“Our topic today is what the early Christians believed about the Trinity. Actually I should be able to cover this whole topic in less than a minute simply by saying the early Christians believed the Nicene Creed. That’s what they believed about the Trinity and that should take care of the matter. However, it doesn’t because most professing Christians today actually don’t believe the Nicene Creed. Now, they will tell you that they do believe it, but the truth is they don’t.”
(David W.
Bercot, 'What the Early Christians Believed About the Trinity')
Quite a way to start a lecture. Having originally grown up a Lutheran and subsequently finding fellowship in various other Protestant traditions, this bold statement by Bercot grabbed my attention. An explanation will obviously be required, and at some length despite my having abridged his summations for the sake of relative brevity:
“The key to having an orthodox scriptural understanding of the Trinity is to grasp that there is a difference between three attributes or terms. They are nature, personal attributes, and order. Let me explain. These terms—again, nature, personal attributes and order—refer to three very different things, yet most western Christians do not grasp this distinction. . . .
“nature, or substance, refers to the essence or class to which a person or creature belongs. . .
. The Nicene Creed affirms that the Father and the Son are of the same nature or substance. The Son isn’t something foreign to the Father; rather, He possesses the same nature as the Father. We could say it this way: both the Father and the Son are equally divine. They are both theos, just like you and I are humans, they are theos, or divinity, or God . . . .
“Personal attributes are something altogether different.
Personal attributes refer to the individual characteristics and differences between members of the same class or nature. . . . Because the Father and the Son are equal in nature does not mean that They have the same personal attributes. The church has taught from the beginning that there are personal attributes that distinguish the Father from the Son. For example: The Father begets the Son and therefore the Son has His origin or arche in the Father.
Does this make the Son less divine than the father? Does this reduce the Son to being a demigod? Not at all, because being unbegotten is not an aspect of divinity, it is a personal attribute. . . .
“The Son and the Holy Spirit possess the full attributes of divinity but the Father possesses unique personal attributes that make Him greater than the Son and the Holy Spirit. As I’ve said, one of these characteristics is that the Father is the begetter, He is the origin of the Trinity.
However, there is another sense in which the early church taught that the Father is greater than the Son and that is in the sense of order. Now, by order I mean chain of authority. Equality of nature doesn’t mean equal quality of order. . . .
“When Christians don’t understand the difference between nature, personal attributes, and order, they end up with a very confused understanding of the Trinity.
They usually end up getting into heresy even though they are trying to have an orthodox view of the Trinity. They totally misconstrue what the Scriptures teach about the Trinity and if they read the early Christian writings they are baffled by what they read there.”
(Ibid.)
See brother Bercot's lecture for a full treatment of the matter. I'll now consider a couple primary sources from my own notes, as well as commentary on them by patristic scholars.
“we know no ruler more kingly or just than He except God who begot Him.”
(Justin Martyr, ca. 153, First Apology 12, in Fathers of the Church 6:44, brackets in original)
Thus we see Justin to have viewed the Son, in the present tense (not to be confused with the Incarnation), as subordinate to the Father in the personal attributes of being kingly and just. Note the comment from the Roman Catholic translator:
“This seems to imply the error of subordinationism which teaches that the Father is greater than the Son.”
(Thomas B. Falls, Fathers of the Church 6:44)
From the next chapter of Justin's work:
“For we have learnt that he is the son of the true God, and we hold him in second place, with the prophetic Spirit in the third rank.”
(Justin Martyr, ca. 153, Apology 13:3, in Oxford Early Christian Texts 11:111)
The commentary from the translators:
“At D 5.4 Justin says that ‘only God is unbegotten and incorruptible, and he is God for that very reason; everything else after him is begotten and corruptible’. This is one of the grounds of Justin’s subordinationism:
an unbegotten, incorruptible, immortal God could not be crucified. But, equally, such a God could not reveal himself to his creatures. Hence the need for an ‘other God’ ( ἕτερος θεὸς ) besides the maker of the universe (cf. D 55.1; 56.4; 56.2; 128.4; 129.4), who ‘has never done or said anything except what he who is the creator of the universe, above whom there is no other God, willed him both to do and to say’ ( D, 56.11).
Justin’s subordinationism succinctly encompasses both a courageous acknowledgement of the folly of the cross (cf. 1 Cor. 1:23), and deliberately startling assertion of the real, though secondary, divinity of Jesus.”
