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What, then, was the doctrine of Paul concerning God and Christ? He nowhere gives us a full metaphysical statement. It is not clear that he had developed any precise theological doctrine of the Trinity. Certainly his view of the third person is indefinite; and it is doubtful whether he regarded the Holy Spirit as a personal being. In the two passages which contain his most discriminating utterances on the subject of the Godhead, the Holy Spirit is not mentioned: "To us there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we unto him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through him" (1 Cor. viii. 6). "There is one God, one mediator also between God and men, himself man, Christ Jesus" (1 Tim. ii. 5). These passages have a credal ring, and, together with the baptismal formula, seem to be the basis of the early confessions. Two points bearing upon the question of the Trinity stand out clearly. First, Paul remained a firm adherent of the Jewish monotheism. To him, as to Moses and to Christ, God was a single personal being—"the Father," "the blessed and only potentate," "whom no man hath seen, nor can see." Secondly, Paul distinguished Christ from God, as a personal being, and regarded him, moreover, as essentially inferior and subordinate to the supreme Deity. I do not press the point here that Paul, in the second passage quoted, expressly calls Christ a man, in direct antithesis with God. Other passages make it plain that the apostle conceived of Christ as superhuman and preexistent and as having a certain metaphysical relation to God. But that Paul ever confounded Christ with God himself, or regarded him as in any way the supreme Divinity, is a position invalidated not only by direct statements, but also by the whole drift of his epistles. The central feature of Paul's christology is its doctrine of mediatorship: "One God, the Father, and one mediator between God and men." This is a theological advance on the messianic doctrine of the Synoptic gospels. Messiahship is the doctrine of a "Son of Man;" mediatorship is the doctrine of a "Son of God." Paul gives no evidence of acquaintance with the Logos doctrine, but he anticipates it. He exalts Christ above all human beings. If he does not clothe him with the supreme attributes of Deity, he places him next to God in nature, honor, and power; so that, while remaining a monotheist, he takes a long step toward a monotheistic trinitarianism, giving us the one only trinitarian benediction of the New Testament (2 Cor. xiii. 14).
Passing to the post-apostolic age, we find that these two articles of Paul's doctrine form the basis of the faith of the church. Not only so, they continue to be the characteristic and fundamental features of the Greek Trinitarianism through the whole course of its development. From beginning to end, Greek theology is distinctly monotheistic. Clement writes: "As God lives and as the Lord Jesus Christ lives." So Athenagoras: "We acknowledge a God, and a Son, his Logos, and a Holy Spirit." So Dionysius of Rome: "We must believe on God the Father Omnipotent, and on Jesus Christ his Son, and on the Holy Spirit." The Nicene creed, in which Greek orthodoxy culminated, continues the strain in language which is a clear echo of Paul himself: "We believe in one God, the Father almighty," "and in one Lord Jesus Christ the Son of God, begotten of the Father." To be sure, the Son of God is also called God in the added phrase, "God of God;" but "God" is here descriptive, in the sense of divine, since the Son of God is begotten of the Father and hence of the same divine nature. The Father is God in the primary or supreme sense. Christ as Son is God only in a derived or secondary sense. As the evolution of church doctrine went on, the trinitarian element grew more explicit and complete, but the original Pauline monotheism was never given up. In fact, the more pronounced the Greek Trinitarianism became, the more tenaciously its monotheism was declared and vindicated. God, the Father, the eternal cause of all things, was never confounded with either of the other persons, or with the Trinity as a whole.
The same is true of Paul's doctrine of mediatorship. It also became a vital feature of Greek theology, and remained its moulding principle through all its history. A difference, however, is to be noted. The doctrine of monotheism naturally lay in the background, as a fixed quantity, being assumed always as a cardinal truth of Christianity which had its birth on Jewish monotheistic ground, and carefully avoided all connection with the pagan polytheism. Not so with the doctrine of Christ's mediatorship. This was the new truth of Christianity. Theologically, Christianity is a christology. Its Trinitarianism started out of its doctrine of Christ as the Son of God and the mediator between God and man. Around this point the early controversies arose, and here began a christological evolution which became the central factor of Greek ecclesiastical history through its whole course. This evolution must be fully comprehended, if we would understand the Nicene Trinitarianism. It may be naturally divided into four sections or stages, represented by the names of Paul, Justin Martyr, Origen, and Athanasius.
The faith of the sub-apostolic age remained essentially Pauline. It is truly represented in the primitive portions of the so-called Apostles' creed. Christ was regarded as a superhuman being, above all angels and inferior only to God himself, preexistent, appearing among men from the heavenly world, the true Son of God, and hence in a sense God, as of divine nature, though not the Supreme One. But no further metaphysics is yet attempted. There is no Logos doctrine. This doctrine which was to so change the whole current of Christian thought, and give such an impulse to the spirit of metaphysical speculation, first appears in Justin Martyr.
