of Alexandria lived in the very centre of the world’s freshest
ideas—their dwelling was the mart of nations—and Grecian and Oriental
Philosophy met together in their far-famed Schools, and mingled their
Wisdom. “The arms of the Macedonians,” says Gibbon, “diffused over Asia
and Egypt the language and learning of Greece; and the theological
system of Plato (before Christ, 360) was taught, with less reserve, and
perhaps with some improvements, in the celebrated School of Alexandria.
A numerous colony of Jews had been invited, by the favour of the
Ptolemies, to settle in their new capital. While the bulk of the nation
practised their legal ceremonies, and pursued the lucrative operations
of Commerce, a few Hebrews, of a more liberal spirit, devoted their
lives to religious and philosophical contemplation. They cultivated with
diligence, and embraced with ardour, the theological system of the
Athenian Sage. But their national pride would have been mortified by a
fair confession of their former poverty: and they boldly marked, as the
sacred inheritance of their ancestors, the gold and jewels which they
had so lately stolen from their Egyptian masters. One hundred years
before the birth of Christ, a philosophical treatise, which manifestly
betrays the style and sentiments of the School of Plato, was produced by
the Alexandrian Jews, and unanimously received as a genuine and valuable
relic of the inspired Wisdom of Solomon. A similar union of the Mosaic
faith and the Grecian philosophy, distinguishes the works of Philo,
which were composed for the most part under the reign of Augustus. The
material soul of the Universe might offend the piety of the Hebrews: but
they applied the character of the LOGOS to the Jehovah of Moses and the
patriarchs; and the Son of God was introduced upon earth under a
visible, and even human appearance, to perform those familiar offices
which seem incompatible with the nature and attributes of the Universal
cause.”[456]
It is not necessary that I should inquire here with great accuracy into
the nature of the Trinity as taught by Plato. I think it is most
probable that Plato’s Trinity was a Trinity of Attributes rather than a
Trinity of Persons; that it corresponded rather with Sabellianism than
with the Orthodox form of the Doctrine. This is a question, however, on
which it is impossible to speak with certainty, owing, partly, to the
nature of the ideas which constitute this compound conception of Deity,
and partly to the gorgeous style of the imaginative metaphysician, whose
figures we hardly know whether we are to harden into Realities, or to
fuse into Ideas. Authorities are divided upon this point—and we have the
name of Cudworth upon the one side, and the scarcely less illustrious
one of Guizot upon the other. Whatever may have been the view of Plato
himself,[457] it is certain that before Christ, his followers, some of
the purer of the later Platonists, as they are called, taught a doctrine
of the Trinity exactly corresponding to the form in which it was
established nearly three hundred years after the death of our Saviour,
by the first General Council of the Christian Church. The Platonists
contemplated one original fountain of being, a simple unity, “which
virtually containeth all things,” from whence all other things, whether
temporal or eternal, whether created or uncreated, were altogether
derived. This Monad or Unity the Platonists considered as the only
absolute or perfect existence, superior to intellect or wisdom, (Logos)
for these two reasons—first, because Intellect being concerned with
ideas, implies numbers and multiplicity; whereas the Supreme is UNITY;
and secondly, that because “Knowledge is not the highest good, there
must be some substantial thing in order of Nature superior to
Intellect.” In the same way that GOODNESS and UNITY, the properties of
the self-existent God, were supposed to be superior to Mind or Wisdom,
the second principle, so in its turn Intellect was supposed to be
superior to the moving spirit or energy which carried ideas (the ideas
of the Logos) into Action. The Monad, or Supreme Unity, generated
Intellect, and Intellect as containing the intelligible ideas or
archetypes of all sensible things, generated Soul or the spirit of
Action. Hence the Platonic Trinity: THE ONE GOOD; Intellect (LOGOS OR
NOUS); PSYCHE, or operating energy.[458] In Platonic language, the FIRST
in this Trinity is said to be _All things Unitively_; the SECOND, _All
things intellectually_; and the THIRD, _All things actively or
productively_. I shall give one example of the style of the Platonists
in expressing these Trinitarian conceptions. It is exactly that which
the earlier Fathers would have used when speaking of the Christian
Trinity. “That which is always perfect generates what is Eternal, and
that which it generates is always less than itself. What shall we say
therefore of the most absolutely perfect Being of all? Does that produce
nothing from itself? Or rather, does it not produce the greatest of all
things after it? Now the greatest of all things after the most
absolutely perfect Being is Mind or Intellect; and this is Second to it.
