De immutabilitate traditionis contra modernam haeresim evolutionismi

And the whole inquiry will be reduced to two observations. The first and preliminary will be that those passages of the Fathers that now come under consideration can be understood in a plainly orthodox sense. The second and principal, that they not only can but must be taken in that sense, prescinding even from the explicit professions of the authors, if account be taken of the criteria alone that are proper to Catholic tradition.

1. And as to the first, it is not worthwhile to descend to a discussion of individual passages; it will suffice to bring forward an example from those that are the most difficult, and that could offer the better handle for calumny — I mean those testimonies of the ancients concerning the mystery of the Trinity reported above, from which the critics wish to persuade us that those same ancients were ignorant of the consubstantiality of the persons, and that besides the highest and supreme God they acknowledged two other inferior gods, according to the dogma of the pagans! In which exegesis of theirs they perhaps had the causes of their deception in the neglect of the principles of scholastic theology.

Certainly consubstantiality not only does not conflict with the order of origin among the persons, but rather so necessarily coheres with it that, if once several unproceeding persons were thought in God, by that very fact the dogma of one God in three persons would evidently become absurd. On this matter see the treatise On the Trinity, theses 9 and 31, with the prologue to Q. 28. For this reason the Gospel inculcates this very order of origin so insistently and so studiously, employing even formulas that might seem to carnal understanding to be to the detriment of equality — as when it is said of the Son that he can do nothing of himself, and of the Holy Spirit that he will not speak of himself, that whatever he shall hear he shall speak, and other things of the kind. The dogma of the Trinity therefore posits one unproceeding person, from whom is the Son; from whom together with the Son, as from one principle, is the Holy Spirit. For thus and not otherwise are the divine persons distinguished among themselves by the relations of origin alone, and not at all by anything absolute — that is, by the essence or substance, which together with the operative power and the operation itself, both within and without, is one and the same. So too the operation of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit is the same, but it is in the Father with the relation of one communicating, it is in the Son with the relation of one receiving from the Father, it is in the Holy Spirit with the relation of one receiving from both. Now therefore it must be seen whether there have a place there the incriminated expressions of the Father to whom the Son and the Holy Spirit minister in all things (Iren. l. 4, c. 7; Justin, in Tryph. n. 61); of the Father who commands, of the Son who obeys (Hippol. ubi supra); of the Father who makes, of the Son through whom it is made, or of the Father who is the whole substance, of the Son who is the derivation of the whole and a portion (Tertull. in apolog. c. 21, and c. Praxeam c. 9). And that in such expressions there cannot be propriety of words — on that there will surely be no question between us. But we too sometimes say of God things that do not carry with them a greater propriety of terms. For we say that God repents, and that God is angry; nor do we fear to attribute to God hands and arms and eyes. Do we therefore make God corporeal? Do we make him mutable in his counsels, or subject to human passions? Far be it. For if from those expressions there be removed whatever is human, nothing else will remain signified by hands and arms but power and might; nothing else by anger but the efficacious will to punish sins; nothing else by repentance but a change, not of counsel, but of the things that are subject to counsel. Say the same in the present matter. For in one who ministers, in respect of him whom he serves; in one who obeys, in respect of him whom he obeys; and finally in an instrument, in respect of him whose instrument it is — two things are considered: first, that from him whom he serves, whom he obeys, whose instrument he is, he has derived either the operative power or the will to operate; second, that he has it as different from that which is in the principal agent — namely, as participated, dependent, and subject. Now remove from such terms, if haply they be transferred to divine things, all that sounds the imperfection of dependence, and nothing else will remain signified but the order of origin alone, according to which, as was said a little before, the operation in the Son, although the same as the operation of the Father, is nevertheless in him with the relation of one receiving from the Father, as it is in the Holy Spirit with the relation of one receiving from both. And you will say that the modes of speaking of Irenaeus, of Justin, of Hippolytus (nay, even of Tertullian, whose style is always hyperbolic and labours under an exaggerated realism) — you will say, I repeat, that these modes of speaking do not admit an orthodox sense, especially when the Arians, who were to abuse them, did not yet exist, and the principles common among Christians concerning the divinity of themselves sufficiently excluded the grossness of carnal understanding?¹.

