We find upon all occasions, the early Christian writers speak of the Father as superior to the Son, and in general they give him the title of God, as distinguished from the Son; and sometimes they expressly call him, exclusively of the Son, the only true God; a phraseology which does not at all accord with the idea of the perfect equality of all the persons in the Trinity. But it might well be expected, that the advances to the present doctrine of the Trinity should be gradual and slow. It was, indeed, some centuries before it was completely formed.
It is not a little amusing to observe how the Fathers of the second, third and fourth centuries were embarrassed with the Heathens on the one hand, to whom they wished to recommend their religion, by exalting the person of its founder, and with the ancient Jewish and Gentile converts (whose prejudices against Polytheism, they also wished to guard against) on the other. Willing to conciliate the one, and yet not to offend the other, they are particularly careful, at the same time that they give the appellation of God to Jesus Christ, to distinguish between him and the Father, giving a decided superiority to the latter. Of this I think it may be worth while to produce a number of examples, from the time that the doctrine of the divinity of Christ was first started, to the time of the council of Nice; for till that time, and even something later, did this language continue to be used. Clemens Romanus never calls Christ, God. He says, "Have we not all one God, and one Christ, and one spirit of grace poured upon us all?" which is exactly the language of the apostle Paul, with whom he was in part contemporary.
Justin Martyr, who is the first that we can find to have advanced the doctrine of the divinity of Christ, says He who appeared to Abraham, and to Isaac, and to Jacob, was subordinate to the Father, and minister to his will.4 He even says, that the Father is the author to him both of his existence, and of his being powerful, and of his being Lord and God.6
"All the evangelists," says Irenains, "have delivered to us the doctrine of one God,...and one Christ, the Son of God;'" and invoking the Father he calls him the only God (solus et verus Deus); and according to several of the most considerable of the early Christian writers, a common epithet by which the Father is distinguished from the Son, is, that he alone is (AUTOQEOS) or God of himself.
Origen, quoted by Dr. Clarke, says, "Hence we may solve the scruple of many pious persons, who, through fear lest they should make two Gods, fall into false and wicked notions....We must tell them that he who is of himself God, (AUTOQEOS) is that God (hO QEOS) (as our Saviour, in his prayer to his Father says, that they may know thee, the only true God;) but that whatever is God besides that self-existent person, being so only by communication of his divinity, cannot so properly be styled (hO QEOS) that God, but rather (QEOS) a divine person." The same observation had before been made by Clemens Alexandrinus, who also calls the Son a creature, and the work of God? Origen also says, "According to our doctrine, the God and Father of all is not alone great; for he has communicated of his greatness to the first-begotten of all the creation" (PRWTOTOKOS PASHS KTISEWS).
Novatian says that "the Sabellians make too much of the divinity of the Son, when they say it is that of the Father, extending his honour beyond bounds. They dare to make him, not the Son, but God the Father himself. And again, that they acknowledge the divinity of Christ in too boundless and unrestrained a manner," (effrenatius et effusius in Christo divinitatem confiteri). The same writer also says, "The Son to whom divinity is communicated is, indeed, God; but God the Father of all is deservedly God of all, and the origin (principium) of his Son, whom he begat Lord."
Arnobius says, "Christ, a God, under the form of a man, speaking by the order of the principal God." Again, "then, at length, did God Almighty, the only God, send Christ."
Such language as this was held till the time of the council of Nice. Alexander, who is very severe on Eusebius, bishop of Nicomedia, who was an Arian, says, in his circular letter to the bishops, "the Son is of a middle nature between the first cause of all things, and the creatures, which were created out of nothing." Athanasius himself, as quoted by Dr. Clarke, says, "the nature of God is the cause both of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and of all creatures." He also says, "There is but one God, because the Father is but one, yet is the Son also God, having such a sameness as that of a son to a father."
Lactantius says, "Christ taught that there is one God, and that he alone ought to be worshipped; neither did he ever call himself God, because he would not have been true to his trust, if, being sent to take away gods (that is, a multiplicity of gods) and to assert one, he had introduced another besides that One...Because he assumed nothing at all to himself, he received the dignity of perpetual priest, the honour of sovereign king, the power of a judge, and the name of God."
Hilary, who wrote twelve books on the doctrine of the Trinity, after the council of Nice, to prove that the Father himself is the only self-existing God, and in a proper sense the only true God (quod solus innascibilis et quod solus verus sit) after alleging a passage from the prophet Isaiah, quotes in support of it the saying of our Saviour, "This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent." Much more might be alleged from this writer, to the same purpose.
Lastly, Epiphanius says, "Who is there that does not assert that there is only one God, the Father Almighty, from whom his only begotten Son truly proceeded?"
Indeed, that the Fathers of the council of Nice could not mean the Son was strictly speaking equal to the Father, is evident from their calling him God of God, which in that age was always opposed to God of himself (AUTOQEOS) that is, self-existent or independent; which was always understood to be the prerogative of the Father. It is remarkable that when the writers of that age speak of Christ as existing from eternity, they did not therefore suppose that he was properly self-existent. Thus Alexander, bishop of Alexandria, says, "We believe that the Son was always from the Father; but let no one by the word always be led to imagine him self-existent (AGENNHTOS)."
On these principles the primitive fathers had no difficulty in the interpretation of that saying of our Lord, "my Father is greater than I." They never thought of saying, that he was equal to the Father with respect to his divinity, though inferior with respect to his humanity; which is the only sense of the passage that the doctrine of the Trinity in its present state admits of. For they thought that the Son was in all respects, and in his whole person, inferior to his Father, as having derived his being from him.
Tertullian had this idea of the passage when he says, "the Father is all substance, but the Son is a derivation from him, and a part, as he himself declares, the Father is greater than I.'" It is also remarkable, as Mr. Whiston observes, that the ancient fathers, both Greek and Latin, never interpret Phil. ii. 7, to mean an equality of the Son to the Father. Novatian says, "He, therefore, though he was in the form of God, did not make himself equal to God (non est rapinam arbitratus equalem se Deo esse), for though he remembered he was God of God the Father, he never compared
himself to God the Father, being mindful that he was of his Father, and that he had this, because his Father gave it him."
It also deserves to be noticed, that notwithstanding the supposed derivation of the Son from the Father, and therefore their being of the same substance, most of the early Christian writers thought the text "I and my Father are one," was to be understood of an unity or harmony of disposition only. Thus Tertuilian observes, that the expression is unum, one thing, not one person; and he explains it to mean unity, likeness, conjunction, and of the love that the Father bore to the Son?. Origen says, "let him consider that text, all that believed were of one heart and of one soul, and then he will understand this, "I and my Father are one." Novatian says, one thing (unum) being in the neuter gender, signifies an agreement of society, not an unity of person, and he explains it by this passage in Paul, "he that planteth and he that watereth are both one." But the fathers of the council of Sardica, held A.D. 347, reprobated the opinion that the union of the Father and Son consists in consent and concord only, apprehending it to be a strict unity of substance; so much farther was the doctrine of the Trinity advanced at that time.
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