Doctrina Trinității în perioada patristică: părinții bisericești și Conciliul de la Niceea – partea a II-a

The Doctrine of the Trinity in the Patristic Period: the Church Fathers and the Council of Nicaea – Part II

Abstract

The author has continued his research of the history of Trinitarian doctrine, the results of which are presented in this second part of the series. The historical and theological survey of the available data offered by primary sources has yielded sufficient ground to argue that the Church Fathers of the East and West, and the Ecumenical Councils, especially Nicea, had contributed, in a significant fashion, to the formation of two models of the Trinitarian understanding of God by the end of the patristic era (8th century). Their Trinitarian vocabulary, economic perspective, as well as perichoretic understanding of God have to be seen as a major stepping stone towards the crystalisation of the classical theistic doctrine of God. This is to say that Nicean and post-Nicean developments testify to an understanding of the Trinitarian relationship of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit that has been articulated in the language and vocabulary of the Early / Apostolic Fathers, to which new aspects have been added by the Cappadocian Fathers and Augustin. The study has evidenced that a clear chronologically viable ontological anteriority within the Godhead may be seen as being suggested by the language of “eternal generation,” “begotten-ness,” and “procession,” a language the Church Fathers have accepted as theologically appropriate and sound, and deployed it in the wording of the Creed.