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Rev. MF Blume
It is understood commonly by many scholars that the doctrine of the Trinity developed over a period of time. It was not until the end of the fourth century that most of the loose ends were tied up. But John of Damascus put the last touches in refining the doctrine as late as the eighth century! So, modern Trinitarianism was not fully developed until the eighth century! Louis Berkhof wrote:
"The early Church Fathers...had no clear conception of the Trinity." (History of Christian Doctrines, Grand Rapids: Baker, 1937, p. 40)
Clement of Alexandria and Adamantius Origen also contributed to the first formulation of a Trinity doctrine. Hipploytus, Novatian, Cyprian, Dionysius of Rome, Dionysius of Alexandria, Gregory Thaumaturgus, Arnobius and Lactantius also proposed a Trinity and believed the Greek Apologists idea of LOGOS was correct.
We must briefly mention that issue which the Greek Apologists brought along in the second century since their doctrine led up to the first Trinitarian concept that existed in the Church world.
GREEK THOUGHT COMES INTO THE CHURCH
Another post I wrote refers to the "Origin of the Trinity" Doctrine, in which it is accounted that the steps leading to a Trinity doctrine began with the Greek Apologists in the period from AD 130 to 180. These people introduced the pagan Greek idea of philosophy concerning "LOGOS" and claimed that John implied what the Greek Philosophers believed regarding LOGOS since John used that same Greek word. We know, however, that John was inspired by God to write what he did in John 1:1, and that he was not referencing the Greek LOGOS belief whatsoever. These Greek philosphers who proposed their LOGOS doctrine did so long before Christ came to earth! They were pagans. The orthodox circle of Christians today as well as the then-contemporary adherents of the teachings of the Greek Apologists believe(d) that these Greek philosophers, such as Plato, were "prechristians" since they sought for truth before Christ came, and God supposedly granted them the truth of the LOGOS.
We must be made aware of the fact that before the Church was born, only the Israleites were God's people. God dealt with no Gentile nation in granting truth and revelation beside Israel. It was not until Jesus died and broke down the middle partition between the Jews and Gentiles, that the Gentiles were allowed into the commonwealth of God's people by grace.
Ephe 2:11-20 Wherefore remember, that ye [being] in time past Gentiles in the flesh, who are called Uncircumcision by that which is called the Circumcision in the flesh made by hands; That at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world: But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition [between us]; Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, [even] the law of commandments [contained] in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man, [so] making peace; And that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby: And came and preached peace to you which were afar off, and to them that were nigh. For through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father. Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God; And are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner [stone];
These verses prove that Gentiles were outside of God and "without God in the world" until Jesus died and destroyed the barrier in His flesh on the cross. Only after Jesus' death were the Gentiles free to draw near to God. Now we can be of the "household of God" since Jesus Christ died for us.
To say that God revealed truths to ancient pagans is to break the very point these scriptures are teaching. Before Christ came, the Old Mosaic Covenant was the only covenant available to mankind. It demanded that one must become an Israelite in order to serve God. Since Jesus introduced the New Covenant of grace and remission of sins through His blood, Gentiles are now accessible to God's throne, too. But not before He shed His blood!
The Greek philosphers could not have learned about God without first becoming Israelites. For God does not reveal His truths to those who are "afar off" (Eph. 2:17).
Paul taught that without God's Spirit, one could not know things of God.
1Cor 2:9-16 But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed [them] unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know [them], because they are spiritually discerned. But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man. For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.
The natural man cannot receive the things of God. These Greeks were "natural". Only by receiving the Spirit AFTER Jesus Christ died and was glorified could one understand spiritual truths, such as the Godhead. Plato lived long BEFORE the Spirit of God was given. Despite the stand that orthodox trinitarians take even today, the Greeks DID NOT receive enlightenment from God, and the philosphical thought of the LOGOS is NOT what John implied in John 1:1,14.
