The rise of the Trinitarian idea
Written by C. A. Ladson
Brethren Of Christ Articles - Doctrinal Matters
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In this slight tracing of the rise of the Trinitarian idea, no account is taken of anything anterior to the Christian era. That the worship of various Triads, Trinities, and Triangles existed in Egypt and India, and that this bore a part in the philosophy that corrupted the Faith, is certain, but the scope of this essay ranges between the apostolic days and the acceptance of that which is formulated in the mis-named Athanasian Creed as follows: - “We worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in unity, neither confounding the persons nor dividing the substance. For there is one person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost. But the God-head of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost is all one, the glory equal, the majesty co-eternal.” Of which it is declared, “which faith except everyone do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he will perish everlastingly.”
This belief was current long centuries before the above form emerged; the authorship of which, and time and place of composition can only be guessed at, no evidence being available earlier than the sixth century. The era of the rise of the idea may loosely be said to be comprised between the middle of the First and the close of the Fourth centuries, when the Council of Constantinople, 381 A.D., in the words of Mosheim, “defined fully and perfectly what the Council of Nice left imperfect; and fixed in a full and determined manner the doctrine of three persons in one God.”
This Council marks the maturity of this apostacy, and of its authoritative accrediting by the Church, three and a half centuries from the time when Paul noted the beginnings of declension from the Faith, and warned Christ’s brethren of the fatal outcome.
Small and apparently innocent were its beginnings in the hands of well-meaning friends of the gospel, who by hair-breadth lines began to deviate from its simplicity in order to make it acceptable, or less un-acceptable to their pagan friends. Like the beginning of strife, the beginning of error is “as when one letteth out water;” it wears wider and wider the channel, till there is a devastating flood.
“The offence of the cross,” was the stumbling block. How could these pagan worshippers of the Beautiful accept the person of one who had died a death of infamy? What was there to recommend such a one? What was he more than other men who had been crucified by the authorities? They had crucified good men before him, and doubtless would do so again. Paul met this objection in his day, but he trimmed not a whit. He preached “Christ, and him crucified” he boldly says, “unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness.” Others unfortunately were less robust, and began endeavouring to “raise the dignity of Christ,” as Joseph Priestley (1733—1804) says, by adding to the plain teaching that he was a man “made of a woman, made under the law,” “like unto his brethren,” “tempted in all points like as we are.” Instead of accepting and teaching that the more public the death, the clearer the proof of the resurrection, they began to explain away the nature of the crucifixion, and in so doing, by degrees explained away the human nature of Christ.
The theories of Plato and his school were in the air of the first century, and being respectable and accepted were pressed into the service of the improvers of Christian doctrine as a harmless innovation, scarcely, if at all, to be called a compromise. Various were the views of the Platonists, and soon the “harmless innovation” had obscured the simple truth, and involved the religious world of that day in a whirlpool of ecclesiastical subtleties, into which, save for a remnant, the Christians were drawn, and the Truth disappeared.
“All souls,” said some of the Platonists, “were pre-existent, the body was of small importance. Christ’s body held the soul of a god, or an emanation from God Himself.” Others said that only in appearance had Jesus been crucified, that a simulacrum, or image of a man had apparently suffered, but it was but an illusion of the senses. And here others seized upon the Platonic logos, the personified wisdom of God. This logos said they had entered into a corporeal shape, and this was the Christ. The idea was eagerly caught up, Christian and pagan finding common standing ground. Against this John, by the spirit of God, strove in the famous first chapter of his gospel record, taking hold of their phraseology to emphasise the truth that Jesus Christ, son of man and son of God, was the true logos, and sternly condemning the denial of Christ’s coming in the flesh; and again, in his first epistle, “every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, is of God.” To deny it, he declared, was the spirit of anti-Christ. But anti-Christ though it was, it grew apace. In explanation of the very evident pain that Christ had suffered the supporters of the new theory averred that he was above the feeling of pain, impassable; that the appearance of suffering was but an appearance, he was of higher nature, though in appearance a man. Apparently, but not really of our race, was the teaching of those who sought to wed the prejudices of the allegorical Hebrews and the philosophical Greeks to the Gospel of Christ crucified, in order to soften the asperities of the truth.
So line upon line, here a little and there a little, the Truth lost and the heresy gained till about the middle of the second century when Justin Martyr, a Greek by birth, and by religion a Platonist, filled with the spirit of mysticism, embraced Christianity and had no small part in its corruption. He threw himself with ardour into the questions of the day, readily adapting the idea of the logos, which he held as part of his Platonism. Long and very wearisome are the disquisitions of this time, and one is seized with astonishment at the ingenuity wasted by these early Christian apologists, and at the patience of the readers of their endless writings.
But Justin Martyr cannot justly be described as a Trinitarian; he wrote much about the logos, with many different and somewhat confused meanings, but principally as “The supreme reason” an attribute of God, which had been given off as an emanation, and made into a separate person, or inferior God. He sought to identify this “inferior God” with the Creator in Genesis, and with the being who appeared to Abraham, Jacob, and Moses, and at various times in the Old Testament history. He taught that the logos became flesh in Christ, and that as an attribute of God; it had been from everlasting without beginning, which the son was not. He held the inferiority of the nature of Jesus, and speaks of his distinctness from God, calling him “the next in rank,” and “next after God,” and says that men pray to God through Christ. We cannot, then, term him a Trinitarian in the usually accepted sense, but neither Unitarian nor Trinitarian, he seems vaguely to have professed a sort of Dualism. He contends for two Gods and two Lords, and quotes the “us” of Genesis 1:26, in support of his ideas. He declared God and Jesus Christ to be “numerically distinct,” the “emanation” not being the equal of that from which it emanated. He seems to have been the first to teach the pre-existence of Christ. The abilities of Justin Martyr were largely used in the recommendation of Christianity to the Roman heathen, and on one occasion he told a Roman Emperor that the divinity of the Son of God should not be a strange thing to one whose own Jupiter was the father of many sons. This is a strange commentary on the history of the initial error, for beginning with seeking to raise the dignity of Christ; it ends in belittling God Himself, and all with the excellent intention of recommending Christianity.