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INTRODUCTION Pre-Arian Christology WO PREVIOUS VOLUMES in this series have dealt with the Trinitarian and Christological errors of Arianism. St. Hilary of Poitiers: The Trinity, translated by Stephen McKenna, C.SS.R.,l appeared in 1954 and offers in English the saint's Latin treatise, De Trinitate. Hilary became bishop of Poitiers about A.D. 354 but was exiled to Phrygia some two years later because he refused the Emperor Constantius' demand that he repudiate the orthodox teaching of St. Athanasius against the Arians on the divinity of Christ. During his exile he completed the twelve books of his De Trinitate; in this work his chieftargets are the Arians and the Anomoeans (as the strictest Arians were also called),2 although he mentions Arius by name only twice and his followers only once. The Trinitarian doctrine of Hilary is both orthodox and precise: there is one God in three divine Persons-the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. In his Christology he was more interested in proving that the divine nature of Christ was consubstantial with that of his heavenly Father than in showing that his human nature was consubstantial with ours. (2) The second anti-Arian volume in this series is Marius Victorinus: Theological Treatises on the Trinity, translated by Sister 1 FOTe 25 (New York 1954). 2 The Greek word for Anomoean means "unlike" or "dissimilar," and, as a sect, taught that the Son not only was not one in substance with the Father but not even of a like or similar substance. Hence the Son could neither be divine nor one in being with the Father. 3 4 ST. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM Mary T. Clark, R.S.C.J.3 Victorinus was born in Africa toward the end of the third century. Later he came to Rome and became famous as a teacher of rhetoric. He also steeped himself in Neoplatonism. After his conversion to Christianity (ca. A.D. 356), he turned his Neoplatonic philosophy and rhetoric against Arianism to refute it in his Theological Treatises on the Trinity. St. Jerome4 calls the treatises very obscure and says that only the learned can understand them. But Victorinus emerged from several traditions: that of classical Rome, the new trends in the philosophic thought of Plotinus and Porphyry , and the developing positions ofChristianity in East and West which still needed an adequate vocabulary to become clear. Writing in Latin but systematizing Christian beliefs in a Neoplatonic structure made it necessary for Victorinus to introduce many neologisms and to give extended meanings to existing terms. This contributes to his obscurity but cannot disguise the profundity of his insight into one God in three divine Persons. He is the first Latin writer to compose a systematic metaphysical treatise on the Trinity and stands out as the precursor of the medieval theologians. Sister Clark's translation is at once simple and elegant. (3) But these books were written in Latin and for those born to this language. In the present volume, Chrysostom's homilies , which were delivered in Greek to congregations of eastern Christians in Antioch and Constantinople, are presented to English readers whose knowledge of the Arian turmoil may well be limited. It may be profitable, then, to give a sketch of 3 FOTC 69 (Washington, D.C. 1981). Another volume in the same series which is most deserving of mention is the translation of the De Trinitate by Russell]. DeSimone, O.S.A., in his Novatian the Presbyter, FOTC 67 (Washington , D.C. 1974). Since this Trinitarian treatise was written before A.D. 250, some seventy years before Arianism tore the Church asunder by denying the divinity of Christ, it does not attack that heresiarch's doctrine as such. But it does set forth a picture of Christ, the Word, as both God and man, as one with the Father although posterior in origin. This led to accusations of subordinationism although Novatian may only have been defending the distinction in person of the Father and the Son. 4 Cf. De viris illustribus 101 (PL 23.701-702). Cited by F. Cayre. Manual of Patrology and History of Theology, Vol. I, trans. H. Howitt 331 (Paris 1935) (hereafter cited as Cayre). INTRODUCTION 5 the antecedents of Arianism and early Christology before turning to Chrysostom's answer to the Arian Anomoeans, who presented so grave a problem to the purity of the faith in the fourth century. (4) How did the Christians of the first three centuries look on Christ? One...

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