The question here arises and cannot be ignored: What place should be given in this evolution to the fourth Gospel? The question of actual date does not now concern us. The point is: When does the fourth Gospel appear in history as a document to which theological appeal is made? Certainly the two questions are closely connected, and I would here declare my conviction that no satisfactory conclusion can be reached on the Johannine problem, until the historical facts as to the relation of the fourth Gospel to the origin of the Logos doctrine are properly weighed. Three facts especially are to be considered. First, setting aside the fourth Gospel itself, no trace of a Logos doctrine appears in the early church until Justin Martyr; that is, more than a century after the death of Christ. Secondly, none of the post-apostolic Fathers before Justin Martyr allude to the fourth Gospel or quote from it. [I leave out of account the Ignatian Epistles, which, if genuine, are so greatly interpolated as to be unworthy of confidence, and also the Epistle to Diognetus, which is now properly regarded as of later date. The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, the Epistles of Clement, of Barnabas, of Polycarp, the Shepherd of Hermas, the Fragments of Papias, and the recently discovered Apology of Aristides, make no allusion to a Logos doctrine or to the fourth Gospel.]
Thirdly, Justin Martyr plainly draws his Logos doctrine from Greek philosophic sources, never quoting the fourth Gospel by name in defense of it, and never even referring to the Gospel at all, so that it is still a disputed question whether he was directly acquainted with it. Whatever be the truth on this point, it does not affect the fact with which we are now concerned, viz., that so far as the light of early church history goes, the Logos doctrine is not shown to be of apostolic origin, or drawn from the fourth Gospel. If this gospel is Johannine, it was, for some reason, not in general circulation before Justin Martyr's time, and was not quoted in connection with the Logos doctrine till quite late in the second century. To assume that the fourth Gospel was written by the Apostle John, and then conclude that the Logos doctrine of the post-apostolic church is Johannine and apostolic, against evidence of the clearest sort to the contrary, is one of the most vicious and fallacious of syllogisms. I regret to say that this style of reasoning is not yet extinct. [See, for one illustration, Gloag, Introduction to the Johannine Writings, p. 189: "The doctrine of the Logos frequently occurs in the writings of the Fathers, especially of Justin Martyr. They derived their notions concerning it from the Gospel of John." In his preface the writer allows that "the authenticity of John's Gospel is the great question of modern criticism, and must be regarded as still unsettled." Yet here he assumes this "unsettled question'" to be a fact, and then assumes that Justin Martyr was acquainted with the fourth Gospel, and derived his Logos doctrine from it. A similar piece of false reasoning occurs in regard to a quotation in the Epistle of Polycarp from the first Epistle of John (p. 101). Polycarp does not allude to John anywhere in his Epistle, nor does he give the authorship of the quotation; yet Dr. Gloag, assuming that the author of the fourth Gospel and the first Epistle of John is the same, concludes: "We have then the testimony of Polycarp in proof of the genuineness of John's Gospel, and this testimony is of great importance, as Polycarp was the disciple of John." Observe how the testimony of Irenaeus, a generation later, as to Polycarp's relation to John, is here used to prop up a conclusion that is wholly without foundation. The question is not whether Polycarp was acquainted with John, but whether he gives any evidence of acquaintance with the reputed Gospel of John. There is not a hint of it in his Epistle, or even that he knew John at all. To assume that John wrote both Gospel and Epistle, and then that Polycarp, as a disciple of John, must have been acquainted with both Gospel and Epistle, and then to argue from an anonymous quotation from the Epistle that the Gospel is Johannine, is a flagrant petitio principii.]
As to the origin of the Logos doctrine in general there can be no question. It has no Jewish ancestry. The Logos doctrine is essentially a mediation doctrine. It is based on the idea of the divine transcendence and of a cosmological void needing to be filled between the absolute God and the world. Jewish theology held indeed to the divine transcendence; but by its doctrine of creation, involving a direct creative act, and of man as formed in the divine image, it brought God into the closest relations with all his creatures, and especially with man himself. God walking in the garden and conversing with Adam is a picture of the whole Old Testament conception of God's immediate connection with the human race. In fact, there lurks in Jewish thought a strong tincture of divine immanence in its whole theory of theophanies, and most of all in its conception of "the Spirit of the Lord " moving directly upon human souls. Thus no basis was laid in Jewish theology for the growth of a Logos doctrine. The "Wisdom" of the Proverbs is simply a poetical personification of the divine attribute. Christ has much to say of his close relation to God, and of his mission to men; but it was a mission based on spiritual needs, soteriological, not cosmological. The term Logos he never uses, and the conception was quite foreign to him. Had the Logos mediation doctrine been a product of Jewish thought, it would certainly have appeared in Paul; but he gives no hint of it. We have indeed his doctrine of Christ's mediatorship in a new form, and the beginnings of a cosmological view of Christ's nature, as being "the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation;" but this is Greek, not Jewish, and gives evidence of his acquaintance with Greek philosophy. For it is in Greek philosophy that the sources of the Logos doctrine are to be found. It first appeared in the cosmological Asia Minor school, in the sixth century B.C, to explain the order of the world, as a principle of reason and law. As such it was employed by Heraclitus and Anaxagoras. When the dualistic school of Plato arose, it became the mediating principle between the transcendent spiritual sphere and the world of phenomena. It also appeared in Stoicism, to sustain its doctrine of a divine immanence in nature. Thus the Logos as a divine principle with mediating functions had a long history in Greek philosophy before it became christologized in the early church. Justin Martyr directly refers to Platonic and Stoic authorities for his Logos ideas. He was himself a Platonist before he became a Christian, and he never laid aside his philosopher's cloak. He believed that Greek philosophy was a partial revelation of divine truth, and he drew from it weapons to be used in the service of Christian dogma. Justin belonged to the school of Paul, and in his hands the Pauline form of doctrine was not essentially modified. The new Logos ideas fitted quite closely to Paul's own.
