Tuesday, September 13, 2022

Homoousion Stoicism

The Irony is I began my flirtation with Christian Stoicism by considering certain assumptions all sides of the Nicene V Arian controversy agreed on regarding the Usias of God possibly wrong in my God and the Universe post.  But I have since found that the Stoics did sometimes use the word Usias in defining their distinction between God as the Active Matter and the visible material world as Passive Matter.  Meaning in that sense even Stoic Christians could agree that Humans other then Jesus are not exactly Homousian with God in the same way Jesus is.

However my argument was never that the Nicene Creed was wrong, and I still consider the fixation on various forms of Usias a partial distraction from the original point of the Arian heresy.  And what I've learned reading Early Arianism shows that Arius and Athanasius arguments did hinge a lot on both agreeing with Divine Immutability.

The reason why I'm making this new post on the subject is Tertullian.  Many Scholars have observed a degree of Stoicism in Tertullian including his willingness to argue that God is in a sense Corporeal.


Now Tertullian's Stoicism is definitely tainted a bit by later Roman Stoicism when it comes to things like Sexual Morality so he's still fallen away from the New Testament in that sense.  But the Metaphysics is the point of discussion here.

He was still critical of some Stoic ideas just like I am, but what baffles me is how he thought Marcion who was more Gnostic then the Gnostics in his attitude towards the material world owed anything to the Stoics?

Tertulian is also famously cited as the only Pre-Nicene Father who even comes close to defining the Trinity in Nicene-Homousian terms with his use of Substantia which is arguably the Latin equivalent of Usias. So could even Tertulian's use of Substantia be influenced by Stoic uses of Usias?

According to Eusebius of Caesarea it was Constantine himself who insisted on the Homousian thermology.  But we also know that at Nicaea Constantine didn't know Greek very well, he was a firmly Western Latin in his language.  And since Tertullian was the first Latin Church Theologian, I'm sure I'm not the first to suggest Constantine got this Homousian idea from Tertullian's Trinitarian use of Substantia.

So it could be that in-spite of how much Platonism was already running strong in the Fourth Century Church that Homoousionism was one final win for the Stoic Theology.

No comments:

Post a Comment