THE TRINITY
AND THE SON
After Nicaea.
The Nicene crisis did not come to an end with the closing of the
Council of Nicaea.
Arianism
proper had, for the moment, been driven underground, but the conflict
only served to throw into relief the deep-seated theological divisions
in the ranks of the adversaries. The Church's new relationship to
the State, which meant that the success or failure of a doctrine
might hinge upon the favor of the reigning emperor, tended to
sharpen these divisions. The dispersal of the council's members
marked the commencement of a protracted period of controversy,
lasting until the
Council of Constantinople in A.D. 381.
This period can be divided into four chief phases in the fluctuating
controversy.
[1]
- The first phase, lasting until Constantine's death in A.D.
337, was a period of widespread reaction against Nicaea. The
Arian leaders, who had been exiled, returned, and
Eusebius of Nicomedia
became leader of an anti-Nicene coalition. Constantine
tried to patch things up with Arius in A.D. 332, and swung away from
orthodox party whose members refused to compromise. This position
remained the official imperial policy until Constantius' death
in A.D. 361, when Julian the Apostate renounced Christianity altogether.
While the emperor Constantine was alive, his creed was sacrosanct,
but the Eusebians (as we may conveniently call them after their
leader) were able to engineer the deposition and exile of their
principal opponents, Athanasius of Alexandria, Eustathius of Antioch
and Marcellus of Ancyra.
[2]
- In the second phase, lasting from A.D. 337 to 350, the
"Arianizing" emperor Constantius ruled in the East, and
the Western emperor, Constans, backed the Nicene cause and protected
its leaders. In the East a series of credal statements appeared which
ignored Nicaea rather than contradicting it. So, while the Eusebians
were openly campaigning to get behind the Nicene creed, the formulae
they produced at Antioch (A.D. 341), Philippopolis (A.D. 342) and Antioch
again (A.D. 344), were on the whole moderate, omitting the homoousios,
but usually critical of
Arianism
proper and sometimes even conciliatory to the Nicenes.
[3]
- In the third phase, lasting from A.D. 350 to 361, Constantius reigned
as sole emperor and made a determined effort to crush the Nicene
doctrine. The genuinely Arian element in the great anti-Nicene
party now threw off the mask and succeeded in getting an unadulterated
version of their teaching canonized at a series of synods, notably
the third council of Sirmium (A.D. 357) and the synods of Nice (A.D. 359)
and Constantinople (A.D. 360). This was the situation which lead Jerome
to write, "The whole world groaned and marveled to find itself Arian".
At the same time, as a result of the very triumph
of extremism, the moderates in the vast amorphous party, called
"Semi-Arians", began to rally under Basil of Ancyra
around the compromise formula "of like substance" (homoiousios)
[4],
saying in one way another that the Son was like
the Father. At the synod of Ancyra (A.D. 358) he published the first
Homoiousian manifesto. This pronounced that Christ was not a creature
but Son of the Father, for "creator and creature are one thing,
Father and Son are quite another"; and it condemned other typical Arian
theses. But on the other hand, the Son was not simply an "energy"
of the Father, as Marcellus was presumed to have taught, but
"a substance (ousia) like the Father" (Note that in their
terminology ousia approximated the sense of "Person".).
In distinction from all creatures He is really Son. But the likeness
between Father and Son is not to be conceived of as identity
(tautotes); being another ousia, the Son can be
like the Father, but not identical with Him. So the statement
speaks of "the likeness of ousia to ousia",
but condemns anyone who defines the Son as homoousios or
tautousios with the Father. Thus the formula homoiousios,
put under a ban at Sirmium in A.D. 357, was deliberately taken up.
A year later in A.D. 359 a Homoiousian memorandum was drafted. Constantius
died in A.D. 361, and Julian the Apostate, who renounced Christianity
altogether, became emperor.
- In the final phase, lasting from A.D. 361 to A.D. 381,
Arianism
was overthrown and the then dominant "Homoiousians"
were gradually converted to accept of the homoousios.
[5]
The brief pagan reaction under Julian the Apostate at least removed imperial
pressure in favor of one form of Christianity against another.
At its end what can be called a Neo-Nicene party was prepared
to take the lead in the Eastern Church. In 363, Julian the Apostate
died in battle and his successor Jovian reverted to orthodoxy
for a while. The important development in this final phase was
the conversion of the great body of Homoiousian churchmen to the
acceptance of the homoousion. The figures largely instrumental
in this development were Athanasius and Hilary of Poitiers;
the latter spent A.D. 356-359 in exile in Asia Minor and for the first
time found himself in direct contact with the Eastern theological debate.
[6]
Hilary was born of a good family in Gaul about A.D. 315, educated
in the Latin classics, converted about A.D. 350 to Christianity, and
some three years later was made by popular choice bishop of Poitiers,
his birth place. He became leader of the orthodox in Gaul and
was in A.D. 359 banished by the Emperor Constantius to Phrygia,
where he studied theology and wrote his De Trinitate.
[7]
At Alexandria, the old lion Athanasius was prepared to make the necessary
explanations to unite those who accepted generally the Nicene position.
