Theological Outlines • by • Francis J. Hall

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August 05, 2005

Ch.X. Q.61. History of the Doctrine

THE doctrine of the Trinity is involved in the Baptismal formula, and has been held in its integrity by the Church from pentecostal days. Its ecclesiastical form summarizes the contents of a protracted and progressive self-revelation of God, and is the result of much subsequent conflict in the Church with error. In patriarchal ages polytheism prevailed widely, and had to be guarded against strictly. Therefore the truth of the Divine unity was revealed and emphasized for ages before the tri-personal mode of this unity could safely be made known.1 Yet the earlier revelations contained implicit anticipations of the more explicit revelation which was to come.

2. Thus it happens that those who have received the Faith once for all delivered can discern hints and shadows of the Trinity, without being able to find explicit proofs of it, in the Old Testament. The Divine Name, Elohim, occurs many times in the plural number:2—and with plural adjectives,3 plural pronouns,4 and plural verbs.5 Other Names of God also appear in the plural.6 God is spoken of, and speaks of Himself as more than one Person.7 Finally in certain passages three Divine Persons seem to be implied.8

3. Several New Testament passages mention the three Divine Persons as Divine.9 A comparison of texts taken from all parts of Scripture shows that (a) Each of these Persons is Creator, although it is also stated that there is but one Creator;10 (b) Each is called Jehovah,11 the Lord,12 the God of Israel,13 the Law-giver,14 Omnipresent,15 and the Source of life;16 while it is denied that there is more than one Being who may thus be described;17 (c) Each made mankind,18 quickens the dead,19 raised Christ,20 commissions the ministry,21 sanctifies the elect,22 and performs all spiritual operations,23 although obviously but one God is capable of these things.

4. Ancient Christian writers were accustomed to emphasize Divine unity as against prevailing polytheism. Their own belief in the Godhead of three Persons caused them to be charged with inconsistency. To meet this difficulty attempts were made to unite the doctrines thought to be opposed to each other in one consistent theory and formula.24 The first attempts were crude and unsatisfactory. At the close of the second century Theodotus and Artemon rejected the super-human personality of Christ, psilanthropism; and the effort to exclude this heresy led Praxeas to merge Christ's person in that of the Father and to assert that the Father Himself suffered on the Cross, Patripassianism. In the next generation Sabellius developed this heresy into the theory that the Divine Persons are mere economic manifestations or modes, dramatis personae, so that there is but one Divine Person strictly speaking, Sabellianism.

5. Tertullian, Hippolytus, Origen, and others endeavoured to correct these heresies. The doctrines of circumcession and subordination, or the Divine Monarchy, were formulated as protectives respectively of the essential unity and tri-personality of God. Origen, in particular, set forth the eternal nature of the Son's generation in such wise as to guard at once His co-eternity with and subordination to the Father. As against Sabellius a tendency appeared to substitute the term ύπόστασιςfor προσωπον, person, in order to vindicate the real and substantial nature of personal distinctions in the Godhead.

6. Origen employed crude language at times in formulating the doctrine of subordination, and in the fourth century Arius gave his language a heretical twist, urging that as Son the Word must be later in time than the Father and a creature, although very exalted and the agent by whom all else was made. The Council of Nicea, 325 A. D., shut this error out by affirming the Son to be co-essential, ομοούσιος, with the Father; and, after over half a century of conflict this term prevailed. The Macedonian denial of the Godhead of the Holy Spirit was also repudiated by the Council of Constantinople, 381 A. D.

7. The Nicene Creed asserted the procession of the Spirit from the Father only, although His procession through and therefore from the Son was not denied. The Council of Toledo in Spain, 589 A. D., sanctioned the addition of Filioque to the Creed. This was rejected in the East, on canonical grounds at first, but prevailed in the West.

8. The Athanasian Symbol, which appeared early in the fifth century in Gaul, crystalized the ecclesiastical dogma of the Trinity; and, with a slight verbal difference as to the procession of the Spirit, gained ecumenical acceptance.

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Posted by Debra Bullock at August 5, 2005 11:22 PM

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