The development of the Trinity

The development of the Trinity - What was most at issue theologically in the Councils of Nicaea (325), Constantinople (381) and Calecedon(451)?

In 325 The Emperor Constantine called the Council, composed of some three hundred and eighteen bishops, to meet at Nicea in view of ending the controversy between Arius and his bishop Alexander, over the divinity of Jesus. The key theological issues that were at issue at the Council of Nicaea were the role of Jesus and his relationship to God.  There were two opposing sides, on one side Arius, a priest in a suburb of Alexandria argued the ultimate distinctiveness of God from Jesus.This view would be known as Arianism. In opposition, defended by Athanasius amongst others, was the view that God the Son and God the Father were of the same substance. Jesus was God but in a human form.

According to Arianism, the being, or substance of the unique God was absolutely incommunicable and for God to communicate His substance to another being would mean God was divisible and subject to change.  Moreover, if another being were to share God’s substance or divinity, there would be a plurality of divine beings, which would undermine God‘s uniqueness. For the supporters of Arianism, the idea that God and Jesus were made of the same essential stuff presented immensely difficult questions such as “did God somehow divide his own substance to make a son? And, if so, how many more God’s might he produce by further division.” For Arianism, this absurdity was inevitable if one did not conclude God’s distinctive uniqueness from Jesus.  Thus, God was viewed as Jesus’ superior, their relationship was one of hierarchy where God the father was the Godhead and Jesus was his subordinate. [1] God was seen as the unique source of all, and everything else that exists including Jesus. Whilst, Arianism still maintained that Jesus was divine and unique from all other creatures and the first and greatest of his creatures, he was however not of the same hypostases as God the Father. Having been created by God, Jesus was necessarily posterior to God.[2] Jesus had a distinct existence to God the father, a second hypostasis and a nature as a mediator.  Arius also described Jesus as being the incarnation from the pre-existent Logos further elucidating this clear distinction between God and Jesus. Jesus viewed as a created being also meant that he had a beginning “He came into existence before the times and ages” wrote Arius in his letter to Eusebius of Nicomedia.[3][4] [5] Therefore, the Father is conceived of as the real Logos and the Son does not arise from eternity in God, but outside of Him.   Arius’ position also had an impact on salvation.  Defining the Son as a creature meant that he was treptos, changeable, therefore temptable. Since Jesus was temptable and he over came his temptation, this meant that all creatures had the potentiality to conquer sin and attain to righteousness.

To end the Arianism controversy, Athanasius in opposition argued that God and Jesus were of the same substance Homoousios,  Ousia usually translated as “essence” or “substance”; homo meaning “the same.”[6] For Athanasius, to separate God from Jesus in this way has catastrophic ramifications for the concept of salvation.  According to Athanasius, Christ could not have brought about salvation to his people if the Son was a mere creature.  To define the Son in this was too far removed from God, thus Jesus was not truly divine.  This then meant that the Son could no longer achieve salvation since he had no knowledge of God and could not reveal God.  [7]

The final document “The Nicene Creed” described Jesus Christ as

The son of God begotten from the Father, only-begotten, that is, from the ousia of the father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made, homoousios with the Father, through Whom all things came into being. [8]

The statement  “true God from true God”[9] was a direct response to counter Arius’ claim that Jesus was “God but not true God”. This precise wording, didn’t allow the possibility for any word play to be re-interpreted by God as distinct from Jesus.[10] “From the same substance as the Father” was inserted immediately after the words  “Begotten not made” in order to counter the Arianism claim that Christ was created from nothing. This statement meant that Jesus had to be regarded as being generated from outside of the Father’s substance.[11] The bishops who came together, nearly three hundred of them, used the Creed of Niciea to condemn the Arian heresy and to put an end to the Arian controversy. Christianity now affirmed that God was the same substance as Jesus.  God’s self was born in the Lord Jesus Christ and that He was not the incarnation of a “subordinate mediating” being, but the revelation of the one true God.   However, their attempts were not sufficient and for fifty six years after the Nicaea, various heresies and schisms were prevalent and still disrupting the church and state.

For more than a century the church wavered and the emperor in Constantinople turned the Athanasian majority into a minority. Constantine himself leaned toward Arianism later in his reign, and his eventual successor, his son Constantius, was openly Arian.

