Part 46

Now it is not a little remarkable, that many orthodox writers perceived and deplored the lamentable deficiency of this faith of the primitive Church; and some of them boldly declare, that the Christian Fathers were not yet initiated in these high mysteries. “M. Jurieu,” quoted by Jortin, “whose zeal against heresy is well known, assures us that the fundamental articles of Christianity were not understood by the Fathers of the three first centuries; that the true system began to be modelled into some shape by the Nicene bishops, and was afterwards immensely improved and beautified by the following synods and councils.”[468]

Bishop Bull declares, “that almost all the Catholic writers before Arius’ time seem not to have known any thing of the invisibility and immensity of the Son of God; and that they often speak of him in such a manner as if, even in respect of his divine nature, he was _finite_, _visible_, and _circumscribed in place_.” Such sentiments are only to be paralleled by some passages from these Fathers themselves, who declare that such notions as they had of the divinity of Christ they had derived solely from the Gospel of St. John, and that the other Evangelists had but an obscure knowledge of this subject. “None of them,” says Origen, “disclosed his divinity so purely as John.”[469] “John,” says Eusebius, “commenced with the doctrine of the divinity, that having been reserved by the divine Spirit for him as the most worthy.”[470] And, later, Chrysostom declares that the other Evangelists were like “little children, who hear, but do not understand what they hear, being occupied with cakes and childish playthings;” but John taught, “what the angels themselves did not know before he declared it.” “This doctrine was not published at first, for the world was not advanced to it. Matthew, Mark, and Luke did not state what was suitable to his dignity, but what was fitting for their hearers. John, the Son of Thunder, advanced at last to the doctrine of the divinity.”[471]

I shall now cite some proofs from the Christian writers of the three first centuries, to show that though, in correspondence with Platonic doctrines, a derived and subordinate divinity was ascribed to Jesus, nothing like the present orthodox faith was dreamed of, and that the highest authorities on these subjects, Cudworth for instance, are fully aware that, for nearly four hundred years, the Creeds of the Church embraced nothing more than the Platonic Trinity.

And, first, I shall give one distinct testimony from Origen, to which others might be added from Irenæus and Tertullian, of the _Unitarianism of the Jewish Christians_:

“And when you consider the faith concerning our Saviour of those of the Jews who believe in Jesus, some thinking him to be the son of Joseph and Mary, and others of Mary only, and the divine Spirit, but still without any belief in his divinity.”[472] “_And they of the Jews who have received Jesus as the Christ_, go by the name of Ebionites.”[473]

* * * * *

I am next to cite evidence that, for the first three hundred years, the Christian writers acknowledged _the inferiority of Jesus to his_ FATHER, though ascribing to him a derived divinity. It is not until A. D. 140 that we find any very distinct mention even of this description of divinity as belonging to Jesus.[474]

_Justin Martyr_, _A.D._ 140.

“I will endeavour to show that he who appeared to Abraham, Jacob, and Moses, and who is called God, is different from the God that made all things,—_numerically_ different, though not _in will_; for I say that he never did any thing but what that GOD WHO MADE ALL THINGS, and above whom there is no god, _willed_ that he should do and say.”[475]

_Irenæus_, _A.D._ 178.

“We hold the Rule of Truth, that there is ONE GOD ALMIGHTY, who created all things by his Logos.” ... “This is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ; and of Him it is that Paul declared, There is ONE GOD, even the FATHER, who is above all, and through all, and in us all.”[476]

_Clemens Alexandrinus_, _A.D._ 194.

“There is one unbegotten almighty FATHER, and one first begotten, by whom all things were, and without whom nothing was made. For one is truly God, who made the _beginning_ of all things, meaning his first-begotten son.”[477]

_Tertullian_, _A.D._ 200.

“I do not speak of Gods and Lords; but I follow the Apostle; so that if the Father and the Son are to be named together, I call the Father God, and Jesus Christ Lord: though I can call Christ God when speaking of himself alone.” And he goes on to explain this by declaring, that a ray of the sun may, with sufficient propriety, be called the sun.[478]

_Origen_, _A.D._ 230.

