Life of St Athanasius the Great and Account of Arianism

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128 Pages (Part I)

Page 51

In this sense it takes its place at the centre of his system of 'categories,' as the something to which all determinations of quality, quantity, relation and the rest attach, and which itself attaches to nothing; in Aristotle's words it alone is self-existent, choriston, whereas all that comes under any of the other categories is achoriston, non-existent except as a property of some ousia. But here the difficulty begins. We may look at a concrete term as denoting either this or that individual simply (tode ti), or as expressing its nature, and so as common to more individuals than one. Now properly (protos) ousia is only appropriate to the former purpose. But it may be employed in a secondary sense to designate the latter; in this sense species and genera are deuterai ousiai, the wider class being less truly ousiai than the narrower. In fact we here detect the transition of the idea of ousia from the category of ousia proper to that of poion (cf. Athan. p. 478 sq.; he uses ousia freely in the secondary sense for non-theological purposes in contra Gentes, where it is often best rendered 'nature'). Aristotle accordingly uses ousia freely to designate what we call substances, whether simple or compound, such as iron, gold, earth, the heavens, to akineton, &c., &c. Corresponding again, to the logical distinction of genos and eidos is the metaphysical distinction (not exactly of matter and form, but) of matter simply, regarded as to hupokeimenon, and matter regarded as existing in this or that form, to poion to en te ousi& 139;, to ti en einai, the meeting-point of logic and metaphysics in Aristotle's system. Agreeably to this distinction, ousia is used sometimes of the latter--the concrete thing regarded in its essential nature, sometimes of the former he hupokeimene ousia hos hule, hule being in fact the summum genus of the material world.

Now the use of the word in Christian theology had exemplified nearly every one of the above senses. In the quasi-material sense homoousion had been used in the school of Valentinian to express the homogeneity of the two factors in the fundamental dualism of the Universe of intelligent beings. In a somewhat similar sense it is used in the Clementine Homilies xx. 7.

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