The Trinity in the Greek Fathers John Anthony McGuckin

Yet it is also illuminating in that it shows how fluid and inter-reactive the early
Christian theologians were. In general, for the Fathers, the scriptures and the
liturgical mysteries of the church were always more immediately influential than
anything else 49
The transition between the late New Testament era and the earliest
The time of the Greek Fathers is a time when apocalypticism is still the churchs
preferred syntax of thought about the manner of Gods relation with the world.
Christ, the Fathers own Son and messenger, and the Spirit, the gift of the
Messiah to a renewed world (namely the church), are celebrated as the two
primary means of the divine outreach of the Father. - 50
In this apocalyptic medium, the bringing of consonance between the heavenly
reality (Gods court where his will is perfectly fulfilled) and the earthly dominion
(where evil regularly withstands Gods overarching design) is the crux of all the
theology of redemption
Because of this overarching perspective, the earliest level of Greek post-New
Testamental theology is entirely dynamic, or economic, in character.
Early Christian economic theology is dynamic because it expresses the
fundamental insight that God is one who saves his people. God is energy. God is
not a thing.
This confessionalism is found not only in early trinitarian prayers (doxologies),
but also in patristic attempts to explain why God works so dramatically in this
way (through Jesus) and not in any other way that could be posited as more
rational.
This is also why the earliest of Christian patristic theologies is incidental,
accidental almost.
It comes out of the writers almost unconsciously; it is not offered as a treatise
on the nature of God but rather as reflections s on Gods will for the present
circumstances.
Clement of Rome: who wrote to the troubled Corinthian Christians to remind
them of a threefold truth: that Christ is Gods agent for redemption, that the
Spirit is Christs gift for reconciliation and insight, and that a peaceful church is
the fruit of Christs work. It is to the humble that Christ belongs not to those
who exalt themselves above his flock. The Lord Jesus, who is the scepter of Gods
own majesty, did not come in a show of arrogance and pride, but in humility, as
the Holy Spirit spoke of him, saying: Lord, who has believed what we said . . . ?
The earliest references to the Trinity, therefore, are entirely made up of New
Testament cloth (Clements indebtedness to Paul is obvious in every line). The
consonance of the heavenly court and the church on earth is at the forefront of
Clements mind. The Christ is the Lord who brings peace from the Father. And

the Spirit of Holiness, who is the Messiahs gift, reveals the life-giving words of
what is evidently Christs own pre-existent revelation. It is Christ who speaks in
Isaiah, in the Psalms, and so on. It is the Spirit who teaches Christs heavenly and
ineffable doctrine through the medium of the scriptures, which is one of the chief
apocalyptic signs the church possesses.
However simple, or even crude, Clements trinitarian theology may be in the
eyes of later readers, it is nonetheless fully formed and fairly impressive.
We know God only by being conformed to his ways, Clement teaches, and this
consonance is the eschatological gift of grace (reconciliation) 51 which the
Father has given to the world through the adventus of the Son, effected in the
sanctifying and revelatory power of the Spirit 52
Ignatius of Antioch - Another theologian-bishop near Clements time was put
into a different form of crisis. he bitter persecution of the Christians that had
caused his arrest and his long journey to Rome and his expected execution there
was no less than a supreme eschatological sign. Bloody hatred of the church was
not a political accident, but an apocalyptical testing of the church. Bishops
are icons of God the Father; priests are like Christ; deacons are the angels
present in the churches. The threefold ministry is described as a living sign of the
Trinity present in the eschatological mysteries of the Eucharist and baptism.
This earliest level of patristic trinitarianism has often been dismissed as
unformed, or pedestrian, largely because commentators are impatient to find
signs or traces of the later formulae of the Trinitarian doctrine in the early
writers.
A similar tendency of pre-Nicene theology barely to differentiate the risen Christ
from the Spirit equally confuses and troubles those later theologians who still
read the ancients. For most of the Apostolic Fathers,5 this intimate proximity of
Christ and Spirit is presumed. 53
Spirit is not merely the Holy Spirit, but is also a synonym for heavenly.
Once again the overarching eschatological climate explains Ignatius tendency of
assimilating Son and Spirit, for spirit conveys the status of being an inhabitant
of the heavenly court and an emissary of God.
Talking of the Spirit of God was one of the few ways in which the writers of this
era could articulate what theologians, after Origen, meant by the pre-existence
of Christ (is he merely a man or does he have an eternal pre-existence in the
heavenly court?).
Christs pre-existence is certainly presumed in such writings as Second
Clement.
The Christian Apologists