GREEK PHILOSOPHY
These Greeks believed that the LOGOS implied reasoning. Plato said that two worlds existed. There was the good world which was the real world and was the thoughts and ideas. Then there was the imperfect world of the physical which merely manifests the world of thought. At the head of the world of thought was One supreme God. He is not involved with the physical world which was of matter and was evil. This world of ideas was the intermediate realm between God and the physical world.
Philo lived at the time of Jesus and believed that these thoughts could be applied to the Old Testament teachings of God. He said that God's Word was the LOGOS which Plato referred to. It was an instrument of God and was used by God to reach the physical realm. Philo called the LOGOS the Son of God who was the first thing ever begotten by God and was a second God. Philo did not call this LOGOS a thing which had personality, though.
The Greek apologists came and applied all of this to the New Testament and to Jesus Christ. Intellectualism took reign over spirituality in their writings, leaning heavily upon philosophy. We must recognize that John did not refer to this Greek Logos of Plato or of Philo. John used the word to help explain the manifestation of Jesus Christ in the flesh. John did not say that the LOGOS was separate from God and an intermediate element between God and the physical world. John said that the LOGOS was God, Himself! It was God's eternal mind and plan. It was God's means of self-revelation in a human body.
Justin Martyr was the foremost proponent of the Greek Apologists' doctrine and took Philo's LOGOS and changed it somewhat to fit Christianity. This thought of LOGOS makes God's Word something beside Himself, contrary to John's statement that the "WORD WAS GOD." And it was this root of seeing the LOGOS as a separate element beside God that led finally to the formation of the Trinity doctrine.
Once believers accepted the categorical mistake that the LOGOS (Word) was separate from God, they altered the thought to try and stay within other biblical boundaries by saying that it was the Son of God, another "person" apart from the Father, but yet God.
TERTULLIAN THE
FIRST TRINITARIAN,
and TRINITARIAN CHAMPION OF THE EAST
Tertullian came along in AD 150 and lived to become a lawyer and orator. He was converted to Christianity in his middle age in 195, and became presbyter of the church in Carthage, North Africa. Today he is referred to as the founder of Western theology (EH Klotsche, The History of Christian Doctrine, Grand Rapids: Baker, 1979, 52-53).
He wrote Against Praxeas in 213 and attacked the modalist concept of God, bringing an explanation of his trinitarianism into view.
It must be noted that he began believing in only two persons of the Godhead as opposed to three. Since he joined the Montanists, who stressed the work of the Holy Ghost, he was made aware of his need to position the Holy Ghost into the Godhead as a person, also, in his doctrine.
Tertullian, the father of Trinitarianism, wrote in his book, Against Hermogenes,
Tertullian wrote of a "Trinity."
Tertullian taught the doctrine of subordinationism. This teaches that the Son is inferior to the Father. And he said
When He heard the modalists speak of his attempts to divide the substance of God, Tertullian replied that even the angels "are naturally members of the Father's substance". And if angels could exist and be of the Father's substance but yet not destroy His oneness, why should the existence of the Son and Spirit destroy His oneness? (Jaroslav Pelikan, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600), vol. 1 of The Christian Tradition: A Hisotry of the Development of Doctrine (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1971) 105.)
Tertullian did not believe what trinitarians today believe. Modern trinitarians believe that the Father, Son and Holy Ghost are coequal. Tertullian believed the Son and Spirit were progressively inferior to the Father.
Trinitarians today believe that the Son and Father were both eternal, and that the Son eternally comes forth from the Father.
Modern Trinitarians disagree and believe there will be no end to the existence of the Son and the Holy Ghost.
Both Tertullian and the Greek Apologists believed that the Son became personal when he was begotten.
"Before all things God was alone... yet even not then was He alone; for He had with Him that which he possessed in Himself, that is to say, His own Reason.... God had not Word from the beginning, but he had Reason even before the beginning....For although God had not yet sent out His Word, He still had Him within Himself".
Apparently, Tertullian even believed that each of the three beings, or persons of the Godhead, had a body since he said that all spirit beings have a body. This brings him incredibly close to tritheism - the belief in three gods.
