Apostolic Fathers

Clement of Rome

(AD35-99)

“Little can be gleaned from the first of (the Apostolic Fathers), Clement of Rome. He coordinates the Three in an oath: ‘As God lives, and the Lord Jesus Christ lives, and the Holy Spirit’; and again in the question, ‘Have we not one God, and one Christ, and one Spirit of grace poured upon us?’ As for Christ, he takes His pre-existence prior to the incarnation for granted, since it was He Who spoke through the Spirit in the Psalms, and Who is ‘the sceptre of majesty’, i.e. the instrument through which God has ever exercised His sovereignty. He is also ‘the way by which we have found salvation, the high-priest of our offering’; through Him we ‘gaze up to the heights of heaven’. The Holy Spirit Clement regarded as inspiring God’s prophets in all ages, as much the Old Testament writers as himself But of the problem of the relation of the Three to each other he seems to have been oblivious.” (JND Kelly, p91)

Epistle of Barnabus

(AD70-132)

The complete text is preserved in the 4th-century Codex Sinaiticus. The Epistle was attributed to Barnabas, the companion of Paul the Apostle, by Clement of Alexandria and Origen. Clement quotes it with phrases such as “the Apostle Barnabas says”. Origen speaks of it as the General Epistle of Barnabas. It is now thought to have been written by an early church leader also called Barnabus.

“Hints of a similar two-level use of ‘spirit’ occur in ‘Barnabas’. Sometimes he makes reference, in traditional fashion, to the Spirit as inspiring prophets and as having prepared in advance those whom God calls; but he also speaks of Christ’s body as ‘the vessel of spirit’, presumably denoting by the word the spiritual nature of the divine element in the Lord. The chief interest of his theology, however, is the prominence it gives to Christ’s pre-existence. It was He Who cooperated with God the Father at creation (the words, ‘Let us make man in our image’, were addressed to Him); He conversed with Moses, and before the incarnation received His mandate from the Father. He is ‘Lord of the entire cosmos’, and it is His glory that ‘all things are in Him, and unto Him’.” (JND Kelly p.92)

Hermas

(Dated 2nd century)

“Hermas clearly envisages three distinct personages-the master, i.e. God the Father, his ‘well-beloved son’, i.e. the Holy Spirit, and the servant, i.e. the Son of God, Jesus Christ. The distinction between the three, however, seems to date from the incarnation; as pre-existent the Son of God is identified with the Holy Spirit, so that before the incarnation there would seem to have been but two divine Persons, the Father and the Spirit. The third, the Saviour or Lord, was elevated to be their companion as a reward for his merits, having cooperated nobly with the pre-existent Spirit which indwelt him. Hermas’ s theology was thus an amalgam of binitarianism and adoptionism, though it made an attempt to conform to the triadic formula accepted in the Church.” (Kelly, 94)

The Didache

(even though dating has been difficult, current consensus is very early, AD 50-70): “After the foregoing instructions, baptize in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, in living [running] water…. If you have neither, pour water three times on the head, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”(7:1, also 7:3)

Ignatius of Antioch

(d.AD 98-117)

“The centre of Ignatius’ was Christ. It is (also) true that he assigned a proper place to the Holy Spirit. He was the principle of the Lord’s virginal conception; it was by Him that Christ established and confirmed the Church’s officers. He was the gift sent by the Saviour, and spoke through Ignatius himself. Further, the triadic formula occurs thrice’ at least in his letters, the most notable example being a picturesque simile comparing the faithful to stones forming the temple built by God the Father; the cross of Jesus Christ is the crane by which they are hoisted up, and the Holy Spirit the hawser. Much more frequently, however, he speaks of God the Father and Jesus Christ, declaring that ‘there is one God, who has revealed Himself through His Son Jesus Christ, Who is His Word emerging from silence’. Christ is the Father’s ‘thought‘ (), ‘the unlying mouth by which the Father spoke truly’. Ignatius even declares (E.g. Eph. inscr.; I8, 2; Trail. 7, I; Rom. inscr.) that He is ‘our God’, describing (Eph. 7, 2; I9, 3) Him as ‘God incarnate’ () and ‘God made manifest as man’ (). He was ‘in spirit () united with the Father (Smyrn. 3, 3). In His pre-existent being ingenerate (): the technical term reserved to distinguish the increate God from creatures), He was the timeless, invisible, impalpable, impassible one Who for our sakes entered time and became visible, palpable and passible (Eph. 7, 2; Polyc. 3, 2.). His divine Sonship dates from the Incarnation (Smyrn. I, I.)” (Kelly, p92)

“[T]o the Church at Ephesus in Asia . . . chosen through true suffering by the will of the Father in Jesus Christ our God” (Letter to the Ephesians 1 [A.D. 110]).

“For our God, Jesus Christ, was conceived by Mary in accord with God’s plan: of the seed of David, it is true, but also of the Holy Spirit” (ibid., 18:2).

Martyrdom of St Polycarp

(in his dying prayers): “your beloved Son through whom be to you with him and the Holy Spirit glory, now and for all the ages to come, amen” (14:3)

Analysis of the Heresies

The Christological Heresies

1. Jesus as human person plus Divine Person- “Adoptionism”

This heresy envisages a human Jesus as it were, “strapped-on” to the Deity. This “adoption” was seen by some to have occurred specifically at his Baptism. This was the heresy of Theodotus in AD 190, possibly the sect called the Ebionites and also more famously, Paul of Samosata. Nestorianism can also be seen as a form of this heresy for convenience of grouping, where there is held to be both human as well as divine persons.

The problem of adoptionism is that worshipping a human person is idolatrous. It does not matter that God is with him or not, God comes to all of us. The Holy Spirit came upon persons in the Old Testament too. Paul of Samosata was condemned by Pope St. Victor at the Council of Antioch.

2. Jesus as a fleshy shell “Appolonarism” &“Monothelitism”:

(Dr. William Marshner’s refers to this as “happy puppet”). Again, we group these for convenience since they share the same essence- Jesus as neither human person nor divine person, nor even a human nature, only a soul-less fleshy husk. So Apollonarism has Jesus with no human Soul, rather God donning a fleshy coat, while Monothelitism is more subtle, in it Jesus though he might have a human soul, has no human will and so this cannot truly be a soul.

These probably avoid idolatry since the intention is that God be worshipped as residing within a fleshy shell. What they avoid is the ascribing of true humanity, and thus Christian soteriology is omitted. We cannot truly say that God became human if the Person Jesus that walked in Galilee is actually not human at all. God literally wrapping himself in flesh is not the same as “God became Man”. Rather this is a bit like the walking war-machines in Star Wars that have little men operating them from cockpit inside. Those men have not “become the machine”, its a gimmick. These feel not so much failures to accept the Incarnation rather failures to appreciate the full implication of it. “In-Carnate” is not God hopping into a mechanical shell, which is what is really implied here, rather it is God “made” Human, or “made” Flesh.

3. Only an Illusion of Humanity: “Docetism”, Monophysitism

there is not even a puppet, there is only an illusion of humanity. This probably avoids paganism, but also avoids the Incarnation itself. Once again, I append monophysitism here because it is the same problem: if there is only one nature and that nature is divine, there really is no trace of human.

4. Arianism, Islam

Arianism is probably the furthest one can get from orthodoxy. It is to deny any concrete divine union with the person of Jesus, rather to elevate Jesus’ own humanity to a “species” somewhere in between a man and God. This in the modern day takes the shape of the Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses among others, some of whom even take Jesus to be the archangel Michael, or Islam in which Jesus is “no more than a prophet”.

We will probably not know precisely what Arius taught, since most of our knowledge of him is from Church Fathers’ polemics against him, his own writings are lost/destroyed. Arianism although included here might be seen essentially as a Trinitarian heresy in another way. Arius is seems, accepts that the Second Person is generated “outside of time” from the Father but does not accept eternal generation, rather he states that there is an act of will of the Father at which point he is generated. It can be seen that all this necessitates temporal language, for eg. he is saying “born outside of time, however there was a point at which he did not exist”, and it isn’t hard to see that he contradicts himself here. Arius is asserting “a point at which he did not exist” and arbitrarily refusing to accept that this is a “point in time”:

“’We are persecuted’, Arius protests, ‘because we say the Son has a beginning whereas God is without beginning.’ ‘He came into existence’, he writes in the same letter, ‘ before the times and the ages’ -inevitably so, because He is the creator of time itself, no less than ‘of everything else belonging to the world of contingency. Nevertheless, although ‘born outside time, prior to His generation He did not exist’…” (Kelly 228 ref: Ep. ad Alex).

Athanasius asserted “Nor is the Son’s generation, as the Arians claimed, the result of a definite act of the Father’s will, which would reduce the Son’s status to that of a creature. It certainly happens according to the Father’s will, but it is misleading to speak of a specific act of volition in regard to what is an eternal process inherent in God’s very nature. (c. Ar. 3. 59-66) (…) Athanasius is satisfied that, as the Father’s offspring, the Son must be really distinct from Him; and since the generation is eternal, it follows that the distinction too is eternal and does not belong simply to the ‘economy’ (C. Ar. 3. 4, Kelly p.244)

The Trinitarian Heresies and their link to the Christological

Sabellianism/ Modalism:

Modalism accepts only “one person” in God, who only “appears” to be three. In terms of its Christology this will necessarily lead to some form of adoptionism. This is because there being no actual Divine Son and only one Person in God in reality, so the same Person would be their own Son were they to become man and call someone “Father”. Also it is patripassianism, where the Father is literally crucified as also is the Son.

Emanationism and Subordinationism

When one thing emanates from another we get many beings, not one. Further those emanating are ontologically derived from the source. Emanationism gives rise to a concrete basis for subordinationism, because co-equality can no longer be argued. When this breaks down, then one-ness can no longer be argued- what is different in rank cannot still be the same thing- this is tri-theism.

Thus emanationism we see certainly playing out into pagan belief, even though it was not intended in that manner by the fathers like Justin. the point of Trinitarianism is to preserve oneness and this is always going to massively narrow down the number of possible descriptions of it. In fact there can only be one description of it which is orthodoxy. Indeed Arius developed his doctrine in protest against this manner of teaching of the like of Justin, but in doing do unfortunately led his followers into even greater error.