A new intellectual ferment was in the making as the second century grew old. For
the first time, Christians began attracting the attention of groups external to
them 54
These groups were also formidable opponents to the Christians
The Apologists at first were often Christians of a philosophical bent t (it is difficult
to call any one of them a serious philosopher as such) who tried to express
fundamental Christian attitudes in ways with which a Hellenistic mind might
resonate
The early Apologists placed the doctrine of Trinity on a new footing by trying to
explain for their audiences (curious seekers, whom the Christians regarded as
potential catechumens) how they could claim to be continuing the monotheism
of the Jews while worshiping Christ as God
At this period the arcanum of the Holy Spirit (that is the secret of his status and
role and mission as sanctifying grace) was not communicated to the believer
until the eve of his or her baptism, and then in the most simple fashion.
This is partly why the doctrine of the person and role of the Spirit is shadowy in
this literature, in comparison to the teachings about the person and work of
Christ
Among the Apologists the syntax of Logos theology became dominant very
quickly. It was a term that is rooted in the holy scriptures and capable of many
meanings.
It may mean the plan of Gods salvation, or the Fathers spoken word which
created the universe, or the divine Wisdom which held all things in order, or the
supreme active Spirit of the transcendent God
Logos was a major term of reference among the Stoics. But it was Philo of
Alexandria who had shown the Jewish and Christian communities its religious
potentialities 55
He described the Logos as the pre-existent power of the supreme God who spoke
and acted through all the theophanies of the Law and the paideia of the scripture
Logos philosophy articulates how monotheism can be combined with confession
of Jesus as divine power of the Father
Theophilus of Antioch - introduces to Christian discourse, from Hellenistic
logic, the distinction between the logos endiathetos and the logos prophorikos.
The former refers to a conception as distinct from an elaborated argument or
ideational activity as a prelude to rhetoric. Theophilus applies it to the issue of
the relation of the Son and the Father goes on 55 to use the idea to explain
creation and redemption: how a historically conditioned Jesus can be understood
as the same one who made the heavens and the earth, and who is older than the
stars. 56. . For Theophilus, the Father exists as the supreme monad in infinite
transcendence. But when he decides to create the material world, he utters

what he has hitherto kept secret within his own mind. In other words, the
Fathers Wisdom is always co-present and co-eternal but at a specific moment
(purely for the worlds making) the Logos is expressed, and becomes manifest
in order to work. .. At one stroke Theophilus explains also why the Logos had to
have charge of the redemption of the fallen world: it was his fallen world and he
who made it came to repair it
Justin Martyr - describes himself as a sage (he was remarked in the church as
being the first one who had come into the ranks of Christians wearing the
distinctive robe of the philosopher and still wishing to retain it after baptism). .
Justin takes the path of Theophilus further. Using Stoic ideas he theorizes that
the Logos has left divine seeds (logoi spermatikoi) in all rational creatures.
Applying Platonic ideas about the recognition of truth, he goes on to suggest
that it is this aspect of human constitution that makes religious insight possible
and Christianity the natural goal for all who wish to be wise. Before the coming of
the Logos all human beings have seedling manifestations of the truth, which
are authentic, but partial. after the incarnation, the church holds the power to
bring all partial truths into focus. The Logos, Justin argues (in the context of
possibly the first ever JewishChristian dialogue), is distinct from the supreme
Father in name and number,13 and yet the Logos is truly the Son of God issuing
from God before all creatures. This divine origination makes the Logos
authentically divine, worthy of the title God, not a God alongside God but the
Son of God from within the Fathers bosom. The Logos-Son is not a creature,
issued from out of the Fathers will, but, as the scriptures indicate, a true
offspring produced from out of the Father, by generation. Thus the distinction
between the concept of issuing by willed production and the concept of
emanating by generation became an important theological construct of the later
generation. It marks the difference between envisaging g the Logos-Son as either
made or begotten, as either the first of all the creatures or someone above the
creation whose origin and status is within the Deity. This notion will command
the whole of the later fourth-century Christian dialectic.
The Apologists, nevertheless, had begun sketching out an answer to the issue of
universal salvation through the Logos theology 57
According to the Apologists, the world, strictly speaking, is not a work of the
Father, but that of the Logos. The Father remains the supreme and transcendent
one. The Logos is a reflection, an image, of the deity
The Apologists arguments about the Logos made it clear that the title of Son is
to be ascribed to Jesus on account of his pre-existent state as immanent Word
and not merely as an honor applicable to his earthly ministry 58
Irenaeus of Lyons - Reacting against the theological currents swirling around
him, Irenaeus composes a series of largely pastoral books, urging caution in
theology . He develops the Logos theology, gives an account of the process
whereby the scriptures become canonical, and articulates the concepts of
apostolic succession and regula fidei against the Gnostics. But in terms of
trinitarian thought Irenaeus is of immense importance for being the first to

