Retrieving Nicaea

The Development and Meaning of Trinitarian Doctrine

Anatolios, Khaled

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781441231956
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Khaled Anatolios, a noted expert on the development of Nicene theology, offers a historically informed theological study of the development of the doctrine of the Trinity, showing its relevance to Christian life and thought today. According to Anatolios, the development of trinitarian doctrine involved a global interpretation of Christian faith as a whole. Consequently, the meaning of trinitarian doctrine is to be found in a reappropriation of the process of this development, such that the entirety of Christian existence is interpreted in a trinitarian manner. The book provides essential resources for this reappropriation by identifying the network of theological issues that comprise the "systematic scope" of Nicene theology, focusing especially on the trinitarian perspectives of three major theologians: Athanasius, Gregory of Nyssa, and Augustine. It includes a foreword by Brian E. Daley.

1

Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology

History and Interpretation

This chapter will first narrate, in fairly broad strokes, the fourth-century doctrinal debates, then discuss how to best categorize the conflict of doctrinal positions in these debates so as to render them theologically intelligible. The narration of events between the Council of Nicaea in 325 and the Council of Constantinople in 381 will be presented with a minimum of interpretation; its aim is simply to acquaint the reader with the main figures and events. The second section will propose that a useful strategy for interpreting the debates of this period is to distinguish between theologies that see the unity of the Trinity as a unity of being and theologies that see this unity as a unity of will.

Before Nicaea[35]

The church of the fourth century inherited a tradition of trinitarian discourse that was pervasively embedded in its worship and proclamation, even if it was lacking in conceptual definition. The early Christians were monotheists who gave unqualified adherence to the Shema of Deuteronomy: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord alone” (Deut. 6:4). Yet they expressed belief in Jesus Christ as Savior in terms that referred to Jesus as the Son, Word, and Wisdom of God and as the one who grants his disciples the grace of adoption through the bestowal of God’s Spirit (cf. Gal. 4:4–7). The first centuries of Christian theological reflection assimilated confessions of both the oneness of God and the triadic form of Christian discipleship with varying degrees of concern for conceptual clarity and logical synthesis.

The first major debate concerned with conceptualizing the Christian experience of God as Trinity and bringing into coherence the emphases on divine unity and triadic distinction occurs in the third century. Tertullian (fl. 200), Hippolytus (ca. 170–ca. 236), and Novatian (mid-third century) all oppose doctrines that insist on the radical singularity of God and that reduce the distinctions between Father, Son, and Spirit to modes of appearance or activity. Tertullian insists that the unity of God must be interpreted through the trinitarian “economy” and attempts terminological differentiations that make it possible to speak of God in terms of a monotheistic trinitarianism: Father, Son, and Spirit are one in “substance,” “condition,” and “power” (substantia, status, potestas) while three in “degree,” “form,” and “aspect” (gradus, forma, species).[36] After the work of Tertullian, Hippolytus, and Novatian, the conceptions of God as a radically singular being and of Son and Spirit as merely modes of divine operation came to be associated with a certain Sabellius and with Paul of Samosata, third-century figures whose writings are no longer extant and who are therefore known to us only through the reports of their opponents. Nevertheless, their impact was such that it became de rigueur for the articulation of a Christian doctrine of God to reject a “Sabellian” or “Samosatene” interpretation of divine unity.

This lesson was well learned by Origen, arguably the greatest and most influential theologian of the third century, whose teaching cast a large shadow on the trinitarian controversies of the fourth century.[37] With Origen, there is a pronounced emphasis on Father, Son, and Spirit as distinct subsistences (hypostaseis) and on the eternal generation of the Son from the Father. Origen spoke of varying degrees of transcendence among the three hypostaseis, though he strictly differentiated the divine Trinity from creation.[38] More fatefully, he conjectured that God’s eternal sovereignty, mediated by the preexistent Word and Wisdom, implied the existence from eternity of the creation over which he is sovereign.[39] This line of reasoning seemed to indicate an intrinsic link between the eternal generation of the Word from the Father and the everlasting existence of the creation. As Origen’s speculation about the everlasting existence of creation came under severe critique, most notably in the later part of the third century by Methodius of Olympus, the doctrine of creation from nothing was brought to the foreground of theological reflection.[40] This critique led to a further question: if only the one God was unoriginated (agen[n]ētos/agenētos), did the derivation of the Son from the Father also involve a kind of “creation from nothing”?[41] Thus, when Constantine’s reign began in the early fourth century, Christian discourse used a trinitarian grammar, but it was not clear how best to conceive the relations and respective status of Father, Son, and Spirit vis-à-vis the created realm.

