{107} (cont’d)
B) Functionality is, therefore, the first structural moment of the revelation of the Trinitarian mystery. Thus, since the Trinity is functional, but does not consist in functionality it forces us to take another step. In addition this step is expressed in a second concept, which I call transcendence. The error of Modalism consisted in thinking that the Trinity is a structure ad extra of the divinity. On the contrary, not only God, but {108} the Trinity itself is something ad intra at least from the divine order. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as such are prior to any creation. And, in this sense, the Trinity as such transcends the creation of the world. What is this transcendence? That is the question.
1) In the first place, the Trinity, by being prior to any creation, is prior to the time in which (as we can at least presume) creation formally consists. This is what faith naturally expresses, which will later be repeated in the First Council of Constantinople: ante omnia saecula, before all time (DS 150).
2) In the second place, this pretemporal anteriority is proper to each of the three termini and not only to one: to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. This is what is essential because precisely in the Old Testament (and here appears the fertility of the concept of transcendence) we are presented, for example, with the wisdom of God as a personified Wisdom. It is certainly not the one belonging to the Word since it is said about it that it is a creature: “Before all ages...he created me” (Sir 24:9; cf. 1:4; 24:8; Prv 8:22). It would not be possible to understand all these allusions and expositions of the Old Testament if they are not anchored in the idea of a transfunctional transcendence. It is true that this Wisdom is not formally the Son, because in addition it is not said of Wisdom that it is the case of a personification of a quality of the Father or of something different from Him. Certainly, the fourth Gospel called God a Logos, but regardless of the origin of that terminology the Logos mentioned there is the Logos that reveals God. It says it is the revealing Logos. The prologue of the Gospel of St. John says not a word about the very structure of the Trinitarian mystery, but simply affirms its transcendence, namely, that revelation and the Logos precisely come from something anterior to all time and to {109} all creation. However, let us remember that in this divine order we qualify as transcendent, there is also the idea of a Son of Man who appears in the Apocalypse of Daniel (Dn 7:13), which belongs to this order, but cannot be identified with the Trinitarian functionality.
At any rate, in the personification of Wisdom, without referring expressly to the Son, there is a kind of intimation of a terminus anterior to creation. The same can be said about the Spirit.
3) These three termini that belong to the transcendent order, to the divine order anterior to time and creation, are not simply juxtaposed, but there is among them an internal structuralization. Right here is where the greatest difficulties begin. Jesus Christ himself tells us in the Gospel of St. John: “the Father is greater than I” (Jn 14:28). Theology recognized this problem quite early. Thus, the great Origen himself called the Son a déuteros theós, “second God”1. Correctly understood, not a second God juxtaposed to the Father, but a God of the second order where “order” means “fundamented” in the Father. The same must be said of the Holy Spirit.
This vision that the three termini have a rank among themselves, and an internal structuralization in this transcendental order is what has produced an important difficulty, which ended in an error called “Subordinationism”. However, at this stage it is not formally an error. That Jesus Christ said “the Father is greater than I” (Jn 14:28) was a subject amply developed by the Greek apologists (Athenagoras, Tatian, Justin, etc.) up to St. Irenaeus, the first theologian. And here {110} we always find an unclear expression that the generation of the Son is a generation not quite temporal, but a generation also not quite like the very eternity of God. It is a kind of eternal duration in which God has freely created what we call the Son who has a kind of existence between the eternity of God and anterior to the temporal reality of the world. Certainly it would not be the case of a temporal generation, but of a generation in this other order, which is precisely the one I call transcendence.
Of course, the idea is expressed in a clear difference these apologists make between a Logos, which they call the uttered Logos (for example, “God said, ‘Let there be light’, and there was light” in Gn 1:3), and a Logos in which God says to himself what He is2. That is the immanent Logos. However, all this is somewhat confusing, and St. Irenaeus himself, who never spoke in his theology about the Son except as revealer of the Father, appears more or less oscillating in his expressions about this difficult problem. Also, when speaking about the Holy Spirit, Athenagoras does not clearly establish if he is a kind of envoy different from the Father and the Son.
Nevertheless, what for me appears important and clear is the second stage I call “transcendence”. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are more than the functionality we have seen in the first case, but they definitely belong to the transcendent order. This order may or may not be identified with God (that is a different matter), but at least it is a divine and transcendent order where He has a function. Athenagoras himself writes, “We know a God and his Word. And how is the union of the Son with the Father, how is the communication between the Father and the Son? What may the Spirit be? And what is the union and {111} distinction of what is united thus: of the Spirit, of the Son, and of the Father? The Father and the Son are nothing but one: the Son is in the Father, the Father is in the Son, and the unity of both is the dýnamis of the Spirit”3. One might think this is an exposition of what the Council of Nicea is going to present, but next to it we have all the difficulties I have just mentioned.
