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Doug: And welcome once again
to EWTN's "Bookmark."
I am Doug Keck, your host.
Our guest author is
Stephen Bullivant, author of
The Trinity: Not to Be
a Heretic, published by
Paulist Press.
Nice to meet you, Stephen.
Stephen: Good to see you.
Thanks for having me.
Doug: And you're an author
of a couple of different
books.
You wrote one on "Atheism."
There's another one also
Faith and Unbelief.
And this one is on
The Trinity: How Not to Be
a Heretic.
Let me ask you before we get
started too far.
You look pretty young
to have all this sage wisdom
I found in this book,
all these Early Church Father
references and things
like this.
Now, you're a convert to
the Catholic faith.
Was the understanding of
the Trinity important to you
in your conversion at all?
Stephen: Well, certainly,
one of the things that;
I mean, I was kind of very
gradually converted was
studying theology,
and a large part of the
curriculum at the
University of Oxford was
the Church Fathers.
So, a big bit of what we
were learning was not just
kind of the ideas.
But, the people behind
those ideas and seeing
how, you know,
the development
from the scriptural witness,
how this gets played out and
kind of threshed out
and debated, to get the kind
of things like the Nicene Creed
and, you know, kind of
know the background to
some of those classic
doctrinal statements,
you have to really understand
the arguments and the context
out of where it's
all coming from.
Doug: This is the thing
that struck me.
And I'm sure you did it on
purpose, of course.
You say in the introduction,
"Supreme simplicity.
This is a simple book about
an even simpler subject,
"The Doctrine of
the Holy Trinity."
This must be simple for
the Christian God as
supreme simplicity.
The Trinity is the
Church's most basic
description of Who God
actually is and Who He
needs to be in order to
save us."
Now, we've heard talk
about the Trinity.
I went to Holy Trinity
High School.
And I've heard people say,
"Well, you can kind of
explain, it's a mystery
and, you know, we used to
hear that the shamrock was
used by, you know,
St. Patrick."
And then, we heard, "Well,
that really isn't a good
idea."
I mean, a lot of people,
the Trinity is, okay,
I got Father, Son, Holy Spirit,
and It's one God.
But, that's about as far
as I can get.
How can that be simple?
Stephen: Well, I mean,
the supreme simplicity,
it's a quotation
from St. Anselm,
and the doctrine of the
Holy Trinity is simple.
It's, it can be boiled down
to 3 very simple sentences--
"There is only one God,";
"The Father, the Son,
and the Holy Spirit
is each God,"; and "The Father,
the Son, and the Holy Spirit
are not the same."
And that's it.
That's the content.
Now, the trick comes in
finding a way to say
all 3 things at once.
Doug: Right.
Stephen: Because, the reason
the Church feels
it has to find a way is
because it sees that each
of them is clearly stated
in Scripture.
And what we see over the
next kind of 300 years
more is the Church finding
a way to kind of develop
a technical vocabulary to
explain that.
But, I think the trouble
we have is that, when people
talk about the Trinity,
and we know that
the word "Trinity" doesn't
appear in the Bible.
It gets caught at the end
of the 2nd century.
Doug: Right.
You hear that all the
time.
Stephen: And all the
language that gets used,
"Hypostasis, Homoousios,
Consubstantial,"
in the "Creed."
Doug: Right.
Stephen: People, A) it sounds
all technical and jargony
and people kind of know
that these aren't words
that came around
until 300-400 years later.
So, it sounds like the doctrine
and what that doctrine means
is this super abstract thing
that's divorced from the
scriptural witness.
And it's not at all.
Doug: And that it's not
really relative.
Stephen: Well, of course.
Doug: To the way people
were living out their
lives.
Stephen: Yeah, absolutely.
Doug: In the 1st and 2nd
Century.
Well, one thing that strikes me,
too, about it is,
and in reading,
obviously the Early Church
Fathers, the teachings,
and the challenges too,
and then, the various
reasons things got
challenged.
Obviously, the one God,
the Trinity.