The works of
Athanasius
of this period also deals with the related questions which the
long-continued discussion had brought up. His Letters to Serapion
defend the place of the Holy Spirit in the Godhead, which Arianism had
rather incidentally challenged, and the Letter to Epictetus,
bishop of Corinth, asserts clearly the completeness of the humanity
of Christ. An important shift in technical terminology is the
use of ousia, essence, for the being of the Godhead, and
hupostasis, substance, for its particular expression in
Father, Son, and Spirit. The anathemas attached to the Nicene
Creed had used the two words as synonyms, which seems on the whole
to have been usage that Athanasius preferred. But in his conciliatory
Letter to the Bishops of Africa, Athanasius agreed
that hupostasis might be used either way, and the general
usage has become, as Basil defines it, that ousia indicates
the universal and hupostasis the particular.
"One ousia and three hypostaseis" is therefore in
Trinitarian theology recognized as the equivalent of the Latin
phrase, "Three person in one substance." It is necessary
to remember that Greek hupostasis corresponds in etymology
but not in meaning to the Latin (and English) substance, which
confused the young Jerome when he came to Antioch and found those
whom he supposed to be orthodox talking, as it seemed to him,
of three divine substances. Ancient Latin being chary of abstract
terms, substantia with its concreteness had to serve for
the general idea of being until medieval philosophers felt more
at home with esse and essentia.
[8]
Both Athanasius and Hilary realized that as regards the fundamental issues,
the gap between the Homoiousians and the Nicene party was extremely
narrow, and that the final success of the latter could be ensured
by establishing a rapprochement between them. So in his
De Synodis (A.D. 359), Athanasius made a conciliatory gesture,
saluting the Homoiousians as brothers (os adelphoi pros adelphous
dialegometha) who in essentials were at one with himself.
[9]
A further practical step of great importance was taken in A.D. 362
at the council of Alexandria, which met under Athanasius' chairmanship
during the détente caused by the death of Constantius (A.D. 361)
and the accession of Julian the Apostate. At this council it
was formally recognized that what mattered was not the language
used but the meaning underlying it. Thus the formula
"three hypostases", hitherto suspect to the Nicenes because it sounded
in their ears painfully like "three ousiai",
that is, three divine beings, was pronounced legitimate provided
it did not carry the Arian connotation of "utterly distinct,
alien hypostases, different in substance from each other",
in other words, "three principles or three Gods", but
merely expressed the separate subsistence to the three Persons
in the consubstantial Triad. The opposite formula,
"one hypostasis", so disturbing to anti-Nicenes of every school,
was equally approved, its adherents having explained that they
had no Sabellian intent but, equating hupostasis with ousia,
we merely trying to bring out the unity of nature between Father
and Son. By these statesmanlike decision, which incidentally
shocked many in the West who saw in "three hypostases"
a confession of tritheism, the union between the two parties was
virtually sealed, and we can see foreshadowed in it the formula
which became the badge of orthodoxy, "one ousia, three
hupostaseis".
[10]
This statesmanlike attitude of Athanasius and Hilary was not without
effect. Coming at a time when the great body of the Homoiousians
were growing increasingly apprehensive of the menace of unmitigated
Arianism,
it quietened their suspicions that the orthodox party
was inveterately Sabellian, and made the Homoousian theology more
palatable to them.
[11]
Hilary died in A.D. 368 and Athanasius died in A.D. 373. After Roman emperor
Jovan suddenly and mysteriously died in Ancyra in A.D. 364, political
Arianism was again supported by the emperor Valens, ruler of the
Roman East from A.D. 364 to 378. This delayed the victory of the Neo-Nicene
party; but it was probably helpful in the long run, since it gave
time for the Neo-Nicene party to formulate a clearer statement
of its ideas and to consolidate its forces. In A.D. 379 Theodosius
came from the West to be emperor, where
Arianism
had never had any real foothold in the Latin Church. He was baptized
in A.D. 380, gave up use of the title pontifex maximus, and
made it illegal to depart from the Nicene faith. His recognition
of the doctrine of the coequal Trinity as the creed of the Empire,
and of its supporters as the officially recognized leaders of the
Church, put the seal on the Church's later development. The
Nicene formula, not wholly welcome even to its proponents in A.D. 325,
had now become the hallmark of orthodoxy, as it has ever since remained.
[12]
In A.D. 381, he outlawed heretical churches and sects
(the Arians), and put their property at the disposal of the orthodox,
and called the
(First) Council of Constantinople.
At this Council that was held at Constantinople in A.D. 381, the Nicene
faith was reaffirmed, and the various Arian and Arianizing deviations
were placed under a ban.
[13]
ENDNOTES
[1] J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrine, 2nd Edition,
Harper & Row, Publishers (New York, Evanston and London, 1958, 1960).,
p. 237.
[2] Ibid., pp. 237-238.
[3] Ibid., p. 238.
[4] Ibid., p. 238.
[5] Ibid., p. 238.
[6] Ibid., p. 252.
[7] Williams, David John, Hilary of Poitiers in
The New International Dictionary of the Christian Church,
Revised Edition.,
Zondervan Publishing House (Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA, 1981),
p. 470.
[8] Hardy, Edward Rochie, General Introduction to
Christology of the Later Fathers, volume III of
The Library of Christian Classics,
The Westminster Press (Philadelphia, USA, 1954).,
pp. 23-24.
[9] Ibid., pp. 253-257.
[10] Ibid., pp. 253-254.
[11] Ibid., p. 255.
[12] Hardy., p. 24.
[13] Kelly., p. 238.