Further, consubstantiality stands very well with appropriation, whereby some essential attribute, although in reality common to the three persons, is nevertheless considered as if it belonged to one before the others. And this appropriation, being used both in the Scriptures and in all the symbols of faith and among all the Fathers, doctors, and theologians, belongs so manifestly to the Catholic² treatment of the Trinity that it is a wonder if it can be either ignored or rejected by our critics. « It must be said, says St Thomas, that for the manifestation of the faith it was fitting that essential attributes be appropriated to the persons. For although the trinity of persons cannot be proved by demonstration, it is fitting that it be declared through certain things more manifest. But essential attributes are more known to us according to reason than the properties of the persons, because from creatures, from which we receive knowledge, we can arrive with certainty at the knowledge of essential attributes, but not at the knowledge of personal properties. As therefore we use the similitude of a vestige or image found in creatures for the manifestation of the divine persons, so also essential attributes. And this manifestation of the persons through essential attributes is called appropriation ». Nor indeed can the matter be arbitrary, but having its foundation most of all in a certain peculiar fitness between the essential attribute and the property of the person, it supplies the best solution to the many difficulties that occur in the present matter.

Indeed, the appropriation of power, wisdom, and goodness is most usual, and that too is better known than to need much explanation. For power has the character of a principle, and is appropriated to the Father, who is the principle among the divine persons. Wisdom, exemplarity, idea, art, shines in the conception of the intellect, and is appropriated to the Son, who proceeds as the word. But goodness is the reason and object of love, and is appropriated to the Holy Spirit, who proceeds as love. Just as, therefore, the ancients attributed to the Father the work of the first creation, of which it is said in Genesis: In the beginning God created heaven and earth; but the earth was void and empty, and the spirit of God was borne over the waters, because in this work the omnipotence that draws the world from nothing absolute shines forth: so they attributed to the Son, as the Word of the Father, the work of the second creation — that is, of the formation, distinction, and adornment of things — because that work is the work of wisdom. Moreover, the procession of the Word from the Father in order to the adorning of the world was considered by them as a certain sending forth into the light, or bringing forth ad extra, of the Word himself conceived from eternity. In this sense Athenagoras said that the Word came forth in order to be the idea and act of all material things, which were like unformed matter and an inert earth. And Hippolytus said that the Father, creating the world, begot the Word, making him visible and capable of being seen, whereas before he was incapable of being seen and invisible. For just as an architect who has in his mind the idea of a building that no one previously saw makes it visible when he begins to form the building out of unformed materials, so the Father brought forth ad extra his Word begotten from eternity, when he said: Let there be light, let there be a firmament, and the rest that is recorded in Genesis. And just as the art of the craftsman in some way goes forth outside in order to impress and figure itself in the artifact, and to become its act and form: so in the work of the adorning of the world there went forth that uncreated art appropriated to the Word, of which Prov. VIII-27: When he prepared the heavens, I was present; when he enclosed the abyss with a sure law and compass; when he established the ether above, and weighed the fountains of waters; when he surrounded the sea with its limit, and set a law to the waters that they should not pass their bounds; when he hung the foundations of the earth, I was with him, composing all things. Hence, from first to last, this second and temporal generation of the Word, about which the critics raise so great a question, is in the mind of the ancients nothing but the manifestation of God in the creation of things, as regards that uncreated idea or understood reason of the universe which is specially appropriated to the Word because of the mode of its procession. That such a manifestation adds nothing new to the Word, but posits a change on the part of the creature alone, can be doubtful to him only to whom even the first principles of natural theology were still unknown — nay rather, to whom it would not even be perspicuous that the interior idea of the architect is in no way changed in itself when, through the execution of the work, it is brought forth ad extra³. How then could the expressions of the ancients concerning the Word proceeding forth from the Father to the making of the world seem to anyone irreducible to an orthodox sense?

