Chapter 8

"THEY SHALL WANDER INTO MYTHS"

The historical development of the Doctrine of the Trinity

APPENDIX 1 TO CHAPTER 8

God a Unity and also the God of Jesus. Jesus great  but subordinate.

Jesus pre-existed only in the mind and purpose of  God.

All doctrine Bible based.

Deviations in doctrine predicted.

Early 'Rules of Faith' and Creeds have no trinitarian  allusions.

Ebionites and Nazarenes fled from Jerusalem, taking primitive views about Christ.

The 'Apostolic Fathers' regarded God as supreme, Jesus subordinate.

'Christ' and 'God' used interchangeably by Ignatius, and first references to Christ's personal pre- existence.

Justin Martyr, the first 'Christian philosopher', and Irenaeus taught that Christ was a pre-existent God, but still subordinate to the Father.

Clement of Alexandria consciously used Greek philosophy to define Christian beliefs about God and Christ. The relationship of Father, Son and Holy Spirit developed on a Platonic framework. 

Tertullian used 'trinitas' to denote the Father, Son and Holy Spirit relationship.

Origen propounded the idea of the 'eternal generation' of the Son, thus paving the way for the Arian controversy about whether the Son was a created being. Meanwhile Paul of Samosata insisted that Jesus was a man who had no previous personal existence.

The long held belief that Christ was created and was subordinate to the Father was finally and successfully challenged in the Arian controversy. The basis of the present trinitarian doctrine worked out at the Council of Nicea.

The Arian dispute finally settled at the Council of Constantinople in favour of what had now become orthodox views. The hitherto unexamined position of the Holy Spirit settled by its inclusion in the co-equal trinity. Emperor Theodosius enforces compliance.

The Athanasian Creed formulated by an unknown author, and eventually accepted as the official basis for salvation.

As a result of translations of the Bible into the  common languages many individuals and protestant groups renounce the doctrine as unscriptural.

On the meaning and use of crucial words in the Trinitarian dispute

For the reader who wishes to enquire more deeply into the arguments used during the discussions on the Arian controversy an insight into the meanings of some of the words used is essential. ⁽¹⁷⁴⁾

hypostasis

This basically means 'anything set under', a 'support' (i.e. the legs of an animal or the base of a statue) and is metaphorically used to describe 'ground of hope', and thus 'confidence'; also 'subsistence, reality, substance, nature, essence'. ⁽¹⁷⁵⁾

It occurs five times in Scripture where it is translated 'confidence' (2 Corinthians 9:4; 11:17; Hebrews 3:14), 'substance' (Hebrews 11:1,A.V.), and the 'nature' (A.V.'person') of God (Hebrews 1:3).

ousia

This has the fundamental meaning of 'that which is one's own, one's property, state, condition'; metaphorically the 'being, substance, essence' of a thing.

It can readily be seen that in their metaphorical use hypostasis and ousia are virtually interchangeable, and they were considered to be such prior to the Arian controversy. The problem was that ousia could mean either a particular being or a common essence. Similarly hypostasis had this dual meaning, but the idea of a particular entity was more prominent. In the anathemas of the Creed of Nicea ousia and hypostasis were used as synonyms.

homo and homoi

These are prefixes denoting similarity: homo meaning 'the same as', whilst homoi means 'like' or 'similar to'.

A lot of the discussion in the fourth century was directed to a fine tuning of the meaning of these words. The Arians were happy to combine 'homoi' and 'ousia' to form homoi-ousia, meaning 'of like substance'. By this they alleged that the Son was like the Father, in the sense that any son has the same nature as his father, without being entirely identical to him. This was also the general view of all the bishops prior to Nicea. At that Council, however, the Alexandrine party insisted on homo-ousia, (the 'consubstantial' of the Nicea Creed) indicating identity in every respect, or 'identity of essence'. Homo-ousia was a word sometimes found in earlier Classical and Christian writers, but not in the sense of identity, nor equality. Nor was it found in Scripture.

Whilst the inclusion of this word did not please the hard-line Arians, the majority at the Council, because of the inherent ambiguity in the word ousia, were prepared to read their own views into it and so sign the document with a relatively clear conscience. Eusebius the historian, a firm supporter of Arius, agreed to sign on this basis, and his letter back to his church at Caesarea explaining and justifying his change of heart makes interesting reading, and confirms that the Creed of Nicea could have been 'all things to all men'. ⁽¹⁷⁶⁾