“We may by this means solve the doubts which terrify many men, who pretend to great piety, and who are afraid of making two Gods, and, through this, fall into vain and impious opinions; denying that the nature of the Son is different from that of the Father, and who acknowledge that he is God in name only; or denying the divinity of the Son, and then maintaining that his nature and essence is different from that of the Father. For we must tell them that he who is _God of himself_, is THE God, as the Saviour states in his prayer to the Father, ‘that they may know thee, THE only true God;’ but that whosoever becomes divine by partaking of his divinity, cannot be styled THE God, but _a_ God, among whom _especially is the first born of all creatures_.”[479]

_Novatian_, _A.D._ 251.

“He, although he was in the form of God, did not think of the robbery of being equal with God. For though he knew that he was God, from God the Father, he never likened or compared himself with God the Father, remembering that he was from the Father, and that he had what he had because the Father had given it to him.”[480]

_Lactantius_, _A.D._ 310.

“He showed his fidelity to God, in that he taught that there is ONE GOD, and that he alone ought to be worshipped. Nor did he ever say that he himself was God. For he would not have preserved his fidelity if, being sent to take away a number of gods, and to assert ONE GOD, he had introduced another besides that one. Wherefore, because he was so faithful, because he arrogated nothing to himself, that he might fulfil the commands of Him who sent him, he _received_ the dignity of perpetual priest, and the honour of Supreme King, the power of a judge, and the title of God.”[481]

And not inconveniently to multiply evidence, let us come at once to the very orthodox Athanasius himself, and we shall find how little this Father knew of the nice adjustments of that Creed which now passes under his name.

_Athanasius_, _A.D._ 325.

“For there is one God, and there is not another besides Him. When it is said that the Father is the only God, that he is one God, ‘I am the FIRST,’ and ‘I am the LAST,’ it is well said. This is not said, however, to take away from the Son; for he also is _in_ THE ONE, FIRST, and ONLY ONE, as being the only _Logos_, Wisdom, and Effulgence of him who is THE ONE, and THE ALONE, and THE SUPREME.”[482]

“And Athanasius himself, who is commonly accounted the very Rule of Orthodoxality in this point, when he doth so often resemble the Father to the _Sun_, or the _original Light_; and the Son to the _splendour or brightness of it_, (as likewise doth the Nicene Council and the Scripture itself,) he seems hereby to imply some dependence of the Second upon the First, and subordination to it. Especially when he declareth, that the _Three Persons_ of the _Trinity_ are not to be looked upon as _Three Principles_, nor to be resembled to _Three Suns_, but to the _Sun_, and its splendour, and _its derivative light_.”[483]

Now I may sum up the impression of these passages in the words of the very learned Cudworth:—“But particularly as to their gradual subordination of the _Second Hypostasis_ to the _First_, and of the _Third_ to the _First and Second_, our Platonick Christian doubtless would therefore plead them the more excusable, because the generality of _Christian Doctors_, for the first three hundred years after the Apostles’ times, plainly asserted the same; as Justin Martyr, Athenagoras, Tatianus, Irenæus, the Author of the Recognitions, Tertullian, Clemens Alexandrinus, Origen, Gregorius Thaumaturgus, Dionysius of Alexandria, Lactantius, and many others. All whose testimonies, because it would be too tedious to set down here, we shall content ourselves with one of the last mentioned;—‘Both the Father and Son is God: but he as it were an exuberant fountain, this as a stream derived from him: He like to the sun, this like to a ray extended from the sun.’ And though it be true, that Athanasius, writing against the Arians, does appeal to the tradition of the antient Church, and amongst others cites Origen’s testimony too; yet this was only for the Eternity and Divinity of the Son of God, but not at all for such an absolute _co-equality_ of him with the Father as would exclude all _dependence_, _subordination_, and _inferiority_;[484] those antients so unanimously agreeing therein, that they are by Petavius therefore taxed for Platonism, and having by that means corrupted the purity of the Christian Faith, in this article of the Trinity. Which how it can be reconciled with those other opinions, of Ecclesiastic Tradition being a Rule of Faith, and impossibility of the visible Churches erring in any fundamental point, cannot easily be understood. However, this general Tradition, or Consent of the Christian Church, for three hundred years together after the Apostles’ times, though it cannot justify the Platonists in anything discrepant from the Scripture, yet may it in some measure doubtless plead their excuse, who had no Scripture Revelation at all to guide them herein; and so at least make their error more tolerable or pardonable.”[485]

