The Doctrine of the Trinity in the Early Church

The most significant developments in articulating the doctrine of the Triune God took place in the 4th century, A.D. with a group of men known as the Theologians.

Introduction

The doctrine of God has always been of primary importance to Christianity. A correct view of God is pivotal to every other doctrine that the church holds dear. The most significant developments in articulating the doctrine of the Triune God took place in the 4th century, A.D. with a group of men known as the Theologians. Though the earliest church fathers had affirmed the doctrine of the apostles, they were focused on their pastoral duties to a persecuted church and thus were unable to compose doctrinal treatises. With the relaxing of the persecution of the church during the rise of Constantine to power in the Roman empire, the stage was set for wide-ranging ecumenical dialogue. The resultant councils and creeds did not discover or create Trinitarian doctrine. The Theologians, responding to serious heresies such as Arianism, articulated in the creeds the truths that the orthodox church had believed since the time of the apostles.¹

The Arian Controversy

With the end of state persecution against the church, the entire Roman Empire was available for openly Christian teaching. Unfortunately, it became much easier for heretics to develop a wide following, particularly if they claimed that their teaching came from a correct interpretation of the Bible. Perhaps the most prominent heretic of the early church, Arius (d. 336 A.D.) was trained in the theological school of Lucan, himself a disciple of Paul of Samosota. Paul had been excommunicated in 268 A.D. at the Synod of Antioch for his view of the relationship between Christ and the Father. Lucan continued Paul’s teaching of Adoptionism until his martyrdom in 311/12. Soon after Arius received an appointment as a presbyter in Alexandria. Arius, having been schooled in Antioch, would inevitably clash with the rival tradition in Alexandria.²

Arius did not strictly teach the doctrine of his predecessors Paul and Lucan, but his heavy emphasis on absolute monotheism led him astray. This emphasis led to the complete subordination of Christ to the Father, to the point that Jesus was a created being. Referring to this creation, Arius states,

We praise Him (God) as without beginning because of Him (Jesus) who has a beginning. And adore Him as everlasting, because of Him who in tie has come to be. The Unbegun made the Son a beginning of things originated; and advanced His as a Son to Himself by adoption. He has nothing proper to God in proper subsistence. For He is not equal, no, nor one in essence with Him.³ (italics mine)

In addition, out of his unbridled zeal for monotheism, Arius misinterpreted the Greek Logos in John 1:1 as “wisdom,” and correlated it with the Septuagint’s version of Prov. 8:22, which states that wisdom was God’s first creation. This incorrect translation and correlation led Arius to teach that the Son of God was the first creature that God created.⁴ Arius, in his work Thalia, explicitly denies the eternality of the Son:

God was not always Father; but there was when God was alone and was not yet Father; afterward He became a Father. The Son was not always; for since all things have come into existence from nothing, and all things are creatures and have been made, so also the Logos of God Himself came into existence from nothing and there was a time when He was not; and that before He came into existence He was not; but He also had a beginning of His being created.⁵ (italics mine)

Alexander (d. 328 A.D.), the bishop of Alexandria, was the first to take offense at the teachings of the presbyter Arius. Alexander sought to have Arius excommunicated in 320/21, but Arius found refuge with Eusebius of Nicomedia, a bishop, himself a follower of Lucan. However, the most forceful opponent that Arius contended with was Athanasius (ca. 296-373 A.D.), who trained under Alexander in Alexandria. Upon Alexander’s death in 328, Athansius succeeded his mentor as the bishop of Alexandria. The core of Athanasius’ soteriology, which caused his great disagreement with Arius, was that only God could save humanity. Because God chose to send a Savior through whom this salvation would be accomplished, this Savior Himself must also be fully divine.⁶ With this background Athanasius condemned Arianism, for if the Savior must in fact be divine, and Jesus was created unlike the Father, then Christians were practicing polytheism. Thus on two main points Athanasius was repulsed by Arian doctrine: (1) it led to polytheism, and (2) it taught that salvation originated in creation, not with the Creator.

The Council of Nicea

In 323 Constantine gained sole control over the entire Roman Empire, an empire that was greatly divided over the debate between Arius and Alexander. In order to bring unity to the empire, Constantine ordered a council to resolve the matter at Nicea in 325,⁷ organized by Bishop Hosius of Cordova, a follower of Athanasius.⁸ The council was made up of three distinct groups. Arius was not a bishop, so Eusebius of Nicomedia represented the Arians in general, though his views were more extreme. The Alexandrians, following the views of Alexander and Athanasius, stood in staunch opposition to the Arians. The final group, the majority of attendees, did not fully understand the issues and simply desired peace. Eusebius read the views of his party in their most extreme form, and as a result the council drafted a creed meant to crush the teachings of Arianism.⁹

The Nicene Creed. The statement drafted on the 19th of June, 325, began with a strong statement of monotheism, “We believe in one God.” Against Arius’ definition of begotten, which he took to mean “created,” the Nicene Creed differentiated the terms by stating that the Son of God was “begotten, not made.” Additionally, the Son was declared homoousia with the Father, from the Greek homo, “same,” and ousio, “substance, nature or essence.”¹⁰ This was a clear affirmation of the Son’s deity (though as will be seen below the term caused a lot of confusion between the Eastern and Western bishops). The final denunciation against Arius lay in the closing portion of the Creed, “But those who say there was when He was not…these the Catholic Church anathematizes.” The Council was solely concerned with settling the debate over the deity of Christ, and thus regarding the Holy Spirit they simply wrote “We believe…in one Holy Spirit.”

