Doctrine of the Trinity

Doctrine of the Trinity ST506 LESSON 15 of 24 Peter Toon, DPhil Cliff College Oxford University King s College University of London Liverpool University This is the fifteenth lecture in the series on the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. I begin with a prayer addressed to our Lord Jesus Christ and taken from the Service for Matins or Morning Prayer of the early Greek-speaking church. Illumine our hearts, O Sovereign Master who lovest man with the pure light of thy wisdom, and open the eyes of our understanding to the comprehension of the proclamation of thy gospel. Implant in us also the fear of thy blessed commandments that trampling down all carnal appetites we may lead a godly life both thinking and doing all with such things as are pleasing in thy sight, for thou art the sanctification and the illumination both of our souls and bodies, O Christ our God. And unto thee we ascribe glory together with thy Father who hath no beginning and thine all holy and blessed and life-giving Spirit now and ever and unto the ages of ages, Amen. Again you will notice in this Greek prayer how that the developed doctrine of the Trinity forms the wording of the conclusion to the prayer: O Christ our God and unto thee we ascribe glory together with thy Father who hath no beginning and thine all holy and blessed and life-giving Spirit now and ever and unto the ages of ages. This morning we turn our attention specifically to the creed which was promulgated by the Council of Constantinople in the year 381. There are various places where you can find the text of this creed. If you own the series, the select library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church: Second Series, edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, which has been reprinted in modern times by William B. Eerdmans, volume 14 is the volume on the seven ecumenical councils. And you will find the text both of the creed and of the canons of that council within that large volume. Another source is the more recent books on the Councils of the Church from the Jesuits. And you will find it in there both in Latin and Greek and then of course an English translation. The problem there with the English translation is that it is moving toward inclusive language, and therefore it is a different type of translation to that that you will find in the older books. 1 of 11

But the text that I am using is the one that I have been using all the time. It is the book by J. N. D. Kelly entitled The Early Christian Creeds. And it is his translation that I use. He prints the Greek on one side of the page and the English on the other side of the page. I m not going to read the whole creed again but merely to read the second paragraph which deals with the one Lord Jesus Christ and then the third paragraph, the beginning thereof which speaks of the Holy Spirit. And in one Lord Jesus Christ the only begotten Son of God, begotten from the Father before all ages Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten not made, of one substance with the Father through whom all things came into existence who, because of us men and because of our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate from the Holy Spirit and the virgin Mary and became Man. Then it continues to describe the incarnation and the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And then onto the third paragraph, And in the Holy Spirit the Lord and Life-giver who proceeds from the Father, who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and together glorified. Our first task is to note the differences between the Creed of Nicea, 325, the Nicene Creed properly speaking, and then this creed, the Creed of Constantinople which is often called the Nicene Creed and is so called in much liturgy where it is used therein. First of all let us note the omissions. What I am now going to say makes more sense if you can have the two versions in front of you, that is, 325 and 381. The omissions are as follows: the words that is from the substance of the Father, the words God from God, and the words things in heaven and things on earth. All these are from the second paragraph of the Nicene Creed, and they are left out of the version from 381. The other material which is left out is the material which contains the anathemas. One reason for this may have been that the anathemas as given in 325 were no longer appropriate, for they envisaged a form of Arianism which now had been left behind and that therefore they weren t immediately appropriate to the new situation where Arianism still existed but in a developed and different form. And then as we have been noting in past lectures, the church had developed a specific distinction between hypostasis and ousia. And you ll recall that the last anathema used them in such a way as to make them virtual synonyms, so it would have been confusing to repeat that anathema. And so for those reasons probably and for others they were left out. 2 of 11