But, one question would be,
you know, if it wasn't true,
why would the Church bother?
It would be a lot easier
to just say, 'Well,
there's one God.'
Stephen: Yeah.
Doug: And maybe even
modalistic kind of idea
as say, 'Well, either he;
either Jesus wasn't really God
and we kind of misunderstood
or He is God,
but, God and He are
the same, and in
a modalistic way,
as you talk about it,
He just, when He was on earth,
He was in that form.
Stephen: Yeah.
Doug: And then,
when He's the Holy Spirit,
He's the Holy Spirit,
and when He's God the Father,
He's God the Father.
So, why would the Church
bother to create this
whole complex theology
if it wasn't that it was true
and they were trying
to make sense of what they
knew to be true?
Stephen: Absolutely, and the,
you know, the kind of
the prejudice I guess is
that this is something
that theologians kind of
invented.
But, of course, what we see
in the Early Church is
that you've got a lot of
very clever theologians,
trying to downplay or kind of
get around having to kind of
keep all 3 balls
in the air, if you like.
And the reason why the Church
puts so much effort
and kind of hassle into
convening Church councils,
into arguing, into kind of,
you know, anathematizing,
and just writing these big books
is precisely because
they read the Scriptures
and St. Hippolytus of Rome,
2nd Century Church Father says,
"The whole of the Scriptures
were proclamation
about this."
So, this is them trying
to be faithful to what they
believe God has revealed
about Himself to us.
Doug: One of the things is,
that strikes me, again;
it's always good to
understand your faith.
But, you know,
there's a lot of people,
I'm assuming,
who made it to Heaven
without understanding,
you know,
how to best explain the
Trinity.
They took it on faith.
They understood that this
was the teaching of the
Church.
They could see it basically
through Scripture.
But, why is it important
for someone today,
in the world we're living in
today to have a better
understanding
as an informed Catholic,
let's say?
Stephen: Well, I think
there's 2 main reasons.
First of all, is that
it just helps you deepen
your own faith,
your own prayer life.
You know, Trinity is
simply the Church's most
basic description of
Who God is, Who God's revealed
Himself to be,
Who He needs to be
in order to save us.
So, it helps; as we kind of
delve into a Scripture
as if we kind of, you know,
believe in lifelong
formation and all that
kind of lifelong ongoing
catechesis, and this is
a kind of central thing,
and if you don't have that,
then, the rest of it kind of
isn't going to fall
into place.
But the other big issue at
the moment is apologetics.
I mean, it's very common
to hear people challenging
Christians and saying,
"Look, Christianity makes
no sense at all.
Central thing in you
is that God's Three
and God's One.
That's just nonsense.
How can you possibly
believe that?
This is just absurd.
This is irrational."
And if Christians don't
have a kind of a way of
explaining that, if they
just kind of shrug a little or
just kind of say, "Oh, well,
it's just something
we have to believe," then,
it not only kind of proves
the point to people
outside.
But, it makes them then
question what it is and the,
kind of the rationality
of what it is
that we claim that
we believe.
Doug: Now, in Chapter 1,
More Than Words, you start off
with a very interesting
fast food parable,
having to do with
"McDonald's" and then,
apparently some
very well-known
Heston Blumenthal.
Stephen: Yeah, he's a very
famous English chef.
Doug: Okay.
And what are the 2, what do
he and Ronald McDonald
have to do with one
another?
Stephen: Well, basically,
the, whenever we try and
talk about God, we're going to
have to come up
against the limits of
human language, creaturely
language trying to talk
about the Creator.
And we have problems with this,
with all kinds of things.
I mean, if you ask me to
describe kind of what my wife
and daughter mean to me,
I'd struggle to kind of
put it into words,
even though I'm
the world expert
on my own feelings
about my own family.
Now, all those kind of issues,
they're just going
to kind of get multiplied
infinitely when we're
trying to do justice to
the kind of the God
Who creates the universe and
created me to be able to try
and do Him justice and
language.
And so, all our language
in theology has to be kind of
circumscribed.
And we need to kind of be
aware of its limits.