But three points are noticeable in the Logos doctrine, which became fountain heads of tendencies that were finally to change the whole current of theological thought, and to substitute for the Pauline christology something radically different.
First, the Logos doctrine emphasized the superhuman or divine element in Christ's nature. Paul again and again called Christ a man. But he also gave him a preexistence and "form of God" which distinguished him from merely human beings, and thus laid a cosmological basis for his mediatorship. It is here that the Logos, doctrine comes in. The philosophical Logos was essentially cosmological and metaphysical. It was a necessary bond of communication between the world of spiritual intelligences and this lower world of time and sense. In itself, whether as an impersonal principle or as a personal being, it was utterly aloof from earth; but its great function was mediatorial, and thus in its relationships it touched both spheres. When Jesus Christ was identified with the Logos, his whole being was transcendentalized. His human and earthly features were transfigured, and lost in the higher glory. He was no longer the Son of man, but the Son of God, and even a quasi divinity. The whole point of view was changed. Paul starts with the human and proceeds to the divine. The Logos doctrine reverses the process. As a consequence, while Paul never lost sight of Christ's real humanity, the Logos theology was in danger at once of regarding Christ as essentially a transcendent being descending from the higher sphere, and entering human relations in a sort of disguise. This danger brought forth its natural fruit in the later monophysite heresies.
Secondly, the Logos doctrine in its assertion of Christ's mediatorship emphasized the subordination element which characterizes Paul's christology, and tended to magnify it. It is the essence of the Logos doctrine that the Logos mediates between what is higher than itself and what is lower. He is a middle being both in nature and function. Such is the mediating principle of Plato, the demon of Plutarch, the Logos of Philo. This cosmological view, treating the Logos principle as necessary and immanent in the universe, and not as introduced providentially into the moral order in consequence of sin, now came into Christian theology. Paul started it, but the Logos doctrine completed it. In this view the subordination element is vital, and it became the governing note of the whole Logos school. Justin Martyr's doctrine of Christ was that of a Son of God, wholly removed in his preincarnate existence from the human sphere, and yet as completely distinguished from the Supreme Being. He regards the Logos of God as originally immanent in God, as the divine reason, and then at a point in time evolved into a personal existence of sonship and mediating activity. This development of the Logos into personality is by the divine will. Thus the Son of God is subordinate to the Father in all things, though having his origin in the Father's essence. Justin was philosophically a Platonic transcendentalist. The Supreme Being was in his view invisible and unapproachable. Hence his idea that the Jehovah of the Old Testament in his various theophanies was not the Father but the Son or Logos. He found traces of the Logos even in pagan philosophy and faith, and in the lives of such men as Socrates.
A third feature of the Logos doctrine was to be still more influential in radically remoulding Greek Christian thought. I refer to its purely metaphysical and speculative character. The Logos doctrine may be true, but if so, its truth is metaphysical, not historical. The Christ of history is not a speculation of Greek philosophy. The introduction of the Logos doctrine into Christian theology, giving a new shape as it did to the entire content of faith, wrought an immense change in its whole spirit and direction. Instead of resting on historical facts, it now built itself on certain speculative assumptions. This is the secret of the remarkable change from the confessional character of the Apostles' creed to the transcendental metaphysics of Nice and Chalcedon. It is a fact which theologians have been slow to learn, that the metaphysical words so freely used by the Greek Fathers in theological controversy were all borrowed from the philosophical nomenclature of Plato and Aristotle. This becomes especially apparent in what may be called the scholastic period of Greek theology, and is well illustrated by John of Damascus, who prefaces his great work, "On the Orthodox Faith," with an explanatory dictionary of Aristotelean terms.
Before proceeding to Origen, it is proper to say a few words as to the relation of the fourth Gospel to the further history, and also concerning the general character of its christology. Although Justin Martyr himself makes no use of this gospel in connection with his Logos doctrine, it begins to be quoted by his immediate successors, and soon becomes the great repository of proof texts for the whole Logos school. It is pertinent, therefore, to note that its christology is essentially Pauline, with the addition of the Logos terminology. Its monotheism is decided. God is always the Father. Christ is the mediator sent of God, subordinate and dependent. Its doctrine is summed up in the words of Christ's prayer, "This is life eternal, to know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent." In a single point, however, the Johannine christology advances beyond the Pauline. Paul has a transcendental view of Christ as the "form" and "image" of God. But the fourth Gospel develops a metaphysical unity between the Father and the Son to which Paul is a stranger. Just how much is involved in the famous passage, "I and my Father are one," is somewhat doubtful. It is clear, however, that the unity asserted is not one of substance or being, since Christ compares it to the unity of believers: "that they all may be one even as we are one."