Superiority of the Father- Subordinationism, Monarchialism

Subordinationism is also necessarily ingrained in emanationism due to the ontological dependence of the one from the other, and the loss of co-equality. Some of the early Church Fathers used language that seems subordinationist, or language of “causation”, this is before the language of “eternal generation” developed. A subordinate God cannot be God, so this language was abandoned when the correct manner of describing the Trinity was arrived at. The point is that every of these Church Fathers fully believed that Jesus is the Almighty God. It was only the manner of explaining the mystery that was not adequate.

They were all monotheistic, and all believed Jesus is fully God.There are non- RCC writers who assert that ECFs pre-Nicene were universally subordinationalist. I cannot confirm all their work but here are the references:

“There is no theologian in the Eastern or the Western Church before the outbreak of the Arian Controversy, who does not in some sense regard the Son as subordinate to the Father.”- The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God, R. P. C. Hanson

“Arianism: Before Nicaea, Christian theology was almost universally subordinationist. Theology almost universally taught that the Son was subordinate to the Father, but Arius expressed this kind of Christology in a provocative way. … The slogan of Arius and his allies soon came to be this: “There was when he was not.” -Gods and the One God, Robert M. Grant, p160.

All the great pre-Nicene theologians represented the subordination of the Logos to God.” … “Every significant theologian of the Church in the pre-Nicene period, had actually represented a Subordinationist Christology. (The Formation of Christian Dogma, An Historical Study of its Problems; Martin Werner, p125, 234, Werner is a modernist who also advocates angel-Christology)

“Thus we call the tendency, strong in the theology of the 2nd and 3rd cc., to consider Christ, as Son of God, inferior to the Father (…) Subordinationist tendencies are evident esp. in theologians like Justin, Tertullian, Origen and Novatian; but even in Irenaeus, to whom trinitarian speculations are alien, commenting on Jn 14, 28, has no difficulty in considering Christ inferior to the Father.” (M. Simmonetti, Oxford Encyclopedia of the Early Church, II.797.)

Teaching about the Godhead which regards either the Son as subordinate to the Father or the Holy Ghost as subordinate to both. It is a characteristic tendency in much of Christian teaching of the first three centuries, and is a marked feature of such otherwise orthodox Fathers as St. Justin and Origen. (The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 2nd ed., p. 1319.)

The term is a common retrospective concept used to denote theologians of the early church who affirmed the divinity of the Son or Spirit of God, but conceived it somehow as a lesser form of divinity than that of the Father. It is a modern concept that is so vague that is that it does not illuminate much of the theology of the pre-Nicene teachers, where a subordinationist presupposition was widely and unreflectively shared. (John Athony McGuckin, The Westminster Handbook to Patristic Theology, p. 321.)

It was mainly Athanasius who clearly stated a non-subordinationist position. However as we said above, to accord a clear subordinationism in the ECFs would to my mind be unfair, since they are merely using “second” and “third” in an attempt to describe trinitarian language amidst the difficulties involved in doing so with any degree of accuracy. There is no indication that the Son is to be given lesser adoration. Let them speak for themselves, when you read the section on their individual sayings, I would say that is of the utmost importance for making a judgement in this regard.

The Economic Trinity

This is probably the least of these heresies, and is the description of St. Justin, who held that the Word while eternal, was from all eternity implicit in the Father, as though not yet given “subjectivity” until the point of Creation- the so -called “economic Trinity”, the Trinity that is only manifest in the economy of the Salvation of mankind. This is not really outright heresy, rather it is the error of making an analogy to the difference between and foetus and a born baby, and applying it to God, and erroneous because of that.

Ultimately it is only the analogy of Mind and intelligence which works and nothing else and until this is arrived upon everything else is necessarily polytheism, that much is demonstrated. Most importantly, right through the Fathers is the belief that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are One God, and that each is God, and that never changes through the errors in working out how it may be, even when Justin calls Jesus a “second God”, he does not intend this to be polytheistic by any means. There is never the explicit intent to describe multiple deities at any stage.

Every variety in trinitarian doctrine merely represents the effort to arrive at the right description. Thus with the attempts to formally describe the trinitarian relationship and Christology we start to see heresies emerge as every possible avenue is put forward. All the problems of Trinitarianism stem from the absence of “homoousios”-“Consubstantial”, to mean not just similar substance, but one and the same substance, the “identity” of substance. Once this is arrived at, and it had to be arrived at through necessity, all the other possibilities are done away with, all of which violate the co-terminus of “substance”, which itself does not allow any wriggle room at all.

Apologists

The efforts of the apologists was to be able to explain the seemingly inexplicable- how are there both three who are God- Father Son and Spirit, and yet one God. The efforts go through the stages of part error, part progress, and always an effort to preserve that unity of divinity. Also the initial effort did not seem to even address the Holy Spirit , since the main questions were being asked by the Gnostics and Platonists who were concerned with knowledge, and not spirituality- How can we “know” God, and what is the “”Knowledge of God”.

St Justin Martyr

(100-165 AD)

“His starting-point was the current maxim that reason (the ‘germinal logos’) was what united men to God and gave them knowledge of Him. Before Christ’s coming men had possessed, as it were, seeds of the Logos and had thus been enabled to arrive at fragmentary facets of truth. Hence such pagans as ‘lived with reason’ were, in a sense, Christians before Christianity. (1 apol. 46, 3) The Logos, however, had now ‘assumed shape and become a man’ in Jesus Christ; He had become incarnate in His entirety in Him. (lb. 5, 4; 2 apol. IO, I. ) The Logos is here conceived of as the Father’s intelligence or rational thought; but Justin argued (Dial. 128, 4·) that He was not only in name distinct from the Father, as the light is from the sun, but was ‘numerically distinct too’ ()… So the Logos, ‘having been put forth as an offspring from the Father, was with Him before all creatures, and the Father had converse with Him’. (Dial.62,4) And He is divine: ‘being Word and first-begotten of God, He is also God’ (1 apol. 63, I5.) ‘Thus, then He is adorable, He is God (Dial. 63, 5); and ‘we adore and love, next to God, the Logos derived from the increate and ineffable God, seeing that for our sakes He became man’. (2 apol. I3, 4)… the Logos is God’s ‘offspring’ (), His ‘child’ () and ‘unique Son (): ‘before all creatures God begat, in the beginning, a rational power out of Himself () …When we utter a word, we give birth to the word (or reason) within us, but without diminishing it, since the putting of it forth entails no abscission.(Dial.61,2)” (Kelly, p.96,97)

Justin, Martyr:

“to present before Him petitions for our existing again in incorruption through faith in Him. Our teacher of these things is Jesus Christ, who also was born for this purpose, and was crucified under Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judæa, in the times of Tiberius Cæsar; and that we reasonably worship Him, having learned that He is the Son of the true God Himself, and holding Him in the second place, and the prophetic Spirit in the third, we will prove. For they proclaim our madness to consist in this, that we give to a crucified man a place second to the unchangeable and eternal God, the Creator of all; for they do not discern the mystery that is herein, to which, as we make it plain to you, we pray you to give heed.” (1st Ap. Ch.13)

He was no sophist, but His word was the power of God (1st Ap., Ch.14)

 Jesus Christ is the only proper Son who has been begotten by God, being His Word and first-begotten, and power; and, becoming man according to His will (1Ap.Ch.23)

Justin then says to Trypho the Jew, “I shall attempt to persuade you…that there is said to be, another God and Lord subject to the Maker of all things…”The Son, “…was begotten of the Father by an act of will…” And, “…this Offspring, which was truly brought forth from the Father, was with the Father before all the creatures(i.e. creation)…”

“…both Him (the Father) and the Son…and the prophetic Spirit we worship and adore…” (First Apology, Chap.6)

“we reasonably worship him (Jesus Christ), having learned that He is the Son of the true God himself, holding himself in the second place, and the prophetic Spirit in the third…” (First Apology Chap.13)

Trinitarian Baptismal formula (First Apology Chap.61)

Tatian (c.120-180 AD)

Tatian was a student of Justin Martyr, his well know words are the Oratorio and the Diatesseron.

In his Address to the Greeks, wrote that God, “was alone”; that the Logos “was in Him” and “by His simple will the Logos springs forth” and becomes “the first-begotten work of the Father”; and that “the Logos, begotten in the beginning, begat in turn our world”.

“’The birth of the Logos involves a distribution (), but no severance (). Whatever is severed is cut off from its original, but that which is distributed undergoes division in the economy without impoverishing the source from which it is derived (…) the Word issues forth from the Father’s power without depriving His begetter of His Word. For example, I talk and you listen to me; but I, who converse with you, am not, by the conveyance of my word to you, made empty of my word…Before creation God was alone, the Logos being immanent in Him as His potentiality for creating all things; but at the moment of creation He leaped forth from the Father as His ‘primordial work’ (). Once born, being ‘spirit derived from spirit, rationality from rational power ‘” (Kelly p99)

Athenagoras

(c133-190 AD)

“…we acknowledge one God, uncreated, eternal, invisible, impassible, incomprehensible…by whom the universe has been created through His Logos…Nor let anyone think it ridiculous that God should have a Son…the Son of God is the Logos of the Father…the Son, I will state briefly, that He is the first product of the Father…”

“for as we acknowledge a God, and a son his Logos, and a Holy Spirit, united in essence, – the Father, the Son, the Spirit, because the Son is the Intelligence, Reason, Wisdom, of the Father, and the Spirit and effluence, as light from fire, so also do we apprehend…” (A Plea for Christians, Chap.24)

“Repudiating the objection that there is something ridiculous in God’s having a son, he protests that God’s Son is not like the children of men, but is the Father’s Word in idea and in actualization (…) ‘The Son being in the Father and the Father in the Son by the unity and power of divine spirit, the Son of God is the Father’s intelligence and Word’ (). To make his meaning clearer, Athenagoras then points out that, while He is God’s offspring, He never actually came into being (), ‘for God from the beginning, being eternal intelligence, had His Word () in Himself, being eternally rational’ (). (…)That the Logos was one in essence with the Father, inseparable in His fundamental being from Him as much after His generation as prior to it, the Apologists were never weary of reiterating. (Kelly 99)

