God the Spirit
THE TRINITY STRUGGLE
God the Spirit
THE TRINITY STRUGGLE
The earliest struggles of Christians up to about the middle of the second century A.D. were against the ridicule of the masses and the literary attacks by prominent writers of the age. This went on while there was an increasing belligerence from the state. However, as the second century moved toward a close the church found itself embroiled in another kind of struggle.
The Canonized Bible Emerges: The overview of Trinitarian thinking needs to be prefaced with a few observations. The first is about the Scriptures. The formation of the Scriptures into a “closed canon” took a long time. Of course, the church began with a Bible in its hand, so to speak. The Old Testament in Greek (LXX) had been circulating in the Mediterranean world from the second century B.C. These were the first Scriptures used in the preaching of the gospel and the first to which the hearers turned in their search for truth (Acts 17:2-11). The New Testament was produced within about fifty years (ca. A.D. 45-95). However, it is difficult to trace the gradual acceptance and collection of these individual scrolls (books) into larger collections.
There is evidence of an awareness of New Testament Scriptures that goes beyond individual documents. In about the middle of the second century, Marcion, an infamous heretic, produced a “canon” consisting of about ten of Paul’s letters and Marcion’s form of the Gospel of Luke.
Near the end of the second century another “canon” was produced by an unknown author. It is called the Muratorian Fragment because it was discovered in the Ambrosian Library of Milan, Italy, by the Italian librarian Muratori. It was published in 1740. It includes twenty-two of the twenty-seven books we have in the New Testament.
Other prominent writers compiled lists of the New Testament books during the second and third centuries that varied slightly. However, one does not find a complete list of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament until the last third of the fourth century. In A.D. 367 a bishop of Alexandria, Egypt, named Athanasius, wrote: “I have thought good to set forth clearly what books have been received by us through tradition as belonging to the Canon, and which we believe to be Divine . . . Of the New Testament these are the books [then follows the complete list ending with “the Apocalypse of John”]. These are the foundations of salvation, that whoso thirsteth, may be satisfied by the eloquence which is in them. In them alone (en toutois monois) is set forth the doctrine of piety. Let no one add to them, nor take aught therefrom.”
The fact that Athanasius mentioned “books that are canonized and handed down and believed to be divine” implies that such a body of books already existed. Irrefutable proof of this is found in two of the great manuscripts of the Bible, which were written before Athanasius penned his list. Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus are Greek manuscripts of the Old and New Testaments. Although a few leaves are missing, they both are dated from about the middle of the fourth century. They, along with the Codex Alexandrinus of the following century, form the greatest trio of manuscripts in all history.
It is logical and safe to assume that the church was quite aware of an accepted authoritative body of Scripture by the early fourth century A.D. The general consensus reached in the church by this time was “officially” acknowledged by the third Council of Carthage in North Africa in A.D. 397. Dissenting voices were heard from time to time about the acceptability of four or five of the New Testament books. Also, near the end of the fourth century, the significance of the Apocryphal books was attacked by Jerome when he translated the entire Bible from the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek into Latin (Vulgate). However, it can still be said that “by the end of the fourth century, the various Christian churches were coming to the point at which each recognized that twenty-seven books constituted the canon of the New Testament, that is, a collection accepted as the authoritative norm and criterion of Christian faith and practice.”
The second observation before we sketch the overview of the development of Trinitarian thinking grows out of the preceding about Scripture. The preceding sketch concerning the emerging canon of Scripture shows a period of at least two hundred years (ca. A.D. 100-300) in which there was ambiguity about the body of Scripture that could be used as the “final Word from God.” This was not due to the finality of the written Word; it was due to the canonization process.
