[146] Those which have been in constant use in the preparation of this chapter have been an excellent article by Th. Förster in the Theologische Studien und Kritiken for 1888, p. 645 ff., and two full and valuable papers by Dr. Baltzer on the Theologie and Christologie of Hilary in the Programm of the Rottweil Gymnasium for 1879 and 1889 respectively. I have unfortunately not had access to Wirthmüller's work, Die Lehre d. hl. Hil. über die Selbstentäusserung Christi, but the citations in Baltzer and Schwane give some clue to its contents. The Introduction to the Benedictine edition is useful, though its value is lessened by an evident desire to make Hilary conform to the accepted opinions of a later age. Dorner's great work on the Doctrine of the Person of Christ, in the English translation, with the Dogmengeschichte of Schwane (ed. 2, 1895) and that of Harnack (ed. 3, 1894) have also been constantly and profitably consulted. Indebtedness to other works is from time to time acknowledged in the notes.
[147] Tr. in Ps. xvii. 2, 4.
[148] As e.g. Trin. vi. 45.
[149] St. John v. 44 in Trin. ix. 22.
[150] Thus the Book of Baruch, regarded as part of Jeremiah, is cited with the same confidence as Isaiah and the other prophets in Trin. v. 39.
[151] E.g. Tr. in Ps. cxviii. Aleph. 1, cxxviii. 12. cxxxi. 8. It must be confessed that Hilary's illustrations of the principle are not always fortunate.
[152] Thus in Trin. xi. 15, in commenting on Ps. xxii. 6, he puts forward two alternative theories of the generation of worms, only one of which can be true, while both may be false. But he uses both, to illustrate two truths concerning our Lord.
[153] Cf. also Trin. x. 67.
[154] Tr. in Ps. cxxxviii. 3.
[155] Trin. ix. 62. There is a similar argument in § 63.
[156] E.g. Tr. in Ps. cxxv. 1.
[157] Cf. Tr. in Ps. cxlii. 1.
[158] Tr. in Ps. cxxxii. 6.
[159] E.g. Tr. in Ps. lxiii. 2; Trin. iv. 14, ix. 59.
[160] Comm. in Matt. xix. 4, xxi. 13.
[161] Tr. in Ps.cxlii. 1; cf. ib. cxxxi. 24, cxxxiii. 4, cl. 1.
[162] Similar arguments are often used: cf. Tr. in Ps. cxlv. 1.
[163] Tr. in Ps. cxx. 4.
[164] Ib. cxlvi. 11.
[165] Comm. in Matt. v. 11.
[166] E.g. Comm. in Matt. xviii. 2; Tr. in Ps. cxix. 20, cxxxiv. 12, cxxxvi. 6, 7; Trin. iv. 38.
[167] E.g. Trin. i. 6.
[168] The unhesitating use of the Theophanies of the Old Testament as direct evidence for the divinity of Christ is noteworthy. Similar to the usual proofs for the distinction of Persons within the Trinity, from the alternate use of plural and singular, are the arguments in Tr. in Ps. cxviii., Iod, 5, cxxvii. 4.
[169] It is worth notice that he makes no use of Origen's mystical interpretation of the Canticles. Silence in such a case is itself a criticism.
[170] Compare such a passage as Trin. x. 24 with his use of the proof-texts against Arianism.
[171] Tr. in Ps. cxxvii. 10.
[172] E.g. Tr. in Ps. xci. 10, cxviii. Iod, 15, cxxxiv. 1, cxxxv. 1.
[173] E g. Trin. vii. 13; and cf. the argument which is also Athanasian, of vii. 31.
[174] Beside the passages mentioned on p. xxx., it only occurs in Instructio Psalmorum § 13.
[175] The translation of the De Trinitate in this volume may give a somewhat false impression in this respect. For the sake of conciseness the word Person has been often used in the English where it is absent, and absent designedly in the Latin. The word occurs Trin. iii. 23 in., iv. 42, v. 10, 26, vii. 39, 40, and in a few other places.
[176] Concorporatio, Comm. in Matt. vi. 1; corporatio, Tr. in Ps. i. 14, ii. 3, and often; corporatus Deus, Comm. in Matt. iv. 14, Tr. in Ps. li. 16; corporalitas, Comm. in Matt. iv. 14 (twice), Instr. Ps. vi. In the De Trinitate he usually prefers a periphrasis;--assumpta caro, assumpsit carnem. Corporatiois used of man's dwelling in a body in Trin. xi. 15, and De Mysteriis, ed. Gamurrini, p. 5.
