Wednesday, April 10, 2024

Johannes Quasten (RC) on Tertullian's Triadology and Christology

 On Against Paxeas:

 

After the introductory chapter on Praxeas and his teaching, the author deals with the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity, sometimes called the divine economy or dispensation (oikonomia, dispositio). In order to allay popular fears and prejudices, he draws a parallel with the theory of Orman Law which acknowledged several imperatores but only one imperium; that is, the State was ruled in virtue of one undivided power, but, since that sole authority could not be effectively exercised over so vast a territory, by an individual, the territory was divided but not the power, and each Emperor wielded that one within an allotted area. Similarly, the divine monarchy is unimpaired in the Church’s dogma. There follows a discussion of the generation of the Son, also called the Word and the Wisdom of God, with biblical quotations in proof of the plurality of divine persons. The testimony of the Gospel of John is adduced in order to refute the heretical interpretation of Scriptural passages by Praxeas. Finally, the writer creates of the Holy Ghost or Paraclete, as distinct from the Father and the Son. But this is only the frame of the treatise. Within the 31 chapters Tertullian develops completely the doctrine of the Trinity (this will be discussed later). There are striking passages like the following:

 

Three, however, not in quality, but in essence, not in substance, but in form, not in power, but in aspect; yet of one substance and one quality and one power, because there is one God from whom these sequences and forms, and aspects are reckoned out in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit (2).

 

He describes the relation existing between the Father and the Son as in no way destroying the Divine Monarchy, because it is not by division that the one differs from the other—but by distinction (9). He is the first of the Latin authors to use trinitas as the technical term 92 ff).

 

Unfortunately, in his defense of the distinction of the Divine persons, he did not escape the pitfalls of Subordinationism. (Johannes Quasten, Patrology, 4 vols. [Westminster, Md.: Christian Classics, Inc., 1992], 2:285-86)

 

 

Trinity

 

It is in the doctrine of the Trinity and the intimately connected Christology that Tertullian made the greatest contribution to theology. Some of his formulae and definitions are so precise and happy that they were adopted by the ecclesiastical terminology never to be discarded. It was mentioned above that Tertullian was the first to use the Latin word trinitas for the three divine persons. De pud. 21 speaks of a Trinitas unius Divinitatis, Pater et Filius et Spiritus Sanctus. However, it is in Adv. Prax., that his doctrine of the trinity finds its best expression. He explains the compatibility between the unity and trinity of the Godhead by pointing to the oneness in substance and origin of the three: tres unius substantiae et unius status et unius potestatis (De pud. 2). The Son is ‘of the substance of the Father’: Filium non aliunde deduco, sed de substantia Patris (ibid. 4). The Spirit is ‘from the Father through the Son’: Spiritum non aliunde deduco quam a Patre per Filium (ibid.) Thus Tertullian states: ‘I always affirm that there is one substance in three united together’: Ubique teneo unam substantiam in tribus cohaerentibus (ibid. 12). In ch. 25 of De pud. he puts the relation of Father, Son and Paraclete in the following way: Connexus Patris in Filio et Filii in Paracleto tres efficit cohaerentes, alterum e altero. Qui test unum sunt, non unus. Tertullian is the first to use the term persona, which became so famous in the subsequent development. He says of the Logos that he is ‘another’ than the father ‘in the sense of person, not of substance, for distinctiveness, not for division; alium autem quomodo accipere debeas iam professus sum, personae non substantiae nominee, ad distinctionem non ad divisionem (Adv. Prax. 12). The term persona is applied also to the Holy Spirit, whom Tertullian calls ‘the third person’:

 

If the plurality of the Trinity still offends you, as if it were not connected in simple unity, I ask you how it is possible for a Being who is merely and absolutely One and Singular, to speak in plural phrase, saying, ‘let us make man in our own image, and after our own likeness’; whereas He ought to have said, ‘Let me make man in my own image, and after my own likeness,’ as being a unique and singular Being? In the following passage, however, ‘Behold the man is become as one of us,’ He is either deceiving or amusing us in speaking plurally if He is the One only and singular. Or was it to the angels that He spoke, as the Jews interpret the passage, because these also acknowledge not the Son? Or was it because He was at once the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, that he spoke to Himself in plural terms, making Himself plural on that very account? Nay, it was because He had already His Son close at His side, as a second Person, His own Word, and a third Person also, the Spirit in the Word, that He purposely adopted the plural phrases ‘Let us make’ and ‘in our image’ and ‘become as one of us,’ For with whom did He make man? and to whom did He make him like? He was speaking with the Son who was to put on human nature; and the Spirit who was to sanctify man. with these did He then speak, in the Unity of the Trinity, as with His ministers and witnesses (ibid. 12 ANF 4).