Today it is difficult for us to think of our Bible without knowing its limits. However, it is quite possible that several generations of Christians lived and died without seeing a complete Bible. It is true that the Scriptures testified to their finality by the end of the first century. But how many books were to be included and, of great significance, which writings were to be excluded? It is difficult for us to grasp the mind-set of the early Christians as they struggled against opposition from the masses and notable pagan writers of their time. They had Scriptures, but there was a sort of open-ended quality about them. Therefore, it is probable that those early defenders of the faith saw Scripture as a dynamic, living communication from God that was exciting and fresh.
For example: Let your mind go back to about A.D 200. Imagine the little band of Christians known to have existed in the city of Lyons, Gaul (France). They possessed the Gospel of Mark, Luke, Acts, and several of Paul’s epistles. While they were worshiping one Sunday morning a courier arrived from Saragossa, Spain. He brought electrifying news. The church at Saragossa had received a document that had been circulating among the scattered Jewish Christians, particularly in Italy, Asia Minor, and Judea. The authorship was debated, but there had been a growing conviction that it was a manuscript written by an inspired man of God. Many Christians thought the author was no other than the apostle Paul!
Be there in the congregation that Sunday as one of the elders took the scroll, stood before the group, and read as follows: “‘God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world’” (Hebrews 1:1, 2). Try to conceive of hearing a biblical text read that you did not know existed before! The courier had said something about it being an epistle to the Hebrews, but a close study of it by the congregation at Lyons convinced them it was truly an inspired writing and worthy to be kept with their other sacred scrolls.
Although the preceding example is constructed, it serves to illustrate a process by which the Christians of the early centuries received Scripture, perceived Scripture, and at last came to the conclusion that the Scriptures had been fully and finally given. When that conclusion was reached, it was declared in various church councils such as the one at Carthage mentioned previously.
Another observation is apropos. It has to do with the changing nature of the struggles of the early church that produced the methodologies used and much of the language we find when we study the Trinity problem.
Early “canons” such as that by Marcion the heretic no doubt intensified the need for and hastened the day of the completed canon. As this “ingathering” of Scriptures grew, it provided a definitive weapon to be used by the church in articulating the Christian faith. While this scriptural base was growing, the Christian community had other sources to draw from to bolster the authenticity of their message. Two sources were apostolic authority and creedal affirmations.
The apostolic authority principle included: (1) the Scriptures written by apostles; (2) the oral teaching of the apostles; (3) the remembrance of this oral teaching in congregations that had been established by the apostles; (4) and the writings of those close colleagues of the apostles such as Mark and Luke.
Many of the early creedal affirmations were apparently patterned from the Scriptures themselves. For example: Matthew closes his Gospel with Jesus’ great commission statement: “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19). However, early-third-century evidence from Hippolytus shows that this had been formulated into a baptismal confession of faith. What Jesus had given as a mandate to produce faith was now being used as a test of faith.
The early Christians were equipped with texts (Scripture), oral tradition (principally passed on by those who had been in congregations established by apostles who remembered well their teachings), and creedal formulas (tests or statements of faith). This meant the early church was better equipped to withstand opposition from without and within.
Internal Struggles: The early church encountered difficulties in a very hostile society. However, history shows that the church grew rapidly in spite of all external opposition. However, there arose serious internal strife, which, in many respects, was more difficult to resolve. There were many internal rifts, but our study seeks to examine the Trinitarian problem. We call it a problem because the route to the formal doctrine of the Trinity was fraught with problems.
Among the attacks from without had been the charge of atheism because Christians would not bow down to Caesar or confess him as Lord. The major response to this charge was that there is but one God. This left the opposition bewildered. The Romans accepted the state religion of Caesarism, but neither Caesar nor Roman citizens believed that he was the only god.
Furthermore, they were not able to understand how Christians could make such a claim since they spoke of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit. As Christian apologists began to explicate how one God could be spoken of in this way, the Romans soon found that a variety of perceptions existed among the Christian brotherhood. We need to stress here that the controversy was not primarily between pagans and Christians. It was a struggle, for the most part, among those who believed in the Trinity in one form or another. What began as a defense of monotheism to those without became a challenge to explain monotheism among those within.