There is a general resemblance between the Logos doctrine of the fourth Gospel and that of Justin Martyr. Yet there are striking divergences which indicate an independent origin. The fourth Gospel is mystical, with a spice of Neo-Platonism, reminding one of Philo. Justin is speculative, with an emanation element which has a Stoic strain. His distinction between the immanent and the personalized Logos is wanting in the fourth Gospel. Behind both is the shadow of Gnosticism. But the fourth Gospel gives the clearest signs of Gnostic influence. Its peculiar vocabulary is from Gnostic sources. The Gnostic dualism is also suggested in the shaping given to the doctrine of Satan, and in the two classes of men, children of light, who are sons of God, and children of darkness, who are of their "father the devil." The real authorship of the fourth Gospel is obscure. It may be that there is behind it a true Johannine tradition; but philosophically it plainly belongs to the Philonic school. It is no valid objection that Philo has no incarnation. The object of the gospel, in part at least, was, in a Gnostic way, to identify the Jesus of history with the mediation Logos of Greek philosophy. This required that the Logos should be made flesh. It seems probable that the Logos doctrine of the fourth Gospel and that of Justin Martyr represent two separate streams of philosophical Christian thought, which afterwards became united in a common evolution.
We come to Origen, the boldest speculator and the most fertile thinker of the ancient church. The school which he founded included all the lights of later Greek orthodoxy. Even Athanasius, who called no man master, sought the aid of his great name, and quoted him to show that he was a true homoousian. Origen stamped on Greek theology the essential features that it has borne ever since. In his hands the Logos doctrine suffered two amendments. The first is his view of the eternal generation of the Son. The distinction of the Justin Martyr school between immanent and personalized Logos Origen discarded. He taught that the Son was eternally a distinct personal being. Holding to his real generation from the Father, he insisted that it was without beginning, since the Father's activity was unchangeable and eternal. This view placed the Logos doctrine on a firmer metaphysical basis, since it removed the Son of God more completely from the category of created beings, and also opposed all theories of a temporal evolution such as were proposed by the Sabellians. The Origenistic doctrine of eternal generation has recently been treated with considerable contempt, but it took a firm hold on the Greek mind and became the fundamental note of the Greek Trinitarianism. It has been said that the Nicene creed does not teach it. This cannot be sustained. It is certainly implied there. In fact, the whole homoousian doctrine is built upon it, and Athanasius, the great expounder of the doctrine, clearly holds it.
The second amendment of Origen was in the line of the strict subordination of the Son to the Father. He not only emphasized this point as essential to the defense of the trinitarian doctrine against the charge of tritheism, but he also gave it an entirely new theological aspect by insisting on the difference of essence. Justin Martyr made the Son to be an emanation or product of the Father's essence. Origen opposed all emanation theories, substituting the doctrine of eternal generation. Hence he denied that the Son was of the same essence with the Father, although he at the same time denied that he was of any created essence. The Son was truly begotten of the Father, but his nature was different, since he lacked the attributes of absoluteness and selfexistence, and derived his being from the Father's will. Thus Origen reduced the Son to a sort of middle being between the uncreated and the created, and paved the way for Arius.
Arius has become the arch-heretic of church history; but in the interest of historical truth I wish to say that great injustice has been done him. He was a sincere and thorough Trinitarian after the type of his age, and sought to defend the trinitarian doctrine against all taint of Sabellianism. But his polemic led him to take a step further in the direction toward which Origen had pointed, and which had already been anticipated by such Origenists as Dionysius of Alexandria and Eusebius of Caesarea, — that the Son of God, if truly derived from the Father and by his will, must be a creature, though the highest creature in the universe, and the creator himself, as the Logos or mediation principle, of all other creatures.
We are thus brought to the great crisis in the development of the Greek theology, and to its fourth stage, — the epoch of Athanasius and the Nicene creed. Historically and critically, Athanasianism is simply a revolt from the subordination tendency, when carried too far, and a counter-reaction along the Origenistic lines of eternal generation and of an essential difference between the Son of God and all created beings. But, as is usual in such reactions, it went to the opposite extreme. Arius had stretched subordination to its farthest point. Athanasius reduced it to a minimum. Origen had described the Son as "a middie being between the uncreated and the created." The Nicene creed declared him to be of the same essence with the Father, since he is true Son of God, and as a Son must be of the Father's nature, — "God of God, very God of very God." Thus the term homoousios becomes the turning-point of the Nicene epoch. Yet curiously this famous word made much less noise in the Athanasian age than it has since, and, besides, a new meaning has been foisted upon it which has no ground in the word itself or in the use made of it by the Nicene theologians. It was put into the Nicene creed by a sort of accident, as Athanasius explains, in order to drive the Arians from their cover; and although it became in this way a watch-word of orthodoxy, it was not insisted on as essential even by Athanasius himself. What it meant to the Nicene party is clear from Athanasius' own explanations. He declares distinctly that it was used simply to signify that the Son was truly Son, not putatively or adoptively, and that, as true Son, he was of the same generic nature with the Father, and so equal to the Father in all divine attributes. Athanasius was ready even to accept the term homoiousios (like in essence) as a synonym for homoousios (completely like in essence), if it was explained to mean a likeness of essence in kind which would allow that the Son was a true Son and derived from the Father his essential qualities. This, in fact, became the basis of the union which followed between the Athanasian and Semi-Arian parties, resulting in the acceptance of the Nicene creed by all except the extreme Arians. It is a fact which seems not to be generally recognized, that Athanasius uses the word homoousios very rarely, while he employs the word homoios (like) very frequently, as expressing his own position concerning the relation of the Son to the Father. It is significant that in the "Statement of Faith" which was written not long after the formation of the Nicene creed, he uses simply the word homoios, "being like the Father, as the Lord says: 'He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.'" What Athanasius contended for so stoutly against the Arians was the real divine sonship of Christ, and his essential equality with the Father. When this was allowed, he cared little for words.
