Homoousians, homoiousians and homoians

There's three ancient Greek words you do not see every day! They are, however, extremely relevant to understanding what most Christians believe today in our history, and will lead us to a rather key question regarding the belief that prevailed; I will be asking both Stephen Holmes and Bart Ehrman for their points of view on this question (maybe I'll bug Dale Tuggy again too, but I am still waiting for another answer from him, so don't want to bug him too much). But first, let's define.

Homoousian is the belief-set that Jesus is of the same substance or essence as God the father [the one and only divine].

Homoiousian is the belief-set that Jesus is of similar substance or essence as God the father.

Homoian rejects any talk of substance with "its materialistic overtones, inevitably misleading and unhelpful" (Holmes, Quest For the Trinity, p 93), but still keeps the key iota there, that Jesus is like God.

In Holmes' book, the Homoiousian and Homoian distinction is not clearly developed, with Holmes concentrating mainly on the predominant Homoian belief in the fourth century. I am not sure why that is, and Wikipedia, for instance, is able to cite many more Homoiousians than Homoians - I suspect that the distinction is fine and not exclusive. What is fascinating is that in the fourth century, when these first monumental councils and creeds were coming together, it is not the Homoousian view that initially prevailed. Furthermore, the Roman Emperor Constantine who was absolutely pivotal in the 325 Council formation, was baptised several decades later by a Homoian (or Homoiousian) bishop, just before he died! It was by no means a foregone conclusion (Ehrman) that the Homoousians were going to win out, but in the end they did.

And so we get closer to our question - why was that? When I read Holmes' couple of chapters on this key period, and remember that Holmes is a deep and devout believer himself in God's sovereignty in this process, he points to a lack of unity among the Homoians. They were also too busy trying to dismantle the opposing view, without "doing theology" themselves. In the meantime, the Homoousians were very busy doing theology. Somehow, I still do not quite get it.

I am not certain that Ehrman's orthoparadoxes idea quite answers it either - this is Ehrman's idea that what prevailed was where certain "right" (ortho) beliefs of one belief-set were maintained and others rejected from several different 2nd and 3rd century Fathers, none of which were fully orthodox (and some, like Origen, positively condemned later), in order to gain a paradoxically, but ultimately purely orthodox view.

So let's see if I get lucky with some answers...

Bart Ehrman blogs on the back foot to my email

As you may have realised from previous posts, I am going through Daniel Wallace's interesting book Revisiting the Corruption of the New Testament. Actually, the full title is worth noting ...Testament: manuscript, patristic, and apocryphal evidence.

Bart Ehrman is central to every chapter of this book, which is a response to his much earlier work: The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture. If I had to summarise what I understand the basic point of this book to be, it would be that the corruptions that took place need to be weighed without bias between the various criteria available in order to come up with sound hypotheses to the reasons motivating the changes, and placed within a wider context of overall reliability.

I need page references for this so I apologise, but Bart is quoted as recognising that the criterion of orthodoxy needed to be a secondary issue and not a primary one, while seems to be shown to making the orthodoxy criterion not only a primary criterion, but almost like some kind of supreme cause for manuscript miscopying. I already believe this to be an overstatement because when I consider the criterion applied by Bart of "embarrassment", it is difficult to see that as being a strict issue of orthodoxy. That said, the discussions in the book around Matthew 24:36 do indeed seem to reveal some possible bias from Bart.

I do not know Bart Ehrman. I neither like him, nor dislike him. For a very interesting discussion on para-social relationships, I would direct anyone interested to the Liturgists podcast episode 10, which deals effectively with the work-identity separation, which I think Bart should hear because he has taken this the wrong way (i.e. personally), which seems confirmed by the very title of his blog post hyper-linked below. By the way, for reference, I am also a "thin-skinned" individual, and I thought it was good and very open for Bart to acknowledge this aspect of his character.

So in reverse order:

1. Bart Ehrman's response (obviously I cannot prove that it was in response to my email, but I will leave that to you to judge). I leave a comment there and a link to this post. The comment will essentially be a brief reference to the value of dialogue between scholars and the potential for progress in our understanding.

2. My 2nd email:
Wow!

Before I worry too much about which side of the intelligence fence I sit, I think I might put this question out to the members forum for their views to see if I can get a bit more discussion going on this. There's something missing here. 

I also note that this may have been written in the night which may have affected your tone, as I am sure you are not usually so dismissive of Wallace's credentials!

Have a good day.

3. Bart's initial response:
No, I haven’t responded.  I think anyone with intelligence can read what I have to say and what they have to say to figure out who has the better argument!

4. My 1st email: Dear Bart, thanks for all your hard work and commitment to this blog, I do find it informative and have just become a member.

I am wondering if there is somewhere here or perhaps in print that you have responded to Revisiting the Corruption of the New Testament (Wallace and co.), and in particular the allegations of the criterion of orthodoxy?
....[technical issue]
Many thanks,
John


NB I note that I made have also harmed this discussion by using the word "allegations", which was a much too loaded word. Sorry for that, Bart, if you ever read this!