As pointed out earlier, the fact of the Trinity can be deducted from the Scriptures. Indeed, this writer is convinced that the existence of the Trinity is the only logical conclusion to which one can come from a study of the Scripture. This was certainly the overwhelming conviction of the early Christians. The difficulty lay in explaining the fact and the how of Trinity.
In working with this “problem,” the Christian writers, scholars, and leaders had access to a growing body of Scriptures. They also utilized the language tools of their age to express their faith in the Trinity, which they deducted from Scripture.
Scripture did not clarify the how. Yet the how was extremely important. Any concept of Trinity that articulated a how that was not in harmony with the “that” of Scripture was to be rejected. The seemingly interminable efforts to capture all the nuances of the how of the Trinity were not merely empty theological nit-pickings. The early church knew, as we surely must know, that one's concept of God shapes his or her religion.
If monotheism was to be the affirmation, how were they to explain the how of the “Persons” to themselves and the world? If “Persons” were to be the affirmation, why was this not polytheism, as their opponents claimed? The future of Christianity hung in the balance. If the “Persons” are dismissed, scriptural foundations crumble and Christianity becomes a sterile monotheism surrounded by vagaries and myths. If the “Persons” are separated into individual gods, Christianity joins the barren wasteland of all polytheistic religions.
Rather than seeing this struggle as an irrelevant exercise in fruitless theological speculation, one needs to see the church fighting for its very life as it searches to understand its God. In facing up to these challenges, the early Christians drew upon philosophical, legal, and theological terms of the day to clarify their positions. This was complicated because the debate included Christians from the East and from the West who spoke in Greek and Latin, respectively. The precise meaning and nuance of some terms became crucial.
This struggle over the meaning of terms turned out to be such a hurdle to solving the dilemma that it proves helpful to note a few of them encountered in various contexts. By the fourth century the discussion relating to the Trinity involved many words that, though used to clarify the debate, often caused confusion and misunderstanding. Major examples are:
For Greeks, hypostasis meant “substance” and/or “person.”
For Greeks, prosopon meant “personal reality, self-conscious agent,” or “an outward aspect.”
For Greeks, ousia meant “substance.”
For Greeks, homoousios meant “same substance.”
For Greeks, homoiousios meant “like substance.”
For Latins, persona meant “person,” “individual” (originally it meant a mask of an actor, then his character). For Latins, substantia meant “substance.”
For Latins, subsistentia meant “subsistence.”
For Latins, essentia meant “that which pertains to underlying entity, substance, form.” For Latins, essence meant “substance, form, entity.”
It does not take much examination of these words to see why vocabularies of the Eastern (Greek) and Western (Latin) churches were among the reasons why harmony of views concerning the Trinity were hard to come by. Note that in Greek hypostasis meant “substance" and/or “person.” Ousia also meant “substance.” In Latin persona meant “person.” Were all these terms synonyms? Were hypostasis and ousia equivalent to the Latin substantia, meaning “substance”?
Were the Latin essence and substantia synonyms? If so, were they equivalent to the Greek hypostasis and ousia, if they are synonyms? Was there anything about homoousios and homoiousios that makes an “iota” of difference? Were the Latin substantia and subsistentia sometimes used as synonyms?
The Ebb and Flow of Trinitarian Thinking: This overview of Trinitarian thinking is not a detailed history of the development of trinitarianism that took place from about A.D. 150 to approximately A.D. 500. Rather, the present task is to convey some sense of the struggle, some reasons for it, and its eventual culmination in creedal form. The methods used to accomplish this are as follows: We will select some key writers on this topic, give their respective views, and sketch the response to these views by their opponents. A more extensive approach would require a study of the governmental politics involved and the personal power plays that are painfully obvious as one studies the literature of the era.
