The Angelic Doctor Against the Errors of the Greeks - Prologue

Contra Errores Graecorum, by St. Thomas Aquinas, OP, Translated by Peter Damian Fehlner, FI, Re-Edited and Missing Chapters Supplied by Joseph Kenny, OP.

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The book, most Holy Father, Pope Urban, which your Excellency called to my attention [the Libellus de fide SS. Trinitatis of Nicholas of Durazzo, Bishop of Cotrone] I have studied carefully and have found expressed in it much that is useful to the affirmation of our faith. I believe, however, its fruitfulness for many persons could be considerably diminished because of some perplexing statements contained in texts of the holy Fathers, and so could provide the quarrelsome with the material and occasion for calumny. And so, after eliminating all ambiguity from the authorities found in the aforesaid book so that the purest fruit of the faith might be harvested, I have proposed first to explain what seems perplexing in the abovementioned authorities, and then to show how by means of them the truth of the Catholic faith may be taught and defended.

There are, in my opinion, two reasons why some of the statements of the ancient Greek Fathers strike our contemporaries as dubious. First, because once errors regarding the faith arose, the holy Doctors of the Church became more circumspect in the way they expounded points of faith, so as to exclude these errors. It is clear, for example, that the Doctors  who lived before the error of Arius did not speak so expressly about the unity of the divine essence as the Doctors who came afterwards. And the same happened in the case of other errors. This is quite evident not only in regard to Doctors in general, but in respect to one particularly distinguished Doctor, Augustine.  For in the books he published after the rise of the Pelagian heresy he spoke more cautiously about the freedom of the human will than he had done in his books published before the rise of said heresy. In these earlier works, while defending the will against the Manichees, he made certain statements which the Pelagians, who rejected divine grace, used in support of their error. It is, therefore, no wonder if after the appearance of various errors, present day teachers of the faith speak more cautiously and more selectively so as to steer clear of any kind of heresy. Hence, if there are found some points in statements of the ancient Fathers not expressed with the caution moderns find appropriate to observe, their statements are not to be ridiculed or rejected; on the other hand neither are they to be overextended, but reverently interpreted.

“Second, because many things which sound well enough in Greek do not perhaps, sound well in Latin. Hence, Latins and Greeks professing the same faith do so using different words. For among the Greeks it is said, correctly, and in a Catholic way, that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are three hypostases.  But with the Latins it does not sound right to say that there are three substantiae, even though on a purely verbal basis the term hypostasis in Greek means the same as the term substantia in Latin. The fact is, substantia in Latin is more frequently used to signify essence. And both we and the Greeks hold that in God there is but one essence. So where the Greeks speak of three hypostases, we Latins speak of three personae, as Augustine in the seventh book on the Trinity  also teaches. And, doubtless, there are many similar instances.

It is, therefore, the task of the good translator, when translating material dealing with the Catholic faith, to preserve the meaning, but to adapt the mode of expression so that it is in harmony with the idiom of the language into which he is translating. For obviously, when anything spoken in a literary fashion in Latin is explained in common parlance, the explanation will be inept if it is simply word for word. All the more so, when anything expressed in one language is translated merely word for word into another, it will be no surprise if perplexity concerning the meaning of the original sometimes occurs.