In the exposition of the Trinitarian theology it is essential to consider by itself and for itself this stage of transcendence as different from functionality, and anterior to what we are going to say as a third concept. It has always been so, because functionality cannot exist except founded on transcendence, i.e., only in the measure there is a divine order that in one way or another involves these different termini, duly structured in a unitary structure with a different rank. This is essential. If not, there would be no possibility of interpreting the functionality of the three termini: of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Functionality comes from above, it is transcendent.
A first class theologian and great Biblical scholar4 insists in saying (as if it were a discovery) that there is an intermediate time between the historical time of creation and the eternity of God. That there is a different time when actually the God-man was created, and therefore, that the Incarnation represents no more than a change of condition, and not the primary act with which the Word refers to creation. Naturally, he carefully points out as a good theologian that the Word thus created and incarnated before history has no human body and soul. Needless to say the Church condemned Origenism. Yet, this poses a problem, which I will address immediately {112} and must be fitted to what I call the transcendence of these termini in the divine order.
Functionality is not derogated, but absorbed into transcendence. Here it was possible to repeat the same type of mistake made with functionality, namely, not to consider that the Trinity is not functionality, but to make the easy assumption that the Trinity consists only of functionality. Similarly, it is not that these aspects of transcendence I have just mentioned may not exist, but that it was possible to think the Trinity consists precisely in transcendence. That was precisely what was inadmissible: the work of Arius.
If we take wisdom, for example, as a mere quality of God, the fundamentation of the Son in the Father might lead to think that the Son presents a kind of exalted participation in the wisdom of the Father. The Son would then be a kind of diminished God, a simple participation in the divinity. If we call him Word or Logos it would only be in the sense of this participation, but nothing more. The Son would be a reality produced by God. He would be founded in God only by creation. Fundamentation would be a causal effect. The Word would be transcendent to the world, but something created ex nihilo, in a creation certainly anterior to time (áchronos), but a creation in the eternal duration of God. As a creature of God the Word would be God only through grace, katá chárin. This was the theology of Arius in the IV century. Here are his own words, “God was not always Father; he existed only as God, but was not yet Father; only later did he make himself Father. The Son did not exist always because, since all things have been born from nothing and all are made and created, similarly the very Word of God was made from nothing, and there was a moment in which he did not yet exist, and did not exist before being made; on the contrary, he had a beginning through creation... Afterwards, when he wished to create us, he created one, which he {113} called Word, Wisdom, and Son to create us through him... Because although (the Word) is called God, however, is not true God, but was made partaker (of God) by grace, just as all the rest... The Word is absolutely alien and dissimilar to the nature and the properties of God the Father, and belongs to the things created and made, and is one of them”5.
In this passage we find all the elements of the theology of Arius. In the first place, the idea is presented that the Word proceeds from the Father by creation. In the second place, this Word has been created before the creation of the world and of time in a kind of eternal duration. In the third place, the Word is an intermediary between God and creation. In the fourth place, the Word is God by grace (katá chárin) and not by nature (kath’ ousían).
At almost the same time, something similar was happening with the Holy Spirit. There were many, called the Pneumatomachi or Macedonians, who estimated that the Holy Spirit belonged to the transcendent order as a kind of great angel revealer of God, but nothing else.
In the end, the transcendence of the Trinity would certainly be a transcendence of the three termini with respect to the world, but not with respect to the whole of creation. They would be three absolutely different termini and all their physical reality would be triplicity, God plus the two intermediate realities between He and the world. The Church energetically rejected this interpretation at the Council of Nicea and the First Council of Constantinople. The Trinity is not “causation”, but “procession”. Therefore, it is a true Trinity constitutive of God as such.
{114} C) Still, it would have been desirable for theology to pay attention to the concept of transcendence in and by itself as fundament of functionality. It is the point in which is inscribed, as I mentioned above, the period of the Old Testament and a good part of the Judeo-Hellenic and Hellenic mentality. But also it is an unavoidable aspect in the revelation of Christ and of the whole New Testament. Christ decided to lead his disciples towards an adhesion to his person, for the moment at least, as belonging in some of its essential dimensions to the divine world, and therefore preexistent in God. This preexistence in the divine world is precisely what the concept of transcendence expresses. And on it is founded the functionality with respect to man and the world in general. Only slowly did He take his disciples to be able to apprehend or intimate the characteristics of this transcendence. The Word and the Holy Spirit, actually, not only belong to the divine world, but their transcendence is something else, i.e., the very structure (sit venia verbo) of God as such. This is what the third concept expresses, which I shall name by the term consecrated by the Council of Nicea, with the reservation to immediately make some comments about it, the concept of consubstantiality.