 

However, Tertullian could not shake off entirely the influence of subordinationism. The old distinction between the Logos endiathetos and the Logos prophorikos, the Word internal or immanent in God and the Word emitted or uttered by God, which isled the Greek apologists, made him regard the divine generation as taking place gradually. Although Wisdom and Word are identical names for the second person in the Trinity, Tertullian distinguishes between a prior birth as Wisdom before the creation, and a nativitas perfecta at the moment of creation, when the Logos was sent forth and Wisdom became the Word: ‘Hence it was then that the Word itself received its manifestation and its completion, namely sound and voice, when God said: Let there be light. This is the perfect birth of the Word, when it proceeds from God. it was first introduced by Him for thought under the name of Wisdom. The Lord established me as the beginning of his ways (prov. 8, 22). Then He is generated for action: When He made the heavens, I was near Him (Prov. 8, 27). Consequently, making the one of whom he is the Son to be His Father by His procession, He became the first-born, as generated before all, and only Son, as solely generated by God’ (Adv. Prax. 7). Thus the Son as such is not eternal (Hermog. 3 EP 321) although the Logos was res et persona even before the creation of the world per substantiae proprietatem (ibid.). The Father is the whole substance (tota substantia est) while the Son is only an outflow and a portion of the whole (derivation totius et portio), as He Himself professes, Because my Father is greater than I (John 14, 28). The analogies by which Tertullian tries to explain the Godhead also indicate his subordinationist tendencies, especially when he states that the Son goes out from the Father as the beam from the sun:

 

For God brought forth the Word, as also the Paraclete declares, as a root brings forth the ground shoot, and a spring the river and the sun its beam. For these manifestations also are emanations of the substances form which they proceed. I should not hesitate, indeed, to call the shoot the son of the root and the river son of the spring and the beam son of the sun, because every source is a parent and everything which issues from a source is an offspring—and especially the Word of God, who has actually received as his own peculiar designation the name of Son: yet the shoot is not shut off from the root nor the river from the spring nor the beam from the sun, anymore than the Word is separated from God. Following, therefore, the form of these analogies I confess that I call God and His Word—the Father and His Son—two. For the root and the shoot are distinctly two things, but conjoined; and the spring and the river are also two manifestations, but undivided; so likewise the sun and the beam are two aspects, but they cohere. Everything which proceeds from something else must needs be second to that from which it proceeds, without being on that account separated. Where, however, there is a second, there must be two; and where there is a third, there must be three. Now the Spirit indeed is third from God and the Son; just as the fruit of the shoot is third from the root, or as the irrigation canal out of the river is third from the spring, or as the apex of the beam is third from the sun; nothing, however, is alien form that original source whence it derives its own properties. . . . In like manner the Trinity, proceeding from the Father by intermingled and connected degrees, does not at all disturb the monarchy, while it guards the state of the economy. (Adv. Prax. 8 ANF). (Johannes Quasten, Patrology, 4 vols. [Westminster, Md.: Christian Classics, Inc., 1992], 2:324-28)

 

 

Christology

 

Tertullian’s doctrine of the Trinity in spite of its shortcomings marks an important step forward. Some of his formulas are identical with those of the Council of Nicaea, held more than one hundred years later. Others have been adopted by tradition and later Councils. This holds true especially of his Christology, which has all the merits of his teaching on the Godhead and none of its defects. He clearly announces the two natures in the one person of Christ. There is no transformation of the divinity into the humanity, any more than a fusion or combination that would have made only one substance out of two:

 

We see plainly the twofold state, which is not confounded, but conjoined in one person—Jesus, God, and Man . . . so that the property of each nature is so wholly preserved that the Spirit on the one hand did all its own things in Jesus such as miracles, and mighty deeds and wonders; and the flesh, on the other hand, exhibited the affections which belong to it. It was hungry under the devil’s temptation, thirsty with the Samaritan woman, wept over Lazarus, was troubled even unto death, and at last actually died. If, however, it was only some third thing, some composite essence formed out of the two substances, like the electrum, there would be no distinct proofs apparent of either nature. But by a transfer of functions, the Spirit would have done things to be done by the Flesh, and the Flesh such as are effected by the spirit; or else such things as are suited neither to the Flesh nor to the Spirit, but confusedly of some third character. Nay more, on this supposition, either the Word underwent death, or the flesh did not die, if the Word had been converted into flesh; because either the flesh was immortal, or the Word was mortal. Forasmuch, however, as the two substances acted distinctly, each in its own character, there necessarily accrued to them severally their own operations and their own issues. (Adv. Pra. 27 ANF 3).

 

We recognize in these statements the formula of the Council of Chalcedon (451 A.D.) of the two substances in one person. (Johannes Quasten, Patrology, 4 vols. [Westminster, Md.: Christian Classics, Inc., 1992], 2:328)