mystery of the Holy Trinity. They agreed, of course, entirely in the definition, in the worship of one God in three Persons; but it often happens that people see things, especially mysteries, from different angles. The Western Fathers, he thinks, start from the consubstantial nature, from the Unity of God, and they subordinate to it the mystery of the three Persons; the Easterns first consider the three Persons, each truly God, and then add to this consideration the mystery that they are nevertheless one God. He goes on to notice how this representation comes from Origen, how it reached the great Greek Fathers through semi-Arian channels, and he sees in it a reason even for the later quarrel about the Filioque. "The faith unites," he says, "but theology sometimes divides us. St. Augustine in his theory of the Trinity, in his philosophic conception of the mystery, is very far from St. Gregory of Nazianzum."[1]
The most general observation of all would be, perhaps, that Eastern theology seems to us vague. They have had no lack of subtle philosophers before the schism and after it;[2] but they do not seem to have ever felt that need of tabulating their articles of faith, of arranging them into a clear and consistent system, that has been a characteristic of the Western mind.[3] Dr. Ehrhard says that the Greek Church has not had a mediæval period.[4] She has certainly not had a scholastic period, nor any one like St. Thomas Aquinas. The perfection of system in his two Summas, that has always remained the ideal of our theology since, has never been an ideal to them.[5] One
- ↑ Duchesne: Églises'séparées, pp. 83–87.
- ↑ To discuss theology has always been the delight of Greeks of every rank. It was the theological Emperors who caused the endless troubles of the Church from Constantius (337–361) to the schism. At the other end of the social scale "the city is full of workmen and slaves who are all theologians," says St. Gregory of Nyssa († c. 395), "if you ask a man to change money, he will tell you how the Son differs from the Father; if you ask the price of a loaf he will argue that the Son is less than the Father; you want to know if the bath be ready and you are told that the Son was made out of nothing."
- ↑ An example of this is their confusion about the meaning of the words οὐσία, ὑπόστασις, πρόσωπον. Cf. Franzelin, de Verbo incarn. Th. 21.
- ↑ Der Kathol. u. d. xx Jhrdt. (1902), p. 23.
- ↑ The Summa theol. was first done into Greek by Demetrios Kydones in the 14th century.