And so, the idea of
the first chapter is really just
to introduce kind of the
problems of religious
language, but, also,
how we get out of those
problems, because,
of course, Christ Himself
becomes human.
St. Iranaeus called Him
"A man among men."
Talks human language,
about God, and the Scriptures
are obviously full of
human language,
and it also warns us to be
kind of careful in thinking
we kind of know God,
you know, as He knows
Himself.
So, you know, "My ways are
not your ways.
My thoughts are not
your thoughts."
But, even so, we kind of,
we have the mandate that
we can speak meaningfully,
and, of course,
the Holy Spirit at Pentecost
kind of guarantees
that we can do it
in all the languages
of the nations.
So, that first chapter is
really just trying to tee up
some issues about
religious language that
are then are going to get
picked up later on.
Cause the difficulty is
that you kind of start off
and say, 'Oh well, we've got
to be very careful
with religious language,'
and then, by the end of
a book on the Trinity,
you've got this kind of
precise, kind of almost
engineers' terminology,
this kind of jog that makes
you feel like you know
what you're talking about,
and then, it's nice
to then bring it back.
And this is what the
Church Fathers do again
and again.
I mean, St. Augustine
particularly says,
"Well, we've got these words.
And they're the best
we've got.
And we need to use them."
But we need to also be aware
that we don't fully
know what it means
to describe God as being
3 Persons, or whatever.
Doug: Well, you have
St. Thomas here, says,
"What God is not is
clearer to us than
what He is."
Stephen: Yeah.
Absolutely.
And there's the great
classic example of Thomas,
at the very end of his life,
when he's kind of, not quite
finished the "Summa",
but got very far
into it.
He's at Mass.
He has this kind of
instant mystical vision
and he refuses to write
another word.
And when asked, he says,
"I can't, because,
all that I've written seems
like straw to be compared
to kind of what's been
revealed to me."
Now, you know, there's
kind of 2 lessons
you can draw from that.
One is the kind of
humility that we need.
Even Thomas Aquinas has
to have one faced with,
you know, when we're going
to see God face-to-face.
But, equally, you know,
God only gives him
writer's block at the end of
kind of 8 million words
writing about God.
So, you know, He could
have given Thomas that to
begin with and we wouldn't
have had the Summa Theologica,
we wouldn't have had
everything else.
So, there's this tension.
We have to talk about God.
We can't have a religion
without God.
We can't evangelize
without words.
But, we also need to be
aware of the limit.
Doug: Right, in a sense
that God is outside of
time.
Stephen: Absolutely.
You know, now we see
through a glass darkly.
Doug: Right.
Stephen: Then we'll see
face-to-face.
Doug: Right.
Now, there's some wonderful
artwork in the book
here on Page 14.
Maybe you can identify the
wonderful artist and why
you decided to put this
in your book.
Stephen: Well, there's
a picture in there that
I drew of my mother,
when I was 3, 4,
and what that's there
to do is, because,
and there's the sense,
cause, you know, you can
kind of tell
a particular story
about religious language,
and it looks like,
well, we just;
if all we can do
is kind of fail
to do justice to God,
it'd be better not to say
anything about Him at all,
rather than, you know,
insult Him by saying things
that are beneath Him,
okay.
But, the trouble is then,
is that, well, how you
then go on to talk about God
in a way that we're
meant to?
And actually, what I
always find, and I think
my students quite like
seeing these kind of
scribbling from me
as a little child, was that,
there's a sense in which
a child's picture of
its parents--I've got
a 3 year-old daughter--
the child's picture of its
parents are dreadful pictures,
and an objective level.
They're insulting.
If I did that picture of
my mother now and said,
"Oh mom, it looks just
like you.
Wow!
Don't you think I've
captured your face well?"
She'd be insulted.
But, what it means for
a child to do it.
I mean, it's not that bad
cause you can see
it's a human.
You can just about see
there's a smile.
Doug: Well, you kind of
even ask people; you say,
you show it to people and
say, "What do you think
that is," kind of
a thing.
