Benedictus Aretius

Steven Avery

Administrator
Benedictus Aretius
PRDL
http://prdldev.juniusinstitute.org/author_view.php?a_id=118

Benedictus Aretius (1505-1574)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benedictus_Aretius

Benedictus Aretius (surname derived from Marti by Greek translation) (1505–1574) was a Swiss Protestant theologian, Protestant reformer and natural philosopher. ....

His major work, Theologiæ problemata (Bern, 1573), was a compendium of the knowledge of the time and was highly valued. His Examen theologicum (1557) ran through six editions in fourteen years. His works also include

  • a commentary on the New Testament (1580 and 1616) and on the Pentateuch (1602; 2d ed., with commentary on the Psalms added, 1618);
  • a commentary on Pindar (1587);
  • a description of the flora of two mountains of the Bernese Oberland, Stockhorn and Niesen (Strasbourg, 1561);
  • a Hebrew method for schools (Basel, 1561); and
  • a defense of the execution (in 1566) of the antitrinitarian Valentin Gentilis (Geneva, 1567).
 
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Steven Avery

Administrator
RGA - p. 164-165
In his commentary on the Catholic Epistles (1608), Benedictus Aretius of Bern accepted the comma, and insisted (implicitly criticising Calvin) that the agreement of the three heavenly witnesses refers to their essence and not merely their witness. Aretius also ran the ridiculous argument that the Arians had attempted to expunge the comma from the Syriac text. But, he concluded, since this verse had been restored in “all the corrected versions these days,” the reader ought not place any weight on the absence of the comma from the Syriac version.33

33 Aretius, 1608, 257: “Tres testes Diuinitatis Christi profert ex coelo, vt monstret efficaciam
Spiritus operantis per prędicationem Euangelij veram esse. Tres, inquit, sunt in Coelo huius rei
testes, Pater, qui in Baptismo hoc testatur, Matth. 3. λόγος & ipse Filius, qui idem non negat,
imò affirmat, Ioan. 14. & cap. 17. & alibi frequenter. Spiritus quoque Sanctus idem testatur, qui
in Baptismo præsens est specie columbæ, & à Christo vt consolator suorum mittitur à Patre in
corda fidelium. Atque hi tres vnum sunt, ἕν εἰσιν, non solum consensu, quod quidem
verissimum est, h. e. eadem est trium personarum Diuinitas, substantia & dignitas. Idem etiam
sunt consensu. Nam vnum & idem docent de Christi natura, quòd sit Dei Filius. Hunc versum
deleuerunt ex Syriaco Testamento indubiè Arriani, qui hoc fulmine prosternuntur valide. Ideo
olim quoque in multis exemplaribus Græcis & Latinis defuit. Sed habent hæc verba hodie
correcta exemplaria omnia,

Aretius, Benedictus. Commentarii in Epistolas canonicas, facili et perspicua methodo conscripti. Posterior haec editio superiori emendatior aucta est isagoge in ipsam Epistolam. [Bern]: Jean le Preux, 1608.

BCEME p. 80
But not everyone was so positive about Calvin’s exegesis. In his commentary
on the Catholic Epistles, the Calvinist Benedictus Aretius
(† 1574) of Bern accepted the comma, but insisted (implicitly criticising
Calvin) that the agreement of the three heavenly witnesses refers not
merely their witness, but also to their essence. Aretius also argued that
the Arians had attempted to expunge the comma from the Syriac text.
But, he concluded, since this verse had been restored in ‘all the corrected
versions these days’, the reader ought not give any importance to
the absence of the comma from the Syriac version.37

37 Aretius 1608, 257; cf. Bludau 1903a, 397

Aretius, Benedictus. Commentarii in Epistolas canonicas. [Bern]: Jean Le Preux, 1608.