We are now prepared to estimate more clearly and comprehensively the trinitarianism of Athanasius. Radically it is Origenism. The Logos doctrine, in its Origenistic form of eternal generation and derived subordination, forms the backbone of the Nicene christology. Too much theological significance has been given by historical writers to the Nicene epoch, as if it created an essentially new theology. This is very far from the truth. It was a time of widespread ecclesiastical ferment, and men of action, rather than of speculative thought, came to the front. A conflict arose between two factions of the same theological school. Origenism became divided against itself. Athanasius was not a speculative, systematic thinker; he was a born leader of men, a knight of Christian chivalry, ready to point his lance at every denier of "the faith once delivered." He seized the word homoousios and threw it as a gauntlet into the arena, but it was a word of battle to be dropped at leisure, not a note of new theology. It was in the Latin West that a makeshift catch-word of the Nicene nomenclature was taken up, its true meaning misunderstood, and a new scheme of trinitarian theology drawn from it. The difference between Athanasius and Origen is largely a matter of words. Origen disliked the term homoousios because it seemed to break down subordination and introduce tritheism. Athanasius adopted it because it seemed to save subordination from the annihilating heterousianism (unlikeness of essence) of Arius. Both were defending the same position, but from different standpoints. Yet Athanasius took one long step forward. He held to a certain subordination of the Son to the Father, as he was compelled to, in consistency with the essential character of the Logos mediating doctrine, to which he unflinchingly adhered. But he reduced it, as we have already said, to its lowest possible terms. He was ready to call Christ God, not merely in the larger sense of what is superhuman or divine, but in the strict meaning, "very God of very God," as having the same essential nature with the Father. He even declared the Son to be "equal" to the Father, applied to him the terms which characterize the highest deity, and gave him the supreme attributes of omniscience, omnipotence, and sovereignty. This is new theological language, and seems to indicate an entirely new departure. But a close study of Athanasius makes it clear that he has not departed from the Origenistic principles of generation and subordination. In fact, he could not do so without surrendering the whole Logos doctrine in its original form, and exposing himself to the charge of holding to three independent Gods. If he had felt a leaning toward the entire elimination of the subordination element, of which there is no evidence, the danger of such a charge would have deterred him. The one object of dread ever present to the Nicene and post-Nicene Fathers was the spectre of Tritheism. To be squarely Trinitarian and yet not be Tritheistic was the great effort of Greek theology. How was it accomplished? The answer to this question gives us the "open sesame" of the Athanasian Trinitarianism. Three distinct points are to be noted, — the view taken of the Father; of the Son; and of their metaphysical relation to each other.
First, the Father, with Athanasius, is the one God, the Absolute and Supreme Being. He never confounds the one God with the Trinity. The three Persons are not one Being. This, to him, is Sabellianism. His monotheism is clearly set forth in his "Statement of Faith:" "We believe in one Unbegotten God, Father Almighty, maker of all things visible and invisible, that hath his being from himself, and in one only-begotten Word, Wisdom, Son, begotten of the Father without beginning and eternally." Unbegottenness and self-existence are here made the essential attributes of the Father alone. He is the eternal cause and fountain of all being, including even the being of the Son and Holy Spirit. This point is fundamental in the Athanasian system; it is the philosophical Platonic assumption with which he starts, and on which he builds his Logos doctrine. It is the stronghold of his theism against all pantheism on the one hand, and of his monotheism against all polytheism or tritheism on the other. No Greek theologian held more firmly to the divine transcendence than Athanasius. He had no controversy with Arius here. He held equally with him that God was utterly unlike his creation, and was separated from it, in his essence, by infinite measures. Hence the prominence given by him to the Logos doctrine, which is central and dominant in his whole christology. With Athanasius the Logos in his mediation role is essential to the existence of the universe as well as to the redemption of mankind. In him the cosmological idea triumphs over the soteriological. Christ is much more than the Saviour of men; he is the eternal and necessary principle of mediation and communion between the transcendent God and all created things. Thus the incarnation rather than the crucifixion is made the prominent fact in the relation of Christ to men. It is not sin merely, but nature as created, that separates man from God. Athanasius here departs from the Scripture, which teaches man's essential likeness to God, and also from Plato, who declares that "likeness to God" (hOMOIWSIS TW QEW) is man's great prerogative and moral duty. Plato's doctrine of transcendence was modified by his view of man's moral relationship. (Athanasius tended rather to emphasize the divine transcendence and to separate man from God more completely. Hence, according to him, the absolute necessity of the incarnation. "The Word was made man that we might be divinized". And here appears the great reason why Athanasius insisted so earnestly upon the homoousian doctrine. In his view, unless the Logos mediator was essentially divine, "very God of very God," the chasm between God and man, between the infinite and the finite, could not be spanned. But let it be noted that this whole view involves the strictest monotheism. The Logos mediating principle is as sharply distinguished from the Absolute God as he is from the creation in whose behalf he mediates.