Stephen: Yeah, yeah.
Doug: Trying to, and
you're sitting there
trying to figure out,
is that his version of the
Trinity there?
Stephen: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But, you know, when I was
very small, I wanted to
draw a picture.
Of all the things
I could have picked,
I picked my mother.
I put her in a garden,
surrounded with
butterflies and flowers,
put what's meant to be
a smile on her face.
And she's cherished it and
she's done it cause she knows
that with my limited
abilities, I've produced
something that expresses
something very important
about kind of my relationship
to my mother.
Doug: You're reflecting
your love back to
your mother.
Stephen: Absolutely.
And so, that's why she's
kept it.
Doug: Right.
You say here, "As a younger
Josef Ratzinger,
the future Pope Benedict XVI
once stated, "The doctrine
of the Trinity
did not arise out of
speculation about God,
out of an attempt
by philosophical thinking
to explain to itself
what the font of all being
was like.
It developed out of the
effort to digest
historical experiences."
So, it goes back to what
we were saying, is really,
was the Church struggling
to come up with?
We know this is true.
Stephen: Yeah.
Doug: How do we understand
it?
Stephen: Yeah.
Absolutely.
It comes right out of the
kind of astonishing things
that happened
in the 1st century
that ever counted to us
in Scripture.
You know, the Jews,
you know, their big thing is
that there's one God.
Doug: Right.
Stephen: That's the thing
that sets them apart and
the thing that they're
persecuted for, you know,
throughout the ancient period,
particularly in
the Roman Empire.
And, obviously, Jesus is a Jew,
Mary and Joseph are Jews,
the first disciples
are Jews.
They just kind of take
that.
But then, suddenly,
Jesus of Nazareth is walking
around, doing things on
His own authority that
only kind of God can do.
You know, in the Old Testament,
God creates the Sabbath.
Jesus said, "You know,
the Son of Man is Lord of
the Sabbath."
He establishes the dietary
laws.
You can't even half a sentence,
you know, in the Gospel of Mark,
Jesus does away
with them.
He forgives sins
on His own authority and
the Scribes, the experts
in the law say kind of,
"Who can forgive sins
but God alone?"
Of course, the answer is,
no one.
So, they're kind of having
to wrestle with this idea of,
well, we know that's
God the Father, and then,
suddenly, we've got the Son,
Who appears to be God as well,
and then, there's this
3rd Thing, the Spirit,
and, of course,
at Pentecost they kind of
really feel the Spirit and
see the wonders that
the Spirit does throughout
the Church.
So, they're trying to do
justice to all of this and
they don't have the
language to do it.
And so, you know,
in the phrase, "It's a digest
historical experience,"
is that Ratzinger gives us,
and this is kind of, you know,
the next kind of 3 or 4
centuries is the Church
just trying to grapple with
what's been revealed to it,
in history,
and then, of course,
in the Scriptures,
it testifies that history.
Doug: And also, obviously
there's a, Luke 3:22 here
is that, you know,
the baptism
in the Jordan where,
"You are My Son,
Beloved, Who I'm well
pleased."
Then, you've got the
Transfiguration.
But the idea that
you can see there
in the New Testament,
where the Church,
the Early Christians would see,
you know, this aspect of the
Trinity, this, the Father,
the Son, the Holy Spirit,
in a sense, all.
Stephen: Of course.
Doug: Making themselves
evident simultaneously.
Stephen: Yeah.
Doug: Effectively.
But, this I thought was
interesting, that you said
that, "The Early Christians
were also convinced
that the Old Testament
witnessed to the Trinity
just as surely as
did the New Testament
and the life of
the Church Itself,
only more obscurely.
Stephen: Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, the, as we know
from reading the New Testament,
constantly we get phrases
like, "As it is written
in the Scriptures,
this was done
in order to fulfill,"
and Jesus says things quite
explicitly, you know,
like, "Moses wrote this
about Me.
Have you not read the Law
and the Prophets?
This was written about Me."
You know, we see this in
Emmaus wrote the
disciples, for example.
