The Sect of the Tetradites

[Secret Alias]

I didn't not know until a few minutes ago that there were early Christians who argued (or were accused of arguing) on behalf of a Tetrad rather than a Trinity. The Monophysite Patriarch Damian of Alexandria (late sixth century) was so called:

Timothy of Constantinople writes adherents of Damian's party down as 'tetradites', i.e. as maintaining that the divine substance, the 'one' of the Godhead, is an entity distinct from the three hypostases(22). It must be admitted that Damián comes close to saying this in passages quoted by Peter in book III chs. 4 If. (perhaps indeed he does say it); but Peter spends relatively little time on the issue and does not breathe the word 'tetradite'. Damián had perhaps been betrayed into an indiscretion by the language of Pseudo-Dionysius" On the divine names which he had quoted, into speaking of a 'descent' from the ultimate Monad to the three divine hypostases. Certainly he has no intention to present the divine substance of the common Godhead as an independent being prior to a threefold differentiation. Damián has thus given his answer to the two questions: the one and common substance is actual in the three mutually participating hypostases; the three hypostases are the distinctive and substantial ingeneracy, generacy and procession. (Damián, of course, does not know a scholastic expression such as 'subsistent relationship' https://books.google.com/books?id=xHbYAAAAMAAJ&q=%22(Dami%C3%A1n,+of+course,+does+not+know+a+%22&dq=%22(Dami%C3%A1n,+of+course,+does+not+know+a+%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjSyuSvhO7dAhVSHDQIHQOqDt4Q6AEIKTAA

https://books.google.com/books?id=DO8qT ... es&f=false

[andrewcriddle]

See also much later Peter Lombard and the quaternity controversy.

Andrew Criddle