For Mind beholdeth this as its Father, and standeth in need of nothing
else besides it; whereas that First Principle standeth in need of no
(Logos) Mind or Intellect. What is generated from that which is better
than Mind, must needs be Mind or Intellect, because Mind is better than
all other things, they being all in order of nature after it, and junior
to it; as PSYCHE itself, or the First Soul; for this is also the Word or
Energy of Mind (Logos), as that is the Word or Energy of the First
Good.[459] Perfect Intellect,” (Logos, the second in the Trinity,)
“generates Soul” (Psyche, or Moving Spirit, the third in the Platonic
Trinity), “and it being perfect must needs generate, for so great a
Power could not remain steril. But that which is here begotten also,
cannot be greater than its Begetter; but must needs be Inferior to it,
as being the Image thereof.”—(_Plotinus. Cudworth_, p. 580.)
Now to connect such speculations as these with Gentile Christianity we
have the intermediate link of the Platonizing or Alexandrian Jews. About
two hundred years before Christ the Hebrew Scriptures were made
accessible to Grecian curiosity through the medium of the Septuagint
Translation: and when comparison came to be instituted between the
wisdom of their Sacred Books, and the wisdom of the Schools, a strong
temptation came into force upon the Jewish Platonists, by a system of
allegory and fanciful interpretation to make their Scriptures divulge
recondite doctrines, and by such imaginative means to metamorphose its
simplest statements into the likeness of the deep and mysterious
teachings of Philosophy. Hence arose the whole system of allegorizing
which prevailed so extensively among the Jews of Alexandria. They were
under two sets of influences, an affection for the Platonic or Eclectic
Philosophy of their Schools, and a jealousy for their Religion that made
them shrink from the idea that any Philosophy should contain secrets not
there divulged.[460] They combined these two affections, and made their
Scriptures speak the language of the Schools by means of the
transforming process of allegorical interpretation. Examples without end
might be given of the most extravagant transfigurations of the events of
Hebrew History.
As a preparation for the manner of speaking on these subjects afterwards
adopted by the earlier Christian Trinitarians, I will extract one
passage, which perhaps most faithfully represents the purer views of
Philo of Alexandria, the most eminent of the Jewish Platonizers, and
whose influence operating upon Christianity through the minds of the
Gentile philosophical believers, is to this day felt upon the popular
forms of our faith. I have only to premise that he is speaking of the
Attributes of God abstractly from God himself; and though it is more
than probable that Philo as well as Plato never separated these
Attributes from the Supreme Deity, still it was the necessary tendency
of such personifications to harden into distinct persons, and with
common minds personified Attributes very soon came to be considered as
Real Beings. This then was the original source of the Christian Trinity.
To keep the lofty and retired Essence of God apart from all contact with
matter which was looked upon as evil, and from number which was looked
upon as imperfect, the Powers of God were first considered as Emanations
from Him by successive generation—INTELLECT proceeding from the ONE
GOOD, and operating ENERGY or SPIRIT proceeding from Intellect (Logos)
to consummate its Ideas, and then gradually came to be separated from
Him, by a very natural process of philosophic deteriorations, and to be
fixed down into independent personalities. With these explanations I now
quote from Philo. He belonged to the age of Christ, but was born some
time anterior to the Christian era: Brucker says twenty years. Philo is
allegorizing the appearance of the three angels to Abraham, into a
threefold manifestation of the One God: “The FATHER is in the middle of
all, who in Holy Scripture is by a peculiar name styled THE BEING [HE
WHO IS]: and on each side are [two] most ancient Powers next to THE
BEING, whereof one is called the Effective (creative Power) and the
other Royal; and the Effective, GOD, for by this [the Father] made and
adorned the Universe; and the Royal, LORD, for it is fit he should rule
and govern what he has made. Being therefore attended on both sides with
his Powers, to a discerning understanding he appears one while to be
ONE, and another while to be THREE. ONE when the mind being in the
highest degree purified, and passing over not only a multitude of
numbers, but also that which is next to an Unit,” (the Monad) “the
number of two,” (the other two, Logos and Psyche) “endeavours after a
simple and uncompounded Idea, perfect of itself: and THREE, when not as
yet sufficiently exercised in great mysteries, it busies itself about
lesser, and is not able to conceive THE BEING, [HE WHO IS,] without any
other, of itself, but by his Works, and either as creating or
governing.”[461]
Such, then, were the prevalent modes of Conception at the time when the
Gospel passed out of the hands of strictly Jewish interpreters, and came
to be inspected by the eyes of Gentile Philosophers. With more or less
purity of conception, all the Platonists personified the divine
Attributes; and some of them represented these personified Attributes as
distinct Existences, not hesitating to speak of a second God, though
holding him to be derived and dependent. There is no trace among the
purer Platonists of any belief of three co-equal Gods, each possessing
within himself the fullness of Deity, yet mysteriously united. The
second and third persons in the Platonic Trinity were carefully
represented as derived, dependent, and subordinate, under the
similitudes of the stream and the fountain, the branch and the vine, the
sun and its outshining effulgence; the relation between them being like
that of three apparent Suns,—“two of them being but the _parhelii_ of
the other, and essentially dependent on it: for as much as the second
would be but the reflected Image of the first, and the third but the
second refracted.”[462]
Now it so happened that the Apostle John, living at Ephesus, “the centre
of the mingling opinions of the East and West,” made use of this term
“Logos” as already familiar to those for whom he wrote, and with the
purpose of impressing upon the word the higher and purer meaning
attached to it by the Jews of Palestine; wresting it from the
philosophical to the strictly Jewish or Christian sense. Nothing could
be more natural than that the Apostle should adopt the style of the
philosophic schools in the midst of which he wrote, especially since it
was not peculiar to them, but already in use among the Jews; and that
endeavouring to connect truth with familiar modes of speaking, he should
attempt to infuse into the word the more spiritual ideas with which it
was already associated in his own language.