St. Theophilus of Antioch

(d.AD183)

Theophilus:

“…at first God was alone and the Word was in Him…The Word then, being God, and being naturally produced from God, whenever the Father of the universe wills…”

“’He is not His Son in the sense in which poets and romancers relate the birth of sons to gods, but rather in the sense in which the truth speaks of the Word as eternally immanent () in God’s bosom. For before anything came into being He had Him as His counsellor, His own intelligence and thought. But when God willed to create what He had planned, He engendered and brought forth () this Word, the first-begotten of all creation. He did not thereby empty Himself of His Word, but having begotten Him consorts with Him always (Apology to Autolycus). Like Justin, Theophilus regarded the Old Testament theophanies as having been in fact appearances of the Logos. God Himself cannot be contained in space and time, but it was precisely the function of the Word Whom He generated to manifest His mind and will in the created order. (Kelly, 99)          

“the three days which were before the luminaries, are types of the Trinity, of God, and his Word, and His wisdom” (To Autolycus, Chap. 2:18)

“Yet, as compared with their thought about the Logos, the Apologists appear to have been extremely vague as to the exact status and role of the Spirit. His essential function in their eyes would seem to have been the inspiration of the prophets. Developing this, Justin interprets Isaiah. II, 2 (‘The Spirit of God shall rest upon him’) as indicating that with the coming of Christ prophecy would cease among the Jews; henceforth the Spirit would be Christ’s Spirit, and would bestow His gifts and graces upon Christians(…) The Spirit was for (the Apologists) the Spirit of God; like the Word, He shared the divine nature, being (in Athenagoras’s words) an ‘effluence’ from the Deity. Although much of Justin’s language about Him has a sub-personal ring, it becomes more personal when he speaks of ‘the prophetic Spirit’; (…) As regards the relation of the Three, there is little to be gleaned from Justin beyond his statement that Christians venerate Christ and the Spirit in the second and the third ranks respectively. Athenagoras echoes this idea when he inveighs against labelling as atheists ‘men who acknowledge God the Father, God the Son and the Holy Spirit, and declare both Their power in union and Their distinction in order’ (). This order, or Tag,s, however, was not intended to suggest degrees of subordination within the Godhead; it…Theophilus, with his doctrine of God’s Word and His Wisdom (he probably preferred ‘Wisdom’ to ‘Spirit’ because of the persistent ambiguity of the latter term), provides a fairly mature example of their teaching. In spite of his tendency1 to blur the distinction between the Word and the Spirit, he really had the idea of the holy Triad fixed firmly in his mind. He envisaged God as having His Word and His Wisdom eternally in Himself, and generating Them for the purpose of creation; Thus the image with which the Apologists worked, viz. that of a man putting forth his thought and his spirit in external activity, enabled them to recognize, however dimly, the plurality in the Godhead, and also to show how the Word and the Spirit, while really manifested in the world of space and time, could also abide within the being of the Father, Their essential unity with Him unbroken.” (Kelly 103,4)

St. Irenaeus

(130-202AD)

“The theologian who summed up the thought of the second century, and dominated Christian orthodoxy before Origen, was Irenaeus. He for his part was deeply indebted to the Apologists;… Where he was in advance of the Apologists, (…) (was) in the much fuller recognition which he gave to the place of the Spirit in the triadic scheme.” (Kelly, p.104)

“’being altogether mind and altogether Word, God utters what He thinks and thinks what He utters. His thinking is His Word, and His Word is His intelligence, and the Father is that intelligence comprising all things’” (Haer. 2, 28, s: c ib. I, 12, 2)… . He certainly conceived of the Word’s relationship to the Father as eternal, but he had not reached the position of picturing it as generation…. he states that ‘His Word and His Wisdom, His Son and His Spirit, are always by Him’, and that it was to them that God addressed the words, ‘Let us make man etc.'(Haer. 4, 20, r.)… ‘It is the Word Who establishes things, i.e. gives them body and bestows the reality of being upon them, and the Spirit Who gives order and form to these different powers’.( Dem. 5)… ‘without the Spirit it is impossible to behold the Word of God … since the knowledge of the Father is the Son, and the knowledge of the Son of God can only be obtained through the Spirit; and according to the Father’s good pleasure the Son ministers and dispenses the Spirit to whomsoever the Father wills, and as He wills’. (Dem.7) ‘the Father is God, and the Son is God, for whatever is begotten of God is God’.(Dem.47)” (Kelly, p.105,6)

“she (the Church) believes in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all the things that are in them, and in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God….and in the Holy Spirit…in order that to Christ Jesus, our Lord, and God, and Saviour, and King, according to the will of the invisible Father, ‘every knee should bow…’” (Against Heresies, Chap.1)

“for with him were always present the Word and Wisdom, the Son and the Spirit, by whom and in whom, freely and spontaneously, the made all things, to whom also he speaks, saying, ‘Let us make man after Our image and likeness…” (Against Heresies, Bk.4.Chap.20)

Third Century Trinitarianism

Tertullian (d.220)

Tertullian makes the advance of using the term “Person” for the distinction of the Persons of God. He however falls into the error of subordination and even partialism, when he compares the three Persons to “river/stream/rivulet”, and “tree/branch/fruit”. He sees the Son and Spirit as having “portions” of Divinity from the Father. He was the first Latin writer and the first to use “Trinity” and “Persons” by which he could express a true distinction. Tertullian is rather more explicit, pointing out that ‘before all things God was alone, being His own universe, location, everything. He was alone, however, in the sense that there was nothing external to Himself But even then He was not really alone, for He had with Him that Reason which He possessed within Himself, that is to say, His own Reason.’ Moreover, he brings out, much more clearly than any of his predecessors, the otherness or individuality of this immanent reason or Word. The rationality, he explains, by means of which a man cogitates and plans is somehow’ another’ (alius), or’ a second’ in himself (secundus quodammodo in te est sermo); and so it is with the divine Word, with which God has been ratiocinating from everlasting and which constitutes ‘a second in addition to Himself ‘ (secundum a se). (Adv. Prax. 5)

The Incarnation: “If Jesus Christ, then, consists of ‘two substances’ ( c£ utramque substantiam Christi et carnis et spiritus non negas3), what should we say about the relation between them? Tertullian has the distinction of being the first theologian frankly to tackle this issue. ‘Thus the Word’, he writes, ‘is in flesh. But this provokes the inquiry how the Word became flesh. Was He, so to speak, metamorphosed (transfiguratus) into flesh, or did He clothe Himself in it (indutus carnem)?’ He has no hesitation in opting for the second alternative. A transformation is unthinkable, for the reason that God and His Logos are by definition immutable, and that the result of such a metamorphosis would be the destruction of both the Godhead and the manhood and the emergence of a monstrous tertium quid, a mixture or amalgam. The logical conclusion is that both ‘substances’ continue unaltered and unimpaired after the union. So, anticipating later definitions, Tertullian can say that each of them preserves its peculiar qualities (salva est utriusque proprietas substantiae) and activity (substantiae ambo in statu suo quaeque distincte agebant), the spirit performing the miracles and the humanity enduring the sufferings. Yet while the flesh remains flesh and the spirit spirit (he cites the Lord’s remark to Nicodemus in john 3, 6 as Scriptural confirmation), they both belong to a single subject (itz uno plane esse possunt); He Who was both Son of God and Son of man was one and the same Person. He sums up:s ‘We observe a twofold condition, not confused but conjoined, Jesus, in one Person at once God and man’ (Kelly p.151)

“Tertullian followed the Apologists in dating His ‘perfect generation’ from His extrapolation for the work of creation; prior to that moment God could not strictly be said to have had a Son, while after it the term ‘Father’, which for earlier theologians generally connoted God as author of reality, began to acquire the specialized meaning of Father of the Son. As so generated, the Word or Son is a ‘Person’ (persona), ‘a second in addition to the Father’ (secundum a patre8). In the third place, however, there is the Spirit, the ‘representative’ or ‘deputy’ (vicaria vis9) of the Son; He issues from the Father by way of the Son (a patre per .filium10 (lots of references here5-10, all in Kelly 112), being ‘third from the Father and the Son (…) He, too, is a ‘Person’,z so that the Godhead is a ‘trinity’ (trinitas: Tertullian is the first to employ the word). The three are indeed numerically distinct, being ‘capable of being counted’ (nttmerum •.. patiuntur4). (Adv. Prax.2)… Like the Apologists, he again and again rcpudiated the suggestion that the distinction between the Three involved any division or separation; it was a distinctio or dispositio (i.e. a distribution), not a separatio,(Kelly 113), His characteristic way of expressing this was to state that Father, Son and Spirit are one in ‘substance’. Thus Father and Son are one identical substance which has been, not divided, but ‘extended’;(Apol.21,12)

“I testify that the Father, and the Son, and the Spirit are inseparable from each other…my assertion is that the Father is one, and the Son is one, and the Spirit is one, and that they are distinct from each other…that it is not by way of diversity that the Son differs from the Father, but by distribution; it is not by division that he is different, but by distinction…(this progresses into a bit of heresy here)” (Against Praxeas, Chap.9)

Therefore learn from Nicodemu that “what is born in flesh” is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Flesh does not become spirit, or spirit flesh; they can clearly exist in one person. Jesus consisted of flesh and spirit; of flesh as man, of spirit as God. The angel at the time proclaimed his God of God, in respect that he was Spirit, keeping for the flesh the title Son of man, Thus also the apostle confirms that he was composed of two realities, when he designated him the “mediator of God and people” (Against Praxeas 27)

“We do indeed believe that there is only one God, but we believe that under this dispensation, or, as we say, oikonomia, there is also a Son of this one only God, his Word, who proceeded from him and through whom all things were made and without whom nothing was made. . . . We believe he was sent down by the Father, in accord with his own promise, the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, the sanctifier of the faith of those who believe in the Father and the Son, and in the Holy Spirit” (Against Praxeas 2 [A.D. 216]).