"For who will deny that God is a Body, although 'God is a Spirit?' For Spirit has a bodily substance of its own kind, in its own form....Whatever, therefore, was the substance of the Word that I designate a Person, I claim for it the name of Son".
Modern Trinitarians do not accept this view, although this view was proposed by the man who began the Trinity doctrine.
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TERTULLIAN'S TRINITY |
MODERN TRINITY |
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Modern Trinity doctrine teaches that Subordinationism (Son inferior to Father) is a heresy. Tertullian, the man who first taught a Trinitarian concept, was a subordinationist.
CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA
Clement of Alxeandria (who died before 216) taught in Alexandria Egypt. The first director of this school was Pantaenus. He was once a Stoic philospher and was later converted to Christianity. He kept his philosphical ideas and implemented them into Christianity. Clement took over the school after Pantaenus. Then Origen took his place after Clement.
Clement and Origen are said to be the Alexandrian School of Theology's leaders. This school carried on with the Greek philosphical idea of the LOGOS after the time of the teachings of Philo and of the Greek Apologists. They promoted the thought that philosophical thought and biblical revelation can blend together, contrary to 1 Cor. 2:8-16, as shown above. These men deemed knowledge as superior to faith. This trend still exists in the mainline orthodox circles.
Many have called this type of belief Christian Gnosticism.
Clement said that the Word originally was "in God". That Word created all of the world and later became Christ (Exhortations to the Heathen, 1).
ORIGEN - TRINITARIAN CHAMPION OF THE WEST
Origen worte against Modalism, or Oneness, as did Tertullian. These writings help us understand what Origen believed.
Jaroslav Pelikan (in "The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition" (100-600), vol. 1 of The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971, p. 192) said that Origen was the original developer of the LOGOS/SON doctrine of the Trinity, while Tertullian and Novatian were next in line of importance to that issue. Thus, Origen contributed greatly to what later Trinitarians believed.
Modern trinitarians still believe much of what Origen invented while they do not believe other aspects of this man who is considered one the Fathers of Trinitarianism.
Origen wrote Commentary on John and said,
He wrote a book called Against Celsus, and said in it
We can see that he was practically teaching ideas that the present-day Jehovah's Witnesses teach. He was the first who taught that the Son eternally was generated from the Father, which modern trinitarians believe.
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ORIGEN'S TRINITY |
MODERN TRINITY |
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HYPPOLYTUS
This man died in 236, and studied under Irenaeus, but believed more of what Tertullian believed rather than Irenaeus. He accused the Roman Bishops Zephyrinus and Callistus as being Modalists.
Modern trinitarians disagree.
Until this time NO Trinitarian believed fully what the modern doctrine of the Trinity teaches. They were all subordinationists. They believed the Father was superior to the Son and Spirit.
Many trinitarians insist one must believe the Trinity in order to be saved. Fact is, nobody believed the Trinity the way trinitarians do today until centuries after the New testament was written!!
NOVATIAN
Novatian lived until having died in 257.
Trinitarians today look at Jesus' deity as being greater than all these original Trinitarians looked at it as being. However, I was personally told by a Trinitarian that although these men were in error, God was using them to bring the Trinity doctrine into human understanding.
It is admitted by trinitarians that the Trinity was developed over a period of time, thus agreeing with the basic principle of the thought which the Roman Catholic Church teaches in their doctrine of Magisterium and Tradition.
A COMMENT ABOUT DOCTRINES OF TRADITION AND OF TRINITY
The doctrine of "Tradition", as taught by the Roman Catholic Church (RCC), teaches that the doctrines that are not found explicitly taught by the apostles but taught later by other men, after the Bible was are written, are nevertheless truths from God. Therefore these "other" doctrines are as important as clear biblical teachings. It teaches that the apostles simply chose not to explicitly write such beliefs to the churches as New Testament Scripture.