Secondly, Athanasius' doctrine of the Son is the logical resultant of his doctrine of the Absolute God as Father and of the mediating Logos. How does the Logos become endowed with his mediating function? It is by virtue of his Sonship. The Logos of God is the Son of God, and hence able to reveal him. Here Athanasius is a true Origenist. Sonship is not a superficial and temporal movement of the divine activity; it is an eternal relationship. Athanasius, moreover, holds equally with Origen to the reality and genuineness of the sonship. He does not explain it away as mere metaphor. The real sonship is what he means by homoousios. This sonship is what separates Christ from the category of creatures and makes him truly divine. But real sonship involves a real generation. This, too, Athanasius accepts in all its literalness, though he guards against a materialistic view of it. In one point only does he vary from Origen, — in making the generation an eternal fact or condition of the divine nature, rather than a voluntary movement of the divine will. Thus the ground is laid for the subordination of the Son to the Father. The Son is a generated, that is, a derived being. Consequently he is not self-existent or independent. This is distinctly declared in one remarkable passage (fourth Oration, 3), where Athanasius argues that if the Logos were self-existent there would result two independent causes of existence or supreme Beings. The subordination thus involved is not a mere official one. The whole theory of official subordination is a product of Western thought; it is unknown in Greek theology. Subordination with Athanasius is of nature, for the Son derives his existence "from the Father's essence." It is true that he insists upon the equality of the Son with the Father. Yet the term "equal" was used by him in a relative, not absolute sense. It applied to those attributes with which Christ was endowed by virtue of his generation from the Father, but not to those which make the Father the supreme God.
Thirdly, what, then, is the metaphysical relation of the Father and Son? At the outset let it be noted that Athanasius has no leaning toward Sabellianism. No stronger protests against the Sabellian position can be found than in his writings. He sharply opposes the doctrine of one personal Being in three modes of revelation and activity. On this point Athanasius is as thoroughly trinitarian as Origen, and he stands squarely in the line of all orthodox Greek theologians. He has been accused of sympathizing with Marcellus, who was a strong defender of the Nicene creed, but lapsed into a complete Sabellian doctrine. There is no ground for the charge. Marcellus was separated from Athanasius in his whole metaphysics. He was not an Origenist; he declared Origen to be the source of the whole Arian heresy. He opposed the Origenistic doctrine of generation and subordination, and held to the absoluteness of the Logos. When Athanasius came to understand the real position of Marcellus he disowned him, and his earnest plea against the Sabellian doctrine in the fourth Oration seems to have been directed especially against Marcellus himself, though his name is not mentioned. The truth is that Marcellus held a type of doctrine that was gaining ground in the West, and his chief sympathizers were in that quarter. Sabellianism had its origin on Greek soil, but it was wholly rejected by the Origenistic Logos school, which finally triumphed over all monarchian tendencies and remained tenaciously trinitarian to the last; while the Sabellianism of Marcellus reappeared in a disguised form in the Western Latin church in the person of Augustine.
Athanasius, then, held to a trinity of three personal Beings. On this point there was no disagreement between him and Arius. Both stood on common Origenistic ground; both equally opposed Sabellianism. Their differences arose on the question of the nature of the second person. Arius declared him to be a creature; Athanasius declared him to be the true Son of God, of the same generic nature with the Father (hOMOOUSIOS), and therefore not a creature.
That Athanasius did not mean by homoousios one numerical essence or being is not only involved in his whole metaphysics, but is expressly declared in his "Statement of Faith:" "We do not hold a Son-Father, as do the Sabellians, calling Him single in essence but not the same in essence, and thus destroying the existence of the Son." The charge here is that the Sabellians reduce the Father and Son to mere modes of one being, — a sort of Son-Father, and thus destroy the Son's distinct personal existence. Athanasius could not have distinguished numerical unity of essence from generic unity more pointedly than he did by the terms monoousios and homoousios. He held that the Father and the Son were both divine beings, and hence of the same divine nature; but this is a very different doctrine from the Sabellian, which makes God a single essence, revealing himself in three personal forms. Sabellianism is essentially monistic and pantheistic; it confounds the persons and their acts, reducing them to accidents of one substance. Athanasius was a theist. He held that God is a self-conscious, individual, uni-personal Being. He was equally a monotheist. He believed in "one God, the Father Almighty." Hence he was always careful to distinguish the acts of the Father and the Son as well as their individualities.
Modern writers frequently assume that the Greek Fathers had crude ideas of what personality is, — a curious assumption to make in regard to men who were profoundly versed in the Aristotelian psychology, and whose metaphysical discriminations have formed the warp and woof of theological thought to the present day. I grant, however, that modern theologians have made one psychological discovery which was unknown to Athanasius. He had not learned that "person," as a metaphysical term, may have two meanings, a natural and a non-natural. By it he meant an individual being, or what Mr. Joseph Cook calls derisively a person "in the ordinary Boston sense." It was reserved for Augustine and his successors down to Mr. Cook to confound all valid laws of thought by asserting that "person" may mean one thing in common speech and a very different thing in Christian theology.