Keep always in mind the rule of faith which I profess and by which I bear witness that the Father and the Son and the Spirit are inseparable from each other, and then you will understand what is meant by it. Observe now that I say the Father is other [distinct], the Son is other, and the Spirit is other. This statement is wrongly understood by every uneducated or perversely disposed individual, as if it meant diversity and implied by that diversity a separation of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” (ibid., 9).

“Thus the connection of the Father in the Son, and of the Son in the Paraclete, produces three coherent persons, who are yet distinct one from another. These three are, one essence, not one person, as it is said, ‘I and my Father are one’ [John 10:30], in respect of unity of being not singularity of number” (ibid., 25).

Hippolytus of Rome  (anti-pope, martyred.220)

“The Father’s Word, therefore, knowing the economy and the will of the Father, to wit, that the Father seeks to be worshipped in none other way than this, gave this charge to the disciples after he rose from the dead: “Go ye and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” (Matt 28:19) And by this he showed that whosoever omitted any one of these, failed in glorifying God perfectly. For it is through the Trinity that the Father is glorified. For the Father willed, the Son did and the Spirit manifested. —Against Noetus

‘Though alone, He was multiple ( ), for He was not without His Word and His Wisdom, His Power and His Counsel’ (C.Noet, 10)

“alongside the Father (i.e. the Godhead Itself), there was ‘ another ‘ () , a second ‘Person’ (), while the Spirit completed the Triad. (C. Noet. 7; II; 14·)… Similarly, in stressing that the Word’s generation takes place as and when the Father wills, his intention is not to subordinate Him to the Father (judged by post-Nicene standards, his language has a subordinationist ring), but to emphasize the absolute unity of the Godhead, since that will of the Father is in fact none other than the Word Himself (C.Noet.10)

Where they (Hippolytus and Tertullian) were in advance of him (Irenaeus) was (a) in their attempts to make explicit the oneness of the divine power or substance of which the Three were expressions or forms, and (b) in their description of Them (in Hippolytus’s case, of the Father and the Son) as Persons (personae). This latter term, it should be noted, was still reserved for Them as manifested in the order of revelation; only later did it come to be applied to the Word and the Spirit as immanent in God’s eternal being… (115) the terms prosopon and persona were admirably suited to express the otherness, or independent subsistence, of the Three. After originally meaning ‘face’, and so ‘expression’ and then ‘role’, the former came to signify ‘individual’, the stress being usually on the external aspect or objective presentation. The primary sense of persona was ‘mask’, from which the transition was easy to the actor who wore it and the character he played. In legal usage it could stand for the holder of the title to a property, but as employed by Tertullian it connoted the concrete presentation of an individual as such. In neither case, it should be noted, was the idea of self-consciousness nowadays associated with ‘person’ and ‘personal’ at all prominent.”( Kelly, 114) The theological activity we have been studying was largely concentrated in the West and at Rome. Yet none of the figures concerned in it had the standing of an official spokesman. Hippolytus and Tertullian might be described as free-lances (Kelly 123) Popes Zephyrinus (198-217) and Callistus (217-22), both of whom sympathized with the widespread popular reaction against the theories of Hippolytus and Tertullian, which they regarded as leading to ditheism.

Adoptionism (Monarchianism): there were two popes who were contemporary with the apologists and had strong adoptionist tendencies (not modalist- Pope Callistus excommunicated Sabelius). In Adoptionism, the Son is not eternal, God began to have a Son in time which was Jesus, at the time of creation. A reduced version of adoptionism is stated by Novatian in 250AD “’when He willed, there has been generated a Son, His Word’.” Which is to mean that the Word is pre-temporal, yet generated “by the Will” of the Father. His views have a subordinationist “coloring” “; He is ‘subject to the Father’, ‘less than the Father’. Yet he makes it plain that this inferiority springs from the fact that the Son is by nature derivative” though he holds to the eternality con-substantiality of the Son nevertheless.

Modalism: Pope Callistus who’s doctrine was bordering on modalism. In fact he was the one who excommunicated the arch-modalist Sabelius (Kelly, p124,125). “Thirdly, since the Father was the unique divine spirit, Callistus could speak of Him as being identical with the Word, and even as becoming incarnate; but he was careful to point out that the Father only ‘co-suffered’ with the Son. Thoughts like these, though closely akin to the Praxeanism combated by Tertullian and understandably anathema to Hippolytus, do not brand Callistus as a thoroughgoing modalist… They suggest, rather, that while his sympathies lay with modalism, he was conscious of its difficulties, and was struggling to develop a compromise approach to the problem which, while taking account of the real distinction between the Father and the Word, would stress the truth that even so They were manifestations of one divine spirit and thus avoid the dangers (as he conceived them} inherent in any doctrine of two or three ‘Persons’. Zephyrinus and Callistus were thus conservatives holding fast to a monarchian tradition which antedated the whole movement of thought inaugurated by the Apologists”

St Novatian (c. 256): “he must be believed to be God who is of God…. Let them, therefore, who read that Jesus Christ the son of man is man, read also that this same Jesus is called also God and the Son of God. —Treatise on the Trinity, 11

“Two Beings are God, the Father and the Son, and with the addition of the Holy Spirit, even three, according to the principle of the divine economy…that there are however two Gods or two Lords is a statement that never proceeds out of our mouth, not that as if it were untrue that the Father is God, and the Son is God and the Holy Spirit is God, and each is God,,,” (Against Praxeas, Chap.13)

Origen (AD184-253)

The brilliant prodigy Origen is said to have taken over the reigns of the head of the Catechetical School of Alexandria from St. Clement at only the age of 18, Clement having to leave, in my understanding, during a persecution. Origen’s error seems to have in part, been monophysitic, that the Divine Soul of the Logos merely indwelt the human flesh derived from the Virgin Mary. Going along with this he also had a near- pantheistic ontology where he believed that all souls pre-existed in God, had fallen away and were finding their way back to God, that all, including Satan would eventually do so, and that the holiest one of all the souls was indeed the Soul of Jesus. Since it was that Soul that then was joined to Flesh, there was not the problem of God changing into a human being, merely being divinised, as per his own analogy, when iron in heated in fire it becomes impossible at one point to tell the two apart. This however is merely a “mystical” or “moral” union in the manner of the union of saints to God. He believes Jesus was an “emanations” from God, and the Holy Spirit, also an emanation from God, but through Jesus , this is also a form of subordination. This is not very different from Origen, of course.

“Being outside the category of time, the Father begets the Son by an eternal act, so that it cannot be said that ‘there was when He was not’; further, the Son is God, though His deity is derivative and He is thus a ‘secondary God’ (deuteros theos)” (Contra Celsius. 5, 39; in Ioh. 6, 39, 202.)

“It was the nature of the Logos, as we saw above, which predominated () in Christ; and his conception is of the Logos indwelling and directing the manhood. The human soul was, on his view, totally suffused with, and caught up in, the divine wisdom, goodness, truth and life. As Origen saw the matter, therefore, the Word had in effect taken over the role of the (), or governing principle, in Christ.”(Kelly, p.157)

“For it is the Trinity alone which exceeds every sense in which not only temporal but even eternal may be understood. It is all other things, indeed, which are outside the Trinity, which are to be measured by time and ages…. It seems right to inquire into the reason why he who is ‘born again through God’ to salvation has need of both Father and Son and Holy Spirit and will not obtain salvation apart from the entire Trinity, and why it is impossible to become partaker of the Father or the Son without the Holy Spirit. In discussing these points it will undoubtedly be necessary to describe the activity which is peculiar to the Holy Spirit and that which is peculiar to the Father and Son.” (De Principiis, book 1, chapter 3)

“This is most clearly pointed out by the Apostle Paul, when demonstrating that the power of the Trinity is one and the same, in the words, “There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit; there are diversities of administrations, but the same Lord; and there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God who worketh all in all. But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit: withal.” From which it most clearly follows that there is no difference in the Trinity, but that which is called the gift of the Spirit is made known through the Son, and operated by God the Father.” (De Principis Bk.1)

“the Holy Spirit, ‘the most honourable of all the beings brought into existence through the Word, the chief in rank of all the beings originated by the Father through Christ’. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are, Origen states, ‘three Persons’ (). This affirmation that each of the Three is a distinct hypostasis from all eternity, not just (as for Tertullian and Hippolytus) as manifested in the ‘economy’, is one of the chief characteristics of his doctrine, and stems directly from the idea of eternal generation. Hupostasis and ousia were originally synonyms, the former Stoic and the latter Platonic, meaning real existence or essence, that which a thing is; but while hypostasis retains this connotation in Origen, he more frequently gives it the sense of individual subsistence, and so individual existent. The error of modalism, he contends, lies in treating the Three as numerically indistinguishable (), separable only in thought, ‘one not only in essence but also in subsistence’ (). The true teaching, on his view, is that the Son is ‘other in subsistence than the Father’ (), or even that the Father and the Son ‘are two things in respect of Their Persons, but one in unanimity, harmony and identity of will’ ()… Origen’ s teaching, the pivot of which was that the Son had been begotten, not created, by the Father…. As the Father’s offspring, He is eternally poured forth out of the Father’s being and so participates in His Godhead. He issues from Him as the will from the mind, which suffers no division in the process… For an effluence would appear to be homoousios, i.e. of one substance with, that body of which it is an effluence or vapour’. Whether or not the term homoousios is original in this passage (there seems to be no cogent reason why it should not be), the idea expressed is authentically Origenist… the Holy Spirit.’ Thus the ultimate ground of His being is the Father, but it is mediated to Him by the Son, from Whom also He derives all His distinctive attributes.” (Kelly p.129) The rest of Origen becomes rather heretical and definitely subordinationalist. the attribution of pre-existence to Christ was general among the Apostolic Fathers, and it is unlikely that even Hermas was an adoptionist in the strict sense.”

