Homoousios

The original Korean text: https://blog.naver.com/stevision/50112610606

 

Let me deal with here 'homoousios', which is a really problematic issue in the history of Christian doctrine. Just as Christianity have interpreted the words of the Bible since the Bible was constituted, so the dogma of homoousios has needed interpreting since it was established in the church. This proves that homoousios is a product of compromise and, in particular, a coined word. It is a product of compromise, because Emperor Constantine proposed 'homoousios' as a compromise to two groups, one believed in the independence (the individuality) of the three Persons of the Trinity, the other in the only God, in order to prevent the empire from dividing into two by the conflict of Christians in the empire when the two Christian groups were in a power struggle.

 

First, let's take a look at the usage of the Greek prefix homo (ομο).

ομοθυμαδον: of one mind, ομοιωμα: image of something, ομοιως: in the same way, ομολογεω: to say the same as another says, that is, to agree with him, ομοτχνος: to have the same job or the same skills.

From this we can infer that homo seems to mean 'the same kind'. It seems that homo alone does not mean 'one and the same'. For example, if A and B are of one mind, we can say that the contents of their minds are the same, that the two minds are 'the same' or are 'of one and the same kind', but that the being of one mind (or the place where one mind took place) is not the same as the other's because the place where the two minds took place were two separate places (two heads of the two men). Therefore, the prefix homo refers to the state in which two subjects (or more than two subjects) possess the same contents.

 

Ousios also is problematic. Its root is ousia (ουσια), which means possessions or wealth(property, substance) in early Greek times. Also, ousia was used as a synonym for physis (φυσις, physis) in philosophy even before Aristotle. Philosophically physis meant the origin, composition, structure, material, and type of a thing.

 

This ousia(우시아) appears in Aristotle's metaphysics. This ousia means substance(실체). The fundamental meaning of substance in Aristotle's philosophy is 'a concrete individual being (i.e., a concrete individual such as a man or an animal)'. This is a primary substance(제1실체). A secondary substance(제2실체) is a thing that includes such individuals. For example, a man belongs to 'human' and to 'animal', so 'human as a universal' or 'animal as a universal' can be called a substance. These kinds of substance are secondary substances. Therefore Aristotle seems to call 'essence(본질) (or the quality that makes something be something)' substance(실체).

 

Aristotle said, "The universal(보편자) does not exist alone outside the individual(개별자) (the particular) but must exist in it (in the individual)." He called 'the universal in the individual' the essence(본질) (the true intrinsic nature), and called 'an individual that has established >the essence of itself< in itself' an ousia. An ousia, therefore, is a concrete individual thing that, as an acceptor of the essence, has accomplished its nature (its essence) in itself. The ousia in the dogma 'homoousios' seems to have adopted this Aristotle concept of ousia. The suffix os (-ος) is masculine, singular, nominative. They gave the Son 'masculine singular'. Let's apply this to humans. Cheol-su and Yeong-hee are two complete human ousias (two complete human substances, or two complete human beings), for both alike have 'the same human nature (the same human essence)'.

 

Homoousios appears in the Greek phrase 'ομοουσιον τω πατρι' in the creed of the Council of Necaea. Here ος(os) became ον(on) because Jesus Christ is objective, and the adjective 'homoousios' that modifies Jesus Christ must change to objective form homoousion. One thing to note is ‘τω πατρι’, which is dative. Here dative means that the Father is the object of the comparison with the Son. That is, the phrase means 'the same as the Father' or '(in comparison) with the Father'.

 

Therefore the confession, that the Son is homoousios with the Father, does not seem to mean that the Son is the ousia (the individual substance) of the Father but that the Son has the same (kind of) ousia as the Father has. This means that the Son has the same (quality of) divinity (the same divine nature) as the Father has, or that, just as the Father is a complete God, so the Son is.

 

The confession, that the Son is homoousios (of the same kind of ousia) with the Father, primarily means that the Son is a divine substance (ousia) having the same divine nature as the Father. This is the answer of the orthodox Christianity to the heresy that the Son is inferior in being to the Father, or that the Son is not a complete God. Homoousios maintains that Jesus is a perfect God. So those who believe in the individual divinity of the Son can accept homoousios.