[177] It occurs in the De Synodis 69, but in that work Hilary is writing as an advocate in defence of language used by others, not as the exponent of his own thoughts. It also occurs once or twice in translations from the Greek, probably by another hand than Hilary's; but from his own authorship it is completely absent.
[178] Trin. v. 10,Syn. 69, God is One not in Person, but in nature,' Trin. iv. 42, Not by oneness of Person but by unity of substance;' vi. 35, the birth of a living Nature from a living Nature.' Often enough the substance or nature of God or Christ is simply a periphrasis. The two natures in the Incarnate Christ are also mentioned, though, as we shall see, Hilary here also avoids a precise nomenclature.
[179] Tr. in Ps. cxxxi. 6, The supreme achievement of Christ was to render man, instructed in the knowledge of God, worthy to be God's dwelling-place;' cf. ib. § 23.
[180] Tr. in Ps.cxviii, Aleph., § 1.
[181] Trin. x. 7.
[182] Cf. Tr. in Ps. cxix. 10; Trin. v. 1, 26, vi. 46 ff., viii. 37, &c., &c.
[183] Trin. iv. 2, xi. 44.
[184] Trin. ii. 2, in vitium vitio coaretamur alieno.
[185] Deus Verbumoften; Verbum alone rarely, if ever. Dorner with his iteration of Logos,' gives an altogether false impression of Hilary's vocabulary.
[186] Trin. i. 17 and often.
[187] Doctrine of the Person of Christ, I. ii. p. 302, English translation. The passages to which he refers are Comm. in Matt. xi. 12; Tr. in Ps. xci. 6; Trin. ii. 3, ix. 69. There is a good, though brief, statement of this view in Mason's Faith of the Gospel, p. 56.
[188] Trin. xii. 21, the birth is in the generation and the generation in the birth.'
[189] Discourses against the Arians, iii. 58 ff; see Robertson's notes in the Athanasius volume of this series, p. 426.
[190] E.g. Syn. 35, 37, 59, Trin. iii. 4, vi. 21, viii. 54.
[191] Cf. Baltzer, Theologie d. hl. Hil. p. 19 f.
[192] Hort, Two Dissertations, p. 21, and cf. p. xvi., above.
[193] It constantly appears, though with all due safeguards, in the De Synodis, where sympathy as well as policy impelled him to approximate the language used by his friends. Similarly in Trin. iii. 23, he argues, from the admitted likeness, that there can be no difference. But, as we saw, this part of the De Trinitate is probably an early work, and does not represent Hilary's later thought.
[194] Trin. v. 38.
[195] Trin. viii. 13 ff.
[196] Cf. Sulp Sev., Chron. ii. 42 for the Eastern suspicion that the West held a trionyma unio;--one Person under three names. Sulpicius ascribes it to Arian slander, but its causes lay deeper than this.
[197] This was the doctrine of all the earlier theologians, soon to be displaced in the stress of controversy by the opinion that the inferiority concerns the Son only as united with man. See the citations in Westcott's Gospel of St. John, additional note to xiv. 28.
[198] Tr. in Ps. cxxxviii. 17.
[199] Ib. cxli. 6.
[200] Trin. xi. 21 ff., on 1 Cor. xv, 21 ff.
[201] Trin. ix. 58 ff.
[202] Bardenhewer, Patrologie, p. 377.
[203] This is one of Hilary's many reminiscences of Origen. Athanasius brought the father into direct connection with the world; cf. Harnack, Dogmengesch. ii. 206 (ed. 3).
[204] Trin. xii. 35 ff. The passage is treated at much greater length in Athanasius' Discourses against the Arians, ii. 18 ff., where see Robertson's notes.
[205] Trin. xii. 45; at the Incarnation Christ is created in the body,' and this is connected with His creation for the beginning of the ways of God.
[206] Westcott, essay on The Gospel of Creation,' in his edition of St. John's Epistles, where, however Hilary is not mentioned.
[207] Cf. Trin. xi. 49.
[208] Trin. ii. 6, xii. 4, &c. He is also often named Jesus Christ in this connection, e.g. Trin. iv. 6.
[209] According to Eusebius' computation, which Hilary would probably accept without dispute, there were 5,228 years from the creation to our Lord's commencement of his mission in the 15th year of Tiberius, a.d. 29.
[210] E.g. Trin. iv. 27; Tr. in Ps. lxviii. 19.
[211] Trin. iii. 9; cf. St. John xvii. 3.
[212] Trin. ii. 25 and often.