We come now to a time when these floating and indefinite conceptions were to assume more fixed forms. It is apparent that so far the Christian Fathers fluctuated between their desire to exalt Jesus into the Logos of God, and the restraining fear of adopting ideas or expressions not reconcilable with the strict unity of the Deity. “The suspense and fluctuation,” says Gibbon, “produced in the minds of the Christians by these opposite tendencies, may be observed in the writings of the theologians who flourished after the end of the apostolic age, and before the origin of the Arian controversy. Their suffrage is claimed with equal confidence by the orthodox and by the heretical parties; and the most inquisitive critics have fairly allowed that if they had the good fortune of possessing the Catholic Verity, they have delivered their conceptions in loose, inaccurate, and sometimes contradictory language.” Ideas so naturally irreconcilable, as Jesus when contemplated as the Son of God, and Jesus when contemplated as the Wisdom of God (Logos), with personality attached to it, were certain sooner or later to betray their inconsistency, and to stand out from one another in opposing attitudes. They could be held in combination only so long as two very strong but opposite influences, (a desire to meet the conceptions of the prevalent Philosophy, and a desire at the same time to preserve unviolated the Jewish and Christian doctrine of the Unity of God,) operated together to prevent theologians looking too closely into their Faith, or attempting too strictly to harmonize its elements.

The elements of a necessary separation existed in that confused system by which the earlier Fathers brought together Jesus the Christ, and the Logos of the purer Platonists, into the same conception; some of them inclining to the idea of the Son of God being an eternal emanation from the Father, like light from the sun, veiling the difficulty of a Son being co-eternal with his Father under the unmeaning phrase, ‘everlasting generation’—and some adopting the lower view that he was only the highest emanation from the origin of all Spirits, the first of created Beings, and the instrument of God in all the other works of Creation. “These speculations,” says Gibbon, “became the most serious business of the present, and most useful preparation for a future life. A theology which it was incumbent to believe, which it was impious to doubt, and which it might be dangerous and even fatal to mistake, became the familiar topic of private meditation and popular discourse.[486] The cold indifference of philosophy was inflamed by the fervent spirit of devotion; and even the metaphors of common language suggested the fallacious prejudices of sense and experience. The Christians, who abhorred the gross and impure generation of the Greek mythology, were tempted to argue from the familiar analogy of the filial and paternal relations. The character of _Son_ seemed to imply a perpetual subordination to the voluntary author of his existence; but as the act of generation in the most spiritual and abstracted sense, must be supposed to transmit the properties of a common nature, they durst not presume to circumscribe the powers or the duration of the Son of an eternal and omnipotent Father.—Their tender reverence for the memory of Christ, and their horror for the profane worship of any created being, would have engaged them to assert the equal and absolute divinity of the _Logos_, if their rapid ascent toward the throne of heaven had not been imperceptibly checked by the apprehension of violating the unity and sole supremacy of the great Father of Christ and of the Universe.”

