Doctrine of the Trinity ST506 LESSON 09 of 24 Peter Toon, DPhil Cliff College Oxford University King s College University of London Liverpool University This is the ninth lecture in the series on the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. We begin with this prayer: Almighty and everlasting God who hast given unto us thy servants grace by the confession of a true faith to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity and in the power of the divine majesty to worship the unity. We beseech thee that thou wouldst keep us steadfast in this faith and evermore defend us from all adversities who livest and reignest one God world without end, Amen. We continue in this ninth lecture that which we began in the eighth. You will recall that we began to reflect upon the development of the doctrine into the dogma of the Holy Trinity in the early church. We noticed the brief contribution of Jewish Christianity and of the early apologists. And we concentrated more on the response of Irenaeus to Gnosticism. And then we had something to say about modalism about its origins in the late second century and its prevalence in the third century and how that, although it was combated and met intellectually in the third and fourth centuries, it has remained in the church and seemingly surfaces in most generations. In this particular lecture, we re going to continue where we left off and to look first of all at Tertullian and then from Tertullian to Origen. And then from Origen we move to the Council of Nicea or at least to Arius, who I guess if there s any one individual person who caused the meeting of the Council of Nicea it would be Arius. But we begin then with Tertullian. Tertullian was a man who lived in Carthage, and he has been rightly described as the father of Latin theology. He wrote and thought in Latin. And therefore, he is very important from that point of view as being one of the earliest exponents of the Christian faith in the Latin language. And as we shall see, he is also very important because he bequeaths to the whole church but specifically to the Latin-speaking Western church certain phrases, certain ways of speaking of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Remember that he was 1 of 11
facing, as Irenaeus had done, the context of Gnosticism. But also Tertullian was well aware of this option, at least it seemed to some to be an option, of modalism. And therefore, he begins his thinking from what they called the rule of faith, that is the faith handed down within the church from the apostolic period. And he sought to mold his speculative thinking or his philosophical and theological thinking on the basis of the rule of faith. And so working from the church s simple Trinitarian confession of faith, Tertullian was able to make a critical, that is, an intellectual use of the idea of emanation. And he did it by excluding from the concept of emanation each and any and every separation of the emergent from its source, by linking the idea of emanation with the other idea which seems to be completely alien to it of unitas substantia, that is, oneness of substance. Notice what he s doing here. This is critical. He takes the concept of emanation which because of the Gnostic influence was widely accepted and widely held. But he excludes from it any and every separation of the emergent from its source by interpreting emanation through this apparently contrary and alien concept of oneness of substance. So you can see where he s going. There is the Father, and there is the Son who in some sense or another comes from the Father. And there is the Holy Spirit who also in some sense or another comes from the Father, but that we are not talking here of an emanation in the Gnostic sense because this relation, this emanation for Tertullian is interpreted through the further concept of the unitas substantia, the unity, the oneness of substance. The consequence of this particular development of thought was that the doctrine of the Holy Trinity could no longer have the cosmological function in Tertullian s expression that it had for the Gnostics. And thus the way was opened for the doctrine of an ontological as we may say or an immanent Trinity. However, although Tertullian did move toward and develop the concept of an immanent or an ontological Trinity, it was of course a Trinity which was soteriologically motivated. That is, it wasn t speculative in the sense that it was grounded in philosophical reasoning. Rather it was grounded in and proceeded from reflection concerning the saving work of the Father in and through and by the Son with and in and through the Holy Spirit. 2 of 11