St Clement of Alexandria (AD 150-215)

“His generation from the Father is without beginning (‘the Father is not without His Son; for along with being Father, He is Father of the Son'(Stromata 4, 162, 5; 5, I, 3; 7, 2, 2.); and He is essentially one with Him, (Paedagogus I, 62, 4; I, 7I, 3; 3, IOI, I.) since the Father is in Him and He in the Father.( lb. I, 24, 3; I, 53, I.) The Spirit, thirdly, is the light issuing from the Word which, divided without any real division, illuminates the faithful; He is also the power of the Word which pervades the world and attracts men to God. (Strom. 6, I38, I f.; 7, 9, 4; 7, 79, 4)… ‘0 wondrous mystery! One is the Father of the universe, and one also the Word of the universe; the Holy Spirit, again, is one and everywhere the same. (Paed. I, 42, I: cf. ib. 3, IOI, 2; Protrepticus. 118, 4; quis div. 34, I; etc)” (Kelly p.127)

“Son and Father, both one, …with the Holy Spirit…” (Christ the Educator, Bk.3, Chap. 12)

St. Cyprian (d.AD258)

“the Creator…Christ…the Holy Spirit; since the three are one…” (Letters, No. 73)

Pope Dionysius (d.AD 268)

According to Athanasius of Alexandria, in the mid-3rd century Pope Dionysius wrote a letter to Dionysius of Alexandria criticizing Sabellius’s views on the relations between the Son and the Father, as well as some who attempted to refute Sabellius’s views. He quotes parts of Dionysius’ letter in “On the decrees of the Council of Nicaea”. In this letter it is clear that Dionysius used the word Trinity (Greek Trias) to explicate the relations between Father, Son and Holy Spirit:

“Next, I may reasonably turn to those who divide and cut to pieces and destroy that most sacred doctrine of the Church of God, the Divine Monarchy, making it as it were three powers and partive subsistences and godheads. I am told that some among you who are catechists and teachers of the Divine Word, take the lead in this tenet, who are diametrically opposed, so to speak, to Sabellius’ opinions; for he blasphemously says that the Son is the Father, and Father the Son, but they in some sort preach three Gods, as dividing the sacred Unity into three subsistences foreign to each other and utterly separate. For it must be that with the God of the Universe, the Divine Word is united, and the Holy Ghost must repose and habitate in God; thus in one as in a summit, I mean the God of the Universe, must the Divine Trinity be gathered up and brought together….Neither, then, may we divide into three godheads the wonderful and divine Unity…Rather, we must believe in God, the Father Almighty; and in Christ Jesus, his Son; and in the Holy Spirit; and that the Word is united to the God of the universe. ‘For,’ he says, ‘The Father and I are one,’ and ‘I am in the Father, and the Father in me’. For thus both the Divine Trinity and the holy preaching of the Monarchy will be preserved.” —’De decretis Nic. syn.26

St Gregory Thaumaturgus (213-270 AD)

“There is one God the Father, perfect Begetter of the perfect Begotten, Father of the only begotten Son. Ther is one Lord, Only of Only, God of God, …one Holy Spirit…who is above all and in all, and God the Son who is through all. There is a perfect Trinity, in glory and eternity and sovereignty, neither divided nor estranged. Wherefore there is nothing either created or in servitude in the Trinity; nor superinduced, as if at some former period it was nonexistent and at some later period it was introduced. And thus neither was the Son ever wanting to the Father, not the Spirit to the Son, but without variation and without change, the same Trinity abides forever…” (Declaration of Faith)

Summarising the development of Trinitarian language

Taken from the New Advent site:

“In Scripture there is as yet no single term by which the Three Divine Persons are denoted together. The word trias (of which the Latin trinitas is a translation) is first found in Theophilus of Antioch about A.D. 180. He speaks of “the Trinity of God [the Father], His Word and His Wisdom (To Autolycus II.15). The term may, of course, have been in use before his time. Afterwards it appears in its Latin form of trinitas in Tertullian (On Pudicity 21). In the next century the word is in general use. It is found in many passages of Origen (“In Ps. xvii”, 15). The first creed in which it appears is that of Origen’s pupil, Gregory Thaumaturgus. In his Ekthesis tes pisteos composed between 260 and 270, he writes:

“There is therefore nothing created, nothing subject to another in the Trinity: nor is there anything that has been added as though it once had not existed, but had entered afterwards: therefore the Father has never been without the Son, nor the Son without the Spirit: and this same Trinity is immutable and unalterable forever (P.G., X, 986)”…”

From a lecture by Fr. David on the Institute of Catholic Culture 23^rd May 2013 “… Origen to whom Christianity is much indebted for its Christology, himself uses the phrase “venerable Trinity” quite commonly and has the earliest formula of the Trinity as one substance (ousia) and three hypostases, he is the first to use that phrase one substance and three persons, which is in his commentary on John and Matthew. He however stumbles upon how to describe that the two are related substance and person. For example, he often stressed how the Son and the Spirit are of a different nature from the Father in order to stress their distinct personage (…) Tertullian at roughly the same time as Origen and also in Africa, who is a former lawyer turned Christian is writing in Latin and introduces “Trinitas”, “persona”, “substantia”…”

“Consubstantial” homousios was finally coined in 325AD at the council of Nicea, convened called with the intention of resolving the matter of the heretic Arius who was claiming that Jesus were a lesser being than the Father. All other terminologies failed and there were weeks of deliberations on the issue. It was not sufficient to state for eg. that Jesus were eternally “from” God, for all things are from the Father, nor to state that Jesus were the ”power” of God, for there are different manifestations of God’s power. “Substance” alone could resolve the matter. This word is not used directly in this manner of reference to Jesus’ relation to the Father in the Bible. Strong’s point out the fascinating etymology of the word “STRONGS NT 3776: οὐσία οὐσία, οὐσίας, ἡ (from ὤν, οὖσα, ὄν, the participle of εἰμί), what one has, i. e. property, possessions, estate (A. V. substance): Luke 15:12. (Tobit 14:13; Herodotus 1, 92; Xenophon, Plato, Attic orators, others.)”. Here we see that the Fathers struggled with defining what it was that made the Persons both the same and yet different at the same time. It’s not really as simple as stating that they are the “same in Substance but different in hypostasis”, for how is the difference not a substance?, or how is it that the difference is not a substantial difference?

The Holy Spirit

In the Nicaean Creed it is stated: “we believe in the Holy Spirit. Further development is made in the Council of Constantinople in AD 381.  St Athanius sees in the Spirit the one who elevates and transforms us creatures making it possible that they partake of or receive God’s own life, as promised by St Peter that we share in the Divine Nature. In His letter to Sorepion (?) “The Son who is in the Father is not a creature but of the very substance of the Father. For the same reason it is not permissible to count the Holy Spirit a creature and so do violence to the Trinity since the Holy Spirit is in the Son and has the Son in Him. IF the Holy Spirit were a creature we would not have any partaking in God through Him. But if by partaking in the Spirit we become sharers in the Divne Nature, one would be senseless to say that the Holy Spirit belongs to the created nature and to the uncreated (?) God.” The Spirit is the one who elevates us out of our merely human lives. St Athanasius coined the phrase that God became man so that men could become gods (…) (all this was Nicaea).

After the council the problem of Arianism continues to grow, but eventually even it, like other heresies starts to splinter. Now we have a group that not only questions the divinity of the Son, but now also of the Spirit. This group is called “pneumato-machians”- Spirit-fighters. This is taken up by the Cappadocian Fathers: St Basil, his brother St Gregory of Nyssa and ST Gregory Nazianzus. Their formula is “one Being, three Persons”, which is not the definition of the Trinity. St Gregory Nazianzus realises why it is a truth this is revealed slowly, imparted carefully. “The Old Testament preached the Father openly and the Son more obscurely, while the New revealed the Son and hinted at the deity of the Spirit. Now the Spirit dwells in us and reveals himself more clearly to us. For it was not right that while the deity of the Father had still not been confessed to preach the Son openly and before the deity of the Son had been acknowledged to force us to accept the Holy Spirit. And I speak too boldly here in the bargain. It was much more fitting that by gradual advances and as David said by partial assents, moving forward and increasing in clarity the light of the Trinity should shine on those that are given light”

“Since Origen’ s day theological reflection about the Spirit had lagged noticeably behind devotional practice. Alexander merely repeated the old affirmation that He inspired the prophets and apostles. Arius considered Him a hypostasis, but regarded His essence as utterly unlike that of the Son, just as the Son’s was utterly unlike that of the Father. Although the problem of the Spirit was not raised at Nicaea, a heightening of interest becomes discernible from now on. On the one hand, a radical like Eusebius of Caesarea, while clear that the Spirit is a hypostasis, reckons He is ‘in the third rank’, ‘a third power’ and ‘third from the Supreme Cause’, and uses Origen’ s exegesis of John r:3 to argue (…) The later Arians, Aetius and Eunomius, true to the logic of their position, regard Him merely as the noblest of the creatures produced by the Son at the Father’s bidding, the source of illumination and sanctification.

On the other hand, a conservative churchman like Cyril of Jerusalem, while discouraging inquiry into His Person and origin, displays a full doctrine which approximates to later orthodoxy. The Spirit, he claims, belongs to the Trinity, and ‘we do not divide the holy Triad as some do, nor do we work confusion in it as Sabellius does’. It is in union with the Spirit that the Son participates in the Father’s Godhead, and the Spirit is ‘the universal sanctifier and deifier’, ‘a being divine and ineffable’. Hence, like the Son, He is far removed from creatures, even the most exalted, and enjoys a perfect knowledge of the Father.’ His relation to the other Two is defined in the formulae, ‘The Father gives to the Son, and the Son communicates to the Holy Spirit’, and, ‘The Father bestows all graces through the Son with the Holy Spirit’. He is ‘subsistent’ (), ‘ever-present with the Father and the Son’, and is glorified inseparably with Them. Cyril delivered his Catechetical Lectures about 348. It was in 359 or 360 that Athanasius was instigated to expound his own theology of the Spirit.” (Kelly 255,6)