What is generally considered to have ended the controversy was the council held in 381, “The council of Constantinople”, which was formed to reassert the faith of Nicaea. The Emperor Theodosius convened the Council, also known as the Second Ecumenical Council, to reaffirm the Nicene Creed and once again to condemn the Arians. On this occasion, there were some minor variations but the core was still greatly based on the original Creed of Nicaea.  It expanded on the 325 creed on the statement on the Son but also includes a long section on the Holy Spirit, described as ‘the Lord and Giver of Life, who proceeds from the father and Son is adored and glorified, who spoke through the prophets.” Here the Holy Spirit is on the same level as the Father and Son, clearly affirming the Spirit’s divinity and Spirit’s place in faith and worship. [12]

Besides ending the Arian interpretations, “The Council of Constantinople” condemned the heresy known as Macedonius, who applied the Arian principle to the Holy Spirit.  Although the council maintained that God and Jesus were equal in substance, the Holy Spirit was inferior to both beings.  [13] Earlier debates about the Holy spirit can be seen around 360, where Athanasius had answered letters from Serapion, Bishop of Thmuis, which spoke of certain persons who had rejected the Arians’ view of a separate, distinct God the Father and God the Son relationship, yet opposed the view the Holy spirit was equal and that it only differed from angels by one degree. [14] This debate argued, that if the Spirit was of God then he must be another Son, which could not be the case since it went against the text of the Bible in which Jesus is regarded as the Only begotten Son. In his reply Athanasius vehemently defended the view that the Holy Spirit is consubstantiality with the Father and Son, in the same way the consubstantiality of the Father and Son.

Some years after “The council of Constantinople” there was much debate about the relation of the divine and the human within Christ. The Church as a whole had maintained the importance of both the Godhead and the manhood of Christ. However, the Church had not yet defined the exact manner in which Godhead and manhood were united in Jesus Christ. As a result, they allowed another debate to take up centerpiece in debates regarding Christology.  There had been two schools of thought on the matter, one of which emphasized divinity and the other, the humanhood of Christ.  These two positions were defended respectively by two rival theological schools known as Alexandria and Antioch. [15] Although they were competing views stressing either the divinity or manhood of Christ, neither side went as far to deny the divinity or manhood.

An attempt to lay down some explanation of the unity between divinity and humanhood of Christ came from Nestorius, a monk from the monastery of Euprepious, who followed the Antioch school of thought.  Nestorius was very critical of the act of worshiping Mary as the Mother of God, Theotokos. In Nestorius’ view Jesus was born a mere man from Mary, and only subsequently became imbued with a divine nature.  The followers of Nestorius claimed that in Christ a man and God were joined together without a fusion, so that Christ was in essence really two persons, the divine and a human.  Thus originated Nestorianism.  The church viewed Nestorius’ Christology as an extreme Antiochene point of view and thus was condemned by the Council of Ephesus, in 431. [16]

Not so long after the heresy of Nestorius concerning the two persons in Christ had been condemned by the Council of Ephesus, arose an opposite heretical view in reaction. The main representatives of this reactionary opposition were Dioscurus, Patriarch of Alexandria, and Eutyches, a presbyter and archimandrite at Constantinople.  Since Nestorianism taught a double personality or a twofold being in Christ, it became imperative for opponents to develop a Christology that stressed the unity in Christ and to reassert the Divinity and humanness, not as two beings but as one. Eutyches, argued in opposition to Nestorianism, that the human nature and divine nature were combined into the single nature of Christ: that of the incarnate Word. This implied that Jesus' human body was essentially different from other human bodies. By contrast, the teaching attributed to Nestorius, claimed that there were two different persons in Christ. Eutyches claimed that Christ was of two natures before the incarnation, but after the incarnation The Divine and the human, were so intermingled that they became one, inasmuch as the human nature was completely absorbed in the Divine. The very body of Jesus could no longer be considered human but was a divine body with no distinction in Christ between the Divine and the human. [17] This position was viewed as Docetism, the view that the humanity of Jesus is an illusion, in disguise.  Thus Eutyches was condemned by the Synod at Constantinople in 448.

In 451 the emperor Marican held The Council of Chalcedon, attended by about 520 bishops, produced a Christological definition which not only condemned Nestorianism again, but also Apollinarianism and Eutychiansim which were two forms of Monophysitism (“one nature”), the doctrine that Christ had one nature.  Apollinarianism was the view that contested the completeness of Jesus’ humanity. Apollinarius, whom the position was named after, argued that Christ’s human nature simply consisted of a body and that the soul was taken up by the Word. This later developed into the view that in fact Christ had an animal soul in addition to a body, but claimed he had a divine rational soul.[18]

The outcome was the Chalcedonion creed, which become the doctrine of the Person of Christ[19] which all Western churches Roman Catholic and Reformed, and the Orthodox churches of the east adopted as their creed.[20]

The Chalcedonion creed adopted the positions argued in the letters of St. Cyril of Alexandra and Pope Leo, thereby resolving the Christological controversy. The council concluded that Jesus was equally perfect in Godhead and also perfect in humanity, truly God and truly man, of a reasonable soul and body; consubstantial with the Father according to the Godhead, and consubstantial with us according to humanity; in all things like unto us, without sin; begotten before all ages according to the Godhead.