The Aftermath of the Council. Unfortunately, the Council of Nicea did not completely resolve the debate over Arianism. The problem surrounded the use of the Greek homoousia, which the council used to describe the relationship between the Son and the Father. The Western theologians understood the term as Tertullian had used it, to mean unity of substance or essence. The Eastern theologians understood it only to affirm the divinity of the Son, and thus feared that it left the door open for Modalism. This misunderstanding of terminology prevented the church from being able to completely do away with the Arian heresy, and left the door open for the Arians to remain a prominent group of theologians.

The Arians set out discrediting their opponents after the council, finally winning the approval of Constantine on his deathbed in 336. Constantine’s son, Constantius, became a defender of Arianism in the eastern portion of the Roman Empire. The opponents of Nicea, primarily Arians, splintered into three distinct groups. The Anomoeans, extreme Arians, argued that the the Son was unlike the Father in every respect. The Homoeans, moderate Arians, taught that the Son was similar to Father, but refused to define exactly what they meant. Finally, many of the Eastern bishops who misunderstood the Nicene Creed’s use of homoousia became known as homoiousians. These theologians were comfortable referring to the Son as similar in substance to the Father, thus affirming Christ’s deity. This group formed as a result of the extreme teachings of both the Arians and Sabellians, which provided common ground for the Eastern and Western theologians to continue to discuss their views regarding the terminology of the Nicene Creed.¹¹

The Cappadocians

Beginning with the work of Hilary of Poiters in 356, the East and West gradually came to realize that their views were in agreement. Hilary demonstrated the East (homoiousians)and West (homoousians) were in fact in agreement on the question of the relationship of the Son to the Father. Hilary further pointed out that the concerns of the East concerning the definition of homoousia were unfounded. These groups finally realized that their positions were not in disagreement at the Alexandrine Synod of 362, and thus the groups began an alliance that would result in a final denunciation of the Arians.¹²   The “Three Great Cappadocians”, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa worked diligently to define the relationship between the persons of the Godhead. These men took it upon themselves to correctly interpret the Nicene Creed for both East and West, clarifying the terminology and offering a solution.

The Cappadocians not only clarified the relationship of the Son to the Father, but also the role and deity of the Holy Spirit. The Arian position had also necessitated a denial of the deity of the Spirit, and indeed they taught that the Spirit had been created by the Father through the Son. Thus the Arians taught that the Spirit was subordinate and inferior to both Christ and the Father.¹³

The Cappadocians clearly taught the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity, concentrating on the differences between essence and persons. Basil of Casesarea states, “Wherefore, in the case of the Godhead, we confess one essence or substance so as not to give a variant definition of existence, but we confess a particular hypostasis, in order that our conception of Father, Son and Holy Spirit may be without confusion and clear.”¹⁴   And again, “For as there is one Father and one Son, so is there one Holy Ghost.” Also regarding the Trinity, Gregory of Nazianzus states, “If ever there was a time when the Father was not, then there was a time when the Son was not. If ever there was a time when the Son was not, then there was a time when the Spirit was not. If the One was from the beginning, then the Three were so too.”¹⁵

The work of the Cappadocians set the stage for the Council of Constantinople in 381 to permanently set aside the views of Arius as a valid theological alternative. “They affirmed that there are in God three hypostases and only one ousia or, in other words, three individual subsistences that participate in one divine essence.”¹⁶   Though little is known about the Council of Constantinople, the creed that resulted from the gathering was distinctly Cappadocian. The Council was composed only of Eastern bishops, but it is generally referred to as an ecumenical council because the West accepted its statement as agreeing with orthodox Trinitarianism. Indeed, the significant Trinitarian theologians of the West, Hilary of Poitiers and Augustine, both borrowed heavily from the Cappadocians. Thus the Creed of Constantinople and the work of the Cappadocians should be regarded as the church’s defining statement of an orthodox doctrine of the Triune God.

Conclusion

With the clarification of the Nicene Creed at Constantinople in 381, the church possessed a clear and concise doctrine of God. One must always remember that these councils did not arbitrarily “create” doctrine, they merely clarified and put into a succinct form what the church had always believed. Regarding the doctrine of God, the Christian church believes that there is one God who has revealed Himself in three persons: the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Through the work of the Cappadocians and other theologians, the church had a firm foundation within which all further refinements of Trinitarian doctrine should be built upon: “We believe in one God, Father, all-sovereign…and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God…and in the Holy Spirit…who is worshiped and glorified together with the Father and Son.”

1.	Bingham, Jeffrey, “HT200 Class Notes,” Dallas Theological Seminary , ( 2004).
2.	Hannah, John, “HT200 Class Notes,” Dallas Theological Seminary , ( 2004), 6.2.
3.	Ibid., 6.2.
4.	Bingham, Jeffrey, “HT200 Class Notes,”.
5.	Hannah, John, “HT200 Class Notes,”, 6.3.
6.	Gonzalez, Justo, A History of Christian Thought, Vol I (Nashville: Abingdon, 1987), 297.
7.	Hannah, John, “HT200 Class Notes,”, 6.4.
8.	Ibid., 6.6.
9.	Ibid., 6.6.
10.	Bingham, Jeffrey, “HT200 Class Notes,”.
11.	Gonzalez, Justo, A History of Christian Thought, Vol I, 280-282.
12.	Ibid., 287.
13.	Hannah, John, “HT200 Class Notes,”, 7.11.
14.	Ibid., 7.12.
15.	Ibid., 7.13.
16.	Gonzalez, Justo, A History of Christian Thought, Vol I, 287.