In the post-Nicene period, however, this ambiguity proved to be a drawback to the unity which the emperors and some of the bishops so much desired. Despite Nicea the Arians seemed to be winning the day, and the Trinitarians were on the defensive. So the emperor Constantius proposed a simpler creed with broad and imprecise definitions using Scriptural terms, to which he hoped all could agree. Reluctant to go back on Nicea, this proposal was rejected by the Church and much effort was given to trying to reinterpret the use of the crucial words. This was particularly the work of the 'Cappadocian Fathers', Basil and the two Gregories. They arrived at a distinction between the words which, although it was a distinction probably not present originally, enabled them to reconcile both sides. They showed that it was possible to interpret homoi-ousios to patri ('like the Father') in the light of homo-ousios to patri ('of the same substance as the Father'). The difference between ousia and hypostasis, they claimed, is as between the universal and the particular. Thus it was possible for God to exist simultaneously in one ousia but three hypostases; that is, One Substance but Three Persons. In this way a middle path was found between those who complained that the Church was teaching three Gods (three hypostases, or three separate beings with different natures), thus denying the unity of God; and those who were holding that there was no distinction at all between the Father and the Son (the Monarchians, or Sabellians). By the Cappadocians' definition the difference between homoi-ousios and homo-ousios shrank to negligible proportions. At the Council of Constantinople in 381 the desired unanimity was secured, and the parts of the Nicea Creed condemning the 'homoiousians' were deleted, no longer being considered necessary. Thus, as one writer observes: 'The Nicene Fathers led the way by converting what was before a scholastic study into an article of the Catholic Faith ..... which was then forced upon the Oriental Church'. ⁽¹⁷⁷⁾

APPENDIX 3 TO CHAPTER 8

BETHUNE-BAKER, J,F. An Introduction to the Early History of Christian Doctrine. Methuen. 5th Ed., 1933.

BIGG Cholse, D.D. Professor of Ecclesiastical History. 'The Christian Platonists of Alexandria, (The Bampton Lectures of the Year 1886). Oxford 1913.

BLUNT, J.J., D.D. The Right use of the Early Fathers. Murray, London,1869.

BLUNT, J.J., The History of the Christian Church During the First Three Centuries. Murray, London, 2nd Ed., 1857.

BURTON, Edward, D.D. Lecture upon the Ecclesiastical History of the First Three Centuries. Oxford, 1845.

CHADWICK, H. The Early Church. (Vol 1 of the Pelican History of the Church). Hodder and Stoughton, 1968.

DAILLE, J. On the Right Use of the Fathers. Pub. Bohn, London. 1843.

DUNN, J.D.G. Christology in the Making. 2nd. Ed. SCM Press Ltd, London, 1989.

ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA, 14th Ed.

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY, Editor Everett Fergusson. St. James's Press, Chicago and London, 1990. Arts.: 'Trinity'; 'Neoplatonism'; 'Arianism'.

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RELIGION, MacMillillan, London and New York, 1987. Article: 'Trinity'

EUSEBIUS. The History of the Christian Church, Penguin Classics Edn. 1988.

EYRE, Alan. The Protesters. Pub. The Christadelphian, 1985.  Brethren in Christ. Pub: Christadelphian Study Service, Australia

GIBBON, E. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

GOODSPEED, E.J. The Apostolic Fathers, An American Translation. Pub: Independent Press, London. 1950

HANSON, R.P.C. The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God. T & T Clark, Edinburgh, 1989

HAZLET, I. Editor. Early Christianity, Origins and Evolution. SPCK, London, 1991.

LAMSON, A., D.D. The Church of the First Three Centuries. British and Foreign Unitarian Association, London, 1875.

LIETZMANN, Hans. A History of the Early Church. Lutterworth Press, London, 1961.

LION HANDBOOK, The History of Christianity, Ed. T. Dowley. Lion Publishing 1977.

MOSHEIM, J.L., D.D. Ecclesiastical History. Translated by Murdock and Soames, Edited by Stubbs, London,1863. (3 Vols.)

MILLMAN, H. H. Dean of St. Paul's. History of Christianity, A New and Revised Edition, 3 Vols. London, 1863.

MOELLER, W. History of the Christian Church. Swan Sonnenschein & Co. Ltd, London, 1898.

PAINE, Levi Leonard. Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Bangor Theological Seminary. 'A Critical History of the Evolution of Trinitarianism'. Boston and New York, 1900.

PRIESTLY, Joseph. A History of the Corruptions of Christianity. (To which are appended Considerations in Evidence that the Apostolic and Primitive Church was Unitarian). The British and foreign Unitarian Association, London, 1871

RUSCH, William G. The Trinitarian Controversy. Fortress Press, Philadelphia, 1980.

STANLEY, A.P. History of the Eastern Church. Pub. John Murray, London, 1884

STANNUS Hugh, H. A History of the Doctrine of the Trinity in the Early Church. 1882. London, Christian Life Publishing Co. 281 Strand, London.

WHITE, P.E. The Doctrine of the Trinity. F. Walker, 2nd Ed., 1937.

EPILOGUE: Was the Vicar Right ......?

REFERENCES

174. For a detailed consideration of this topic the reader is directed to Hanson, ch.7, from which this summary is taken.

175. This and following definitions from Liddell and Scott, Greek-English Lexicon

176. 'To the very last hour I was firm in my resistance to such formulae as were different from mine. But I did not quarrel about accepting what was not displeasing to me, as soon as the meaning of the words was made clear to me and when it seemed to agree with the beliefs professed by me in the creed which I had introduced concluding lines of his Letter to the Church at Caesarea.

177. Quoted by Lamson, p.340.