Commentarii in Epistolas canonicas, facili et perspicua methodo conscripti. Posterior haec editio superiori emendatior aucta est isagoge in ipsam Epistolam (1608)
Benedictus Aretius
https://books.google.com/books?id=o54UAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA257
1662119223530.png
 
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Steven Avery

Administrator
A short history of Valentinus Gentilis, the tritheist tryed, condemned, and put to death by the Protestant reformed city and church of Bern in Switzerland, for asserting the three divine persons of the Trinity, to be [three distinct, eternal spirits, &c.] / wrote in Latin, by Benedictus Aretius, a divine of that church, and now translated into English for the use of Dr. Sherlock ... (1696)
Benedictus Aretius and Robert South (may be translator)
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A25775.0001.001?view=toc
http://archive.org/details/shorthistoryofva00aret
https://books.google.com/books?id=nrI8AAAAcAAJ&pg=PA45
https://books.google.com/books?id=nrI8AAAAcAAJ&pg=PA50
p. 45 "three are one"
p. 49-50
p. 92 - begotten God

Blasphemy: Verbal Offense Against the Sacred, from Moses to Salman Rushdie (1995)
Leonard Williams Levy
https://books.google.com/books?id=zZu63qz85nsC&pg=PA70

1662116886640.png

1662117410595.png

P 229
In 1696 , someone put into an English translation Aretius’s Latin book of 1567, which was published in Bern in justification of the Calvinist execution of Valentinus Gentilis , the Tritheist *; what made the English edition ...

Antitrinitarian Biography: Or Sketches of the Lives and Writings of Distinguished Antitrinitarians : Exhibiting a View of the State of the Unitarian Doctrine and Worship in the Principal Nations of Europe, from the Reformation to the Close of the Seventeenth Century ; to which is Prefixed a History of Unitarianism in England During the Same Period ; in Three Volumes, Volume 2 (1850)
Robert Wallace
https://books.google.com/books?id=tT9BAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA104

John Valentine Gentilis, (Ital. Gentile,) the son
of Francis Gentilis, was a native of Cosenza, in the king-
dom of Naples, and suffered death at Bern, on account of
his religious sentiments; “ his only error ” being, in the
words of Mosheim, “ that he considered the Son and Holy
Spirit as subordinate to the Father.”

....

Benedict Aretius extracted from the writings of Gentilis
the following propositions. 1. The Trinity is a mere
human invention, unknown to the Catholic Creeds, and
diametrically opposed to evangelical truth. 2. The Father
alone is that God, who in Scripture is called the One, and
the Only God. 3. The Son is not of himself, but of the
Father, to whom, as deriving his essence from him, he is
subordinate. 4. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are
distinct, not only as regards their persons, but their essence.
5. The Son was begotten of the Father, according to his
essence, as a subordinate Spirit, different from the Father.
G. There are three Eternal Spirits, each of whom is a god
of himself. *7. These three Spirits are distinct in order,
degree, and essential properties.

Archetypal heresy: Arianism through the Centuries -(1996)
Maurice F. Wiles
http://books.google.com/books?id=4NkNrCnzHgcC&pg=PA58
https://vdoc.pub/documents/archetypal-heresy-arianism-through-the-centuries-6lua2oaff1e0

Despite Gentile's explicit differentiation of his own position from that of Arius, Aretius, one of those involved in his execution, argues for a significant similarity between the two. He acknowledges that Gentile asserts that 'the Word was begotten of the substance of the Father, and is consubstantial with him', whereas Arius describes the Son as 'made out of nothing'. But end p.58 both, he argues, are agreed that 'as to his substance the Son is numerically distinct from the Father'. In this respect, and also in their understanding of the Son's generation as belonging to the temporal order, the two can, he claims, be said to share the same, wholly unacceptable view. 33 33 B.

Aretius, A Short History of Valentinus Gentilis the Tritheist (London, 1696), 58-63. This work was originally published in Geneva in 1567 under the title Valentini Gentilis justo capitis supplicio Bernae affecti brevis historia, et contra eiusdam blasphemias orthodoxa defensio articuli de S. Trinitate.

The production of an English translation and the choice of its title were part of a campaign against William Sherlock in the 'tritheist' controversy in England at the end of the 17th century. Protestant orthodoxy shared with its Catholic counterpart a strong urge to associate any heretic in the area of Trinitarian doctrine with the name of Arius.
 
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