Where did substance language enter the Trinity debate?
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Where did substance language enter the Trinity debate ?
Since the belief in both God and his Son is a basic Christian tenet, the question naturally arises as to what exactly is meant by it:
- Is God Christ's father in the same sense in which He is also ours, namely as creator ?
- Or is He his father in the fullest sense of the word, namely as procreator ?
Since the difference between actual offspring, and metaphorical ones, is that the former literally share one's flesh and blood (or DNA, in modern parlance), a concept had to be sought to express the same idea in more abstract terms, as the divine is ultimately immaterial.
The Wikipedia page Sabellianism states that the Gnostics...
Sabellianism and Gnosticism are not (meaningfully) related to one another.
the generator and the generated have the same substance
They don't. In Gnosticism, the emanated is (ontologically) inferior to the emanator, the last (and therefore most inferior) emanation being the physical (and therefore intrinsically evil) world (this represents the fundamental Gnostic belief).
Were these people also Christians ?
Gnosticism was a highly syncretic, but ultimately independent, belief system, interacting with various other ancient religions, such as Platonism, Judaism, Christianity, or Zoroastrianism. At its roots, however, it was no more Christian than either pagan Platonism, or Judaism proper (which also interacted with one another, as evidenced by both the Septuagint Apocrypha, as well the writings of Philo, for instance).
Sabellius used the word h*m*ousi[os].
Technically true, but its meaning was diametrically opposed to Nicaea's usage of the same term. It is like I were to tell you that English and German are related languages, and that both use the term Gift, but I would conveniently omit to inform you that, in German, it means poison, not present, as it does English.
Is it possible that [Praxeas] was one of the Gnostics [?]
No. Unitarianism is not Gnosticism.
The closest thing, within Christianity itself, that I could (meaningfully) compare Gnosticism with, is Pseudo-Dionysius' system of angelic hierarchies.
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The term ὁμοούσιον (h*m*ousion) predates Dionysius Bishop of Alexandria (r. 247-265 A.D.), who wrote in response to a c. 262 A.D. letter to him by Pope St. Dionysius (259-268 A.D.):
I have not found this term (ὁμοούσιος τῷ Θεῷ) any where in Holy Scripture, yet my remarks which follow, and which they have not noticed, are not inconsistent with that belief
cf. Pohle The Divine Trinity: A Dogmatic Treatise pt. 1, ch. 2, §1, a. 2. "Its [Sabellianism's] Condemnation."
Tertullian [b. c. 160 A.D.] had already used the Latin equivalent of Homoousion, conceding to [his contemporary] Praxeas the Sabellian that the Father and the Son were unius substantiæ, of one substance, but adding duarum personarum, of two persons (Adv. Prax., xiii).
[…]
Origen [b. 185, d. c. 253-4], who is, however, inconsistent in his vocabulary, expressed the anti-Sabellian sense of Dionysius of Alexandria by calling the Son "Heteroousion".
—Bridge, J. (1910). Homoousion. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
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