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UVM Theses and Dissertations

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Format:
Print
Author:
Kenyon, Erik
Dept./Program:
Classics
Year:
2004
Degree:
M.A.
Abstract:
Augustine (354-430) in de Trinitate V and Boethius (ca. 480-524) in Opuscula Sacra I and II both defend the Orthodox position that Father and Son are 'of one substance,' against the heretical Arian position. These Arians, as presented by Augustine, start from the claim that no accidents may be predicated of God, argue that 'Father, Son, and Holy Ghost' must then refer to divine substance, and thus conclude that God is of three substances, not one. This amounts to a belief in three distinct Gods, the second of which they subordinate to the first, and the third to the other two. To circumvent this argument, Augustine and Boethius employ the common strategy of making divine persons relative predications, and then set forth a special sort of divine predication which neither refers to God's substance nor attributes any accidents to God either. Within this overall frame, Augustine employs Aristotle's Categories in, creating arguments that are fundamentally temporal: God's eternal substance does not admit of accidents, which are understood as changes. Nor are such relatives substantial, as they do not show what a thing is in itself.
Boethius extracts a single kernel from Augustine's arguments and produces OSII which gives a simple litmus test for separating personal predicates from those directed at the divine substance. Augustine's argument that relatives are not substantial is reinforced in OSI through the use of more precise terminology of accidents and differentiae. But Boethius' crucial development upon Augustine, which is the topic of the present study, is his replacement of divine eternity as a starting point, beginning instead from God's incorporeality and purity of form, in arguing that persons are not accidental: God's substance, which is incorporeal, does not provide a subject for accidents which are understood in opposition to differentiae. This new argument takes place in a neo-Platonic setting, where all pure form is one. With this fresh approach Boethius introduces the Problem of Universals, as inherited from Porphyry, to discussions of the Trinity.