Although there is no explicit proof that the apostles believed these doctrines, the RCC proposes that the apostles indeed did believe them, otherwise, they feel, God would not have led the RCC to later teach these doctrines. Rather than be founded upon clear, explicit teachings in the Bible as taught by the apostles and Jesus Christ, the RCC believes that their foundation is the belief that God would not have the Roman Church teach such doctrines if they were not true doctrines.
The majority of Protestant denominations do not altogether accept this RCC doctrine, which gives so-called credence to the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, the doctrine of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary and of the literal flesh and blood in the communion eucharist, but they have nevertheless accepted the Trinity doctrine. This Trinity doctrine is no more explicitly taught in scripture than the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. To accept one doctrine and then throw out the other, when both are from the same foundation of "Tradition", as opposed to explicit scriptural teaching, is to act most contradictorily.
The RCC teaches that the RCC has as much authority to hear a new doctrine from God, that was never formerly and explicitly taught by the original Apsotles, as did the original apostles since apostles have continued to exist in the RCC. This doctrine of "Apostolic Succession" is said to give the RCC the right to add new doctrines to the faith. And the Doctrine of the Trinity was one such doctrine that came along in the fourth century, and was totally refined in the eighth centuiry!
OTHER DEVELOPMENTS TOWARDS THE MODERN TRINITY DOCTRINE
In summary, most of the early Trinitarians used tritheistic language and did not accept the absolute deity of Jesus Christ. Most held to the doctrine of subordinationism.
The Father of Orthodox Trinitarianism was Athanasius, who said the Father and Son were coequal and coeternal. This was the deemed to official view in 325 at the Council at Nice. However the idea arose that the Holy Ghost must be considered as another third coeternal, coequal person. And that was settled in the Council of Constantinople in 381. The result of that Council was the revised Nicene Creed which is used today.
The most clear statements of the Trinity doctrine, used by both most Protestants and by the Roman Catholics is the Athanasian creed. It was not made until the fifth century. It was later finalized and its loose ends were tied up in the late eighth century of early ninth century. Both the revised Nicene Creed and the Athanasian creed define Trinitarianism as it is believed today.
LAST NOTE ABOUT THE FINAL REFINEMENT OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY
We have seen that the early Trinity doctrine differed severely with the modern day doctrine. Only Dionysius, Bishop of Rome, and Gregory Thaumaturgus seemed to believe what is believed now today in Trinitarian circles.
Dionysius wrote (259 to 269) a book entitled Against the Sabellians. This book fought the Oneness or Modalist doctrine which promoted that God is absolutely One. In defending himself, he said that he did not believe one could divide God into three persons. One would destroy the Monarchy should one divide it into "three deities" and three "distinct substances (hypostases)".
Although this man rejected the term PERSONS, (hypostases), contrary to modern Trinitarian doctrine, He did not believe God was three deities, as do modern trinitarians.
Gregory Thaumaturgus died in 270 AD. He, too, was a converted philosopher and studied under Origen. It may be that he taught the co-equality of the three persons Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Many scholars say that the statements in his writings as we have them today which speak of co-equality and coeternality of persons were added to his original writings by another person. So we are not sure of his stand on these issues.
JOHN OF DAMASCUS
This man put the final touches on the Trinity doctrine around the time of the latter part of the eighth century and the beginning of the ninth century. He lived in the East division of orthodox christendom and rejected the subordinationist ideas saying that the three persons are not related to one another as three human men are.
Trinitarians say that we lay too much stress upon the differences these early originators of the Trinity doctrine held in comparison to the modern Trinity doctrine. They claim that their error was not their fault. This idea implies that the Bible does not teach doctrine sufficiently, and that we need an extrabiblical foundation to complete the bible teachings. It makes the doctrine of the Trinity proven to be developed and formulated through much time. It makes the postbiblical writers, who spoke of no Trinity whatosever (See study entitled "Early Church Writings"), the least accurate in presenting the views of the New Testament, and later writers more accurate. This does not make sense. This refutes the idea that the closer we get back to the time of the bible writings reveals the more truthful interpretations. Such an idea is the very reason people refer to the Post-Apostolic writings.
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