So Tertullian s doctrine of the Trinity, and again I commend to you the original sources if you want to take a depth charge in this particular area. Tertullian s doctrine of the Trinity preserved both the monarchia, the first order of the Father from whom everything proceeds as the rule of faith and the creeds of the church declared. It preserves the priority, the monarchy, of the Father. But at the same time it also preserves what they called in Greek the economy, that is, the work of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit in the creation and the redemption of the world. And it does this by reason of the Father giving to the Son a participation in His dominion and exercising this dominion in and through Him, and so Tertullian is able in his writings to preserve unity in God, oneness in God, and yet at the same time to be able to expound the distinction as well. And of course in this he differed radically from modalism. And in fact Tertullian specifically differentiates himself from modalism in his discussion with Praxeas. The modalists, you will recall, see in the Son and the Spirit only different manifestations of the Father. They deny, they set aside the fact that the Father is a father only in relation to the Son and the Son is only the Son in relation to the Father. So contrary to this, we find in Tertullian the statement of the Holy Trinity in these terms. The three are one substance, not one person. And, therefore, it is Tertullian, who despite the fact that he was struggling at times to express himself and therefore has certain expressions and certain passages which by later standards seem to be not acceptable. Remember he came before the Council of Nicea and before the Council of Constantinople. And he was making a valiant intellectual effort to express with accuracy the rule of faith, the rule of believing within the church. So despite the weaknesses that one can inevitably find in his writings, we look to Tertullian because he was the one who gave to the church that theological language of three persons, one substance. And therefore he laid the foundations of what later became known as the specifically Christian dogma of the Holy Trinity. So, Tertullian then is the first great Latin theologian who addresses himself and expounds the doctrine of the Holy Trinity and therefore helps on its way the development of this doctrine. We now turn to another great theologian of the same period who also lived on the North African coast. But this time he did not live in the Latin city of Carthage, but he lived in the Greek city of Alexandria which is now of course in Egypt. Origen was an altogether different kind of person to Tertullian. Origen was 3 of 11
a very able philosopher. He probably was before Augustine the greatest mind of the church. And he had a tremendously powerful speculative mind. He was also a theologian, a teacher who wished to be faithful to the sacred Scriptures and the baptismal, Trinitarian rule of faith which the church held, taught, and confessed. And so using his philosophical ratiocinative talents and being committed to the rule of faith and the sacred Scriptures, he himself sought to work out the theological meaning of the baptismal confession. Baptize them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. And in doing this, he is consciously setting aside Gnosticism and the presuppositions and the content of the Gnostic ways of relating the universe to God and God to the universe. And we look to him particularly as the one who helped the church in its development of thinking concerning the relation of the Father and of the Son. He compares the Father and the Son and sets up their relation one to the other using the simple image of a light and its brightness, which is an image that was used also by Tertullian. But from him we get the concept of the begetting by the Father as being eternally begetting. That is, it is not a begetting which occurred at a point in space and time, but it is a relation of begetting which is eternal and means that the Father forever has been eternally begetting His eternally-begotten Son. And so we get in the later statements the phraseology such as begotten of the Father before all ages. But that is not to be interpreted in terms of a specific event, because we re talking about when there is no space and no time when there is only God as God, God in His own eternity, not a created eternity which the angels enjoy, but God s own unique eternity which is most difficult for us even to begin to consider. But within that eternity, the Father eternally begets the Son. Again, you can follow up on the contribution of Origen in the books that I mentioned, the books by J. N. D. Kelly and by Jaroslav Pelikan. To sum up what I ve been trying to say thus far, the work of Irenaeus, the work of Tertullian, and the work of Origen enabled the church to come to grips with the speculations of the Gnostics and enabled the church to develop or continue the development of a Trinitarian understanding, a Trinitarian doctrine of God in which what we call the economic Trinity, that is God as God is toward us God Creator, God Savior, God Redeemer, a doctrine in which the economic Trinity and the ontological or the immanent Trinity, that is God as God is within Himself and towards Himself in His own eternity enabled the church, that is, us being the 4 of 11
