Required reading
Ante-Nicene Fathers (Vol 5) (Available from Amazon or free here) - Conclude a 'Treatise of Novatian concerning the Trinity'.
My summary
Today we conclude Novatian's work on the Trinity.
We hear defenses for:
(i) the divinity of the Son;
(ii) the divinity of the Father (and a denial of a humanity for the Father);
(iii) the humanity of the Son;
(iv) the divinity of the Spirit.
What grabbed me
I appreciated Novatian's attack on those who believe the Son is the Father: 'In this place I may be permitted also to collect arguments from the side of other heretics. It is a substantial kind of proof which is gathered even from an adversary, so as to prove the truth even from the very enemies of truth. For it is so far manifest that He is declared in the Scriptures to be God, that many heretics, moved by the magnitude and truth of this divinity, exaggerating His honours above measure, have dared to announce or to think Him not the Son, but God the Father Himself. And this, although it is contrary to the truth of the Scriptures, is still a great and excellent argument for the divinity of Christ, who is so far God, except as Son of God, born of God, that very many heretics—as we have said—have so accepted Him as God, as to think that He must be pronounced not the Son, but the Father. Therefore let it be considered whether He is God or not, since His authority has so affected some, that, as we have already said above, they have thought Him God the Father Himself, and have confessed the divinity in Christ with such impetuosity and effusion—compelled to it by the manifest divinity in Christ—that they thought that He whom they read of as the Son, because they perceived Him to be God, must be the Father.'
The Son is God, but not God the Father.
Next week's reading
Read 'On the Jewish meats'.
Now it's your turn
Please post your own notes and thoughts in the comments section below.
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