So, once kind of the early
Christians convinced that
Jesus is the one Whom the
"Old Testament" prophecies
have been pointing to,
that basically the Jewish
books are about Him and
about what He's come to
reveal.
Then, it's only natural
then, knowing what they
then know, to kind of
reread what we now know is
the Old Testament,
and then, to kind of see him
in it all the way through.
So, the kind of,
the Christian way of reading
the Scriptures at least in
the ancient, in fact,
probably for most of
Christian history,
is to see the Old Testament
in a kind of a hermeneutic of
continuity and to see Jesus
and glimpses of the
Trinity throughout.
And one of the classic cases
that the Early Church Fathers
point to is kind of right
at the beginning
of Genesis
when God says, "Let us
make man in our own image
and likeness."
And the idea there is that
there's a hint right at
the beginning.
There's some kind of
plurality there and
there's various passages,
kind of the, "Abraham at
the oaks of Mamre," one of
the very famous ones where
kind of; it says, "The Lord
appears to Abraham."
3 people appear,
but he only ever addresses them
in the singular as one,
and as you unpack that
passage in Augustine and
Justin Martyr and some of
the Church Fathers, kind of
see it pointing to the
Trinity in different ways.
But, they're saying that,
"Look, this isn't
something that you could
have worked out just from
that passage alone.
But, once it's been
revealed to you;" it's a bit
like, kind of, you get
to the end of a crime novel,
of the end of the
Harry Potter series.
Doug: Right.
And you can go back and
now see the.
Stephen: And, yeah, and then,
you see the little hints,
the little kind of clues.
Doug: The clues that were
there.
Stephen: That were always
there along.
Doug: Right.
So, it's not an eisegesis
idea that we're going back
and suddenly reading into
the text to try
and prove it.
Cause I was going to ask you,
how did the Jews deal with
that in that line
from the garden about
where there seems to be
a plurality?
Stephen: Well, there's
a difference of; I mean,
there's a difference,
I mean, it's a problematic
passage for the Jews and,
you know, there's
obviously different
rabbinic schools.
But, in Justin Martyr's
dialogue with Trypho--
so, this is Justin Martyr,
the 2nd Century Church Father,
who has this long dialogue
with a Rabbi, and he points
to this passage,
and Justin kind of uses it
to show up the kind of
inconsistencies in
Trypho's reading of it,
to point to, I mean,
Justin's establishing the fact
that the Son is God
as well as the Father.
And one of the ways to
interpret it in the Jewish
tradition was to say that,
well, it says the Lord appears,
and there's 3 of Them.
Well, just one of Them
is the Lord, and 2 of Them
are just kind of attendant
messengers.
And Justin kind of shows
how that interpretation
actually doesn't do
justice to the text.
Doug: Okay.
This one's a little bit
out of left field.
But, you talk about
"The achy breaky heart style
personification, talk of
God's word be merely
a poetic way."
What is the achy, what
does "Achy breaky heart"
have to do with anything?
Stephen: Right.
[laughs] Good question.
[laughs] But basically
what we see in the Scriptures,
in the Old Testament
is that we see
a certain poetic way of
talking about kind of
God's action, God's way of
working, and one of the
classic cases it happened
in the Book of Job where
it's kind of, you know,
there's a kind of
a poetic way of,
you know, how can
we understand God?
And you talk about, you know,
how, you know, I went
searching for God's wisdom
and I've, you know,
kind of searched in the
tallest mountains and
under the sea
and I couldn't be found
anywhere.
And there's a kind of
a poetic personification
of that.
It's a bit like me if I
said to my students,
you know, 'I'm going to;
if you don't get your essays
in time, you know,
you will kindle my wrath
and it will hunt you down."
You know, this is a poetic way
of saying, I'll be angry
and I'll, you know,
hunt you down.
Now, what we.
Doug: You're going to get
a bad grade.
Stephen: Yeah, exactly.
But, what we see is the
kind of, the Old Testament,
you know, cause obviously,
Old Testament is a,
written over a huge
period of time.
