[B-Greek] hOMOOUSIOS and hOMOIOUSIOS

Steve Westfall steve.westfall at comcast.net
Sat Mar 27 15:43:26 EST 2004


I know this isn't Greek grammar, but since you brought it up:

Is it accurate to cast this as an East/West issue in the way the later
"filioque" controversy was?  The Eastern Church, while being the
geographical location of much Arian strength, eventually committed to
"homoousios" too, once it got past all the imperial politics.  And Arius'
greatest opponent, Athanasius, the formulator of the homoousian doctrine,
was an eastern bishop, not a western one.

Steve Westfall

-----Original Message-----
From: b-greek-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:b-greek-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org]On Behalf Of Carl W. Conrad
Sent: Sat, March 27, 2004 12:57 PM
To: bertdehaan at gosympatico.ca
Cc: b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] hOMOOUSIOS and hOMOIOUSIOS


At 1:31 PM -0500 3/27/04, <bertdehaan at gosympatico.ca> wrote:
>My 8 yr old son had these two words in his church history lesson. He told
>me that hOMOOUSIOS refers to Jesus being God, and hOMOIOUSIOS to Jesus
>being like God.
>I can see how these words would be 'related' to hOMOIWS but I don't know
>what exactly these words mean.
>Can someone help me out and maybe parse these words.
>I don't know if the transliteration is like the b-greek scheme but this is
>all I had.

hOMOIOUSIOS means "of similar nature," hOMOOUSIOS "of identical
nature"--the former. The difference between these two adjectives
constitutes the celebrated "iota of difference" that separated the Eastern
Orthodox from the Western Roman church over Christology. You might look at
a Greek lexicon and note the adjectives formed with hOMO- and those formed
with hOMOIO-.
--

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/
---
B-Greek home page: http://metalab.unc.edu/bgreek
B-Greek mailing list
B-Greek at lists.ibiblio.org
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-greek




More information about the B-Greek mailing list