The Consubstantial Nature of The Son - Excerpt from the "Council of Nicaea"

In this post I reference Neo-Platonic thought. If you are interested in learning more on this subject, see my post here.

Controversies in Church History

Protestants often critique Catholics for "inventing" doctrines in Christianity because they look at the dates of Church councils were different Catholic doctrines were defined and assume that the Church came up with that doctrine at that time. This is a misunderstanding though. These councils take place because, not because the Church is inventing something, but because there is some aspect of the deposit of faith given to the Church by Christ and the Apostles that has become a topic of controversy or discussion and the Church needs to define precisely what is to be believed. 

The revelation of God through Christ is mysterious in the sense that we will not fully ever grasp all of what was given to us during that time of public revelation. Rather, it is the duty of the Church to try to understand those divinely revealed mysteries until the Second Coming of Christ and his return in glory. Hence, the Church is always trying to be more precise in how she expresses her beliefs, and when people challenge her on a specific point that hasn't been fully fleshed out yet, it is an opportunity for her to respond and find the right words or phrase which capture the Apostolic and orthodox belief on that issue. 

Hence, over time, there are more and more formulations completed by the Church and a language is developed to best speak about these mysteries, providing more and more guard rails, so to speak, for the faithful to be prevented from falling into heresy. What is interesting, though, is that these divine mysteries require the Church to formulate philosophical frameworks and systems to attempt to capture some of the meaning these mysteries bring. And so philosophy must be employed in the service of Theology. 

Trinity and Unity Can Be Hard to Reconcile 

One of the central mysteries that Christ reveals to the world is that God is a Trinity of persons - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - and yet one God. This is absolutely clear in the Scriptures and in the Tradition of the Church, but is certainly difficult to understand. How is it that God is perfectly one and yet at the same time we introduce three distinctions in him? This is one of the hardest part of theology to understand properly. Having said this, one can easily see how the popular Neo-Platonic philosophy at the time of these early centuries would be something of an intellectual temptation for Catholics to fall towards. Why? 

Neo-Platonism

Neo-Platonism provides something of an easy parallel in its view of God to the Christian Trinity. In Neo-Platonic thought, the ultimate being "The Good" or "The One" is the unspeakable source of all being from which everything else emanates. The Good is unspeakable because any words applied to it would put limitations on it in some way. And so Nature must somehow emanate from The Good, but through a mediator which is lower than The Good. This is the Nous, of the "mind" which holds all the archetypal forms of existence. Since it is not The Good, it can be spoken of and limited in its being to a divine intellect which contains the ultimate forms of being. But Nature is not purely intellectual, and so the Nous must be mediated again into the creation of the world that we know through "the Anima", the spirit which incarnates the forms into the physical Nature of the cosmos. There is a metaphysical and temporal succession here between the three in Neo-Platonism. 

One can easily see now why an early Christian thinker would be very much drawn to this philosophy and to using it as a model to explain the Trinity. The formulation which which was spread through Arianism through a majority of the Church in the 3rd Century was similar. The Son is not God like the Father is God. The Father is the only one fully God, but since he is beyond all then it is through the creation of the Son that all of the lower world was formed. And so Christ is the highest of all creation, but still, at the end of the day, a creature. This is seemingly intellectually easier to then reconcile with the Trinity because Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all very powerful, like God, but they actually aren't all God. 

Orthodox Position

And so the council takes the time to specifically clarify that the Son and the Father are ONE in their being. They share the same "ousia" in Greek, or "substantia" in Latin, while being distinct relational persons. Christ is not a creation or a work of the Father, but consubstantial with the Father. 

Relevant Text 

FIRST COUNCIL OF NICAEA - 325 AD

THE PROFESSION OF FAITH OF THE 318 FATHERS

1. We believe in one God the Father all powerful, maker of all things both seen and unseen. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only-begotten begotten from the Father, that is from the substance [Gr. ousias, Lat. substantia] of the Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten [Gr. gennethenta, Lat. natum] not made [Gr. poethenta, Lat. factum], CONSUBSTANTIAL [Gr. homoousion, Lat. unius substantiae (quod Graeci dicunt homousion)] with the Father, through whom all things came to be, both those in heaven and those in earth; for us humans and for our salvation he came down and became incarnate, became human, suffered and rose up on the third day, went up into the heavens, is coming to judge the living and the dead. And in the holy Spirit.

2. And those who say 1. "there once was when he was not", and "before he was begotten he was not", and that 2. he came to be from ■ things that were not, or ■ from another hypostasis [Gr. hypostaseos] or substance [Gr. ousias, Lat. substantia], affirming that the Son of God is subject to change or alteration these the catholic and apostolic church anathematises.

THE LETTER OF THE SYNOD IN NICAEA TO THE EGYPTIANS

The bishops assembled at Nicaea, who constitute the great and holy synod, greet the church of the Alexandrians, by the grace of God holy and great, and the beloved brethren in Egypt, Libya and Pentapolis. Since the grace of God and the most pious emperor Constantine have called us together from different provinces and cities to constitute the great and holy synod in Nicaea, it seemed absolutely necessary that the holy synod should send you a letter so that you may know what was proposed and discussed, and what was decided and enacted.

3. First of all the affair of the impiety and lawlessness of Arius and his followers was discussed in the presence of the most pious emperor Constantine. It was unanimously agreed that anathemas should be pronounced against his impious opinion and his blasphemous terms and expressions which he has blasphemously applied to the Son of God, ❍ saying ■ "he is from things that are not", and ■ "before he was begotten he was not", and ■ "there once was when he was not", ❍ saying too that ■ by his own power the Son of God is capable of ■ evil and ■ goodness, ❍ and calling him ■ a creature and a work. Against all this the holy synod pronounced anathemas, and did not allow this impious and abandoned opinion and these blasphemous words even to be heard.