110 ARIUS, NO PANTHEIST. Trinity, which for centuries disturbed the Church, were kindred to the Alexandrian questions on the divine Essence. Plotinus believed one God in three hypostases; but, as he made hypostasis equivalent to nature; he made three gods or three natures in one God. This equivalency of hypostasis to nature, developed in the fifth century into the heresy of Nestorius, who maintained that since there are two natures in Christ there must be two hypostases; which again called forth the opposite heresy of the Monophysites, that the two natures became one by a hypostatical union. The indefinite word, hypostasis, had previously sheltered the heresy of Sabellius, who took it only in the sense of an energy or emanation; so that the three hypostases, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, were only three powers or modes of the one God. The word, hypostasis, was finally, abandoned by the Latin Church; because, says Gregory of Nazianzen, the Latins could not distinguish hypostasis from essence. The Western mind craved a definite dogma; but had no love for the speculative process concerned in the formation of dogmas. For hypostasis the Latins substituted person; making three persons in one God. This was clear and definite, though involving an irremediable contradiction, for a person is an individual distinct from other individuals. A new heresy lurked under the new word; for if the unity of God is to be preserved, the Son and the Spirit must be inferior to the Father. But the heresy of Arius was not entirely excluded from the theology of Origen. It was one side of it, but this stood corrected by the other side. Arius, though an Alexandrian, had but little of the philosophy of his age and country, he was an anti-speculative common-sense theologian, without the remotest element of Pantheism; the truest disciple of Anaxagoras that had yet appeared in the Church; one whom Aristotle would have pronounced "a sober man." He distinguished broadly and at once between the essence of God and that of creation. He cut down at one stroke all the Alexandrian theories of eternal creation and eternal generation. If, he said, the son is generated, generation is an act; and that implies time, a beginning of existence. If the Son is produced from God, he must be a portion of God; but this cannot be; the Son, therefore, like all created beings, is produced from nothing, and therefore has an essence different from God's. The Alexandrian philosophy was powerful for the refutation of Arius. Alexander* replied that the Logos or wisdom of God *Bishop of Alexandria, the opponent of Arius. must be eternal as God Himself; otherwise there must have been a period when God was without reason or wisdom. But it is impossible that He who is reason itself should not know the Father whose reason He is. The Son is indeed generated, said Alexander, but it is impossible to place any interval between Him and the Father; but the generation of the Son surpassed the understanding of the Evangelists, and, perhaps, surpasses that of angels. The Arians said "There was, when the Son was not ;" but this, said Alexander, involves the existence of time. Now time is created by Him, and comes into existence along with the world, so that the time, which is said to have existed, must always have existed through Him; which supposes the effect to exist before the cause: and how then could He be the first-born of every creature. The Father therefore must always have been Father, and the Son through whom He is Father must have existed always. "Alexander's aim," says Dorner," was to establish the closest possible connection between the hypostasis of the Son and His eternal divine Essence. In carrying out this design he decidedly posits a duality in God, and if we may judge from the images employed by him, he conceives the Logos of the Father to be objectified in the Son. His images in themselves would warrant us in concluding that he conceived the Father to have reason and power, not in Himself, but in the Son; and that consequently the Son was the Father Himself under a determinate form or a determination or attribute constituting part of the full conception of the Father. The council of Alexandria, concurring in the doctrine of Alexander, adopted the Neo-Platonic idea of time to reconcile the Sonship of Christ with His eternity." Athanasius was not less an Alexandrian than Alexander. He refuted Arianism with the same arguments. He distinguished clearly between the Deity and the world; but he did not leave God in His transcendent existence as some of the Heathens had done; he made God also immanent in the world. The Logos dwelt in a body, but the Deity was not shut up in that body. He was at the same time in other places, and as He moved the body with which He was united, so did He move the universe. God in the Logos is in the entire creation, for He