Christ, when viewed as the Wisdom or Logos of God, was by a natural transition of thought placed within the effulgence of the divine glory; but when viewed not as an Attribute but as a Person, the Son and Messiah of the Father, this dim idea would pass away, and the distinction between God and Christ become too visible to be confused. In this state of opinion two parties naturally appeared, separating the two ideas that entered into the prevalent conception of Christ, each taking up one of them as representing _the whole_ truth respecting his nature and person. The Arians, alarmed at the idea of two Gods, inclined to that part of the conception which represented Jesus as the Son and Messenger of the Father, but at the same time elevating him above all other created beings, and giving him an existence before the worlds were. The Athanasians, on the other hand, inclined to that part of the conception which represented him as the Logos of the Deity, and under the reaction, and the necessity for more strictly defining the hidden sense of doctrines, produced by the Arian Creed, attempted to conquer the difficulty of his Sonship by representing him as an eternal emanation from the very substance of the Deity, and exalted him into an equality with God, though at the same time they described it as a derived and subordinate equality. It is unavoidable in describing these views to make use of contradictory words. The ideas are irreconcilable, and were only saved from plainly appearing so by being involved in a cloud of mystical or rather no meaning words; for words must either be significant of ideas, or no-sense. This then was the subject of the great Arian and Trinitarian Controversy, which in the fourth Century shook the peace of the world. It turned upon this point, whether Christ was of the same essence as the Father, and therefore not created but begotten or emanating; or whether he was as the Arians thought, made out of nothing, and therefore a created Being. Neither of them contemplated him as independent of the Supreme Deity, but the Athanasians regarded him as a con-substantial and co-eternal emanation; the Arians, though assigning him the highest rank, regarded him as created like other beings. Such are the great questions of a metaphysical and dogmatical religion. Such are the mysteries on which Synods and Councils have legislated. Such are the subjects in which Ecclesiastics have shown more interest than in the spirit of the life of Christ, and the moral hopes and preparations of Immortality. Such are the subject matter of Creeds, the dry husks of doctrine, the spiritless formulas on which souls are starved, the bread of Christ converted into a stone, and yet in the eyes of many, superior to practical discipleship, to Charity and the Love of God, to the spirit of Brotherhood and the trustful faith of Duty.

It was to settle this dispute that the first general Council of the Church was assembled at Nice A. D. 325. The Emperor Constantine attended in person. He had previously remonstrated with the contending parties, and entreated them not to disturb the peace of the Empire and of the Church, for matters the most insignificant and small.[487] But he did not know the temper of Controversialists; nor what things become important in their eyes.[488] The Athanasians prevailed, and “the con-substantiality of the Father and the Son was established by the Council of Nice.” Under this word however lurked future Controversies, and by con-substantiality the Council of Nice meant, not the present doctrine of three persons in one God, but merely sameness of nature or kind, such a sameness as three men may possess who are generically the same but numerically different; and this is openly admitted by the highest authorities, Petavius, Cudworth, Le Clerc, Jortin. “The majority,” says Gibbon, “was divided into two parties, distinguished by a contrary tendency to the sentiments of the Tritheists, and of the Sabellians. But as those opposite extremes seemed to overthrow the foundations either of natural or revealed religion, they mutually agreed to qualify the rigour of their principles; and to disavow the just, but invidious, consequences which might be urged by their antagonists. The interest of the common cause inclined them to join their numbers, and to conceal their differences; their animosities were softened by the healing counsels of toleration, and their disputes were suspended by the use of the mysterious _Homoousion_ (Consubstantial), which either party was free to interpret according to their peculiar tenets. The Sabellian sense, which about fifty years before had obliged the Council of Antioch to prohibit this celebrated term, had endeared it to those theologians who entertained a secret but partial affection for a nominal Trinity. But the more fashionable saints of the Arian times, the intrepid Athanasius, the learned Gregory Nazianzen, and the other pillars of the Church, who supported with ability and success the Nicene doctrine, appeared to consider the expression _of substance_ as if it had been synonymous with that _of nature_; and they ventured to illustrate their meaning, by affirming that three men, as they belong to the same common species, are con-substantial or homoousian to each other. This pure and distinct equality was tempered on the one hand by the internal connection, and spiritual penetration, which indissolubly unites the divine persons, and on the other by the pre-eminence of the Father, which was acknowledged as far as it is compatible with the independence of the son. Within these limits the almost invisible and tremulous ball of Orthodoxy was allowed securely to vibrate. On either side beyond this consecrated ground the heretics and the dæmons lurked in ambush to surprise and devour the unhappy wanderer. But as the degrees of theological hatred depend on the Spirit of the war, rather than on the importance of the Controversy, the heretics who degraded, were treated with more severity than those who annihilated the person of the Son.”[489]

