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“Begotten, not made, of one Being with…”
The term ὁμοούσιον, homoousion, translated “of one Being” or “consubstantial”, is the great innovation of the First Council of Nicea, a town in Turkey, in 325 AD. It is now the principal marker of orthodox Christianity although the word does not appear in the Bible. Although the term is part of the inheritance of the First Council, it did not become universally accepted until the sixth century. Jesus in his divinity is “of one Being” with God; and a later Council of Chalcedon (451 AD) would reach the conclusion that he is also “of one being” with us in his humanity. — and yet One.
Bernard Lonergan made an investigation of the development of homoousion. He traces it from the first generations after the apostolic age with the emergence of Jewish Christianity (Ebionites, etc.), various kinds of gnostic Christianity, the Adoptionists, Sabellians, Patripassians, subordinationists, to Arius, and then Nicea and beyond. He begins by recognizing the strange fact that the early thinkers seem to have been mostly heretics, judged by later standards, of course (though he is remarkably unjudgmental about them). However, as he narrates the history of those people’s attempts to move from the common-sense world of the Scriptures to a theoretical grasp of their underlying universal principles, its appearance truly does seem like a work of providence. The word homoousion first appeared in…