“Athanasius’ s teaching, set out in rejoinder to these theses, is that the Spirit is fully divine, consubstantial with the Father and the Son. (…) he demonstrates that Scripture as a whole is unanimous that, so far from having anything in common with creatures, the Spirit ‘belongs to and is one with the Godhead Which is in the Triad’. Thus, while creatures come from nothingness, are the recipients of sanctification and life, and are mutable, circumscribed and multiple, the Spirit comes from God, bestows sanctification and life, and is immutable, omnipresent and unique. Secondly, he makes much of the argument that the Triad is eternal, homogeneous and indivisible, and that since the Spirit is a member of it He must therefore be consubstantial with Father and Son. Thirdly, he dwells on the close relation between the Spirit and the Son, deducing from it that He belongs in essence to the Son exactly as the Son does to the Father. He is, for example, the Spirit of the Son, ‘the vital activity and gift whereby He sanctifies and enlightens’, and He is bestowed by the Son, whatever He possesses is the Son’s. He joins with the Son in His work of creation, as Pss. I04, 29 £ and 33, 6 indicate; and Their indivisibility is also illustrated by Their co-activity in the inspiration of the prophets and in the incamation.1I Lastly, he infers the Spirit’s divinity from the fact that He makes us all ‘partakers of God [c£ 1 Cor. 3, I6 £] If the Holy Spirit were a creature, we should have no participation in God through Him; we should be united to a creature and alien from the divine nature …. If He makes men divine, His nature must undoubtedly be that of God.’ In deference to current convention Athanasius abstains from calling Him God directly. But his doctrine is that He belongs to the Word and the Father, and shares one and the same substance () with Them. I What Athanasius says about the Spirit, we should observe, rounds off his teaching about the Trinity. The Godhead, according to this conception, exists eternally as a Triad of Persons (we recall that he had no term of his own for this) sharing one identical and indivisible substance or essence. All three Persons, moreover, are possessed of one and the same activity (), so that ‘the Father accomplishes all things through the Word in the Holy Spirit’. Whatever the Father effects in the way of creation, or government of the universe, or redemption, He effects through His Word; and whatever the Word carries out, He carries out through the Spirit. Hence he can write, ‘The holy and blessed Triad is indivisible and one in Itself. When mention is made of the Father, the Word is also included, as also the Spirit Who is in the Son. If the Son is named, the Father is in the Son, and the Spirit is not outside the Word. For there is a single grace which is fulfilled from the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit.’ (Kelly 257,8)

Basil stated: “…the Spirit must be recognized as intrinsically holy, one with ‘the divine and blessed nature’, inseparable {as the baptismal formula implied) from Father and Son. In his De Spiritu sancto (375) he took a further step, urging that the Spirit must be accorded the same glory, honour and worship as Father and Son; He must be ‘reckoned with’ (), not ‘reckoned below’ () Them. This was as far as he was to go. He nowhere calls the Spirit God or affirms His consubstantiality in so many words, although he makes it plain1 that ‘we glorify the Spirit with the Father and the Son because we believe that He is not alien to the divine nature’. The high-lights of his argument are (a) the testimony of Scripture to the Spirit’s greatness and dignity, and to the power and vastness of His operation; (b) His association with the Father and Son in whatever They accomplish, especially in the work of sanctification and deification; and (c) His personal relation to both Father and Son. The other Cappadocians repeat and extend Basil’s teaching. Gregory of Nyssa, for example, emphasizes2 the ‘oneness of nature’ shared by the three Persons, and quotes Ps. 33, 6 (‘By the word of the Lord were the heavens established, and all the power of them by the Spirit [lit. ‘breath’] of His mouth ‘) to prove that the Word and the Spirit are coordinate realities.(…) Gregory Nazianzen throws off all inhibitions. ‘Is the Spirit God?’ he inquires, ‘Yes, indeed. Then is He consubstantial? Of course, since He is God.’ He, too, finds support for his doctrine in the testimony of Scripture (e.g. john 4, 24; Rom. 8, 26; 1 Cor. 14, rs), and also in the Spirit’s character as the Spirit of God and of Christ, His association with Christ in the work of redemption, and the Church’s devotional practice. To explain the lateness of His recognition as God he produces6 a highly original theory of doctrinal development. Just as the acknowledgment of the Father’s Godhead had to precede the recognition of the Son’s, so the latter had to be established before the divinity of the Spirit could be admitted. The Old Testament revealed the Father, and the New the Son; the latter only hinted at the Spirit, but He dwells in us and discloses His nature more clearly. (Kelly 260,1)

In AD 381 at Constantinople, the full doctrine of the Holy Spirit gets formulated; Taken into account are verses like the ones mentioned above, but also the fact that there is a calling down of the Holy Spirit while blessing the bread and wine (epiclesis) as the Lord’s Supper is being practised, and also the festival of the Pentecost is being increasingly being celebrated around the empire with great pageantry and expectation. The Nicaean Creed receives a new addendum to the Nicaean Creed which posterity now refers to the exposition of the 150 Fathers….out of this deliberation came six “pneumatological” truths: “I believe in the Holy Spirit , the Lord (kurios)the giver of Life (zoopoieon), who is from the Father, who with the Father and the Son is adored and He is glorified, who has spoken through the prophets.”

The next person to really develop the doctrine of the Holy Spirit was St Augustine. St Augustine first came across the writings of Marius Victorinus, himself a Christian convert “Come Holy Spirit the copula (a nexus/joining/ bond) of the Father and the Son. When you are at rest you are the Father, when you proceed from the Father you are the SON, and when you are binding all into one you are the Holy Spirit.” (AD350)…this image of the Holy Spirit as joining/as copula/as nexus. This term enabled Western theologians to envision the Holy Spirit as “curvature” between the Father and the Son, that you can’t speak of the relationship between Father and the Son without talking about the Holy Spirit.”.. The Father begets the Son in the Spirit. This is a great advancement over earlier images. Augustine is the most insistent that we envision the Holy Spirit as the “glue”…between the Father and the Son. He quotes Book 5 of his De Trinitatae: “ The Holy Spirit is a sort of inexpressible communion or fellowship of Father and Son. And perhaps He’s given this Name just because the same name can be applied to the Father and the Son. He is properly what they are called in common seeing that both Father and Son are holy and both Father and Son are spirit. So to signify the communion of them both by a name which applies to them both, the gift of both is called the Holy Spirit…”

Constantinople essentially confirmed Nicea with the Cappadocian Fathers to the fore “To explain how the one substance can be simultaneously present in three Persons they appeal to the analogy of a universal and its particulars. ‘Ousia and hupostasis ‘, writes Basil, ‘are differentiated exactly as universal () and particular () are, e.g. animal and particular man.’ From this point of view each of the divine hypostases is the ousia or essence of Godhead determined by its appropriate particularizing characteristic (), or identifying peculiarity (), just as each individual man represents the universal ‘man’ determined by certain characteristics which mark him off from other men. For Basils these particularizing characteristics are respectively ‘paternity’ (), ‘sonship’ (), and ‘sanctifying power’ or sanctification’ (). The other Cappadocians define them more precisely as ‘ingenerateness’ (), ‘generateness’ (), and ‘mission’ or ‘procession’ (), although Gregory of Nazianzus has to confess his inability to indicate wherein the Spirit’s procession differs from the generation of the Son. Thus the distinction of the Persons is grounded in Their origin and mutual relation (…) Their theory is that the unity of the ousia, or Godhead, follows from the unity of the divine action () which is disclosed in revelation. ‘If we observe’, writes Gregory of Nyssa, ‘a single activity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in no respect different in the case of any, we are obliged to infer unity of nature () from the identity of activity; for Father, Son and Holy Spirit cooperate in sanctifying, quickening, consoling and so on.’” (Kelly 265,66)

Appendix

Justin Martyr (excerpts from Dods and Rheis tr. A-NF)

First Apology

Ch.31
For in the Jewish war which lately raged, Barchochebas, the leader of the revolt of the Jews, gave orders that Christians alone should be led to cruel punishments, unless they would deny Jesus Christ and utter blasphemy. In these books, then, of the prophets we found Jesus our Christ foretold as coming, born of a virgin, growing up to man’s estate, and healing every disease and every sickness, and raising the dead, and being hated, and unrecognised, and crucified, and dying, and rising again, and ascending into heaven, and being, and being called, the Son of God

Ch.32
And the first power after God the Father and Lord of all is the Word, who is also the Son; and of Him we will, in what follows, relate how He took flesh and became man.

Ch.33
since by Isaiah also, whom we have now adduced, the Spirit of prophecy declared that He should be born as we intimated before. It is wrong, therefore, to understand the Spirit and the power of God as anything else than the Word, who is also the first-born of God, as the foresaid prophet Moses declared; and it was this which, when it came upon the virgin and overshadowed her, caused her to conceive, not by intercourse, but by power. And the name Jesus in the Hebrew language means Σωτήρ (Saviour) in the Greek tongue. Wherefore, too, the angel said to the virgin, You shall call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins. And that the prophets are inspired by no other than the Divine Word, even you, as I fancy, will grant.

Ch.36
But when you hear the utterances of the prophets spoken as it were personally, you must not suppose that they are spoken by the inspired themselves, but by the Divine Word who moves them. For sometimes He declares things that are to come to pass, in the manner of one who foretells the future; sometimes He speaks as from the person of God the Lord and Father of all; sometimes as from the person of Christ; sometimes as from the person of the people answering the Lord or His Father…

CH.42
The words cited above, David uttered 1500 years before Christ became a man and was crucified;

Ch.46
We have been taught that Christ is the first-born of God, and we have declared above that He is the Word of whom every race of men were partakers; and those who lived reasonably are Christians, even though they have been thought atheists; as, among the Greeks, Socrates and Heraclitus, and men like them; and among the barbarians, Abraham, and Ananias, and Azarias, and Misael, and Elias, and many others whose actions and names we now decline to recount, because we know it would be tedious. So that even they who lived before Christ, and lived without reason, were wicked and hostile to Christ, and slew those who lived reasonably. But who, through the power of the Word, according to the will of God the Father and Lord of all, He was born of a virgin as a man, and was named Jesus, and was crucified, and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven, an intelligent man will be able to comprehend from what has been already so largely said.

Ch.47 (clearly the God of the OT is Christ here):
nd again, how it was said by the same Isaiah, that the Gentile nations who were not looking for Him should worship Him, but the Jews who always expected Him should not recognise Him when He came. And the words are spoken as from the person of Christ; and they are these I was manifest to them that asked not for Me; I was found of them that sought Me not: I said, Behold Me, to a nation that called not on My name. I spread out My hands to a disobedient and gainsaying people, to those who walked in a way that is not good, but follow after their own sins; a people that provokes Me to anger to My face. Isaiah 65:1-3 For the Jews having the prophecies, and being always in expectation of the Christ to come, did not recognise Him; and not only so, but even treated Him shamefully. But the Gentiles, who had never heard anything about Christ, until the apostles set out from Jerusalem and preached concerning Him, and gave them the prophecies, were filled with joy and faith, and cast away their idols, and dedicated themselves to the Unbegotten God through Christ.