position the Logos theology as the central pole in a great vista of cosmic
redemption. Irenaeus perfects the concepts of the logos endiathetos and the
logos prophorikos. He takes it away from an (implicit) presupposition that the
Logos is a stage in the life of God, and back toward the more biblically rooted
sense of the Logos as the eternal Son of the Fathers generation. Irenaeus reacts
against the Gnostic scheme of a series of mediating lesser deities between the
supreme God and the corrupted world, and robustly insists that the Logos is the
supreme mediator of the sublime Father and is fully divine, just as the Spirit of
God is fully divine. The immanent Logos and the emitted Logos are no longer
seen as stages of creation, but as aspects of Gods own being and as
simultaneous with God, not his successive moments (which in an eternal being
would be an impossibility). nt: it is the same God existing in different modalities
of relation. These three relations of Fatherhood (the one divine Being), sonship
(the living Reason of the Father), and Spirit (the hypostatic Wisdom of the Father)
exist from all eternity, but are fully manifested to the world only in the economy
of salvation.
Early 3rd century theologians - The dawn of the third century witnesses Greek
theologians such as Hippolytus and Novatian, who are deeply concerned with the
Trinitarian question and who want to marginalize the traditional Christian leaders,
such as Pope Callixtus,21 whom they called monarchians. 59
These cling to the older and biblical phrases describing the Sons relation to the
Father but are generally at a loss to explain the trinitarian relations except in
terms of successive modalities of revelation
The attempts of these traditionalists to resist the onset of the Logos theologians
were more or less doomed by the rise of a school of thought in Rome now known
as Modalism.
The names of Theodotos the Banker, Asclepiodotus, Artemas, Noetus, and
Sabellius are commonly associated with the movement, which tends to argue
that the names of Father, Son, and Spirit are simply designations for different
aspects of the same God working in different modes in the economy of salvation
Added on to the above theology is the Christological conclusion that the Spirit of
God assumed and inhabited Jesus and therefore cannot be called divine, or God,
in any personal way at all.
It was the latter thesis that ultimately scared off the traditionalists and drove a
hesitant church into the arms of the Logos theologians. However, although the
Logos theology had assumed a new international importance, the articulations of
Hippolytus and Novatian about the trinitarian relations were still meager by
comparison with what was soon to come. - 60
Hippolytus instinctively looks to the past. Novatian is a clearer thinker who (at a
time when Tertullian is laying down major advances in Christian semantics
concerning the Trinity) underlines the important principle that the Sonship of the
Logos begins in eternity, and not with the creation. He conceives the unity in the

three divine persons as deriving from the will of the Father. This is a moral unity
which, though it might appear as a weak notion in the relations of human beings,
is, in terms of the power of Gods sovereign will, far removed from fallibility and
change.
For Novatian, Gods unicity is preserved since the Son is derived from the Father.
As Son, he is truly divine; yet as Son, he is not the supreme Father.
Origen of Alexandria - The speed at which the doctrine of the Trinity developed
through the fourth century, reaching a plateau thereafter, is a direct reaction to
Origens scholarly agenda. 61
Origen understands the problems facing the earlier Christian theologians in the
doctrine of God and tries very hard to keep a balance between the Christian
sense of the divine status of the Word (and the Spirit) and the sense of order that
flows from the unique majesty of the one God, the Father.
To emphasize the divine status of the Word and of the Spirit as if it were
something parallel with that of the Father equality in a static sense would
render the Trinity flat and lifeless
On the other hand, to emphasize the order (taxis) or process in the Trinity, that
is, the mission of the Father as conveyed to the Son and the Spirit, as if it were a
simple economy would imply the existence of inferiority in the Trinity, a
subordinationist structure wherein the divinity of all the three hypostases cannot
be sustained except as mythological symbols.
Origen comes to grasp the issues involved in the theology of the Trinity thanks to
his study of the earlier writers and his deep knowledge of the scripture. He saw
the Trinity as one of the key issues of all theology.
He explains that in the time of the Law the Trinity was not fully revealed since
it was an economy of faith that had to wait for the pedagogy of the incarnated
Logos.
There are three hypostases; the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Only the Father is
Unbegotten.
Famously, however (and it was to cost his reputation greatly), he rejects the
concept of homoousios (consubstantiality) as being applicable to the Son and
Father
He teaches instead that the Son was made30 by an eternal generation from
the Father.31 His rejection of the homoousion is a deliberate rejection of the
notion that the Son belongs to a class that could be described as Godhead
containing different members.
Using Philos terminology, for a similar end, he calls the Logos a second God
(deuteros theos).