church, to develop a Trinitarian doctrine in which the economic Trinity and the immanent Trinity are inseparably joined together. In the thinking of these three theologians and others of their time, there were as I ve noted in passing weaknesses in terms of what later theology came to express more clearly and more exactly. And they have been accused and, in this sense are rightly accused, of these weaknesses. But the fact is that on their own terms, in their own times, facing the questions that they were facing and struggling with the possibilities that they were struggling with, we salute them as making this very important contribution to that development which begins to take a dogmatic shape when we get to the Council of Nicea in 325 and achieves a further clarification in the second ecumenical council of 381 at Constantinople. Therein I stop my presentation of what I called in the last lecture the first phase of this development. You remember I said that the theological development of the doctrine of the Trinity was achieved in the Greco-Roman Hellenistic world into phases, first of all in the conflict with Gnosticism in the third century and secondly in the conflict with Hellenistic philosophy in the fourth. And so we now turn to that second phase. The second phase, as I indicated earlier, is distinguished chiefly by the arrival on the scene and thus by the name of Arius of Alexandria and by the direction taken by that teaching which is associated with him, his colleagues, and his disciples known as Arianism. In this case, it s not Gnosticism. But in this case it s what is called in the history of philosophical systems middle Platonism. It was under the influence of middle Platonism, middle Platonic philosophy that Arius radicalized the subordinationist tendencies which are present in the Christian tradition of explaining the Holy Trinity up to this point. This is to the beginning of the fourth century, 310 to 320. Arius worked out a system in which God and the world were radically separated and, therefore, had to be linked by the logos understood as an intermediate being, a being who is higher than the angels but lower than God. So it is Arius that we must now address ourselves to because without understanding him and his teaching, we cannot truly understand what the Council of Nicea had to face and why it used the terminology that it did. So now we introduce Arius as an Alexandrian presbyter who d studied under Lucian of Antioch. And he publicly attacked the teaching of Alexander, who was the bishop of Alexandria in the period around 315 to 316. And he was excommunicated in 318 by the synod of the church in Alexandria in north Egypt. In spite 5 of 11
of this, however, he continued to spread his own doctrine and even managed to find favor with other bishops in that area that we call Palestine, Egypt, Syria. The reason why he found favor with other bishops was that there were still in this period much speculation and little absolute certainty of one and one way only of expressing the baptismal creed which requires belief in the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit one God. So if we can appreciate that, we can understand why at that period even though he was excommunicated by the synod of the church in northern Egypt in Alexandria, he could still find favor in other parts of the Roman Empire. And there was the further problem that at that time there were no telephones and there was no postal service at least of the modern kind. Therefore, information could only be taken by human beings riding on horses or in other ways. And so communication was slow. So Arius in a sense struck a chord with many others in the church at this time. And that chord was that they lived in a particular culture and, within that culture, the dominant philosophical approach was that known as middle Platonism. Coming out of this Hellenistic middle Platonism and seeking to make the Scriptures meaningful within that philosophical context, the tendency always was to equate the Father with true God, real God, and then to have to make the Son and the Spirit high creatures in fact the highest of creatures, but creatures. When we look to Arius, we find that only a few of his writings are still in existence. There is a letter which he wrote to Eusebius, bishop of Nicomedia, around the year 318. There is from him a profession of faith again in the form of letter sent to his own bishop, the bishop who excommunicated him, Alexander of Alexandria, about the year 320. There is a profession of faith presented to the emperor Constantine the Great about the year 327. And then there is a treatise of which only fragments have been preserved called the Thaleia. And then there are other minor, small writings. I want to read to you with comments, because it s very important, the letter of Arius to his bishop, Bishop Alexander. He managed to get two other bishops and six presbyters and six deacons to sign this letter that he wrote to Alexander. And it contains this profession of faith from Arius. As I read it, I want you to see this as an attempt to fit the Christian revelation, that is, the revelation recorded in the New Testament on the basis of being the completion of the Old Testament and then as summarized in the baptismal creed and the rule of faith of the early churches. It is an attempt to fit the biblical understanding into the philosophical, 6 of 11