But what shall we now say of all the passages of Justin in which the theophanies of the Old Testament are attributed to the Son, for the reason that « no one who is not altogether out of his mind would dare to say that the author of the universe and the Father, leaving all things supercelestial, was seen in a little part of the earth? » This reason too is set forth still more expressly below, in the same dialogue with Trypho (n. 127), where it is said: « Do not think that the unbegotten God himself descended or ascended from any place. For that ineffable Father and Lord of the universe neither comes into any place, nor walks, nor sleeps, but remains in his own region, whatever that be, seeing keenly and hearing keenly, not with eyes indeed or ears, but with an ineffable power, and he sees all things and knows all things, nor does any of us escape him, nor is he moved, nor can he be contained in a place — nay, not even in the whole world, since he was even before the world was made. How then should he either speak to anyone, or appear to anyone, or be seen in the narrowest part of the earth? » Here at least, you will say, we must surrender, so that even unwilling we confess that Justin acknowledged in the Father and the Son a nature plainly dissimilar. Nay rather, I say, so dissimilar that the conclusion would follow which you yourself would shrink from — namely, that the nature of the Son was in Justin's mind corporeal and animal, in which, to be sure, he could have ascended, descended, walked, slept, and performed the other things that are denied of the Father. And what, I ask, is more inadmissible? How would Justin everywhere preach the Son as God begotten before the ages and in time incarnate of the Virgin? How would he understand those most magnificent words of Scripture: I am who am, the Lord of hosts, the Lord strong and mighty, the Lord has reigned, and other such things which so often, both in the First Apology and in this very Dialogue, he contends are to be referred to Christ? But do not forget, I pray, that Justin is disputing with a Jew, and while he wishes to persuade the Jew that the theophanies of the Old Testament are not to be referred to that single divine person whom the Jews admitted, he first intends to destroy the absurd and carnal opinion of the Jews concerning those theophanies themselves: Even as, he says at n. 114, it pleases your teachers, who think that the parent of the universe and unbegotten God has hands and feet and fingers and a soul, after the manner of a composite animal, and who therefore teach that it was the Father himself who was seen by Abraham and Jacob. And against this Jewish and crude imagination do battle all the things that were reported above. He intends, then, that the theophanies are not so to be taken as if God had been seen in his own proper substance, but according as visible species and audible voices were formed by divine operation. But now this operation, together with the representative species, Justin attributes to a person distinct from the person of the Father: namely, to that person who in operating bears himself as the minister of the Father; to that person who, being one day to be incarnate, even then assumed the part of announcing to men the wills of the Father; to that person to whom could fit the names of angel and of sent one, which continually occur in the theophanies of the Old Scripture; to that person of whom from the beginning of the disputation (n. 56) he had said: « I shall endeavour to persuade you, since you understand the Scriptures, of what I say — namely, that another is and is called, under the creator of the universe, God and Lord, who is also called angel, because he announces to men whatever the Creator of the universe wishes to announce to them, above whom there is no God »⁴. Finally, to that person of whom at the end (n. 127) he concludes: « Neither Abraham, therefore, nor Isaac, nor Jacob, nor any one of men saw that utterly ineffable Father and Lord of all, but him who, according to his will, is both God, his Son, and angel, from the fact that he ministers his will, whom he also willed to be born a man of the virgin, who was also once fire in the conversation with Moses from the bush ». Nor let it be troublesome to you in these things that Justin subjects the Son to the Father. For he does not subject him as a servant to the creator, but as a son to the fountain of divinity, so that according to our manner of conceiving — (for lisping as we can, we resound the sublime things of God) — the order of origin may be expressed⁵. Nor charge it as a crime against Justin that he said the same Son was begotten of the Father according to the will of the Father, or by the will of the Father. For besides that this is rightly understood in the sense that St Thomas sets forth in the First Part, Q. 41, a. 2⁶, lest namely in this generation of the Son from the substance of the Father someone imagine a necessity dominating the Father and imposed on him unwilling, as the Marcionites feigned concerning their second and fictitious god — Justin explains himself in the same dialogue with Trypho, at n. 128, saying: « But that power, which the prophetic word calls both God and angel, is not to be counted a mere name, like the light of the sun, but is also another thing in number (understand: something subsisting and distinct); I have also briefly discussed this above, when I said that that power was begotten from the Father, by his power and will, not however by an abscission, as if the substance of the Father were divided, as all other things that are divided and cut are not the same as before they were cut; and by way of example I took the fires which we see kindled from another fire, that fire not being diminished from which many can be kindled, but remaining the same. » Where you see that the generation of the Son by the will of the Father is opposed to the generation that is among us by the division of substance — that is, the spiritual generation to the material one. Toward this too tends the similitude of fire last adduced, in which Justin in some way anticipates the Nicene definition: « God of God, light of light ».

