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... 73 Il commence par déclarer que Dieu a fait les anges pour être les agents de sa providence sur les choses qu’il a lui-même organisées, de telle sorte qu’il possède la providence d’ensemble, universelle et générique, et que les anges, préposes aux créatures, aient à exercer la providence particulière (XXIV). On dirait un monarque qui, après avoir organisé son royaume, en répartit l’administration entre différents fonctionnaires à qui il fait confiance et qui, sans s’inquiéter des détails, se contente de surveiller la marche des affaires, quitte peut-être à intervenir s’il se produisait un désordre.22 Bardy does not think that either Paolo Ubaldi or Eduard Schwartz can solve the difficulties which rise from this kind of distinction. Aimé Puech tries to solve the problem of the tension between individual events and divine providence by referring to a passage by Plutarch, but this solution is not satisfactory for Bardy, either.23 Treating the doctrine of Athenagoras, Bardy praises him for affirming the Trinity and the role of the Verb in creation.24 In the introduction to the translation of the Legatio and the De resurrectione, Joseph Hugh Crehan finds it interesting that in the time of Tertullian and Tatian Athenagoras showed such sympathy for Platonic thinking. However, when tackling the problem of God’s inaccessibility, he turns to St. Paul’s vocabulary25, not to the Platonic way of negation. The negative attributes26 may be important, but God’s creative activity makes his transcendence clearer.27 The other difference from Platonism is the way he treats the problem if God’s goodness is his inseparable property or not. He sees the importance of this problem, and he solves it in a Christian way: Athenagoras by making God’s goodness an inseparable property of His being, as natural to Him as a skin is to a body or their ruddy colour to flames of fire seems to be seeking to avoid having to say that God must of necessity communicate His being by some kind of creation. He uses a strictly non-technical word ánoxeópe- vov for the over-spill of God’s goodness upon the world, and the terms npôoSoç and èruorpocpri, which are the regular words used by Neo-Platonists for the outflow of being from the One and for its return thereto, are not found in his work.28 22 Bardy, G., Athénagore: Supplique au sujet des chrétiens, 50. 23 Bardy, G., Athénagore: Supplique au sujet des chrétiens, 50-52. 24 Bardy, G., Athénagore: Supplique au sujet des chrétiens, 52-61. 25 See also Burney, C.F., Christ as the APXH of Creation, in Journal of Theological Studies 27 (1926) 160-177. 26 See Aristides, Apology, passim. 27 Crehan, J. H., Athenagoras, Embassy for the Christians, The Resurrection of the Dead, Westminster Mass.-London 1956. 16-17. 28 Crehan, J. H., Athenagoras, 17-18.