“St. John,” says Guizot, “was a Jew, born and educated in Palestine; he
would naturally, then, attach to the word _Logos_ the sense attached to
it by the Jews of Palestine. Closely examined, the ideas which he gives
of the _Logos_ cannot agree with those of Philo and the school of
Alexandria; they correspond, on the contrary, with those of the Jews of
Palestine. Perhaps St. John, employing a well known term to explain a
doctrine which was yet unknown, has slightly altered the sense: it is
this alteration which we appear to discover on comparing different
passages of his writings. It is worthy of remark, that the Jews of
Palestine, who did not perceive this alteration, could find nothing
extraordinary in what St. John said of the Logos; at least they
comprehended it without difficulty; while the Greeks and Grecising Jews,
on their parts, brought to it prejudices and preconceptions easily
reconciled with those of the Evangelist, who did not expressly
contradict them. This circumstance must have much favoured the progress
of Christianity. Thus the fathers of the Church, in the two first
centuries and later, formed almost all in the school of Alexandria, gave
to the Logos of St. John a sense nearly similar to that which it
received from Philo.[463] Their doctrine approached very near to that
which, in the fourth century, the Council of Nice condemned in the
person of Arius.”[464]
It would not be possible, within my present limits, to trace, with a
minute accuracy, how the Logos of the schools became connected with the
Logos of the Gospel; and afterwards, under the necessity of adjusting
these conceptions with the nominal Unity of God, changed its form into
the present theory of the Trinity. It will readily be imagined that the
Gentile Christians, accustomed to associate ideas of external power with
their Deities, and at the same time to contemplate them in connection
with humanity, would shrink from the bare and unclothed conception of
the crucified Jesus; would endeavour to throw around their new faith a
mystic splendour that might protect it from the ridicule of Heathen
scoffers, and naturally seize upon means so obvious, the language
offered by St. John, and the ideas offered by their own philosophy, to
connect the pre-existent soul of Jesus not with Humanity, but with God.
In this way they could remove the shame and odium of the cross, that
stumbling block to the Jews, and to the Greeks foolishness. We little
realize with what distaste and abhorrence a Hebrew looking for the
Messiah, and a Philosopher speculating on the nature of the divine
Emanations that were the Mediators between God and men, would
contemplate the despised Galilean executed as a malefactor. Neither do
we realize, as we ought to do in this connection, the magnanimity of
Paul: “I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ
and him crucified;” so much has the technical jargon of theology
overcast the moral sublimity of the Apostle’s spiritual meaning.
I shall now, with as much distinctness as a subject purely literary will
admit, attempt to exhibit to you the gradual transformations, by which
these Conceptions slowly assumed the present orthodox form of the
doctrine of the Trinity. If this had been a doctrine of Revelation, it
would, of course, have been perfect at once; but arising out of
accidental circumstances and accidental ideas, it naturally required
many fresh adjustments to make it consistent with itself, and to protect
it, by skilfully chosen words, against all the troublesome attacks of
theological ingenuity. This was not the work of a moment nor of a
century,—hundreds of years passed over before the doctrine assumed any
fixed form; nor was it until the thirteenth century that the present
form of the doctrine of three Gods, numerically one, was authoritatively
decreed.[465] Those who tell us of an “unimproved and unimprovable
Revelation,” must surely be strangely ignorant of the history of
Trinitarian Theology.
There are three Creeds of the Church of England, each of them to be
referred to distinct Periods of Ecclesiastical History, and becoming
more Unitarian in proportion as we approach the Apostolical times, more
Trinitarian in proportion as we recede from those times. These three
Creeds I shall make serve as heads under which to introduce my proofs of
the rise and progress of the Trinitarian Doctrine.