Those then are the things left out. Now the other way round, the Creed of Constantinople contains a series of words and clauses in the second paragraph concerning the Son, some of them apparently of no great significance which are not present in the original Nicene Creed. For example, before all ages with begotten in the second article is left out. The words from the heavens with came down is left out. The sentence from the Holy Spirit and the virgin Mary with was incarnate, the clause and was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate with the connecting article and before suffered, the words and was buried after the word suffered, the words according to the Scriptures after rose again on the third day, the clause and sits on the right hand of the Father after ascended to heaven, the phrase again with glory with will come, and then of whose kingdom there will be no end. These are not present in Nicea but they are in that of Constantinople. But the major addition that we need to look at is that concerning the Holy Spirit. And so it is to that that we shall give our greatest attention. You will recall we have said this several times that when the Council of Constantinople met in 381, one of its particular aims was to develop or bring the church s teaching about the Holy Spirit into line with, into conformity with what it believed and what had been stated about the Son in the creed of the Council of Nicea. At various times between the Council of Nicea and the Council of Constantinople various of the leading theologians, the Fathers had said that the only place where they believed the Nicene Creed ought to be developed and perfected was with respect to the Holy Spirit. You will remember that in the original Nicene Creed there was only the briefest reference to the Holy Spirit, simply we believe in the Holy Spirit. The reason for that was that the 318 bishops and Fathers meeting at Nicea had only expressed their basic belief, for there were not yet any major disputes. And so it was not believed necessary to state more than the obvious. But when we come to 381, we are in a very different situation. If you look away for a moment from the actual creed of 381 to the first canon, you will find that in that canon various contemporary heresies, that is, contemporary with 381, are anathematized. And among those heresies anathematized is the heresy which said that the Holy Spirit was a creature. And so, one of the purposes of the council then was to assert the full deity and to assert the fact that the Holy Spirit is homoousios with the Father and with the Son and that being so He is also a separate person, a separate hypostasis. 3 of 11

Apparently, according to the report of the historian Socrates, the council began with this emphasis upon the full deity and the fact that the Holy Spirit is consubstantial with the Father and with the Son. But this did not please certain bishops from Macedonia, and there was somewhat of a walkout at the beginning of this council. And the walkout was because of this insistence on the homoousion of the Spirit. Therefore, after their departure, when it came to the creation of the creed that we now call the Creed of Constantinople, the Fathers who remained, as we shall see, employed what we may call some discretion in the words that they used of the Holy Spirit, discretion in the sense that they wanted to woo back and to win back those who had left and to bring reconciliation and unity to the church. But let us now turn to the words that are said concerning the Holy Spirit in the Creed of Constantinople and see where these words come from, what scriptural flavor they have. To remind you of the words if you don t have the text in front of you, We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of life who proceeds from the Father, who is worshipped and glorified together with the Father and the Son. First of all the word Lord, if you can remember way back at the beginning of this series, we reflected on the meaning of Yahweh, Kyrios, and how that Jesus is called the Lord. But you will remember also that Saint Paul in 2 Corinthians 3 and verses 17 and following speaks of the Holy Spirit as the Lord. Furthermore, you will remember that in Romans chapter 8 and in various other places, either specifically or indirectly by reason of inference, the Spirit is called by Paul the Spirit of life. And the epithet of life giver in its verbal form had been used of the Spirit in John 6:63 and 2 Corinthians 3:6. And so we can see that these words used by the Fathers are words that are developed from scriptural phraseology. And then the description concerning the Spirit that He proceeds from the Father was borrowed or taken from Jesus own words who you ll remember as recorded in John 15:26 said, The Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father. And you will recall that the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 2:12 speaks of the Spirit who is from God, and so putting these two together we can see the background of what is said in the creed. And then the words who spoke through the prophets was something which had been confessed from the very beginning very widely within the church. And if you want a specific verse for this, you could for example take 2 Peter 1:21, For no prophecy ever came by the will of man, but men spake from God being moved by the Holy Spirit. 4 of 11