We are now arrived at that great period in the faith of the Church, when the dignity of the Son was authoritatively settled by the Nicene Council. Here is a brief account of its proceedings. “The Bishops began by much personal dissension, and presented to the Emperor a variety of written accusations against each other; the Emperor burnt all their libels and exhorted them to peace and unity. They then proceeded to examine the momentous question proposed to them. It was soon discovered that the differences which it was intended to reconcile might in their principle be reduced to one point, and that point might be expressed by one _word_, and thus the question appears to have been speedily simplified (as indeed was necessary that so many persons might come to one conclusion on so mysterious a subject) and reduced to this—whether the Son was or was not _consubstantial_ with the Father. Then arose subtile disceptations respecting the meaning of the word, ‘about which some conflicted with each other, dwelling on the term and minutely dissecting it; it was like a battle fought in the dark; for neither party seemed at all to understand on what ground they vilified each other.’ However the result was perfectly conclusive; they finally decided against the Arian opinions, and established respecting the two first persons in the Trinity, the doctrine which the Church still professes in the Nicene Creed.”[490]

This doctrine is as follows:—you will perceive that it is partly Trinitarian, _and only partly_, a _derived_ deity being attributed to the Son, _and no deity whatsoever_ attributed to the Holy Spirit. Changes were afterwards introduced into this Creed to adapt it to the growing orthodoxy of the times. I shall mention these in their proper places; meanwhile I give the Nicene Creed of the Nicene Council:—

_The Nicene Creed_, _A.D._ 325.

“We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of all things visible and invisible; and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten and only begotten of the Father; that is of the substance of the Father, God of (out of) God, Light of (from) Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father, by whom all things were made both in heaven and in earth: who for us men, and for our salvation, descended and was incarnate, and was made man, suffered, and rose again the third day, ascended into the heavens, and will come to judge the living and the dead. (We believe) also in the Holy Ghost.

“The holy Catholic and Apostolic Church anathematizes those who say that there was a time when the Son of God was not, and that before he was begotten he was not, and that he was made out of nothing, or out of another substance or essence, and is created, changeable, or alterable.”

“Such,” says Jortin, “was the Nicene Creed, as it stood originally and before it was interpolated by subsequent Councils. Our church hath dropped the anathematizing clauses at the end, and one cannot help wishing that the Nicene Fathers had done the same. The Christians in times following were perpetually making anathematisms, even upon the slightest and poorest occasions; and it is really a wonder that they did not at last insert in their Litanies, ‘We beseech Thee to curse and confound the Pelagians, Semi-pelagians, Nestorians, Eutychians, Monothelites, Jacobites, Iconoclasts, and all heretics and schismatics.’”[491]

The history of the fourth century is almost entirely taken up with the persecutions of Consubstantialists against Arians, Arians against Consubstantialists, and the minor strifes of the subdivisions of these sects. After the death of Constantine, the Emperor Constantius sided with the Arians, and then the persecuted became the persecutors, for wherever a dogmatical Religion is held, wherever Creeds are the Essentials of Salvation, of course no Charity can be learned in the School of Suffering. There is an admirable passage contained in Archdeacon Jortin’s most instructive remarks on Ecclesiastical History. It extorts a smile to observe with what unconsciousness dogmatic Theologians of all ages insult their fellow-disciples, in the name and for the love of God, and close their acts of persecution with the words of affection and blessing:—