Functionality, transcendence and consubstantiality are the concepts, which express in a progressive manner the penetration with which man, through the revelation of Christ, has access to the divinity. Begins with functionality, reaches transcendence, and immerses itself in the very reality of God. That is the third concept, consubstantiality. Transcendence is founded on a structural order internal to God himself.
With this we can understand what the Council of Nicea says, “We believe in one God, omnipotent Father, creator of things visible and invisible, and in his only Son Jesus Christ, the Son of God who was begotten (gennethénta) as only-begotten {115} by the Father, i.e., of the ousía of the Father, God of God, Light of Light, true God of true God, begotten (gennethénta) and not made, consubstantial (homooúsios) to the Father” (DS 125). The formula of the Council of Nicea means that the Trinity is not an effect of a cause, neither temporal nor eternal, in the transcendent order, but a mysterious reference by God on himself. The Word is begotten, but not made or produced. The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, or from the Father through the Son. It is strictly a Trinity. Each terminus is in some moment of its own really different from the other two; the three are necessarily identical in ousía.
Thus, St. Athanasius, the great champion of the Council of Nicea against Arius tells us, “They (the Father and the Son) are one not in the sense that one may be divided into two parts... But they are two because the Father is Father and not Son, and in turn the Son is Son and is not Father. But the nature of both is the same; the one of the begotten is not dissimilar to the one of the progenitor, because his image and everything belonging to the Father belongs to the Son. But because of this the Son is not another God, because he is not produced extrinsically... Although the Son is another as begotten, however, he is identical (to the Father) insofar as God; and, therefore, the Son and the Father are one, because they have the same nature and because they have a single and identical divinity”6.
In such fashion, consubstantiality is the characteristic and ultimate fundament of transcendence. It is the precise and formal point of the Trinitarian mystery. Because of this it is the mystery of mysteries, because it is the mystery of the very reality of God qua {116} God. Consubstantiality does not derogate transcendence, but founds it. While transcendence consists in affirming that the Word and the Spirit belong to the divine order, consubstantiality affirms the characteristic of this belonging and of this order. Conversely, in the functions we really and effectively live not only the Trinity of three transcendental termini, but we live the very reality in which God consists, we live God in his formal and intrinsic Trinitariness. Functionality is founded on transcendence and transcendence is founded on consubstantiality.
This is simply the content of the Trinitarian dogma. In it is affirmed, in the first place, the real and not merely functional distinction of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. In the second place, their perfect numerical unity in nature is affirmed, they are consubstantial. But correctly understanding that this term, as I shall immediately explain, must not be taken in its metaphysical sense of ousía. In the third place, the Father “begets” the Son and both spire7 the Holy Spirit. They are mere “processions” and not causal productions. Precisely because of this they constitute, in the fourth place, not a triplicity, but the Trinity of one only God.
However, there is an abysmal difference, not only in language, but also in the activity of conceptualization between the concepts employed at this solemn moment of the Council of Nicea, and the very content of the New Testament revelation. In the New Testament there is never a mention of ousía, with the exception of Lk 15:12-13 where it means what it meant in the common everyday language, inheritance. However, the term homooúsios never appears at all and I shall return to it immediately. Naturally, this presents several problems, which the theological mind of the most faithful will never be able to avoid.
a) In the first place, that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are persons. The revealed text does not say this, and not even the Council of Nicea. The textual references are to the Father, the Son, {117} and the Holy Spirit. The profession of faith of the Council of Nicea never mentions they are persons. This fact is what generally makes theologians say, when they expound on the Council of Nicea, that the council was incomplete because it did not say what these three termini are. Instead of thinking that the purpose of the Council of Nicea was not to write a treatise in theology, but to precisely find the limits and the characteristics of the revelation from which humanity lives. The Council is incomplete with respect to the goals of a theology, but that is another question. To make a theology was never the intention of the Council of Nicea or any other Council.
