holy Ghost). He
arrived in this way at three intelligences. This error
was condemned by Pius IX.[64]
Among the errors about the Trinity we must mention the
theory of the Modernists, who declare that the dogma of
the Trinity, like other dogmas, is a human invention,
achieved by laborious effort and subject to continuous
change and evolution.[65]
From this brief enumeration of the errors about the
Trinity, we see not only the revealed truth as taught by
the Church standing forth more clearly, preserving both
the unity of the divine nature and the Trinity of the
divine persons, but by reason of these errors the
distinction between nature and person is greatly
clarified. As has often been said, the great difficulty
in determining this distinction arose from the difference
between the Latin and Greek terms. In the Western
Church, the Latin word persona (prosopon) at first
meant a theatrical mask, worn by actors when impersonating
famous individuals; later the term was used for those who
held some dignified position (a personage), and finally
it designated all men who are of their own right, that
is, capable of rights, and thus persons were
distinguished from things. More philosophically Boethius
in the sixth century defined a person as "an individual
substance with a rational nature."[66] Today we
define a person as a free and intelligent subject.
In the Eastern Church, however, in the first centuries
the terms "ousia" and
"hypostasis" were used
indiscriminately to designate substance and essence. This
was the cause of many controversies and at the same time it
was realized that "prosopon", with its
etymological meaning of a theatrical mask, did not clearly
express the real distinction between the divine persons.
The Arians understood the term
"hypostasis" to refer to the
substance and declared that there were in God three
subordinate substances. At length, at St.
Athanasius' urging, the word "ousia" was
accepted to mean nature and the word
"hypostasis" to mean person. From
this time the Greek "hypostasis" was
equivalent to the Latin "persona", hence the
expression hypostatic union to designate the union of two
natures in the one person of the incarnate Word;
similarly three "hypostases" in one nature were
said to be in God. Later, among the Greek Fathers,
St. Basil further determined the meaning of these
words. He taught that "ousia" designated what
was common ("to koinon") to individuals of the
same species.[67] Even then the meaning was not clear
because the nature assumed by the Word, although it is
individual, is not a person. Therefore Leontius of
Byzantium, to avoid confusing the individual humanity of
Christ with His divine person, defined
"hypostasis" as a substance not only
individual but also separately existing of itself and truly
incommunicable.[68]
St. Thomas perfected the definition of person when he
said that a person is an individual substance with a
rational nature, that is, incommunicable, existing of
itself separately and operating separately of itself, of
its own right.[69] Today commonly, as we have said,
a person is defined as a free and intelligent subject, and
this definition (analogically, yet properly) applies to
the human person, the angelic person, and the divine
persons, as will be seen more clearly below.
We find two tendencies among the Catholic doctors and
theologians. The Greek Fathers and theologians, when
explaining this mystery, generally began with the Trinity
of persons as explicitly revealed in the New Testament,
rather than with the unity of nature. The Latins, on
the other hand, especially after the time of St.
Augustine, generally started with the unity of nature,
as stated in the tract on the one God, and went on to the
Trinity of persons. Thus the two groups began from
either extreme of the mystery and proceeded to the other
and therefore they were met with opposing difficulties:
the Greeks found difficulty in safeguarding the unity of
nature, and the Latins had to be careful to safeguard
those things which are proper to the persons.
Among the Latin Scholastics we find a notable difference
caused by the controversy about universals, since some,
like Scotus, placed between the divine essence and the
persons a formal distinction, actual on the part of the
thing, whereas the Nominalists made the distinction only
verbal, such as exists between Tully and Cicero. The
Thomists, however, and many other theologians called it
a virtual distinction.
|
|