The Early Stages of Controversy

The trinitarian controversies of the fourth century constitute what is arguably the most crucially formative period in the development of the Christian doctrine of God. The fifth-century historian Socrates gives a plausible rendering of the outbreak of the debate. He tells us that an Egyptian presbyter, Arius, took issue with the preaching of Alexander, the bishop of Alexandria, on the mystery of “the unity of the holy Trinity.”[42] Alexander’s doctrine prominently stressed Origen’s idea of the eternal generation of the Son from the Father. In contrast, the doctrine of Arius combined Origen’s emphasis on the real distinctions within the Trinity with an unflagging insistence on the utter singularity of the one unoriginated and Unbegotten God. Thus, while we can speak of a divine Trinity, only the first entity (hypostasis) is truly and fully God. The unity of this Trinity, composed of unequal hypostaseis, is a unity of will rather than of substance. This doctrine does not deny the Son’s divinity but presumes the framework of a graded hierarchy of transcendence in which it is possible to speak of variation in degree within the divine realm.[43] The fluidity of this model of divinity allowed Arius to balance scriptural attributions of divine honor to the Son with a strict interpretation of biblical monotheism. Given the demarcation between the unoriginate God and the creation from nothing by divine will, the Son must be placed in the latter category. His generation from the Father is thus the first and highest instance of creaturehood. Following Origen’s insistence that all creatures are changeable by nature and equipped with the freedom of moral self-determination, Arius contended that the Son also is changeable by nature. Yet because of his foreseen merits, the Son was granted an unparalleled share of divine glory. Thus his divine status is a consequence of grace rather than nature.

The controversy between Arius and Alexander was exacerbated by factionalism within the Egyptian church dating back to the Diocletianic persecution as well as by different styles of theological discourse within the Egyptian Christian tradition. Both the political unification under Constantine and the centrality to Christian teaching of the issues under discussion ensured that the controversy would quickly cross Egyptian boundaries and spread throughout the Roman Empire. After Constantine defeated his Eastern rival, Licinius, and became sole emperor in 324, he quickly addressed the threat to unity created by this ecclesial debate. A church council was held in Nicaea in 325, attended by both Arius and Alexander as well as other bishops and theologians predominantly from the Eastern part of the empire. This council rejected Arius’s slogan, “there was once when the Son was not,” asserting that the Son’s generation from the Father was of a different order than that of creation: “God of God, Light of Light, true God of true God, begotten not made.” It used the term homoousios (“of the same substance”) to designate the relation between the Son and the Father, less as a positive attempt to describe divine being than as an apophatic pronouncement ruling out any suggestion that the Son was created from nothing. The creed of Nicaea ran as follows:

We believe in one God, Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten from the Father, only-begotten, that is, from the substance of the Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made, consubstantial (homoousion) with the Father, through whom all things came into being, those on heaven and on earth; who for us humans and for our salvation came down and was incarnate and became human, suffered and rose again on the third day, ascended into the heavens, and is coming to judge the living and the dead.

And in the Holy Spirit.

But as for those who say, “there was once when he was not,” and “before being begotten he was not,” and that “he came into being from non-being,” or who declare that the Son of God is of another hypostasis or ousia, or alterable or changeable, these the Catholic and Apostolic Church anathematizes.[44]

The Christian imagination has tended to portray the Nicene council as ushering in the victory of Athanasian “orthodoxy” over “the Arian heresy” with the inspired confession of the homoousios. However, the reception of Nicaea was a far more convoluted process than such a rendering suggests. In point of fact, the Council of Nicaea resulted in more confusion than resolution, at least in the short term, and neither Arius nor Athanasius was a primary figure in the immediate aftermath of the council.[45] Arius’s slogan “there was once when the Son was not” embarrassed even those who were uncomfortable with the teaching of Nicaea. The task of articulating an alternative theology to that propounded by Nicaea passed to the leadership of Eusebius of Nicomedia, Eusebius of Caesarea, and Asterius. Eusebius of Nicomedia was an early supporter of Arius but shunned references to the Son’s origination from nothing. His own theology emphasized the divine title “unbegotten” (age[n]nētos) as applicable only to one. Eusebius is wary of any language of communication of substance as suggesting “two unbegottens” or a materialistic fragmentation of the divine substance. The Son, who is produced by the Father’s will, differs from the Father in substance and power but is united to him through a “likeness of disposition.”[46] Eusebius of Caesarea, the illustrious church historian and theological disciple of Origen, also disowned Arius’s doctrine of the Son’s origination from nothing, but he likewise rejected Origen’s teaching on the eternal generation of the Son.[47] Eusebius of Caesarea had reluctantly agreed to the Nicene homoousios, but his own doctrine, often articulated in terms of the Son’s being the “image of the Father’s substance,” is centrally concerned with maintaining the clear priority of the Father over the Son. Asterius’s doctrine is also distinguishable from that of Arius in several important respects. Not only does he avoid speaking of the Son’s origination from nothing, but he also identifies the Son as “the unchanging image of the substance and will and glory and power” of the Father.[48] This is a decisive modification of Arius’s stress on the incomparability of the Father. Moreover, Arius’s doctrine that God was not always Father is replaced with the notion that fatherhood can be eternally predicated of God as a generative capacity that precedes the generation of the Son.[49] Yet, Asterius did share fundamental common ground with Arius in his affirmation that the Son is not integral to the divine essence but a creature, produced by the Father’s will.[50]