Ch.52 (here too)
Hear, too, how He was to ascend into heaven according to prophecy. It was thus spoken: Lift up the gates of heaven; be opened, that the King of glory may come in. Who is this King of glory? The Lord, strong and mighty

Ch.61 (Trinitarian formula for Baptismal regeneration)
Then they are brought by us where there is water, and are regenerated in the same manner in which we were ourselves regenerated. For, in the name of God, the Father and Lord of the universe, and of our Saviour Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Spirit, they then receive the washing with water (…) there is pronounced over him who chooses to be born again, and has repented of his sins, the name of God the Father and Lord of the universe; he who leads to the laver the person that is to be washed calling him by this name alone. For no one can utter the name of the ineffable God; and if any one dare to say that there is a name, he raves with a hopeless madness. And this washing is called illumination, because they who learn these things are illuminated in their understandings. And in the name of Jesus Christ, who was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and in the name of the Holy Ghost, who through the prophets foretold all things about Jesus, he who is illuminated is washed. (also Ch.66 and who has been washed with the washing that is for the remission of sins, and unto regeneration…)

Ch.62 (the Word of God, the Angel of the Lord who spoke to Moses from the Bush, the “I AM” is Christ:
Now the Word of God is His Son, as we have before said. And He is called Angel and Apostle; for He declares whatever we ought to know, and is sent forth to declare whatever is revealed; as our Lord Himself says, He that hears Me, hears Him that sent Me. Luke 10:16 From the writings of Moses also this will be manifest; for thus it is written in them, And the Angel of God spoke to Moses, in a flame of fire out of the bush, and said, I am that I am, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, the God of your fathers; go down into Egypt, and bring forth My people

Ch.63 Jesus is the Angel of the Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the Son is not the Father
Christ is the Son of God and His Apostle, being of old the Word, and appearing sometimes in the form of fire, and sometimes in the likeness of angels; but now, by the will of God, having become man for the human race, He endured all the sufferings which the devils instigated the senseless Jews to inflict upon Him; who, though they have it expressly affirmed in the writings of Moses, And the angel of God spoke to Moses in a flame of fire in a bush, and said, I am that I am, the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, yet maintain that He who said this was the Father and Creator of the universe. Whence also the Spirit of prophecy rebukes them, and says, Israel does not know Me, my people have not understood Me. Isaiah 1:3 And again, Jesus, as we have already shown, while He was with them, said, No one knows the Father, but the Son; nor the Son but the Father, and those to whom the Son will reveal Him. Matthew 11:27 The Jews, accordingly, being throughout of opinion that it was the Father of the universe who spoke to Moses, though He who spoke to him was indeed the Son of God, who is called both Angel and Apostle, are justly charged, both by the Spirit of prophecy and by Christ Himself, with knowing neither the Father nor the Son. For they who affirm that the Son is the Father, are proved neither to have become acquainted with the Father, nor to know that the Father of the universe has a Son; who also, being the first-begotten Word of God, is even God. And of old He appeared in the shape of fire and in the likeness of an angel to Moses and to the other prophets; but now in the times of your reign, having, as we before said, become Man by a virgin, according to the counsel of the Father, for the salvation of those who believe in Him, He endured both to be set at nought and to suffer, that by dying and rising again He might conquer death. And that which was said out of the bush to Moses, I am that I am, the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, and the God of your fathers, Exodus 3:6

Ch.65
There is then brought to the president of the brethren bread and a cup of wine mixed with water; and he taking them, gives praise and glory to the Father of the universe, through the name of the Son and of the Holy Ghost,

Ch.66 Eucharist
For not as common bread and common drink do we receive these; but in like manner as Jesus Christ our Saviour, having been made flesh by the Word of God, had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so likewise have we been taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of His word, and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh

Second Apology

Ch.6
For He was made man also, as we before said, having been conceived according to the will of God the Father

Ch.8 (the Word was always Christ)
And those of the Stoic school — since, so far as their moral teaching went, they were admirable, as were also the poets in some particulars, on account of the seed of reason [the Logos] implanted in every race of men — were, we know, hated and put to death — Heraclitus for instance, and, among those of our own time, Musonius and others. For, as we intimated, the devils have always effected, that all those who anyhow live a reasonable and earnest life, and shun vice, be hated. And it is nothing wonderful; if the devils are proved to cause those to be much worse hated who live not according to a part only of the word diffused [among men] but by the knowledge and contemplation of the whole Word, which is Christ

Ch.9 (the Word was always Christ)
but in Christ, who was partially known even by Socrates (for He was and is the Word who is in every man, and who foretold the things that were to come to pass both through the prophets and in His own person when He was made of like passions, and taught these things), not only philosophers and scholars believed, but also artisans and people entirely uneducated, despising both glory, and fear, and death; since He is a power of the ineffable Father, not the mere instrument of human reason.

Ch.13 (the WOrd was always Christ)
Whatever things were rightly said among all men, are the property of us Christians. For next to God, we worship and love the Word who is from the unbegotten and ineffable God, since also He became man for our sakes, that becoming a partaker of our sufferings, He might also bring us healing. For all the writers were able to see realities darkly through the sowing of the implanted word that was in them. For the seed and imitation impacted according to capacity is one thing, and quite another is the thing itself, of which there is the participation and imitation according to the grace which is from Him.

Dialogue with Trypho

Ch.36 (Jesus is Yahweh Tsevaot. Lord of Hosts in Psalm)

Justin: As you wish, Trypho, I shall come to these proofs which you seek in the fitting place; but now you will permit me first to recount the prophecies, which I wish to do in order to prove that Christ is called both God and Lord of hosts, and Jacob, in parable by the Holy Spirit; and your interpreters, as God says, are foolish, since they say that reference is made to Solomon and not to Christ, when he bore the ark of testimony into the temple which he built. The Psalm of David is this:

The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof; the world, and all that dwell therein. He has founded it upon the seas, and prepared it upon the floods. Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? Or who shall stand in His holy place? He that is clean of hands and pure of heart: who has not received his soul in vain, and has not sworn guilefully to his neighbour: he shall receive blessing from the Lord, and mercy from God his Saviour. This is the generation of them that seek the Lord, that seek the face of the God of Jacob. Lift up your gates, you rulers; and be lifted up, you everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in. Who is this King of glory? The Lord strong and mighty in battle. Lift up your gates, you rulers; and be lifted up, you everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in. Who is this King of glory? The Lord of hosts, He is the King of glory.

Accordingly, it is shown that Solomon is not the Lord of hosts; but when our Christ rose from the dead and ascended to heaven, the rulers in heaven, under appointment of God, are commanded to open the gates of heaven, that He who is King of glory may enter in, and having ascended, may sit on the right hand of the Father until He make the enemies His footstool, as has been made manifest by another Psalm. For when the rulers of heaven saw Him of uncomely and dishonoured appearance, and inglorious, not recognising Him, they inquired, ‘Who is this King of glory?’ And the Holy Spirit, either from the person of His Father, or from His own person, answers them, ‘The Lord of hosts, He is this King of glory.’ For every one will confess that not one of those who presided over the gates of the temple at Jerusalem would venture to say concerning Solomon, though he was so glorious a king, or concerning the ark of testimony, ‘Who is this King of glory?’

Chapter 37. The same is proved from other Psalms (Ps.46 sing to the God of Abraham, King of all the Earth who sits upon his Throne etc.)
Justin: Moreover, in the diapsalm of the forty-sixth Psalm, reference is thus made to Christ: ‘God went up with a shout, the Lord with the sound of a trumpet. Sing to our God, sing: sing to our King, sing; for God is King of all the earth: sing with understanding. God has ruled over the nations. God sits upon His holy throne. The rulers of the nations were assembled along with the God of Abraham, for the strong ones of God are greatly exalted on the earth.’ And in the ninety-eighth Psalm, the Holy Spirit reproaches you, and predicts Him whom you do not wish to be king to be King and Lord, both of Samuel, and of Aaron, and of Moses, and, in short, of all the others. And the words of the Psalm are these:

The Lord has reigned, let the nations be angry: [it is] He who sits upon the cherubim, let the earth be shaken. The Lord is great in Zion, and He is high above all the nations. Let them confess Your great name, for it is fearful and holy, and the honour of the King loves judgment. You have prepared equity; judgment and righteousness have You performed in Jacob. Exalt the Lord our God, and worship the footstool of His feet; for He is holy. Moses and Aaron among His priests, and Samuel among those who call upon His name. They called (says the Scripture) on the Lord, and He heard them. In the pillar of the cloud He spoke to them; for they kept His testimonies, and the commandment which he gave them. O Lord our God, You heard them: O God, You were propitious to them, and [yet] taking vengeance on all their inventions. Exalt the Lord our God, and worship at His holy hill; for the Lord our God is holy.

Chapter 38. It is an annoyance to the Jew that Christ is said to be adored. Justin confirms it, however, from Psalm 45
Trypho: Sir, it were good for us if we obeyed our teachers, who laid down a law that we should have no intercourse with any of you, and that we should not have even any communication with you on these questions. For you utter many blasphemies, in that you seek to persuade us that this crucified man was with Moses and Aaron, and spoke to them in the pillar of the cloud; then that he became man, was crucified, and ascended up to heaven, and comes again to earth, and ought to be worshipped.