But if Athanasius held to three persons in the strict sense, how did he save himself from tritheism? I answer: In the same way as his predecessors had done before him, by the doctrine of one supreme cause. Here again Athanasius is a pure Origenist. The Origenistic doctrine of generation and subordination solved for him, as for all the Greek Fathers, the mystery of the divine unity as related to the divine trinity. The Son as begotten of the Father is a derived being, and so cannot be a separate or foreign deity. This is the point of the varied illustrations which Athanasius employs in setting forth his view, such as fountain and stream, sun and ray, king and image, parent and child. Some of these comparisons are capable of a Sabellian sense, if the object of Athanasius in using them is not understood; and in recent theology they have been thus misinterpreted. But they were intended to illustrate the community of nature of the Father and the Son, not numerical oneness. This is evident from those illustrations which cannot admit any such construction. Take the case of parent and child which Athanasius uses so frequently. Since the child is the offspring of the parent he is of the same generic nature (hOMOOUSIOS); as such, he is not foreign or exterior to the parent, but interior and proper to him, and so vice versa the parent is interior to the child. Athanasius represents a father (first Oration, 26) as replying to the question whence his child came: "He is not from without, but from myself, proper and similar to my essence, not become mine from another, but begotten of me; wherefore I too am wholly in him, while I remain myself what I am." So, he adds, the Son is interior and proper to the Father. This doctrine of the interiorness or coinherence of the Son in the Father has been misapprehended by Augustinian theologians. It has been supposed to support strongly the view of numerical unity. But this was not the question at issue. Athanasius was arguing against the Arian doctrine that the Son is a creature, and the illustration of parent and child was applied directly against his Arian opponents: "Let them confess in like manner concerning the Word of God that he is simply from the Father." The argument assumes the fundamental postulate of the Platonic dualism and transcendence,— that the created is exterior and foreign to the uncreated. If the Son is a creature, he is foreign to the Father, like all other creatures; but if he is a true Son, of the Father's essence, he cannot be foreign or exterior, and hence cannot be a creature. As a child is generically in his parent and the parent in the child, so the Son is in the Father and the Father in the Son; and it is to support this argument that Athanasius appeals so frequently to Christ's words: "That ye may know that I am in the Father and the Father in me." "I and my Father are one." "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father."
In this connection further light is shed upon the meaning of the term homoousios, as used by Athanasius. He applies it continually to human persons, as belonging to one human race, that is, in a generic sense. How then can it be assumed that, in applying it to the Son of God, he uses it in a totally different sense, especially when the divine relationship is being directly compared with the human, and no hint is given that the meaning is changed? But we are not left to conjecture. Athanasius himself explains his meaning in one clear passage, not to speak of others: "The sense of 'offspring' and 'coessential' (hOMOOUSIOS) is one, and whoso considers the Son an offspring, rightly considers him also as coessential." If this passage by itself were of doubtful interpretation, the context sets all doubt at rest, for Athanasius is showing that the Semi-Arian doctrine of "likeness in essence" (hOMOIOUSIOS) is not in necessary disagreement with the homoousian doctrine, since it allows that the Son is the true offspring of the Father. But it is impossible to interpret "likeness in essence" as implying numerical unity. It would seem unnecessary to pursue this point further; but so ingrained in modern theology is the view that the Nicene Athanasian doctrine of the Trinity involves a numerical unity of essence, that I propose a few additional considerations.
First, if Athanasius had meant by homoousios "numerically one in essence," he would not have distinguished it, as he did, from MONOOUSIOS and TAUTOOUSIOS, for this is the very point of the difference in these terms, as Athanasius himself shows, defining homoousios as meaning "sameness in likeness," in contrast with a simple unity. Further, the fact that Athanasius made such common use of the term hOMOIOS (like) as expressing his own faith, and that he was ready to accept hOMOIOUSIOS as a synonym for hOMOOUSIOS, if properly explained, seems wholly conclusive. But, still further, such a use of the word would have been altogether new in its history. Everywhere in Greek literature homoousios means generic likeness or sameness. Aristotle calls the stars hOMOOUSIOI. Plotinus uses the same term for souls, when arguing that they are divine and immortal. There is no evidence that any Greek Father ever gave the word any different meaning. Gregory of Nyssa calls not only "human souls," but also " corruptible bodies," homoousia. Chrysostom describes Eve as homoousios with Adam. [Gregory, Contra Eunomium, vii. 5; Chrysostom, Homil. in Genes, xvi.]
There is one more consideration that goes to the root of the whole matter. The assumption of numerical unity of essence involves another assumption, viz., that, in the case of the Trinity,
singleness of essence exists with a plurality of persons. But this breaks down a fundamental law of logic and psychology. Essence is the sum of the qualities of a being. Person is a being with certain qualities which constitute its essence. Essence and person then must be coincident. They cannot be separated. The distinction between them is purely logical and subjective. To assume a separation in fact, or that one may be singular and the other plural, is to confound the subjective with the objective, and create a metaphysical contradiction.
[While I must dissent entirely from the interpretation of Principal Robertson and Cardinal Newman in vol. iv. of the Nicene Fathers, I wish to express my admiration of the candor of both these critics in allowing that their view involves what is self-contradictory to the human understanding. But does not such an admission stamp the interpretation itself as false? Certainly Athanasius was not conscious of holding a self-contradictory doctrine, and he was a keen logician.]
The Greek Fathers were never guilty of such a confusion. They were too well versed in the Aristotelian logic. The question was never even raised until the fifth century, in the compromise of Chalcedon. All through the earlier trinitarian and christological controversies the coincidence of nature and person was accepted on all sides as axiomatic. On this ground Origen and his school called the three persons three essences, meaning that each person has his own individual qualities. So Theodore of Mopsuestia, a devoted adherent of the Nicene creed, was led to his theory of two persons in Christ, or of two real Christs, by assuming that if there were two complete natures, divine and human, two persons must result. The same assumption led the Monophysites to their theory of "one nature," since Christ was one person. There is not the slightest evidence that any Greek Father before Theodoret held any other opinion. The Cappadocian Athanasian school stood firmly on it. That Athanasius himself should have developed a new metaphysics on this point, so as to change the whole character of trinitarian doctrine, without leaving a ripple on the surface of ecclesiastical history, is inconceivable.