Nothing whatsoever in the Trinity can legitimately be regarded as major or

minor 62
To this extent our Saviour and Lord is, in his relation to the Father, but one
single God.
Origens trinitarian theology is one in which the Father is the cause and
origination of all, the Son the fashioner and pedagogue of the rational world, and
the Spirit the sanctifier. The Spirit leads inexorably to the Word, and the Word to
the Father
All the trinitarian energy is this movement from the Father to the world, through
the Logos and the Spirit; and equally, the drawing of the redeemed world
through the Spirit to the Logos, and in the Logos to the Father. There is no access
to God the Father except by the Spirit and the Logos
All the trinitarian energy is this movement from the Father to the world, through
the Logos and the Spirit; and equally, the drawing of the redeemed world
through the Spirit to the Logos, and in the Logos to the Father. There is no access
to God the Father except by the Spirit and the Logos
Nicene and post-Nicene reactions Christian theologys progression n met
with difficulties in the early fourth century, when Arius, a priest of Alexandria,
publicly denounced his bishop Alexander for misrepresenting the biblical
tradition and claiming that the Logos is God of God. d. Alexander, according to
Arius, ought to have taught that the Logos is inferior to God as Gods servant. For
the next century, he turned the whole investigation of the Trinity into a series of
public meetings of bishops modeled on the Roman Senates law-making process.
The main landmarks on the road to trinitarianism are the Council of Nicaea in
325, the Synod of Alexandria in 362, and the Council of Constantinople I in 381. 63
The main theologians who form the Nicene and neo-Nicene parties and who
bring Greek patristic trinitarian theology to its formal statement are Athanasius
of Alexandria, Meletius of Antioch, and the Cappadocian Fathers (Basil the Great,
Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa)
The homoousion, or consubstantiality, of the Son and the Father has always been
regarded as a pillar of this Nicene movement.
According to the Nicenes, the belief in one God, the Father, and in one Lord
Jesus Christ implies that there is unity between them and that the Son is divine,
as he is confessed to be God from God and Light from Light.
The Nicenes press the issue, adding qualification after qualification to those
baptismal confessions that become the Nicene creed so that there is no further
possibility of eschewing the doctrine of the Sons divinity: God of God, Light of
Light, true God of true God, begotten not made, one in being with the Father.

Athanasius: The whole being of the Son belongs to the Fathers substance, as
radiance from light, and stream from source; so that he who sees the Son sees
what belongs to the Father; and knows that the Sons being is in the Father just
as it is from the Father. For the Father is in the Son as the sun is in its radiance,
the thought in the word, the source in the stream.
Equality of stature in the deity is made by the Nicenes to be tantamount to a
confession of the selfsame essence
If Jesus is divine, in a genuinely monotheist confession, his divinity must be the
same as that of the Father in a single divinity.
This is what Athanasius means by tautotes ousias, that is, sameness of being. It
is important to note that the Word and the Father have the selfsame being
They do not have generically the same kind of thing as if both belong to a same
class.
if this central insight of the co-equality and selfsame essence in the Triune
Godhead is to make sense, clearly another term in addition to being is needed
to connote the distinctness of persons. At this time the word hypostasis moves to
the fore and receives a new set of Christian resonances to give it the connotation
of a subsistent identity
Gregory moves the debate toward a classical fixing of terminology
Gregory teaches that the single selfsame ousia is differentiated in three
hypostases. The Father possesses his own being, as cause (aitia) and principle
(arche) of the divine Trinity; the Son and Spirit possess the being of the Father in
differently instantiated forms and with different economic missions. Yet each
person is God.
As Gregory is quite aware, this theology is difficult and is built on a paradox for
human reason. Divine unity is a oneness that opens out into diversity, and this
diversity is ever a concurrence into unity
Latin Trinitarian Theology - michel rene barnes
The first question that faces anyone writing on early Latin Trinitarian theology is
that of when or with whom to begin the account. 70
Should some of these Greek writings be considered Latin on the basis of their
origin in Rome?
I have opted for the straightforward criterion of language: if a text was originally
written in Latin it falls within my brief
Latin-language trinitarian theology is born in the tumult of the fight against
monarchianism (also known as patripassianism).

