Folia Theologica et Canonica 4. 26/18 (2015)

SACRA THEOLOGIA - László Perendy, God’s impassibility and His compassio in Chrisin the patristic tradition

GOD’S IMPASSIBILITY AND HIS COMPASSICI IN CHRIST...

69

the expression compassio to the Father does not involve a kind of hidden Patri- passianism and the denial of the Holy Trinity. It would rather mean that the Father strengthens the Son in his suffering, but he himself does not endure suffering.48 The consequence of the Patripassianist debate was the stressing of the personal difference of the impassible Father and the Son who did endure suffering. In Gavrilyuk’s opinion the attempts to solve this tension led to subordi- nationism of Arianism. He classifies the modern attempts to interpret the phenomenon of Arianism into five groups.49

According to the first suggestion the emergence of this heresy is due to Platonism.50 The Arians accentuated the transcendence of àyéwrizoç 8eôç vigorously. They thought that only the Father is in possession of every kind of perfections, among which they listed the following negative attributes: invisibility, immutability, exemption from suffering and passions. The Son (i.e. the Aóyog) is a separate divine being, who originates from God, and he is inferior to him. In the course of time among the various currents of Arianism differences of opinion appeared as to the substance of the Son is similar to that of the Father or it is completely different. There was an agreement among them that the Son was able to receive effects coming outside of him, which made for him possible to get in touch with the world through his senses. Some of these influences could cause him real suffering, the Arians admitted.

According to the second interpretation the Arians did not Hellenize, but they ‘Judaized’ : the roots of the exaggerate stressing of God’s transcendence should be found in the world of the Hellenistic synagogues. This idea is favoured also by Paul of Samosata.51 The actor of the theophanies of the Old Testament is not the invisible and impassible Father, but a creature, Christ, who, being subject to changes, was able to take on himself a human body, and he was also able to suffer and to die. According to this interpretation Arianism was trying to reconcile the faith of the Church in Christ with a strict type of monotheism. It is worth noticing that in this approach the fundamental ambition of Arianism was the same as that of Sabellianism despite the fact that it was born as a reaction to it.

The third type of modern interpretation sees an exegetical effort in Arianism.52 In this view Arius was not willing to reinterpret allegorically the biblical passages which say that the Son is inferior to the Father. So this view has a more

48 Cf. Gavrilyuk, P. L., The Suffering of the Impassible God, 91-100.

49 About the 19'h and 20"1 century attempts to interpret Arianism see Williams, R. D., Arius. Heresy and tradition, London 1987.

50 On the influence of Platonism on Arius see Stead, Ch. G., The Platonism of Arius, in Journal of Theological Studies 15(1964) 14-31.

51 See Newman, J.H., The Arians of the Fourth Century, London 1876. Lorenz, R., Arius judai- zans? Untersuchungen zur dogmengeschichtlichen Einordnung des Arius, Göttingen 1979.

52 Wiles, M., Archetypal Heresy. Arianism through the centuries, Oxford 1996. 10-17.