The Council continued its declaration as follows:

“We confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood; truly God and truly man, of a rational soul and body; of one substance with the Father with respect to the Godhead, and of one substance with us in respect of Manhood; like us un everything except sin; begotten of the father before the ages according to his Godhead but in these last days begotten of the Virgin Mary, the God-bearer according ti his Manhood, for the same Christ, Son, Lord, only-begotten, confessed in two natures , unconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; the distinction of natures being in no way destroyed through their union, but rather the peculiar quality of each nature being preserved and concurring in one Person and one Substance, not being parted and divided into two persons, but one and the same Son and only-begotten God, the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ”.[21]

Anti-Apollinarian position can clearly be identified by the statement  “…truly God and truly man, of a rational soul…”, this is directly countering the idea of Apollinarian, developed by Apollinaris of Laodicea who died in 390 .  Apollinaris maintained that Jesus could not have had a human mind; rather, that Jesus Christ had a body and lower soul and a divine mind.   Anti-Nestorian sentiments can be located in the sentences “...Virgin Mary, the God-bearer (Theotokos) according to his manhood…” and “…concurring in one person and one Substance, not being parted and divided into two persons…”. Asserting Mary as the bearer of God, countered Nestorius’ main argument regarding Theotokos and Mary, and the reasserting of the ones of Jesus countering Nestorius view of two persons, a divine and a human.  Lastly, the Anti-Eutychian position that Jesus’ nature was completely Divine, since the Divine swallowed up Jesus’ humanness, was invalidated by the statements “…and one of substance with us in respect of the manhood…” and “the distinction of natures being in no way destroyed through their union…”.

The Calecedon definition does not attempt to prescribe a theory of how Godhead and manhood were united in the one Christ, rather it affirms that they actually united, a position, which Nestorianism, Apollinarianism and Eutychiansim heresies had contested.  Thus the Caledonian creed stood for equal emphasis in both the Godhead and manhood in Christ and against any emphasis on either Godhead and manhood. [22]

[1] Francess Young, “The making of the creeds”, (SCM Press 2005) p45.

[2] J.N.D Kelly, “Early Christian creeds”,3rd ed ,  (Longman Group Limited 1972) p233.

[3] ibid p233.

[4] Richard E. Rubenstein, “When Jesus become God”, (Harcourt, Inc, 1st  ed) p80.

[5] Francess Young, “The making of the creeds”, (SCM Press 2005) p47.

[6] Richard E. Rubenstein, “When Jesus become God”, (Harcourt, Inc, 1st ed  1999) p79.

[7] Francess Young, “The making of the creeds”, (SCM Press 2005) p47.

[8] J.N.D Kelly, “Early Christian creeds”,3rd ed ,  (Longman Group Limited 1972) p215-216.

[9] Richard E. Rubenstein, “When Jesus become God”, (Harcourt, Inc, 1st ed)

p79.

[10] Aloys Grillmeier, Sj, “Christ in Christian traditions, vol. 1, From the Apostic age to Chalcedon (451)”, 2nd ed, ( Mowbrays London & Oxford), p268.

[11] J.N.D Kelly, “Early Christian creeds”,3rd ed ,  (Longman Group Limited 1972) p285

[12] Richard E. Rubenstein, “When Jesus become God”, (Harcourt, Inc, 1st ed), p222.

[13] Alan Richardson, “Creeds in the making”, (SCM press Ltd 1935), p56

[14] Francess Young, “The making of the creeds”, (SCM Press 2005), p52.

[15] ibid p68.

[16] Alan Richardson, “Creeds in the making”, (SCM press Ltd 1935) p77.

[17] ibid p79.

[18] J.N.D Kelly, “Early Christian creeds”,3rd ed , (Longman Group Limited 1972) p334

[19] ibid p78.

[20] Francess Young, “The making of the creeds”, (SCM Press 2005) p77.

[21] Alan Richardson, “Creeds in the making”, (SCM press Ltd 1935) p81

[22] ibid p82.

 

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