So the first point we re trying to make here then is that the language used in the creed here is deliberately a melody or a bringing together of scriptural phraseology in order to show that what is believed, taught, and confessed here is based upon Scripture. But furthermore it is obvious from the background to the Creed of Constantinople, which we ve been looking at in terms of the development of doctrine and secondly in terms of the ecclesiastical situation, it is obvious that the creed was intended and this third paragraph in particular was intended to convey the conception of the deity, the divinity, the Godhead of the Holy Spirit. But to do so, as I ve already indicated, through language which is guarded and which is calculated to give no more offense than was necessary. The Greek word Lord [Kurios], as we ve already indicated, was the Septuagint equivalent of the Hebrew Yahweh, though its use for other lordships was common in the Hellenistic world. But the allimportant clause is who with the Father and the Son is together worshipped and together glorified. If you are a student of Athanasius and you know his writings, you will recognize that this is almost a reproduction of his own choice of words. You can find in several places in his writings the words who is glorified with the Father and with the Son. Furthermore, it also reflects some of the phraseology of Basil, whom we noticed as one of the Cappadocian theologians. Basil had spoken of that sound doctrine according to which the Son is confessed as homoousios with the Father and the Holy Spirit is numbered together with them and worshipped together with them with identical reverence or identical honor. Further, he also wrote, Glorifying the Holy Spirit with the Father and the Son because of the conviction that He is not alien from the divine nature. For that which is foreign in nature could not have shared in the same divine honors. In fact, the starting point of his treatise on the Holy Spirit was his desire to demonstrate the legitimacy of a doxology giving glory to the Father with the Son and with the Holy Spirit. And the burden of its central chapters was the demonstration of the identity and honor which is enjoyed by the Holy Spirit together with the Father and with the Son. You could say, and I think you could say with justice, that for the Cappadocian theologians such phraseology as conglorification or being glorified together with and the phrase identity of honor possessed a very specific meaning. They were in what you may call the language of worship, the equivalent in ontological terminology of consubstantial, that is, of homoousios. 5 of 11

To move on in our thinking concerning these words used of the Holy Spirit in the third article of the Creed of Constantinople, a feature of the words about the Holy Spirit which sometimes seems puzzling is the comparative mildness of the tone. You would have thought perhaps in the light of all that had gone on and the readiness of so many in the previous years to speak of the Holy Spirit as only a creature or as God but in a tertiary sense of being God, that is, in the third place in the order of subordination, that in the light of these things, that the Fathers at Constantinople would have been rather more emphatic and would have used the words consubstantial with homoousios of the same substance as. Now we ve noted that the word homoousios, although it is said of the Son in relation to the Father, it is not in this creed said of the Holy Spirit in relation to the Father. However, we have noted that it was used by the Cappadocian theologians and it was used by others. And therefore the question arises, Why wasn t it used here? Those present knew of the writings of the Cappadocians. All present knew that this type of phraseology was now being used more and more among those of the orthodox party. They were speaking of the consubstantiality of the Spirit with the Father and with the Son. Why isn t it here in this creed? And I think the only answer that can be given is that the Fathers there without in any way backing off from their belief that the Holy Spirit is consubstantial with the Father and with the Son, without backing off from that, they deliberately used the language which they believed would be more reconciliatory, more attractive to those who still had not yet developed in their theological understanding to be ready to confess the homoousios. So I think that it is probably as simple as that. But of course our records of those days are rather limited. And therefore, that is a calculated guess; but it is based upon what I think is the majority scholarly opinion on this matter. Remember that the aim of producing this creed was to produce it for the whole of the church in the whole of the Roman Empire both east and west. And therefore, it was necessary that it be put in such a form that it would win to orthodoxy as many as possible and would be able to be confessed by the greatest number as the creed of orthodoxy, and looking back over the years that is exactly what happened. This creed often as we ve noted called the Nicene Creed but not so, it is technically the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed. This creed is called the Ecumenical Creed in the best sense of the word ecumenical, meaning that it is used in East and West by Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant. So this creed was confessed by the bishops who were at Constantinople. And thus 6 of 11