But the fact may be brought up that, while Origen called three persons three essences, Athanasius and his followers refused to do so. The explanation is simple. It was the result of a linguistic evolution, such as is common to all language. The theological terminology of the Greek Fathers was Aristotelian. Aristotle distinguished two kinds of essence. By "first essence" he meant a concrete being or thing. By "second essence" he meant the "form" or idea, or, in Platonic language, the universal, the genus or species, which is the basis of all "first essences" or individual things. These distinctions underlie the whole Greek theology. But they are brought out explicitly and in Aristotelian form by the later scholastic Athanasians, Gregory of Nyssa and John of Damascus. When Origen called the Son an "essence" he meant "first essence," that is, a concrete being or real person. But when discussion arose in the Nicene period over the question of the relation of nature to person, and especially concerning the use of hUPOSTASIS for person, as distinguished from OUSIA, the term OUSIA became restricted in meaning to the "second" sense of Aristotle, — the universal, generic, or abstract sense; and such was the common meaning of it in the later Greek Fathers. Gregory of Nyssa and also John of Damascus define OUSIA as KOINON, that is, what is common or generic in contrast with the individual (hUPOSTASIS). Such is the use of it by Athanasius. Hence he again and again employs the Platonic and Aristotelian names for the generic or universal (EIDOS MORFH), as synonyms for OUSIA. No evidence could be clearer. According to Athanasius the divine essence or form or idea is individualized and personalized in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who are thus united in a metaphysical and transcendental unity, and separated from all created beings? This is distinctly set forth by John of Damascus: "Essence does not exist by itself, but is seen in persons." It is true that Athanasius sometimes uses the term qeos as a synonym for OUSIA, but he often adds the abstract, QEIOTHS, in explanation, and the context always shows this to be his meaning. This usage is explained by Gregory of Nyssa in the treatise EK TWN KOINWN ENNOIWN, when he says that if the name QEOS signified a person, three persons would signify three gods, but since it denotes OUSIA, there is one Divinity. It cannot be too distinctly declared that the Greek theologians from Athanasius on are philosophically Platonico-Aristotelians. With them all, the idea or universal has concrete existence only in individual beings. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are such individuals (hUPOSTASEIS). The unity of the three is not concrete or numerical but metaphysical or generic. It is easy now to see why Athanasius declined to say "three essences," and yet did not hesitate to say "three hypostases" or beings. The failure to recognize this linguistic change in the use of "essence," after the time of Origen, has perhaps contributed more than anything else to the opinion that Athanasius departed radically from Origen's view. But it was in fact a mere change of terminology, not one of theological position.
The Athanasian Trinitarianism is seen in its completest form in the Cappadocian theologians, Basil and the two Gregories. The idea has recently been broached that these men formed a Neo-Nicene school, falling away from the homoousianism of Athanasius to the older homoiousianism of Origen. This theory rests on the assumption that Athanasius himself was not an Origenist. But, as we have seen, Athanasius had no quarrel with the genuine homoiousianism of Origen. Homoios was the word oftenest on his own lips. His great conflict was with the Arian Heterousians. He held out the olive branch of peace to the Semi-Arians; and the Cappadocians were his devoted helpers in the reunion that was finally accomplished. Basil was his personal friend. Gregory of Nyssa, Basil's younger brother and disciple, became the acknowledged head of the Nicene party. Strange would it be if these men misunderstood the theological position of their great leader. But there is no evidence of it in their voluminous writings. Their doctrinal watch-words are the same. They contend against Arianism and Sabellianism alike, defending the old Trinitarianism with the old metaphysics of generation, derivation, and subordination. It is true they were ardent Origenists, but Athanasius himself had for Origen only words of praise. In one respect only can we detect a change. The Cappadocians were the schoolmen of the Greek Fathers. They introduced a more precise metaphysical treatment of theological themes; but the substance and even form of their doctrine is thoroughly Athanasian.
To conclude: The words of Harnack on this closing chapter of the Greek Trinitarianism can be truthfully applied to its whole history: "In reality under the cover of the hOMOOUSIOS men indeed continued in the Orient in a kind of homoiousianism, which is to this day orthodox in all their churches." Carlyle once voiced the traditional conception of the Nicene theology when he declared that the whole controversy was about a diphthong. In fact, it was not a question of a diphthong, but of an alpha privative. hOMOIOS versus ANOMOIOS was the real issue. It was Augustine and the Latin Church that changed the focus of debate, and made the diphthong a heresy, by giving homoousios a new meaning, and adding filioque to the creed. It is no wonder that a schism followed between the two churches which has continued to this day. The idea is prevalent that this schism rests on slight theological grounds. The very contrary is the truth. The addition of filioque to the Nicene creed was a radical overturning of the whole structure. It broke down its monotheism; it reduced generation and sonship to a metaphor; it turned three personal beings into one being revealing himself in tri-personal form; it changed the mediating Logos into absolute Deity. Such changes are revolutionary. No compromise was possible, or ever will be. The schism is complete and final.