b) In the second place, here we find a wide use of the terms ousía and homooúsios, substance and consusbstantiality. Certainly, if Sacred Scripture has to be taken within a certain context from which it has to be interpreted, this would apply much more to the Conciliar definitions that, after all, are human in their confection and reflection. The term ousía has to be taken in the context of the Arian controversy. Arius, who was someone who knew Greek philosophy quite well, although that did not make him a good theologian, always spoke of ousía. This man with his intellectual origin in Antioch, profoundly influenced by philosophical tendencies very different from Platonism, employs the term ousía, I will not say in an Aritotelian sense, but in the end in a very similar sense as something different from accident. And then he says that in God there are different ousíai, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Confronting this, the Council of Nicea affirms there is only one. Does this mean that the Council of Nicea has canonized the concept of ousía itself? Not at all, because what ousía means is something very concrete and simple. If we ask the Council of Nicea what are the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit they have to answer, God, only one thing. If we ask who is God, the answer has to be three, Father, {118} Son, and Holy Spirit. This is the only thing the Council of Nicea has said. The rest is the metaphysical overload, which has to be expressed in some way, but that literally does not form part of the decision of the Council of Nicea.
c) There is a third point, still more problematic, that has to be addressed. We are told the Word is begotten and not created. What does the term begotten, gennethénta, mean here? It is not enough to say that it is defined there. The decisions of the Councils often employ expressions and concepts over which the dogmatic definition does not formally extend, and are merely used as epithets. For example, Vatican I Council wishes to define against irrationalism the possibility that human intelligence through natural reason may know God. And does it as all the other Councils except the last one, anathematizing those who deny it, si quis dixerit, Deum unum et verum, creatorem et Dominum nostrum, per ea, quae facta sunt, naturali rationis humanae lumine certo cognosci non posse: anathema sit (DS 3026). But there is no theologian who would dare to say neither then nor now, that this canon formally includes the definition that with natural reason creation can be known. Creation functions there only as an epithet. The definition fell formally and exclusively over the existence of God. Particularly since the Council wished to provide that formal exception in order to defend the theology of Duns Scotus that denies the possibility of knowing creation ex nihilo with natural reason. It is a matter of faith, but not of reason Scotus would say.
Indeed, the term gennethénta, begotten, has an obvious clear characteristic. Jesus Christ on earth Son of God is gennethénta, is a genitum. That is temporal generation. Since this temporal generation starts precisely from the {119} Father and the Word it means the connection (sit venia verbo) between the Father and the Word in some way is going to make reference to this generation in time. But the question always remains, Is this connection formally a generation? Is the Word formally Son of a God who is formally Father independently of any temporal generation? Because it is patently true that only begotten, begotten, engendered, first born of all creatures, are epithets that appear all along the New Testament. That there is an eternal procession of the Word is a dogma of faith. But that this procession is formally a generation independently from any allusion to temporal generation, and not simply the analogical transposition of a temporal generation of Christ is precisely a perplexing question that must float over the Council of Nicea.
As person, as ousía, and as generation opens up a wide field. Because if it is true that the Word is not formally engendered by the Father and, therefore, is not Son, then it means the Father also is not formally Father before the generation of the Son. Naturally, this brings into mind the problem of the very structure of the Trinitarian dogma independently of this generation. That is the difficulty with the text of St. Athanasius I mentioned above. But one cannot be satisfied with saying that the theology of St. Athanasius was incomplete. The Council of Nicea was not incomplete, it was perfectly complete, and it would have been sad if it had loaded with theology something, which in itself is a living problem, namely, What is the internal structure of this Trinitariness of the divine reality? This is the subject of the next section.
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1 Origen, Commentaria in Evangelium Joannis, series graeca, t. 14, Paris, 1857, col. 268.
2 Cf. Athenagoras, Legatio pro christianis, cap. 10, in J.-P. Migne, Patrologiae cursus completus, series graeca, t. 6, Paris, 1857, col. 909.
3 Idem, cap. 12, in J.-P. Migne, Patrologiae cursus completus, series graeca, t. 6, op. cit., col. 913.
4 Zubiri probably refers here to P. Benoit, “Préexistence et Incarnation”, in Revue biblique, no. 77 (1970), pp. 5-29.
5 In the work of Arius, Thaleia, according to the quote preserved in Athanasius, Oratio prima contra arianos, caps. 5-6, in J.-P. Migne, Patrologiae cursus completus, series graeca, t. 26, Paris, 1857, cols. 21-24.
6 Athanasius, Oratio tertia contra arianos, cap. 4, in J.-P. Migne, Patrologiae cursus completus, series graeca, t. 26, <.i>op. cit., cols. 328-329. However, this text does not form part of the decisions of the Council of Nicea. It is possible to have been the champion who impeded that with Arianism the entire Christianity might have been sunk, without actually being a first class theologian, as I shall immediately show (note by X. Zubiri).
7 [Tr. note: from Sp. espiran, both creating the Holy Spirit, from Latin spirare]