it is sometimes known by the number of bishops there. And in this case there were less than the number at Nicea, there were 150 present. And so it is sometimes called The Exposition or The Profession of Faith of the 150 Fathers. Following that ecumenical council, it is interesting to note the progress of the use of the creed in the church. If you turn to the eastern part of the empire, the Greek-speaking part of the Roman Empire, what you find is that very quickly this creed becomes the sole, the only baptismal creed in the Eastern churches. So it became the creed which was taught to catechumens when they were seeking entry into the Christian church in their preparation for holy baptism. And entering into the church, this was the faith that was expounded to them upon of course and in the context of its scriptural basis. This was the creed. And then when they were baptized, usually on the Saturday before Easter Day, when they were baptized this was the creed that they confessed. And furthermore, if we look to the western part of the empire where already there was a baptismal creed in place which we now call The Apostles Creed, even there, there is evidence that in some parts of the Western church, the creed of the Council of Constantinople became the baptismal confession. Where it was used and the history of its usage in the West is a very complicated story, and I must refer you to the learned discussion of J. N. D. Kelly and those to whom he refers if you re interested in following out the use of the Creed of Constantinople in the rite for holy baptism. When we turn to what was called in those ancient days the Holy Eucharist, or it s called by Protestants today, the Lord s Supper or Holy Communion, when we turn to that and look at the liturgies, the orders for worship which were used in the fourth and fifth and sixth and seventh centuries, we find that not immediately but very soon after the council the Creed of Constantinople entered into the liturgy, that is, the liturgy of Sunday, the liturgy of the Lord s Day which was of course the liturgy of the Holy Eucharist which comprised of the ministry of the Word, that is, the reading of Scriptures from the Old and the New Testament, the exposition of the same in the sermon, and all the things connected with the ministry of the Word. And within those all things connected with the ministry of the Word was the recital of the creed, and the creed that came to be used in the East and then in the West within that service of worship was the Creed of Constantinople. However, when it was transferred from being the joint profession of faith of the pastors of the church, the bishops of the church who together in unison said we believe, when it was transferred 7 of 11

as I say into the Eucharist and where it functioned as a baptismal creed wherein all the members of the church as members of Christ together were assembled, each one as a member in the body of Christ said I believe. And so it was a move from the we to the I because the function of the creed in the service of worship is not a profession of everyone as it were altogether as a body, but it is the response of the individual Christian baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit speaking along with other members of the body of Christ and therefore speaking together but each one speaking for himself saying I believe in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. So its use as a baptismal creed and then as a baptismal creed within the Holy Eucharist became the norm in the East and to a less extent because the so-called Apostles Creed was still used in the West with respect to baptism. Before I move on, let me make one comment about the use of the creed in Christian worship. Those of you who belong to churches in which the creed is recited may have noticed that since the 1960s the way in which the creed has been recited has been not I believe in God the Father Almighty but rather we believe. And when you have asked or when others have asked, why the we, you have been told that that is because the original form of the creed was we. As I have tried to show you that is absolutely correct. And if you go to the original documents of Nicea and Constantinople you will find that that is precisely what was the case. However, and this is the big however, when you take a creed from being the profession of the bishops as it were holding hands and standing together against the world, the flesh, and the devil, and against all heresies and saying we believe, when you take that creed and put it into the Holy Eucharist or into Holy Baptism, it there is functioning as a baptismal creed. And although we are all together in Christ one in Christ each of us comes to the Father through the Son by the Spirit as an individual person. Each of us believes for himself as it were in entering into the body of Christ. So it seems to me that this move to use we instead of I is much more a modern statement about community, about bringing individual persons together in community and getting them to do things together in worship than it is about baptismal creeds and a baptismal confession. But I leave that for your cogitation and reflection. Maybe you can talk to some of your professors or your pastors about it, because I think there are a lot of false messages being perpetrated at the moment concerning the difference 8 of 11