We have, then, in all these things obscure explanations, conceptions not sufficiently precise, and finally improper expressions, which, if they had not preceded the time of the Arian impiety that arose, could seem suspect. But we certainly do not have any that would not receive an orthodox interpretation on fair and equitable terms. And the same must be said in the matters of other dogmas. See for example the letter of Cyril of Alexandria to John of Antioch, in which he refutes the calumnies of his adversaries concerning what he held — that a concretion or confusion or commixture of the Word of God with the flesh had taken place, that the divinity is passible, etc.⁷. See also Augustine, l. de praedest. SS. n. 27, where there is a most excellent observation concerning the tradition of the dogma of grace down to Pelagius.

2. Since these things are so, it now remains to ask whether those same more difficult testimonies of the Fathers not only can but also must be understood in that Catholic sense of which we have spoken. Nor must the answer be sought from afar, for the conclusion of what was premised in ch. 1 is sufficient. For in those things that constitute the very sum of the faith, the sense of the present Church is a most certain argument of the sense of the primitive Church, as was proved above. Moreover, all those Fathers whose authority has always been received, and is received even now, could not in fact have deflected from that sense. It is necessary, therefore, that if you find anything in their sayings that is not said with all the caution that the moderns observe, you nevertheless, adhering to the criteria that are proper to the interpretation of sacred tradition and of its monuments, take it without doubt in that orthodox sense in which it can be understood, whatever be the probabilities that, from the viewpoint of a bare and simple scientific criticism, might still seem to you to occur to the contrary.

And this was Augustine's most solid manner of arguing with regard to Chrysostom, whose authority Julian was bringing forward against the dogmas of original sin. For Augustine observed that it was impossible for Chrysostom to have believed otherwise than the others whose consent he had already shown — surely in a matter that did not admit a diversity of views, but concerned the very foundations of religion. For if he had truly held otherwise in so great a cause, where the sum of the Christian religion consists, he would not have obtained and preserved so great an authority in the Church. And therefore, from the fact that his authority had remained entire, it was taken as a sign that his sense had been Catholic. « Do you dare, then, says he in l. 1 c. Iul. n. 22, to oppose these words of the holy bishop John, as though by way of contrary, to the sentences of so many and such great colleagues of his, and to separate him from their most concordant society, and to set him up as their adversary? Far be it, far be it to believe or to say this evil of so great a man. Far be it, I say, that John of Constantinople should resist so many and such great fellow bishops of his — and especially the Roman Innocentius, the Carthaginian Cyprian, the Cappadocian Basil, the Nazianzen Gregory, the Gallic Hilary, the Milanese Ambrose — concerning the baptism of little children and their liberation by Christ from the paternal handwriting. There are other things in which even the most learned and best defenders of the Catholic rule, with the frame of the faith safe, sometimes do not agree among themselves, and one says something better and truer than another about one and the same thing. But this matter of which we now treat pertains to the very foundations of the faith... Comparing therefore John with the elders, whose own sins are forgiven in baptism, he said that they have no sins; not, as you yourself set down his words, that they are not defiled by sin, since you wish, certainly, to be understood that they are not defiled by the sin of the first man... I will set down the very Greek words that were spoken by John: Διὰ τοῦτο καὶ τὰ παιδία βαπτίζομεν, καὶ τοι ἁμαρτήματα οὐκ ἔχοντα. Which is in Latin: Therefore we also baptize infants, although they have no sins. You see certainly that it was not said by him that little children are not defiled by sin, but that they have no sins: understand, their own; and there is no contention. But, you will say, why did he not himself add 'their own'? Why, do we think, unless because, disputing in the Catholic Church, he did not think himself to be understood otherwise, was assailed by no one with such a question, and spoke the more securely while you were not yet litigating? »

Where you see that Augustine does not cling to the rules of textual criticism, as our moderns say, but to higher principles that must govern all legitimate patristic exegesis. Those principles, I say, whose rejection or neglect constitutes the principal vice of the criticism of which certain things are now to be observed in the following chapter.