Separately or as "tres Personae, una Substantia"?
The above is a Latin idiom coined by Tertullian (again), interpreting the Greek idea of One God in Three Persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, which was the faith of the Church.
Tertullians' Latin idiom passed back to the East through Hippolytus, born in Rome but versed in Greek, and then the fun really started!
The term 'substance' and 'person' as philosophical categories expressed different ideas in Latin and Greek. Furthermore, whilst Tertullian coined the phrase, he did not offer any definition of the terms. In Greek 'substance' can be rendered ousia, hypostasis, or physis depending on context.
So began a philosophical and theological journey unpacking the meaning of the Incarnate Son of of a triune Godhead utilising terms which, as they stood, were simply not up to the task. The Christological Councils wrestled with the ideas, not the least of what it was to be a person at all, and there were significant breakthroughs — Nicea being one, and Chalcedon being another — but not without cost, man being the creature that he is...
And so theology advances by degee, revitalising philosophy, metaphysics, and revealing a new paradigm ... Origen and the Cappadocians, Athanasius, Hilary, Cyril, Leo, Maximus and Leontius, Augustine and Anselm ... bit by bit the investigation focussed on the central issue, but it was Aquinas who nailed the very essence of the question ... what it is, to be.
Tertullian apparently maintained that G-d did not become the Father until the Son was begotten (imagine that).
So do we all. How can a father be a father without a son? What was missed is the begetting is an eternal procession — or circumincession — not a timebound event, as Arius assumed.
As I recall, the Catholic Encyclopedia's discussion of the Nicean Creed doesn't mention Tertullian. I don't know if they disowned him after he was declared a heretic.
Not really, rather he left us ... but his work De Trinitate remains a classic of Trinitarian theology, even though completed after he had embraced the Montanist heresy — something worth considering is that if the Church was as militant as most pople like to assume, Tertullian's work would have been destroyed, burnt along with all the other books we're supposed to have burnt ... but it remains a classic and held in high regard.
At any rate, given this "oversight, I wonder if he should be considered a major Trinitarian ideologue.
No oversight, he is. Probably quite wisely he was not invited to the Council ... there would have been bloodshed if he was, as a disputant he had a fiercesome reputation. As it was, the Christological question had to be resolved before the Trinitarian question could even be seen clearly.
I wonder the same about Origen of Alexandria (185-232), who maintained that the Trinity was strictly of spiritual substance.
Again, so do we all. I think the Mormons or someone think God is a corporeal being sitting somewhere ... but we believe in God as a spirit — see John 4:24.
It seems the only way to reconcile the existence of Jesus would be to have a four-fold differentiation, the incarnation being an additional component.
Absolutely wrong, you haven't got it at all! Jesus Christ the Man is the same Person as Jesus Christ the Second Person of the Trinity ... there are not two Jesuses ... "and the word became flesh" (John 1:14 remember?) ... just to make matters worse, when Jesus wealked the earth, He was not absent from heaven ... The Trinity did not become a Duality, with the third member absent, on a foreign posting.
At any rate, it appears that the Church did not have a coherent statement regarding the Trinity almost 300 years after Jesus departed.
Really? I would rather say you evidently do not have a coherent understanding of the Trinity even now. Sorry, but you're certainly not in any position to criticially evaluate the coherence of Catholic theological doctrine.
Thomas