What we see with some of
the strands there is that
what to begin with looked
like kind of poetic
"Achy Breaky Heart."
So, you know, rather than
Billy Ray Cyrus saying,
you know, "I can't handle it.
I'm upset."
You say, "Ooh, don't tell
my heart.
My heart can't understand it."
You know, so, it's poetic
kind of way, with
anthropomorphism.
But, what we see in the
Old Testament is that some
of these, what looked like
just kind of poetic way
they're talking really get
kind of run with.
So, we get talk of,
particularly wisdom.
You know, God's wisdom by,
in the wisdom literature,
kind of ends up as kind of
a whole, you know, agent
that, you know, kind of
does things on her, cause,
it's Lady Wisdom,
of course.
It's Chochma in Hebrew.
It's a theory in Greek.
Who kind of, you know,
seems to be a, kind of an
autonomous agent who, you know,
he's kind of sent out
by the Father and kind of,
oh, does all kinds of
stuff.
So, even within the Jewish
tradition you got kind of
what looked like kind of
plurality within the
Godhead, you know.
Then, obviously, for the
Early Christians to then,
you know, to then see
wisdom being sent down to
earth to accomplish a task
and to come back and to
set up its tent in Israel
and this is kind of gold
to them, cause, they look
back and say,
"Hang on a minute.
This was here all along,
but, you know, we couldn't
have hoped to realize it
until we kind of got to
the who-done-it at the end,
you know.
Doug: Yeah, so; right, so,
in a sense, when Our Lord
comes and He explains it
and we start to get that,
then, we can look back and
see what it meant.
God alamodes, of course.
We talked a little bit
about the whole idea of
modalism, and I guess
that's what the idea that
you take one of
the 3 statements, right?
The first one you talk
about on Page 48 is where
you drop "The Father, the Son,
and the Holy Spirit
are not the same."
Now, modalism would mean,
what?
That in one way, like I
said earlier, God is one
thing this time, and then,
He shows up as.
Stephen: Yeah.
Doug: Jesus.
He's; there's one God and
He's just showing up
in different faces
in a sense.
Stephen: He turns up in
different roles, different
names, you know, in the
same way that I'm a
lecturer, a father.
Doug: Right.
Stephen: And a son.
Doug: Like Greek actors.
Don't you talk about that
in Greek theatre and stuff?
Stephen: Yeah, exactly.
Doug: Right.
Stephen: So, the, one of
the metaphors that the
modalists themselves use,
it's like, you know,
Greek theatre,
they wear big masks.
Doug: Right.
Stephen: Okay, and you
often have one actor
playing 3 different parts,
and they, you know,
by putting on different masks
and probably acting
in a different way, maybe
putting on a different
voice.
But, it's the same person
underneath those 3 masks.
And so, one, you know,
frankly quite
understandable way to try
and, you know, make sense
of at least some of the
biblical witness is to say,
well, actually, yeah;
sometimes He appears as
Father and kind of acts in
a certain way.
Sometimes He appears as Son
and acts in a certain way.
Sometimes He appears as
Spirit.
But, these are all
basically the same Guy,
the same Thing, the same Person,
just taking on
different roles,
putting on different hats,
putting on different masks.
Doug: Now, you also talk
about Aryanism here and Arius,
and it's interesting, too,
because also, you know,
the idea--once you talk about
what Aryanism is
and where it came out of,
and it was kind of a reaction,
wasn't it, to some other
statements that were being
made?
Stephen: Yeah, of course.
Doug: Defending the
Trinity?
Stephen: Yeah.
Well, basically, what
happened is that, after
this modalism controversy,
and that gets kind of
settled once and for all,
then, they take the next one
to come along, kind of
100 years later,
comes about because Arias,
who is kind of a charismatic
priest in Alexandria,
thinks that his bishop,
Alexander is a Modalist.
So, he accuses him of
being a Modalist.
Now, he's not at all.
But, Arias think that
by saying that "Father and Son
and Spirit are kind of
of the same essence and
they're both, they're all
co-eternal, and that there
never was a time when
there wasn't a Son;
well, there never was a time
when there wasn't always
a Son.