(Denis Minns & Paul Parvis, Oxford Early Christian Texts 11:111)
And finally the passage which Minns and Parvis referenced:
“I shall attempt to prove my assertion, namely, that there exists and is mentioned in Scripture another God and Lord under the Creator of all things, who is also called an Angel, because He proclaims to man whatever the Creator of the world—above whom there is no other God—wishes to reveal to them.”
(Justin Martyr, ca. 160, Dialogue With Trypho 56, in Fathers of the Church 6:232)
And commentary on this passage from an Eastern Orthodox patristic scholar:
“As it is not God himself who thus appeared and spoke with man, the Word of God who did all of these things is, for Justin , ‘another God and Lord besides (ἔτερος παρὰ) the Maker of all,’ who is also called his ‘Angel,’ as he brings messages from the Maker of all, ‘above whom there is no other God’ (Dial. 56.4). . . . The divinity of Jesus Christ, an ‘other God,’ is no longer that of the Father himself, but subordinate to it, a lesser divinity”
(John Behr, Formation of Christian Theology 1:104)
Nor was this by any means unique to Justin Martyr. Observed as his teaching is linked by another scholarly source to the next writer we'll consider:
“Subordinationism
“Teaching about the Godhead which regards either the Son as subordinate to the Father or the Holy Ghost as subordinate to both. It is a characteristic tendency in much of Christian teaching of the first three centuries, and is a marked feature of such otherwise orthodox Fathers as St. Justin and Origen.”
(
The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church , 2nd ed., pg. 1319)
We'll explore more in part II a demonstration of how this was, “characteristic . . . of the first three centuries.” For now, another primary source:
“But we are obedient to the Savior who says, ‘The Father who sent me is greater than I,’ and who, for this reason, did not permit himself to accept the title ‘good’ when it was offered to him, although it was perfectly legitimate and true.
Instead, he graciously offered it up to the Father, and rebuked the one who wished to praise the Son excessively. This is why we say the Savior and the Holy Spirit transcend all created beings, not by caparison, but by their exceeding pre-eminence. The Father exceeds the Savior as much (or even more) as the Savior himself and the Holy Spirit exceed the rest.
And by ‘the rest’ I do not mean ordinary beings, for how great is the praise ascribed to him who transcends thrones, dominions, principalities, powers, and every name that is named not only in this world but also in that which is to come? And in addition to these say also of holy angels, spirits, and just souls?
“But although the Savior transcends in his essence, rank, power, divinity (for the Word is living), and wisdom, beings that are so great and of such antiquity, nevertheless, he is not comparable with the Father in any way.”
(Origen, ca. 239, Commentary on John 13:151-152, in Fathers of the Church 89:100)
And the scholarly commentary:
“the Savior said, ‘The Father who sent me is greater than I,’ and ‘although the Savior transcends in his essence, rank, power, divinity . . .
, and wisdom, beings that are so great and of such antiquity, nevertheless, he is not comparable with the Father in any way.’ . . .
“There is, moreover, a clear subordination of the Son to the Father in the Commentary . ‘The Father exceeds the Savior as much . . . as the Savior himself . . . exceeds the rest.’ When ‘the Son of Man is glorified in God,’ it is a case of ‘the lesser’ being glorified ‘in the greater.’
In spite of these subordinationist views, however, Origen rejects the view of those who, ‘in the delusion of glorifying the Father,’ declare ‘that something known by the Father is not known by the Son who refuses to be made equal to the perceptions of the unbegotten God.’ It is perhaps in this same vein that one should understand Origen’s assertion that it is on the basis of the unity of the Son’s will with the Father’s that he says, ‘I and the Father are one.’ ”
(Ronald E. Heine,
Fathers of the Church 89:28,34)
And again, a primary source on Origen:
“ God the Father, since he embraces all things, touches each thing that exists, since he bestows on all existence from his own existence; for he is ‘He who is’. The Son is inferior in relation to the Father, since he touches only things endowed with reason; for he is subordinate to the Father. The Holy Spirit is still lower in degree, pertaining to the saints.
So then the power of the Father is superior to the Son and the Holy Spirit, while the Son’s power is greater than the Holy Spirit; and again the power of the Holy Spirit excels all other holy things.”
(Origen, cited by Justinian, Ad Menam , in The Early Christian Fathers , pg. 239)
And yet again, commentary from the translator:
“According to the quotation in Justinian, Origen gave here a bold statement of the subordination of the Son and the Holy Spirit.
‘Subordinationism,’ it is true, was pre-Nicene orthodoxy”
(Henry Bettenson, The Early Christian Fathers , pg. 239)
Once again we see the patristic scholarship attesting to this as the universal teaching of the pre-Nicene Church.