 

By the way, in relation to the Trinity, there were some people who gave 'ousia' (as the name of existence) to the only Trinitarian God, while hypostasis, which, too, generally means 'a substance' as ousia does, to each Person of the Trinity. So if the ousia in homoousios refers to the one God the Trinity, we can interpret homoousios like this: the Son together with the Father belongs to one ousia.

 

Some people felt uncomfortable with homoousios, thinking that there could be two separate Gods if homoousios means only 'having the same nature of God', while others felt uncomfortable with homoousios, thinking that it could be a heresy of modalism if it refers to 'one ousia (one substance)'. So some suggested homoiousios (= of similar nature) instead of homoousios. The church refused homoiousios and accepted homoousios. However homoousios needs to be interpreted as 'one and the same being (one and the same substance in general meaning of the word) that the Father is'. How can the Father and the Son be truly one God if they are not one and the same substance? But we fall into modalism if we so interpret homoousios that the result may become 'The Son is the individual being of the Father himself who has changed his father-mask to a son-mask.' The church forbids modalistic interpretation of homoousios.

 

The church completes the orthodox doctrine of Trinity like this: The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are all perfect God respectively; and the Father is not the Son or the Holy Spirit, and the Son is not the Father or the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is not the Father or the Son; nevertheless they are not separate three Gods but the only God. In this context, we must say, "The Son has the same divine nature (the same divinity) as the Father has and builds one substance (one ousia) with the Father." So we may conclude that, when the orthodox dogma of Trinity was established, the homoousios was understood as 'the same nature as the Father' and as 'building one divine substance with the Father (as two arms of a man belong to one human substance), but not as '(in reality the Two are) one and the same being'.

 

But is it altogether impossible to interpret homoousios as 'the same nature', 'one substance', and 'one and the same being', or to define it so? My Trinity-model makes it possible. My theory of Trinity is as follows. God exists by himself and is absolutely independent of the time-space. He exists in the dimension of his being. This God generated his another self through the process of begetting. The Son is a perfect God who came into being through such a begetting process. This Son is the Father himself, or the Father's second self. This Father and this Son exist in the dimension of the existence of God. The Son having perfect divinity, commissioned by the Father, caused his another being to be generated in the real space. The Holy Spirit is One who appeared in the space when the Son sent his (another) being into the space. The Holy Spirit is the Father's 3rd self and the Son's 2nd self. It is like this situation, that Chong-tack Kim living in Seoul generates his whole being in Pyongyang so that he can live as a perfect Chong-tack Kim there, and the Chong-tack Kim in Pyongyang generates his being in Washington, USA, and also lives there as a Chong-tack Kim. Like this, 'living as three persons, three Kims, at three places at the same time' can be an analogy of Trinity. Analogically, the Korean Peninsula is a metaphysical space of God's existence while USA is the real three-dimensional space. Unlike human beings, the subsisting God can generate himself more than once. So the one God exists as three Persons, or as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit simultaneously, from eternity to eternity, and lives as such forever. The Son and the Holy Spirit are not merely masks (shells) of God but are identical with the Father in all respects concerning their being. To put it figuratively, just as the two Kims in Pyongyang and Washington have the same as Chong-tack Kim in Seoul has (, that is, mind, spirit, and atoms of the body), so the Son (the 2nd self of the Father) and the Holy Spirit (the 3rd self of the Father) have the same divinity (the same divine nature) as the Father has. We must admit that the self-existing God can exist as Trinity like that. If the Trinity is understood so, the Son is of the same divinity as the Father. And, because the God exists as three Persons (as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit), we can say that the Son and the Father constitute one ousia (one substance). Furthermore, because the Son is the 2nd self of the Father, the Son and the Father are one and the same being, of course, modalistic interpretation excluded here. Homoousios defines the existential relationship of the Son and the Father, so we need to interpret it as 'the same nature as the Father', 'constituting one substance with the Father', and 'one and the same being that the Father is (= the Father's 2nd self)'.