the middle Platonism understanding. Here we go then, the profession of faith. This, blessed father [that s father bishop], is the faith that we receive from our elders and also learned from you. We acknowledge one God who alone is unbegotten, who alone is eternal, who alone is without beginning, who alone is true, who alone is immortal, who alone is wise, who alone is good, who alone is full of power. It is He who judges all, He who controls all things, He who provides all things, and He is subject to no change or alteration. He is just and good. He is the God of the law and of the prophets and of the new covenant. This one God before all time begot His only begotten Son through whom He made the ages and the universe. He begot Him not just in appearance but in fact. By His own will He made His Son to subsist and He made Him unchangeable and unalterable. God s perfect Creature, He is unlike any other creature, begotten yes, but unique in the manner of His begetting. I ll stop there for a second. You will have heard there the absolutely clear statement of the one God, the God of the law and the prophets, that is, the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New. And you will have heard how this one God begets the one who is called His only begotten Son, but that very clearly Arius says that He who is begotten before all the ages and before the creation of the universe, He is nevertheless a creature, God s perfect creature. And then with reference to the Gnosticism and the Manichaeism of his day and with reference to Sabellius, this is what he says in the next paragraph. This offspring of God is not as, Valentinus taught, an emission or an emanation of the Father. Neither is He as Marne taught a part of the Father consubstantial with Him. Neither is He the same Person as the Father as Sabellius said dividing the unity. Nor is it as Hieracas held as if there were one torch from another or one lamp with two parts. Neither is it true to say that He who previously existed was then begotten or constituted as Son. You yourself blessed father [Father Alexander the bishop] many times in counsel and in the midst of the church refuted those who held 7 of 11
these views. And then we continue, But we say that He was created by God s will before all ages. From the Father He received being and life. And in creating Him, the Father conferred His own glory upon Him. Yet the Father in giving all things into His possession did not despoil Himself of them. He contains all things in Himself in an unbegotten way. For He the Father is the source of all things. Therefore, there are three substances. But God who is the cause of all things is absolutely the only one who is without beginning. The Son born of the Father before all time created and constituted in being before all ages did not exist before He was begotten. Born outside of time, generated before all else, He alone received being from the Father. He is not eternal-coeternal with the Father, nor is He as the Father is unbegotten. Neither as some say of things that are related to each other does He have being simultaneously with the Father. For thus there would be two unbegotten principles that God as He is a unity [that s a monad] and source of all things, so He exists before all things. Therefore, He also exists before the Son as we heard you preach to the whole people. Inasmuch then as the Son has being, glory, and life from the Father in so much is God His source. He is His Lord as being His God and existing before Him. If some people understand the phrases from Him, from the womb, and I came forth from the Father and I come as implying that He is a consubstantial part of the Father or a sort of emission or emanation, they make the Father composite, divisible and changeable. Indeed, God would be a body if they had their way, and the incorporeal God would be affected in ways in which only bodies can be affected. That s pretty dense stuff, but I think that even for those who are not familiar with the development of the early church and its theology, it comes across reasonably clearly that God is the one who is the absolutely supreme one. 8 of 11
He is unchangeable. He is the absolute. He is the ultimate. He is God and only God. And then however exalted and however high be the One who is called the Son, He does not have the identical same Godhead, the identical same being as does the One and true God. But His is a derived being. His is a created being. And though He be higher than all the archangels and all the cherubim and seraphim, nevertheless, the Son is not God. He is the highest of the creatures and thus He is a mediator between the created universe and the true God. From this profession of faith we can see that Arius and his companions, the bishops and the presbyters and deacons who signed this letter with him, are wanting in a sense to improve upon the New Testament and to improve upon the baptismal creed by excluding every metaphor and all anthropomorphic language. The Father alone for them would be unbegotten without any source and truly eternal. The Son, because He has a source, would be neither unbegotten nor eternal but would be a kind of supreme creature made out of nothing through the will of the Father. Admittedly, the phrase out of nothing does not occur in the long profession of faith which I ve just read. But Arius himself