L’incarnation du verbe de Dieu entre niceisme et arianisme au IVe siècle

The Incarnation of the Word of God between Niceism and Arianism in the IVth century. The incarnation of the Word is the main theme debated by St. Athanasius throughout his theological and dogmatic works. First, incarnation theology has an anti-pagan connotation, as pagans derided Christians’ faith in the incarnation of the divine Logos, and, on the other hand, the Alexandrian bishop developed the theme of the incarnation against the Arians who denied the divinity of the Son and promoted a “creationist” doctrine of Christ. Between niceism and arianism, the theology of the incarnation knew several forms of theological expression, starting from the Arians, followers of Arius, to the neo-Arians, reinvented by Aetius and Eunomius, passing through the theology of the Homeans, who claimed the resemblance of the Son to the Father, to it culminated in the Homoiousians, those who came closest to the dogma of the Nicene Creed and who would finally embrace Niceism. The Cappadocians use in their theology of the incarnation the intuitions and arguments of Athanasius to overcome any other doctrine that would oppose or contradict the Niceno homoousian dogma, the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father, namely, the Son is God like Father. Keywords: incarnation, Trinity, dogma, homeism, homoousianism, Arianism, niceism, Athanasius, council, ousia, theology, heresy, orthodoxy, Logos, Son, Father.

The primacy of liturgy in Christianity

I argue that liturgy is primary to the Christian faith. By ‘liturgy’, however, I do not mean merely what happens on Sunday morning. Instead, I distinguish between ‘intensive’ and ‘extensive’ liturgies, those that occur when the body of Christ meets together and when that body disperses. All of this together constitutes Christian liturgy. My thesis is not that practice is more primary than theory, for that presupposes the possibility of drawing a sharp line between them – an impossible task. Rather, liturgy is a variety of embodied cognition through which we know God and our neighbours. Theology is something that arises from our liturgies and is itself liturgical in nature. We may believe the Nicene Creed, but saying it aloud is performative in nature. I end by examining the relation of phronēsis and theōria in Aristotle and then consider the way Heidegger uses this distinction to argue that ‘know-how’ (Verstehen) is the most basic kind of human knowledge.

PANDANGAN PENGAKUAN IMAN NICEA-KONSTANTINOPEL (KREDO NICEA) TENTANG DOKTRIN ALLAH TRITUNGGAL

The article describes the doctrine of the Holy Trinity according to the views of the Church Fathers formulated in a Nicene and Constantinople Creed (Nicene Creed). There are many errors and debates about this doctrine throughout the ages including today. This article is important because it puts the right theological foundation, which is orthodox understanding (straight teaching) about the Trinity. The author will describe the 8 points of the Nicene Creed and interact with the Scriptures and the writings of the Church Fathers. The Holy Trinity is essentially One God in Three Persons or Three Persons in One Essence or the Essence of God, namely the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God so the Trinity God does not speak about the number of God but the existence of God . It is called the Father because He is the source of everything including the Son who is His Word begotten or comes out from the Father and the Holy Spirit which is the breath or source of life from the Father himself. The Word and the Holy Spirit are a necessity in the FatherKey words: Trinity, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Nicea, Constantinople, Father of Church, Essence

The Idea of Nicaea at Ephesus II (449)

At Ephesus II, the Nicene construal of 448 was overturned, Eutyches’ doctrine was declared to be faithful to Nicaea, and Flavian’s contrary to it. Ephesus II reoriented the reception of Ephesus I around the 22 July 431 acta (closing off the Antiochene strategy of reading Cyril’s council via the Formula of Reunion), whilst fashioning the hitherto little-known ‘Canon 7’ of 431 into a powerful weapon against any theological statements deemed to be an addition to the Nicene Creed. Ephesus II established its own conciliar status precisely by presenting its activity as the mere recapitulation and reapplication of the all-sufficient decrees of Nicaea and Ephesus. Moreover, the articulation of this ‘idea’ of Nicaea was primarily achieved through the careful layering of textual authorities in written conciliar acta. It was precisely though a self-consciously conservative re-presentation of the faith of Nicaea that Ephesus II dramatically remoulded the Nicene identity.

The Idea of Nicaea in the Two Councils of Ephesus (431)

This chapter begins by arguing that the debate between Nestorius and Cyril (428–31) was characterized by a deep concern for the authentic interpretation of the Nicene Creed. As the controversy grew, it dramatically brought to the surface profound tensions in the inherited assumptions concerning the Nicene faith. This central Nicene theme is then traced through the complex conciliar events of 431. The two rival councils of Ephesus each developed mirroring strategies for defending their particular construal of the Nicene faith, and for portraying their opponents as heretical violators of its tenets. Particular emphasis is put on the way that both sides sought to employ carefully shaped conciliar documentation to advance their respective positions. This opened up new and fruitful discursive possibilities, especially in the attempts to show continuity between the events of 325 and 431.

The Idea of Nicaea in the Early Church Councils, AD 431-451

This work examines the role that appeals to Nicaea (both the council and its creed) played in the major councils of the mid-fifth century. It argues that the conflict between rival construals of Nicaea represented a key dynamic driving—and unsettling—the conciliar activity of these decades. The fundamental dilemma was how to persuasively reaffirm inherited assumptions—that Nicaea possessed unique authority as a conciliar event, and sole sufficiency as a credal statement—in the context of a dispute over Christological doctrine that the resources of the Nicene Creed were seemingly inadequate to address. The book examines the articulation of these contested ideas of ‘Nicaea’ at the councils of Ephesus I (431), Constantinople (448), Ephesus II (449), and Chalcedon (451). Particular attention is paid to the role of conciliar acta. It is proposed that the capacity of the idea of ‘Nicaea’ for flexible re-expression was a source of opportunity as well as a cause of strife, allowing continuity with the past to be asserted precisely through adaptation and modification, and opening up significant new paths for the articulation of credal and conciliar authority. The work thus combines a detailed historical analysis of the reception of Nicaea in the proceedings of the fifth-century councils, with an examination of the complex delineation of theological ‘orthodoxy’ in this period. It also reflects more widely on questions of doctrinal development and ecclesial reception in the early church.

Kinzig on the Creeds

In these four volumes Wolfram Kinzig has put together the largest compilation to date of texts which profess to set out the principal tenets of the Church between the second and the eighth centuries of the Christian era. In dimension it easily surpasses its German precursors of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, while in content it can aim to be more eclectic than the compendium which Philip Schaff addressed to the clergy and fellow-believers in 1877. Its only rival in the twenty-first century is the joint labour of Jaroslav Pelikan and Valerie Hotchkiss, broader in chronological range but therefore less exhaustive in its representation of this formative epoch. The first volume affords all necessary materials for the telling and untelling of the narrative which customarily ends with the promulgation of an amplified version of the Nicene Creed at Constantinople in 381; the second is an argosy of western specimens, a high proportion being prototypes or variants of the so-called Apostles Creed; the third is a miscellany of both personal and synodical confessions, some conventional, some idiosyncratic, many obscure in provenance and purpose; the contents of the fourth are drawn primarily from the Carolingian era, though the sources consulted in the first half are as various as the Pontifical of Donaueschingen (vol. iv. 99), the Irish Book of Dimma (iv. 119), the Dicta Leonis Episcopi (iv. 158–61) and the Sacramentary of Autun (iv. 283). The result is a monument of erudition, an invaluable resource for all future scholarship, and pleasurable reading for those who have hitherto been unable to approach the texts for want of an English rendering. The following remarks are therefore offered to the editor of these volumes as a stimulus to discussion, not to throw any aspersion on his judgement or on his many-times-proven competence as historian and critic.