[213] Trin. ii. 27. The same conclusion is constantly drawn in the Comm. in Matt.
[214] E g. Trin. ix. 4, 14, 51; Tr. in Ps. ii. 11, 25.
[215] Trin. ii. 26, xii. 6, &c.
[216] E.g. Tr. in Ps. cxxxviii. 3.
[217] This, in contrast with God, Who is Life, is proved by the fact that certain bodily growths can be removed without our being conscious of the operation; Trin. vii. 28.
[218] Cf. Trin. vii. 28, x. 15, 16. Similarly in the Eumenides 637, Æschylus makes Apollo excuse Orestes' murder of Clytænnestra on the ground that the mother is not the parent, but only the nurse of the germ. This is contrary to Aristotle's teaching; Æschylus and Hilary evidently represent a rival current of ancient opinion.
[219] Trin. x. 20. In Tr. in Ps. cxviii., Iod, 6, 7, this thought is developed. Man has a double origin. First, he is made after the likeness of God. This is the soul, which is immaterial and has no resemblance and owes no debt, as of effect to cause, to any other nature (i.e. substance) than God. It is not His likeness, but is after His likeness. Secondly, there is the body, composed of earthly matter.
[220] Trin. ii. 30 f., viii. 23 f.
[221] Trin. x. 16, caro non aliunde originem sumpserat quam ex Verbo, and ib. 15, 18, 25. Dorner, I. ii., p. 403, n. 1, points out that this is exactly the teaching of Gregory of Nyssa.
[222] This view that the conception by the Holy Ghost means conception by the Son is consistently held by Hilary throughout his writings. It appears in the earliest of them; in Comm. in Matt. ii. 5, Christ is born of a woman;...Made flesh through the Word.' So in Trin. ii. 24, He is born of the Virgin and of the Holy Ghost, Himself ministering to Himself in this operation....By His own, that is God's, overshadowing power He sowed for Himself the beginnings of His body and ordained that His flesh should commence to exist; and Trin. x 16.
[223] Trin. x. 16; cf. ib. 17. In the Instructio Psalmorum, § 6, he speaks in more usual language;--adventus Domini ex virgine in hominem procreandi, and also in some other passages. Dorner's view (I. ii. 403 f. and note 74, p. 533) differs from that here taken. But he is influenced (see especially p. 404) by the desire to save Hilary's consistency rather than to state his actual opinion. And Hilary was too early in the field, too anxiously employed in feeling his way past the pitfalls of heresy, to escape the danger of occasional inconsistency.
[224] Trin. iii. 19, perfectum ipsa de suis non imminuta generavit. So ib. ii. 25, unigenitus Deus....Virginis utero insertus accrescit. He grew there, but nothing more. In Virginem exactly corresponds to ex Virgine.
[225] Trin. xii. 50; it would be a watering of the sense to regard commixtio in this passage as simply equivalent to coitio.
[226] Trin. x. 16.
[227] Irenæus, i. 1, 13.
[228] He often and emphatically repudiates the use which the Monarchians made of them, e.g. Trin. iv. 4.
[229] E.g. Trin. x. 22 in. The human soul is clearly intended. Schwane, ii. 268, justly praises Hilary for greater accuracy than his contemporaries in laying stress upon each of the constituent elements of Christ's humanity, and especially upon the soul; in this respect following Tertullian and Origen.
[230] In Trin. x. 21 f. is an argument analogous to that of the De Synodis concerning the Godhead. Christ is Man because He is perfectly like man, just as in the Homoeusian argument He is God because He is perfectly like God.
[231] E.g. Comm. in Matt. i.; Tr. in Ps. lxviii. 19.
[232] Trin. ii. 26.
[233] Ib. viii. 45, 47, ix. 14, &c.
[234] This evacuation' or exinanition' is represented in Tr. in Ps. lxviii. 4 by the more precise metaphor of a vessel drained of its liquid contents.
[235] Hilary has devoted his Homily on Psalm lxviii. to this subject. In § 25 he asks, How could He exist in the form of man while remaining in the form of God?' There are many equally emphatic statements throughout his writings.
[236] Baltzer and Schwane have been followed in this matter, in opposition to Dorner.
[237] Trin. ix. 38, habitus demutatio, and similarly ib. 14.
[238] Tr. in Ps. lxviii. 25.
[239] E.g. Trin. viii. 45.
[240] Trin. ix. 14, concursus utriusque formæ.
[241] It is very characteristic that it lies outside Cyprian's vocabulary and range of ideas.