Quaternity

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Notions of a quaternity ('fourfold', 'four number') of the divine or corresponding multiples can be found in different cultural-historical contexts. Sun is about a vision report of Black Elk , a medicine man of the Oglala - Lakota - Indians structured fourfold. The Ezekiel vision of the Old Testament speaks of four living animals - a concept that, similar to the four animals at the side of the divine throne, which are described in Rev 4, is often received as a symbol of the divine in the Judeo-Christian tradition. The Rigveda speaks of four parts of Purusha ; There are also ideas of a quaternity in the Upanishads and other Indian traditions. Carl Gustav Jung sees quaternity as an archetypal structure of the divine as well. Jung tries to identify corresponding ideas in Christian traditions as well. In the history of Christian dogma there have actually only been rejection of positions that would result in a quaternity of the divine, in that the dual nature of Christ as man and God would be counted twice, as the Popes John II. 535 and Honorius I 634 in letters and the 11th Condemn the Provincial Synod of Toledo in 675, or by separately counting God's being in addition to the three divine persons God the Father , God the Son and God the Holy Spirit . This condemned the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 (it was a thesis attributed and attacked to Joachim von Fiore Petrus Lombardus ; the council, however, defended the orthodoxy of the Lombard on this issue ). Petrus Cellensis formulated in the 12th century that if a quaternity were permissible, then this would be completed by Mary.

literature

  • Robert Berner: The Rule of Four . Four Essays on the Principle of Quaternity. Studies on Themes and Motifs in Literature series, New York, 1996.
  • Anna C. Esmeijer: Divina Quaternitas . A Preliminary Study in the Method and Application of Visual Exegesis. Van Gorcum, Amsterdam 1978.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ John G. Neihardt : Black Elk Speaks , Lincoln, Nebraska 1979; here after George L. Elder: Quaternity , in: Linday Jones (ed.): Encyclopedia of Religion, Thomson Gale, 2nd A. 2005, Vol. 11, 7550f, here 7550
  2. ↑ a b Elder 2005, 7750.
  3. ↑ Rigveda 10.90 de sa 
  4. ↑ See e.g. B. Edward F. Edinger: Ego and Archetype , Shambala Publications, Boston 1992 with details of relevant passages in Jung, who himself extensively discusses material from the history of religion.
  5. ↑ Denzinger-Hünermann No. 402.491.534.
  6. ↑ Denzinger-Hünermann No. 803f.
  7. ↑ "ut si ullo modo Trinitas illa quaternitatem externam admitteret, tu sola quaternitatem compleres", Sermo 13, Patrologia Latina 202, 675D.