You know, so, there was a time
there was a Father,
and then, at some point
later He creates a Son and
that kind of stuff.
Arias thinks.
Doug: Right, he's a God
but maybe a lesser God
or he's not.
Stephen: Exactly.
Arias thinks that to say
that is kind of not doing
full justice to the distinction
between the 3.
And so, for Arias,
in order to do that,
he kind of drives
a wedge between
Father and Son, and says
that the Father and the
Son are kind of just
different kind of beings.
And that the Son is
a created being, is created
out of nothing, like us,
like everything, but,
is kind of the best and most
perfect bit of creation,
but, isn't fully God.
He says, we can call Him
"God."
We can kind of; cause,
obviously, Scripture does.
You can't get around John,
John 1.
He says, "Well, we can
call Him "God" as a kind
of a courtesy title.
But, He's not really God.
He's not God in the sense
that the Father is God.
Doug: Right.
We also say, "Decades
earlier, the celebrated
though later condemned in
Alexandria, theologian
Origen had also
differentiated between God
and "True God," and it
says that, "The Son and
the Spirit was created."
Stephen: Yeah.
So, I mean, the thing that
we see with the ***
controversy is that it was
a controversy kind of,
not just waiting, but
it needed to happen.
Because Arias doesn't think
he's saying anything
new.
Arias thinks that this is
a teaching of the Church,
this is the faith that
we've received from our fathers,
and the controversy
only makes sense,
if these are widespread views,
because, very soon,
Arias can claim
very influential bishops
on his side--
Alexander come on his side and
that's why it becomes this
massive kind of Civil War
that needs an ecumenical
council.
Doug: Yes.
Stephen: Two, in fact,
to solve it.
Doug: Yes.
And that's where we end up
ultimately with
the final version of
the "Nicene Creed."
Stephen: At Constantinople.
Doug: Right?
Stephen: Of course.
Doug: At Constantinople,
and then, followed up.
And what's interesting too,
yeah, just before we go,
there's one thing that
struck me was, you seem to
indicate that you don't think
Aryanism was quite as broad
as the way people
seem to talk about it
today.
Is that true?
Stephen: Yeah.
I mean, I think the way that
we use the word "***" is,
we have this idea
that Arias was saying
that Jesus was just
a good man or a human being
or a really good prophet,
which is, a lot of people,
that's how they see Jesus.
Arias would be horrified
at this.
I mean, for Arias, Jesus;
the Son is, Jesus is this
kind of super being,
a kind of a super angel,
the most perfect
creature of God,
you know, utterly
unlike all the other
creatures.
So, He, to be fair to Him,
He's not trying to demean
the Son.
He's trying to exalt the
Father.
Doug: To exalt the Father.
Stephen: But, in order
to do that, He has to
subordinate the Son,
and the Son ends up as just
kind of a high point of
creation, rather than part
of the Creator Itself.
Doug: And then, How Not to
Be a Heretic, of course,
in the Trinity¸ and in
theory you say, at least
in the book, "There was
some sense that maybe He
recanted.
But, He never officially."
Stephen: Yeah.
The, they end up being a way
to kind of bring Arias
back into the Church,
and what we're told is that
he dies before this is
allowed to happen,
and there's some very kind of
unseemly gloating.
Doug: Right.
Stephen: From otherwise
saintly Church Fathers
over this, people like
Athanasius.
Doug: [laughs] It just
goes to show that
even the saints, you know,
are sinners, you know,
on their way.
Well, thank you so much
Stephen.
Stephen: It's a real
genuine pleasure.
Thank you.
Doug: Thanks.
The Trinity: How Not to Be
a Heretic, and it's
published by Paulist Press,
available through
the EWTN Religious Catalogue,
and by the author,
Stephen Bullivant.
Check it out.
Also, his other work,
Faith and Unbelief.
I'm Doug Keck.
Join us next time right here
on EWTN's "Bookmark."
[♪]