From Finland.
Wouldn´t it be interesting to know some of the roots of this controversy...and it all started during the making of the 1st Nicean Creed. The history of this Council is interesting to read and wasn´t as smooothly runned as first thought. During the late 3rd and into the 4th Cts, bishops from the East and the West had different views of Christology. The bishops were bickering among each other and wrote letters and complained to Constantine and, he tore them up without reading them. This is a good insight into the history of the making of Christology and, at least, see some of the roots. ( Here are some insights from a book by Leo Davis, The First Seven Ecumenical Councils (325-787) Their history and Theology) (my comments in ( ).
Quote:
First of all, this term homoousios had 3 principal meanings.
1. It could be generic, of one substance could be said of two individual men, both of whom share human nature while remaining individuals.
2. It could signify numerical identity beings.
3. It could refer to material things, two pots are of the same substance because both are made of the same clay.
Constantine himself explained that homoousios was not used in the sense of bodily affections, for the Son did not dervive His existence from the Father by means of division or severance, since an immaterial, intellectual and incorporeal nuture could not be subject to any bodily affection.
These things must be understood as bearing a divine and ineffable(incapable of being described or experienced) significations." The point was that the 3rd meaning of homoousios, with its connnotations of materiality was not the meaning used in the creed. That left the 2 previous meanings. It seems that the Council intent on stressing the equality of the Son with the Father, had the 1st meaning explicitly in mind. Father and Son are homoousios in that they are equally divine. But implicity in their statement was numerical identity, that Father and Son are of a single divine substance, an aspect brought out by Athanasisus in the couse of the long struggle following the Council.
(Here is the kicker) Homoousios had a long history and even though accepted in the creed, it was OBJECTIONABLE to the majority of the bishops for at least 4 reasons:
1. The term, despite Constantine´s statement had strong materialist overtones which would conote that Father and Son are parts or separable portions of the same "stuff".
2. If the Father and Son were of one numerically identical substance, then the doctrine of the creed could well be Sabellian, Father and Son being identical and indistinguishable.
3. Ther term was associated with heresises since it had been coined by the Gnostics and had, in fact, been condemned at the Coouncil of Antioch in 268 as used by the Adoptionist Paul of Samosata.
4. Lastly, and importantly, for many of the more conservative bishops, the term was not scriptural.
Despite the misgivings of perhaps, the majority of the attending bishops, the term was added to the creed. It seems clear that the authority of Constantine was the main motivating force. Yet behind Constantine was his long-time chief ecclesiastical advisor, Ossius of Cordoba, a bishop immersed in the theology of the westen church. Though the Latin equivalent of hooousious, consubstantial, was not yet a fully accepted term in the western theological vocabulary, it was suited to describe the type of Trinitarian theology fashionable in the West, with its strong insistence on the divine monarch. The very ambiguity of the word would possible have appealed to the politician Constantine was. Within limits the bishops could read their own meaning into the term which still had the merit of scotching the Arian view. So "homoousios" coined by Gnostic heretics, proposed by an unbaptized emperor, jeopardized by naive defenders, but eventually vindicated by the orthodox, was added to the Creed of Nicaea to become a sign of contradiction for the next half-century. (Then, into the 5th ff)
(What is more interesting) Substance (ousia) and hypotasis were regarded as synonymous. Athanasius himself would say at a far later date: "Hypostasis is ousia, and meaning nothing else than BEING (my emphasis) Only gradually, as we have indicated earlier, would hypostasis come to mean theologically what the West call person. (Here is the root of conflict between West and East and the Nestorians. The Nestorians never, never regarded it as person only as essence. Here, at least, is the beginning of the roots of conflict between the groups)
When the Creed was finished, perhaps by June 19, eighteen bishops still opposed it. Constantine then intervened to threaten with exile anyone who would not sign it. (History shows afterward, after the death of the emperor, the bishops who were exiled again returned to the fold only to be exiled again later on as this conflict continued)
(What Constantines´s feelings and thoughts are is another story.)
For now,
Shalom,
David.
PS The author of the book received his S.T.L from the Gregorian U, Rome and his Ph.d from U of Wisconsin. Teaching at Xavier U and Weston school of Theology.
