Folia Theologica et Canonica 1. 23/15 (2012)
SACRA THEOLOGIA - László Perendy, Athenagoras on the Triune God of Christians
ATHENAGORAS ON THE TRIUNE GOD OF CHRISTIANS... 79 He is thus ironically charging the philosophers with the same charge that Atticus levelled at Aristotle. They are not really concerned with absolute truth, but only with xà e’t'8r| xfjç î5A.r|ç. The result is that each of them teaches different philosophical doctrines about God, matter, the forms and the world, and ultimately, therefore, their views are merely 8óijat àvGpoîitvat (7 p.l25, 32). Here a major departure by Athenagoras from Middle Platonism emerges. According to Albinus’ description of the èniaxripoviKÔç Xôyoç, the ei'8r| are secondary intelligibles, and are thus the objects of intellection, not opinion. Athenagoras, however, does not distinguish between true and false 8óíjai, but emphasizes that Sóija is based on what is sensible. The stress here is thus that the ei'8r| are xrjç üÀ.r|ç and that consideration of them results only in Sóíja.47 In another article Malherbe proves once again that Athenagoras was not a slave of any philosophical system.48 To illustrate this, he treats the topic which was fashionable at that time: the location of God.49 He observes that the apologist combines the argument of space with the doctrine of Ideas as patterns in a way which is not known anywhere else.50 We can understand his position if we keep in mind that the identification of space and matter was a philosophical commonplace of his time. This is how Malherbe summarizes the development of this view: How xÔJioç was conceived of by Athenagoras’s contemporaries helps to clarify his reasoning. The Stoics defined space as tó é/ópevov wtô ompaxoç, or more fully, they held space to be xôv vnô ôvxoç (sc. oœpaxoç) Kaxeyópevov Kai èijiGaÇôgEvov xffi Kaxé%ovxi aùxôv. Middle Platonism appropriated this view, and regarded space as filled with matter in such a way that it could be equated with matter. Space would therefore seem to be something corporeal, as Plutarch indeed held it to be, and as such it would have the capability of receiving the Forms, and so can also be defined as to g£TaÀ,r|7iTiKÔv xSv ei8Sv, onep ei'pr|Ke pexacpopiKCûç xijv i57,r|v KaGáíiep, xwà xr0f|vriv Kai 8eijapévr|v. The identification of an object with the space it occupies, and the participation of that space in the Ideas were thus no unknown conceptions in the school philosophy of Athenagoras’s day. He only speaks hypothetically, of course, when he assigns God to a particular place, and he does not of course think of God as corporeal, nor does he work out the exact relationship between God and the space He would occupy. What he does is to use the 47 Malherbe, A. J., Athenagoras on the Poets and Philosophers, 221. 48 Malherbe, A. J., Athenagoras on the Location of God, in Theologische Zeitschrift 26 (1970) 45-53. 49 See also Justin’s ideas about the Father against Stoic immanentism. 50 Malherbe, A. J., Athenagoras on the Location of God, 48.