Late 2nd century, eloquent Christians with Eastern origins who resided in Rome
and Carthage taught that the divinity in Jesus was the Father, the one God,
otherwise known as Spirit.
The scriptural proofs that the divine in Jesus was the Father came from Jesus
own words in the gospel of John: The Father and I are one
These teachers differed among themselves as to what or who the name Son
referred to, but they agreed with the equivalence of Father, Spirit, and divinity,
and that the divinity in Jesus was the Father-Spirit
Those who spoke in this way also rejected the Logos theology of the Apologists
(principally Justin and Theophilus): the uttered Word was not a separate being,
but only words, as when God spoke in Genesis 1
In developing their arguments against the monarchians, Tertullian and Novatian
first of all reaffirm two basic doctrines from the Apologists: that divinity is from
the Father, not identical with the Father; and that the Fathers Word (identified in
the prologue to John) has a real and distinct existence. 71
While the Apologists were concerned with the cosmological activity of the Word,
the Latins focus attention on the second ond persons divine action within the
context of the incarnation: what divine works did Jesus do?

Tertullian, Novatian, and the Latins thereafter articulate another basis for the
unity of Father and Son, one that is based upon a commonality between Father
and Son that is entirely free of topological descriptions, even as it preserves the
Johannine language of in.
While Latins strongly emphasize the Word as the Spirit or divinity who unites with
flesh, Word-Spirit serves as the fulcrum not for demonstrating that Jesus and
the Father were both divine, but for demonstrating that the divine being joined
with flesh was not the Father.
Latin theologies of the Trinity from Tertullian to Augustine follow this form: there
is an explanation for how the Three are understood to be one, that is, unity of
works and power
Three are distinct from one another that is, causal relations; 3 there is a
statement that the Three are eternally irreducible and unconvertible that is,
they are each always themselves and not another;
From its beginning Latin theology has an emphasis on sight in trinitarian
theology: our sight of the Son, of the Father in the Son, and the Sons sight of the
Father
The exegesis of John 14:9, which speaks of this sight, is linked to the exegesis of
14:10, and the meaning of the latter passage gives content to the former.

Faustinus (Rome, c.37680) argues that scriptural descriptions of the Sons iconic
or visual relationship to the Father establish the substantial unity between Father
and Son, as when John 1:14
It is Tertullian who begins the Latin anti-monarchian emphasis on the
theophanies as proofs for the separate existence of the Father and
Son. For Tertullian, a doctrine of two divine persons, one invisible (the
Father) and one visible (the Son or Word), is more true to scripture and
makes better sense exegetically than the monarchian reading (that the
Father enters the body of Jesus and that union is called the Son).
In Old Testament theophanies the Son reveals himself (i.e., the fact of his
existence) and prophetically reveals his future incarnation; in the New Testament
theophany, namely the incarnation, the Son is said to show the Father as well as
to reveal his own divinity.
The way in which the Son reveals the Father is the very same way in
which the Son reveals his own divinity by his works 73
This traditional Latin doctrine is the cornerstone of Latin trinitarian
theology, and the basis for the Wests sympathy for, and understanding
of, theology associated with the Council of Nicaea (325). At the same
time, Latins who reject Nicene theology likewise reject traditional
Latin theology of common works common power.
Tertullian also begins Latin trinitarian theologys argument that the
divinity of the Son and his unity with the Father is shown by the
character of his works or actions
In the Sons workings we perceive the operation of his power, and in recognizing
the power we also recognize the substance to which it belongs.
That substance is the same as the Fathers, and insofar as any one recognizes
Christ to be God in the power of his substance, he would thus come to know God
the Father.
Tertullians argument that works indicate power is ubiquitous in Latin trinitarian
theology. If Christ is only man, Novatian asks, how is it that what the Father
does, the Son also does in like manner? 74
Lactantius gives the same argument in more technical language: The power of
God appeared in him from the works he performed; the weakness of man from
the passions which he endured.
Tertullian gives a diminished account of the Holy Spirits activities.
Monasticism leads Tertullian to stress the continuing role of the Holy Spirit as the
source of prophecy, inspiration, and ecstatic revelation, but unlike Athenagoras,
Theophilus, and Irenaeus, Tertullian does not describe the Holy Spirit as cocreator, which is a very important omission.

A second omission inherited from Irenaeus, is a weak account of the generation

of the Holy Spirit.
Latin trinitarian theology begins, historically and logically, as anti-modalist
the Father is always Father, the Son from the Father is always Son.
Even when scripture says that the Son is in the Father, or the Father is in the
Son, the Father is never the Son, and the Son is never the Father.
Similarly, given its anti-monarchian origins, from the beginning Latin trinitarian
theology is concerned with how the Father is seen in the Son, and how the Son is
seen to be divine