is in all its powers, extending His providence to all, giving life to all, and embracing the universe without being embraced by it. He is in all, as well as beyond all; in heaven, in hades, in humanity, and on earth we may see the Deity of the Logos unfolded before us, and at the same time embracing us. On this imman. ency of the Logos, Athanasius grounded his argument for the divinity of Jesus Christ. If the Logos is in the whole world, yea, in each individual, why could He not also dwell in a man whom He moved, through whom He manifested Himself, even as He manifests Himself in the world. As He is in the sun and moon, so also is He in humanity, which is part of the universe. Eusebius, of Cæsarea, whose orthodoxy is somewhere between that of Arius, and that of Athanasius is not free from the philosophy of Alexandria. In His inmost essence, says Eusebius, God is one. It is only with an eye to the world and God's relation to it that we can speak of the Trinity. The unity expresses that which is inmost in God. It contains in it no plurality. This one Being is the absolute, the primal Substance. This Monad or Father cannot communicate His being. He cannot enter into any relation with the world. He could not be a Creator. To mediate between Him and the world there was need of the Logos. The Son is grounded in God, and is a copy of God. He connects the world with God, and makes it worthy of Him. He is the bond that passes through the universe-the world soul. The Son was always with the Father, generated out of time, existing before the Eons, yet his existence was effected by an act of God. But more singular than the Neo-Platonism, even of Origen, was that of Synesius, Bishop of Pentapolis. Synesius, however, scarcely professed to be a Christian in any other sense, but as Christianity seemed to him a form of philosophy, nearly related to what he had learned in the schools. When the bishopric was offered to him," he declared candidly," says Neander, "that his philosophical conviction did not, on many points, agree with the doctrines of the church, and among these differences, he reckoned many things which were classed along with the Origenistic heresies; as for example, the doctrine of the pre-existence of souls, his different views of the resurrection, on which point he probably departed far more widely, than Origen from the view taken by the Church, inasmuch as he interpreted it, as being but the symbol of a higher idea. A few quotations from the Hymns of Synesius will show the character of his theology, and its likeness to that of the schools. Rejoicing in immortal glory, God sits above the lofty heights of heaven; And first Monad of monads. SYNESIUS' HYMNS. A fragment of the divine Parent Descended into matter; A small portion indeed, But it is everywhere the One in all All diffused through all. It turns the vast circumference of the heavens, Distributed in diverse forms it is present; A part of it is the course of the stars, A part in the Angelic choir; A part, with an heavy bond, found an earthly form, Is nevertheless present in them; Yet a light, a light there is, even in closed eyes, Which leads to the palace of the Parent. But Thou art the root of things present, past, and future. Thou art masculine; ; Thou art feminine: 113 The most remarkable resemblance in any Christian writings, to the doctrines of the Platonists of Alexandria, is found in the once famous works of S. Dionysius. This Saint was the Areopagite who adhered to S. Paul after his discourse at Athens. It was not known for three or four centuries after the death of Dionysius that his works were extant, or even that he had ever written any works. They appeared suddenly in the controversy between the Church and the Monophysite heretics, and were quoted in favor of the heretical side. They have never been universally received as genuine, but their sublime speculations and their sweet mystical piety have always procured them admirers, and even advocates of their genuineness. The favorite doctrine of three orders in the Church; bishops, priests, and deacons, as the copy and symbol of the three orders in the celestial hierarchy, has always made them dear to churchmen. The Abbé Darboy, in a recent Introduction to the works of S. Dionysius, has shown that their author was indeed the Areopagite converted by S. Paul; that he lived in the days when S. John was well known as a theologian, apostle, and evangelist in exile at Patmos; when Timothy and Titus were Bishops of Ephesus and Crete, and when Peter was Pope at Rome. Furthermore that this Dionysius was certainly present at the funeral obsequies of the Virgin Mary, that he was made Bishop of Athens; but having left his Greek Diocese as a missionary to France, he became the veritable S. Denys, who founded the Church of the Gauls. "He did not borrow from Plotinus," says the Abbé Darboy, "but Plotinus borrowed |