The Argument of the Image in Marius Victorinus’s Defense of Consubstantiality
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Image is largely used by Victorinus both as a proof and as an argument in demonstrating the substantial unity between God, who is/has not/no substance, and the Son who has proper substance, proper form and proper subsistence. On one hand image is thus considered as a proof of existence for what cannot be known in another way. Victorinus deals with it when analysing the genesis of the Son, image of the Father, and the nature of the hypostatic relations inside the Trinity’s structure, based on the visibility of beings. The first reference to image as a proof of existence is in Timaios. But image is also used as an argument in demonstrating the consubstantiality of the Three Persons. The model of this kind of unity is the dialectic relation between energeia and dunamis largely applied to the unity between act and substance, existence and essence, being and species. Ploninus has made the same use of image in considering it as the visible or lightly wrapper of all things, kind of hypostatic presence participating/proceeding to/from the substantial principle of all existing things. These two functions of image are inseparable in Victorinus demonstration, but they cover two perfectly distinct kinds of image ( eikôn-imago and eidos-species), corresponding to two different functions, one in metaphysic knowledge, the second in ontological demonstration.
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