In the decades following Nicaea, we witness the rise of two important figures who were largely responsible for the designation of non-Nicene theology as “Arian,” Marcellus and Athanasius. Marcellus, bishop of Ancyra, was present at the Council of Nicaea and interpreted its teaching in a distinctly monistic direction. God is a single being, one prosōpon, of whom no plurality can be predicated. Marcellus’s theology of divine oneness dealt with the plethora of scriptural titles applied to Jesus by insisting that they all apply only after the incarnation, with the exception of the title Logos. The Logos is not distinct from God, just as a human word is not distinct from its speaker.[51] It is enunciated in the act of creation and is only differentiated from God in the incarnation. This differentiation will cease once the redemptive work of Christ is accomplished and the Son becomes subject to the Father (cf. 1 Cor. 15:24).[52] Marcellus propounded his theology by way of a denunciation of Asterius’s doctrine of the Son as a subordinate hypostasis produced by the Father’s will. His own theology and his attempts to present this teaching as the true interpretation of Nicaea made Nicene doctrine at least as problematic, in the eyes of many, as the teaching of Arius. Branded as a “new Sabellius” by the authoritative figure Eusebius of Caesarea, Marcellus was deposed by a synod in Constantinople in 336. While exiled in Rome, he joined forces with his fellow exile Athanasius in a polemical campaign against those whom they called “Arians.”

Athanasius had been present at the Council of Nicaea as a young deacon accompanying his bishop, Alexander. He succeeded Alexander as bishop of Alexandria in 328, embarking on a forty-six-year reign over the Church of Egypt, punctuated by seventeen years of exile. The first of these exiles began in 335, when Athanasius’s opponents, who included both Melitians and supporters of Arius, charged that he had used violence and bribery to achieve episcopal election while below the canonical age. While deposing Athanasius, the Council of Tyre declared Arius’s doctrine orthodox. Although Athanasius later interpreted the judgment against him as motivated by “Arian” sympathies, we do not have any explicit public refutation of “Arianism” from Athanasius until the early 340s, some fifteen years after the Council of Nicaea, when he pens his Orations against the Arians.

Together, Marcellus and Athanasius were at the center of doctrinal tensions in the 340s, in the course of which contrasting doctrinal pronouncements issued from councils in Eastern and Western parts of the empire. After the death of Constantine in 337, the government of the empire was divided among his three sons, Constantinus and Constans in the West and Constantius in the East. The differences between East and West at that time are well illustrated by two councils from this period, the Council of Antioch in 341 and the Council of Serdica in 343. The former followed failed negotiations between Pope Julius and the Eastern bishops to convoke a synod in Rome. Meeting separately, the bishops of Antioch indignantly denied being followers of Arius. But their main theological opponent was Marcellus, whose doctrine they countered by insisting that Father, Son, and Spirit are three hypostaseis. They shunned the language of unity of substance, employing the biblical term “image” to designate the relation between Father and Son (cf. Col. 1:15). The unity of the Trinity was expressed in volitional rather than ontological terms: “one in concord” (symphōnia). The Council of Serdica, convoked by the Western emperor Constans, was also originally intended to bring together East and West. But the Western insistence that Athanasius and Marcellus be in attendance proved unacceptable to the Eastern bishops, and the two sides met separately.[53] At Serdica, the Western bishops defended Athanasius and Marcellus, the latter having persuaded the council attendees that “Arians” had misrepresented his views. The profession of faith promulgated by this council is designed primarily to rule out any form of subordinationism as “Arian.” Any attenuation of the Son’s divinity is proscribed, and the unity of Father, Son, and Spirit is expressed as “one hypostasis.”

Crisis and Resolution

The 350s saw the emergence of several more starkly defined theological positions that were to have the cumulative effect of bringing the debate to clearer resolution. Acacius of Caesarea (who succeeded the illustrious Eusebius as bishop) and Eudoxius of Antioch were at the vanguard of a movement whose doctrine seemed Arius-like in its subordinationism, even though its proponents rejected the label “Arian” a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1: Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology
• 2: Development of Trinitarian Doctrine
• 3: Athanasius
• 4: Gregory of Nyssa
• 5: Augustine’s De Trinitate
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Subject Index
• Index of Modern Authors
• Index of Ancient Sources
• Notes
• Back Cover