Any discussion concerning the Trinity must include a study of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Our first major study dealt with God the Father. The second major study dealt with Son. This study discusses God the Spirit. Since the trilogy is about God, it is necessary to bring to the forefront the inseparable Persons of the Godhead. This is why in the previous lesson titled, “The Essence of God,” we studied, “Explaining the Trinity: A Frontline Battle.” Although this part is a study of God the Spirit, we, like the early Christians, find it necessary to discuss the relationships among the Persons of the Godhead.
One early attempt to preserve the unity of Godhead was called Monarchianism. The name is derived from the word “monarchy.” The theory was that since there is only one kingdom, there cannot be any distinction whatsoever between the divinity of Christ and God, since only one king reigns in a kingdom.
This was one of the reactions to the teachings of Gnosticism, that system of belief that saw a host of aeons in the cosmic realm that threatened the Christian concept of God. In the heat of this early and rather vague conflict, the Monarchianism position expanded in two more doctrines of Monarchianism. They were ultimately rejected.
One form, advocated by one named Theodatus, was called Dynamic Monarchianism. It was a form of adoptionism. Though condemned, it was continued by Paul of Samosata. This doctrine saw Jesus as a man who was born of a virgin by divine decree. He was given special powers to be used in God’s service. He was rewarded for his committed service by being raised from the dead and welcomed into the Godhead.
The “divinity” ascribed to Jesus was the result of God’s power (dynamis) bestowed upon Him. This view was rejected because it required that the Son be “less than” the Father. It implied that the Son was not “essentially” of the Father. He did not exist before the incarnation. Thus His role was according to God’s “purpose,” not by His eternal nature.
Another teaching in this category was called Modalist Monarchianism. In many ways, it was opposed to Dynamic Monarchianism. The Modalists did not deny that Christ was divine. In fact, they advocated His divinity so intensely that they were tagged as Patripassionists. Their belief was dubbed Patripassionism, meaning the Father suffered in Christ, even on the cross. At the heart of this doctrine was the belief that God the Father was actually born as Jesus, died, and raised Himself from the grave! There was only one divine Person to rule over the one kingdom.
Praxeas was a chief advocate of this brand of Monarchianism. He was rebutted by Tertullian, a brilliant and vigorous lawyer born in Carthage, North Africa, in about A.D. 150. Tertullian became a Christian at about the age of forty. In subsequent years he wrote many works, including one titled, “Against Praxeas.” This writing, in Latin, was very important in two of its features: First, he refuted Praxeas’s Monarchianism. Second, he did so by developing trinitarian concepts expressed in terms that later become useful for articulating the orthodox faith of the Trinity in creedal form. In fact, he was the first person in the West to use the Latin term trinitas (Trinity), which, he said, indicated a Godhead of three personae (persons) of one substantia (substance). Theophilus, of the city of Antioch, had first used the Greek term trias (Trinity) in referring to God.
Tertullian realized that lurking in the Monarchian views was the absolutely unacceptable concept of the Godhead as one in number, while the terms Father, Son, and Spirit referred to three modes of divine activity.
The underlying theme and intent of Monarchianism was to explain how one can speak of one God, while at the same time using the terms Son and Spirit. Praxeas taught that the Father and the Son were the same. He held the “Son” was Jesus and the “Spirit” in Jesus was the Father. This position led to Tertullian’s famous remark about Praxeas: “He put the Paraclete (Spirit) to flight and crucified the Father.”
Sabellius, also a forefront leader of Modalistic Monarchianism in the third century, generally held these same views. However, he emphasized that “God” was Father by essence (substance) while “Son” and “Spirit” indicate aspects, or modes, of the Father’s work of redemption and sanctification. In his rebuttal to these teachings, Tertullian took his opponents’ Greek word oikonomia (economy) and transliterated it into Latin to make a major point. He showed that oeconomia means “dispensation,” “arrangement,” and was used by Christian writers to identify God’s plan of salvation. Deeply imbedded in this arrangement or organization of an historical series of events, including “kingdom” or “rule,” was the incarnation of Christ.