had earlier written to Eusebius of Nicomedia, who was in the early days a fellow student with him. And in so doing, he had written in this way. So I now quote from the letter of Arius to Eusebius of Nicomedia a letter dating from about 318. But what we say and what we believe is what we have taught and still teach. Namely that the Son is neither unbegotten nor in any way a part of the unbegotten, and neither was He made from any preexisting matter by the decision and counsel of the Father. He subsisted before all ages. He is fully God, God s only begotten Son and He is immutable. But before He was begotten, before He was created, before He was constituted in being by the Father, He did not exist for He was not unbegotten. They persecute us [that s the orthodox Christians as we later came to call them] because we say that the Son has a source and a beginning, but God has not. This is why they abuse us and also because we use the phrase out of nothing. But we use this phrase because the Son is not a part of the Father nor on the other hand was He made out of any preexisting matter. 9 of 11
As you can see, Arius is saying here that the Son is immutable, but on other occasions he had taught that He was mutable, changeable, according to the letter of Alexander of Alexandria written to all the bishops of the church about the year 319. I quote: The language they have invented which runs counter to the meaning of Scripture is as follows. God was not always Father, but there was a time when He was not Father. The Word of God did not always exist but was made out of nothing. For God who is brought into existence out of what was nonexistent one who was nonexistent. And so there was a time when He was not. For the Son is something created, something made. He is not similar to the Father in respect of substance, neither is He the true and natural Word of the Father. Nor is He the Father s true wisdom but belongs to the things that have been made and created. He is improperly called the Word and wisdom since He Himself was made through the Word of God in the proper sense and through the wisdom that is in God in which wisdom God made not only all other things but Him as well. Therefore, He is mutable by nature as all rational creatures are. The Word is outside of God s substance, other than God s substance, apart from God s substance. The Son cannot tell all about the Father, for He cannot see the Father perfectly. And His knowledge of the Father is imperfect and imprecise. Indeed the Son does not even know His own substance as it is in itself. For it was for our sakes that He was made so that through His instrumentality as it were, God might create us. And He would not have existed if God had not wished to bring us into being. To the question whether it is possible that the Word of God is such that He could be changed in the way that the devil was changed, they did not draw back from answering that it is indeed possible. Because being made and created, He is by nature changeable. 10 of 11
That is from a letter, not of Arius himself, but from a letter of the bishop of Alexandria, Alexander, written to the bishops of the church in 319 in which he is explaining what he understood to be the teaching of Arius and his supporters. And as you could tell as I read it, he understood that teaching in such a way that not only is the Son the one who is called the Son of God or the one who is called the Word of God, not only is He brought into existence out of nothing. Not only is He therefore a creature, but that being made a creature, howbeit the highest of creatures, He is therefore mutable. And in fact just as Satan, the devil, changed, was mutable, so the nature of the Son, the created Son, is changeable. As you reflect upon this teaching of Arius, and you can read some of it in the collection of documents in The Trinitarian Controversy edited by William G. Rusch and in other collections of patristic literature, as you read this, I think that you will begin to see that when the church is seeking to present its faith in a meaningful way within a particular philosophical climate, then there is always the danger that the philosophical climate will determine how the doctrine is expressed not merely in a technical way but I mean in a substantial way. And what we have with Arianism, and it began with Arius and then developed in various ways after him, a most complicated story. What we have with Arianism is the accommodation of the biblical faith to middle Platonism in such a way that the biblical faith is changed, and what we have is a middle Platonic expression of the Christian faith. Now that is pretty serious. That is pretty serious, and this is why the answer provided by the Council of Nicea and then developed further in the Council of Constantinople is so important and so critical. Apart from that, I think we can all learn how powerful is the philosophical cultural context in which we live and how at all times we have to be aware of it and not allow the biblical faith to be changed or crushed or made to appear to be something else by its context. We shall continue these themes in the next lecture. Christ-Centered Learning Anytime, Anywhere 11 of 11