between the we and the I at the beginning of the creed. In the time that is left in this lecture I want to return to that book which you obviously have gathered I have a great regard for. And it is the book by T. F. Torrance, The Trinitarian Faith. And I want to read certain lines from him and to comment as I go. Again please note the richness in his presentation. The great value of this book is that while it is historical in the sense that it uses good, well-founded, historical information as the background for what is said, it is an exposition of the Nicene Creed written from the perspective of the actors in the original play. In other words, though you meet something of the great T. F. Torrance within it, for obviously he has organized the material, he has gone out of his way, and it is the mature writing of his final period as a scholar, to let the original Fathers who were involved in the creation of these creeds to do the speaking and to do the explaining. But what I am now reading from is from his forward not from any of the writings of the Fathers whom he quotes. The Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed was essentially the fruit of Eastern catholic theology. It represents the work of the Greek fathers in reaching careful expression of crucial points in the gospel where it had been seriously misunderstood and distorted under the influence of dualist ways of thought deriving from Hellenism and Hellenized Judaism. The central place accorded to Jesus Christ in the faith of the church called for a clear answer to the question as to whether He was Himself Lord and God or only a created intermediary between God and man. Where was the line of demarcation between God and the creature to be drawn, between God the Father and Jesus Christ or between Jesus Christ the incarnate Son of God and the world? That was the basic question faced by the Nicene Fathers and answered in their unqualified acknowledgment of the deity of Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. So we note there what he s saying that in respect of the Hellenistic worldview which was common in the context in which the Nicene Fathers lived, they placed Jesus Christ on the side of God and not on the side of the creature. The Arians, although they placed Jesus Christ in the highest realms of creaturehood, placed Him over the line, as it were, not on the line with God but over the line in the line with the creation. So that then is the homoousios of the Son. But he goes on, The same question was again raised after 9 of 11

the Council of Nicea in respect of the Holy Spirit. Is the Holy Spirit to be worshipped along with the Father and the Son as Himself God? And having His being with the Son on the divine side of that absolute distinction between the Creator and the creature, or is He to be thought of in terms of the immanent forms of rationality within the creature universe? The Nicene declaration of belief in the Holy Spirit was strengthened at Constantinople we may add to make clear that He the Holy Spirit is the Lord, the Kyrios, and the giver of life and is in no sense whatsoever a creature. And he goes on, The basic decision taken at Nicea made it clear that the eternal relation between the Father and the Son in the Godhead was regarded in the church as the supreme truth upon which everything else in the gospel depends. Jesus Christ is Himself the content of God s unique self-revelation to mankind. It is on the ground of what God has actually revealed of His own nature in Him as His only-begotten Son that everything else to be known of God and of His relation to the world and human beings is to be understood. It is only when we know God the Father in and through His Son who belongs to His own being as God that we may know Him in any true and accurate way. That is, to know God strictly in accordance with His own divine nature. In order to know Him in that way, however, we must enter into an intimate and saving relation with Him in Jesus Christ His incarnate Son. For it is only through reconciliation to God by the blood of Christ that we may draw near to Him and have access to Him. The Lord Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen Son of God is the way, the truth and the life apart from whom no one has access to the Father. His incarnate reality has been made the supreme Principle of all God s ways and works within the order of creation and redemption alike and the controlling Principle of all our understanding of them. Thus, the very essence of the gospel and the whole of the Christian faith depend on the centrality and primacy of the relation in being in ousia, that is, and agency between Jesus Christ and God the Father. Those are rich and solid words. And I m sure that my reading of them may have the effect of encouraging you to try to get a copy of this book, which is published in Scotland by T&T Clark. There I must draw to a close what I ve been saying. You ll remember that 10 of 11

we have been examining the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed. We have noted the verbal changes between the Creed of Nicea and the Creed of Constantinople. And we have noted that there are a lot of minor changes, but we also noted that the major additions are concerning the Holy Spirit and that while the creed does not use the homoousios of the relation of the Father and the Spirit, it does speak in such a way as to say in the language of worship and the language of reverence what is said in the language of ontology by the use of the homoousios. But it used the words it did to be as conciliatory and as useful in the widest context as it possibly could be. And then we noted how this creed became the major baptismal creed in the East and then the one and only Eucharistic creed in Christendom. Christ-Centered Learning Anytime, Anywhere 11 of 11