Wednesday, September 11, 2019

W.B. Hunter on Tertullian's Christology


In an essay on Milton’s theological vocabulary in his writings, W.B. Hunter wrote the following about Tertullian’s Christology which should be of interest to readers:

Tertullian seems to have introduced to theology the use of substantia as the Latin translation of ousia, and he employs substantia in both senses of the Greek word. First, he writes against Praxeas, “you will not allow Him [the Word] to be really a substantive being, by having a substance [substantiae] of His own; in such a way that He may be regarded as an objective thing and a person and so be able . . . to make two, the Father and the Son, God and the Word” (Against Praxeas, 7). Here substantia is evidently used as synonymous with persona or hypostasis or first ousia. Thus, one could follow Tertullian and state that there are three substances in the Trinity. As we have seen, this is the meaning of substantia which Augustine later adopted. But for the common unity of the Trinity Tertullian also uses the same word substantia, now meaning substratum. Commenting upon the verse “I and my Father are one” (John 10:30), he says that they are one “in respect of unity of substance [substantiae], not singularity of number” (Against Praxeas, 25). As Wolfson observes, by substantia Tertullian must here mean unity of substratum, which derives from the Father. Several times elsewhere, Tertullian employs this second meaning. For instance, he writes that “the Father is the entire substance but the Son is a derivation and portion of the whole” (Against Praxeas, 9), or the Son derives “from the substance of the Father” (Against Praxeas, 4), or the Trinity are three “not in condition, but in degree; not in substance, but inform; not in power, but in aspect; yet of one substance, and of one condition, and of one power” (Against Praxeas, 2), or finally, the distinction of Father and Son is to be explained “on the ground of Personality, not of Substance—in the way of distinction, not of division” (Against Praxeas, 12). This second use of substantia in Tertullian for Stoic ousia or substratum if precisely that of Milton, who is thus echoing what appears to be the earliest technical meaning of substantia in any Latin theological writer. Neither man uses the term consubstantial in this context, though both could have.

Another point of similarity between Tertullian and Milton (aside from their subordinationism, which I have argued elsewhere) is the act that both derive the second and third Persons from the substance of the Father. For neither writer is there a common substratum underlying all three members. Tertullian’s view continues in the Nicene Creed (325), which anathematizes all “who assert that the Son of God is of a different hypostasis or ousia.” The two words are used synonymously here—a well-established practice by this time with reference to the substratum in the Son, begotten of the ousia of the Father, as an earlier clause in the original Creed states. Milton, thus, is following the earliest tradition of the Latin church. Augustine, on the other hand, later established the view that a common substratum underlies both Father and Son, and this became the accepted interpretation. (W.B. Hunter, “Further Definitions: Milton’s Theological Vocabulary” in W.B. Hunter, C.A. Patrides, and J.H. Adamson, eds., Bright Essence: Studies in Milton’s Theology [Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1973], 15-25, here, pp. 22-23)