Justin: I know that, as the word of God says, this great wisdom of God, the Maker of all things, and the Almighty, is hid from you. Wherefore, in sympathy with you, I am striving to the utmost that you may understand these matters which to you are paradoxical; but if not, that I myself may be innocent in the day of judgment. For you shall hear other words which appear still more paradoxical; but be not confounded, nay, rather remain still more zealous hearers and investigators, despising the tradition of your teachers, since they are convicted by the Holy Spirit of inability to perceive the truths taught by God, and of preferring to teach their own doctrines. Accordingly, in the forty-fourth [forty-fifth] Psalm, these words are in like manner referred to Christ:

My heart has brought forth a good matter; I tell my works to the King. My tongue is the pen of a ready writer. Fairer in beauty than the sons of men: grace is poured forth into Your lips: therefore has God blessed You forever. Gird Your sword upon Your thigh, O mighty One. Press on in Your fairness and in Your beauty, and prosper and reign, because of truth, and of meekness, and of righteousness: and Your right hand shall instruct You marvellously. Your arrows are sharpened, O mighty One; the people shall fall under You; in the heart of the enemies of the King [the arrows are fixed]. Your throne, O God, is for ever and ever: a sceptre of equity is the sceptre of Your kingdom. You have loved righteousness, and have hated iniquity; therefore your God has anointed You with the oil of gladness above Your fellows. [He has anointed You] with myrrh, and oil, and cassia, from Your garments; from the ivory palaces, whereby they made You glad. King’s daughters are in Your honour. The queen stood at Your right hand, clad in garments embroidered with gold. Hearken, O daughter, and behold, and incline your ear, and forget your people and the house of your father: and the King shall desire your beauty; because He is your Lord, they shall worship Him also. And the daughter of Tyre [shall be there] with gifts. The rich of the people shall entreat Your face. All the glory of the King’s daughter [is] within, clad in embroidered garments of needlework. The virgins that follow her shall be brought to the King; her neighbours shall be brought unto You: they shall be brought with joy and gladness: they shall be led into the King’s shrine. Instead of your fathers, your sons have been born: You shall appoint them rulers over all the earth. I shall remember Your name in every generation: therefore the people shall confess You for ever, and for ever and ever.’

Chapter 48: (Justin puts his belief in Trypho’s words- Christ’s “pre-existence” as “God before the ages”)

Trypho: (…)For when you say that this Christ existed as God before the ages, then that He submitted to be born and become man, yet that He is not man of man, this [assertion] appears to me to be not merely paradoxical, but also foolish.

Justin: I know that the statement does appear to be paradoxical, especially to those of your race, who are ever unwilling to understand or to perform the [requirements] of God, but [ready to perform] those of your teachers, as God Himself declares. Isaiah 29:13 Now assuredly, Trypho, [the proof] that this man is the Christ of God does not fail, though I be unable to prove that He existed formerly as Son of the Maker of all things, being God, and was born a man by the Virgin. But since I have certainly proved that this man is the Christ of God, whoever He be, even if I do not prove that He pre-existed, and submitted to be born a man of like passions with us, having a body, according to the Father’s will; in this last matter alone is it just to say that I have erred, and not to deny that He is the Christ, though it should appear that He was born man of men, and [nothing more] is proved [than this], that He has become Christ by election. For there are some, my friends, of our race, who admit that He is Christ, while holding Him to be man of men; with whom I do not agree, nor would I, even though most of those who have [now] the same opinions as myself should say so; since we were enjoined by Christ Himself to put no faith in human doctrines, but in those proclaimed by the blessed prophets and taught by Himself.

Ch.55 is titled “Chapter 55. Trypho asks that Christ be proved God, but without metaphor. Justin promises to do so”. (Trypho specifically asks Justin to show Jesus is not one of those who are “not really gods” but “the true God, who made all things, is Lord alone of those who are reputed gods and lords.”, BUT is yet “another God besides the Maker of all things”)

Trypho: (…) show us that the Spirit of prophecy admits another God besides the Maker of all things, taking care not to speak of the sun and moon, which, it is written, God has given to the nations to worship as gods; and oftentimes the prophets, employing this manner of speech, say that ‘your God is a God of gods, and a Lord of lords,’ adding frequently, ‘the great and strong and terrible [God].’ For such expressions are used, not as if they really were gods, but because the Scripture is teaching us that the true God, who made all things, is Lord alone of those who are reputed gods and lords. And in order that the Holy Spirit may convince [us] of this, He said by the holy David, ‘The gods of the nations, reputed gods, are idols of demons, and not gods;’ and He denounces a curse on those who worship them.

Justin’s defers his reply to the next chapter where he goes to the story of God appearing to Abraham under the Oaks of Mamre, and that there are two called “God” here among the three. He continues to expound on this passage along with Trypho’s objections. The point is not whether the objections are valid or not, the point we’re trying to make here is Justin’s beliefs- clearly from this passage he wants to show there is “God besides God”, as he puts it. Then he also quotes the Psalm as proof “‘Your throne, O God, is for ever and ever. A sceptre of equity is the sceptre of Your kingdom: You have loved righteousness and hated iniquity: therefore God, even Your God, has anointed You with the oil of gladness above Your fellows.'”

Ch.56 Trypho objects that he stilll does not see a God besides God. Justin answer strongly hints at one essence, but his terminology differs. He says that the two are numerically distinct, he means numerically in person, since there are numerically two- he’s trying to assert that there is actually more than one, which is the correct interpretation of his words, since this has been his endeavour in this section anyway, to show that there is “another God besides God”. At the same time he is tantalizingly close to oneness in essence when he says “not distinct in will”. Justin then relates Genesis 19:23 “the Lord rained down sulfur from the Lord…”). Justin is clear that Jesus is “another God and Lord”, but “subject to the Maker of all things”, thus betraying his subordinationist position. Trypho wants to hold that the Lord appeared Moses “before” the three men, who themselves were only angels. Justin ventures to prove to him otherwise. Justin’s method is to show that the Holy Spirit himself “calls some other one God and Lord, besides the Father of all things and His Christ“. He seeks to demonstrate this not only from the passage in Exodus but also from Psalms 110 and 45 as well as from the story of Jacob in Genesis 35:6-10, concluding “He is called God, and He is and shall be God” in Chapter 58, and again in the Burning Bush to Moses in Exodus in Chapter 59. Essentially, Justin is asserting that the Angel of God is Jesus, who is God.

Justin: I shall attempt to persuade you, since you have understood the Scriptures, [of the truth] of what I say, that there is, and that there is said to be, another God and Lord subject to the Maker of all things; who is also called an Angel, because He announces to men whatsoever the Maker of all things— above whom there is no other God — wishes to announce to them.

Trypho: Certainly; but you have not proved from this that there is another God besides Him who appeared to Abraham,

(…) Reverting to the Scriptures, I shall endeavour to persuade you, that He who is said to have appeared to Abraham, and to Jacob, and to Moses, and who is called God, is distinct from Him who made all things — numerically, I mean, not [distinct] in will. For I affirm that He has never at any time done anything which He who made the world— above whom there is no other God — has not wished Him both to do and to engage Himself with.

It must therefore necessarily be said that one of the two angels who went to Sodom, and is named by Moses in the Scripture Lord, is different from Him who also is God and appeared to Abraham

Chapter 61. Wisdom is begotten of the Father, as fire from fire

Justin makes probably the clearest theologically orthodox statement we will hear from him here when he describes the word and him who speaks the word thus: “: for when we give out some word, we beget the word; yet not by abscission, so as to lessen the word [which remains] in us, when we give it out: and just as we see also happening in the case of a fire, which is not lessened when it has kindled [another], but remains the same; and that which has been kindled by it likewise appears to exist by itself, not diminishing that from which it was kindled.”:

Justin: I shall give you another testimony, my friends, from the Scriptures, that God begot before all creatures a Beginning, [who was] a certain rational power [proceeding] from Himself, who is called by the Holy Spirit, now the Glory of the Lord, now the Son, again Wisdom, again an Angel, then God, and then Lord and Logos; and on another occasion He calls Himself Captain, when He appeared in human form to Joshua the son of Nave (Nun). For He can be called by all those names, since He ministers to the Father’s will, and since He was begotten of the Father by an act of will; just as we see happening among ourselves: for when we give out some word, we beget the word; yet not by abscission, so as to lessen the word [which remains] in us, when we give it out: and just as we see also happening in the case of a fire, which is not lessened when it has kindled [another], but remains the same; and that which has been kindled by it likewise appears to exist by itself, not diminishing that from which it was kindled. The Word of Wisdom, who is Himself this God begotten of the Father of all things, and Word, and Wisdom, and Power, and the Glory of the Begetter, will bear evidence to me…”

Chapter 62: “The Words ‘Let us make man.’…”.

Justin beautifully decribes the Father and Son “communing” prior to creation:

‘Let us make;’ or that God spoke to the elements, to wit, the earth and other similar substances of which we believe man was formed, ‘Let Us make,’— I shall quote again the words narrated by Moses himself, from which we can indisputably learn that [God] conversed with some one who was numerically distinct from Himself, and also a rational Being. These are the words: ‘And God said, Behold, Adam has become as one of us, to know good and evil.’ Genesis 3:22 In saying, therefore, ‘as one of us,’ [Moses] has declared that [there is a certain] number of persons associated with one another, and that they are at least two. For I would not say that the dogma of that heresy which is said to be among you is true, or that the teachers of it can prove that [God] spoke to angels, or that the human frame was the workmanship of angels. But this Offspring, which was truly brought forth from the Father, was with the Father before all the creatures, and the Father communed with Him; even as the Scripture by Solomon has made clear, that He whom Solomon calls Wisdom, was begotten as a Beginning before all His creatures and as Offspring by God…”

Chapter 63. It is proved that this God was incarnate

Here Justin asserts that Jesus is not descended from men, yet is born as a man, and that he is to be worshipped:

‘Who shall declare His generation? For His life is taken away from the earth,’ Isaiah 53:8— does it not appear to you to refer to One who, not having descent from men, was said to be delivered over to death by God for the transgressions of the people?…, You are a priest for ever, after the order of Melchizedek,’- does this not declare to you that [He was] from of old, and that the God and Father of all things intended Him to be begotten by a human womb? …The queen stood at Your right hand, clad in garments embroidered with gold. Hearken, O daughter, and behold, and incline your ear, and forget your people and the house of your father; and the King shall desire your beauty: because he is your Lord, and you shall worship Him.’ Therefore these words testify explicitly that He is witnessed to by Him who established these things, as deserving to be worshipped, as God and as Christ.

Chapter 64