The _first_ Creed is UNITARIAN. It was the only Creed known to the
Church for three hundred and twenty-five years.
The _second_ Creed is _partly_ TRINITARIAN, fixing the Deity of Christ,
but saying nothing of the Deity of the Holy Spirit.
The _third_ Creed contains Trinitarianism, though not in its final and
perfected, yet in its boldest and most extravagant, forms.
The first Creed is known by the name of the Apostles’ Creed. It is not
known by whom it was written, nor when it was written;[466] but though
we have no verbatim copy of it until after the Nicene Council, but only
more or less of the substance, and some of its clauses are evidently of
a later date, it may substantially be regarded as descriptive of the
faith of the Church at an early age.[467] “The Christian system,” says
Mosheim, “as it was hitherto taught, preserved its native and beautiful
simplicity, and was comprehended in a small number of articles. The
public teachers inculcated no other doctrines than those that are
contained in what is commonly called the Apostles’ Creed; and in the
method of illustrating them, all vain subtleties, all mysterious
researches, everything that was beyond the reach of common capacities,
was carefully avoided. This will by no means appear surprising to those
who consider that, at this time, there was not the least controversy
about those capital doctrines of Christianity which were afterwards so
keenly debated in the Church; and who reflect that the bishops of those
primitive times were, for the most part, plain and illiterate men,
remarkable rather for their piety and zeal than for their learning and
eloquence.”—(_Eccles. Hist._ cent. ii. p. 11. ch. 3.)
Here, then, is the FIRST CREED of the Church, long reverenced as a
formula drawn up by the Apostles themselves, and perhaps still by some
unwittingly honoured as such. It contains some departures from the
simplicity of Gospel language, as in creed-making must necessarily
happen; for creeds are required only by those for whom the Scriptures
are not sufficiently definite or sufficiently safe. So far as it is a
Confession of faith, it demonstrates that the belief of the primitive
Church was strictly UNITARIAN.
_The Apostles’ Creed._
I believe in GOD (or, as the earlier notices of this Creed have it, “in
_one_ God,” also, “_one only_ God the Father Almighty”) the FATHER
ALMIGHTY, Maker of heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ, his only Son
our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried: he
descended into hell; the third day he rose again from the dead; he
ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of GOD, the FATHER
ALMIGHTY: from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead: I
believe in the Holy Ghost; the holy Catholic Church; the communion of
saints; the forgiveness of sins; the resurrection of the body; and the
life everlasting. Amen.
* * * * *
From the various transformations of this Creed in the pages of
Ecclesiastical writers, it is evident that it was not a fixed but a
growing formula, and that additions were freely made to it according as
the heresies of the time might seem to require the introduction of a new
clause. One thing, however, is plain, that the Ages which had their
faith stated in this creed had not yet confounded Jesus with God; that
he who is simply and solely described as the Son of God, crucified and
dying, rising from the grave, and sitting now on the right hand of the
Father Almighty, was not yet exalted into the Second Person of the
Trinity, equal to God in all things.
Now it is not a little remarkable, that many orthodox writers perceived
and deplored the lamentable deficiency of this faith of the primitive
Church; and some of them boldly declare, that the Christian Fathers were
not yet initiated in these high mysteries. “M. Jurieu,” quoted by
Jortin, “whose zeal against heresy is well known, assures us that the
fundamental articles of Christianity were not understood by the Fathers
of the three first centuries; that the true system began to be modelled
into some shape by the Nicene bishops, and was afterwards immensely
improved and beautified by the following synods and councils.”[468]
Bishop Bull declares, “that almost all the Catholic writers before
Arius’ time seem not to have known any thing of the invisibility and
immensity of the Son of God; and that they often speak of him in such a
manner as if, even in respect of his divine nature, he was _finite_,
_visible_, and _circumscribed in place_.” Such sentiments are only to be
paralleled by some passages from these Fathers themselves, who declare
that such notions as they had of the divinity of Christ they had derived
solely from the Gospel of St. John, and that the other Evangelists had
but an obscure knowledge of this subject. “None of them,” says Origen,
“disclosed his divinity so purely as John.”[469] “John,” says Eusebius,
“commenced with the doctrine of the divinity, that having been reserved
by the divine Spirit for him as the most worthy.”[470] And, later,
Chrysostom declares that the other Evangelists were like “little
children, who hear, but do not understand what they hear, being occupied
with cakes and childish playthings;” but John taught, “what the angels
themselves did not know before he declared it.” “This doctrine was not
published at first, for the world was not advanced to it. Matthew, Mark,
and Luke did not state what was suitable to his dignity, but what was
fitting for their hearers. John, the Son of Thunder, advanced at last to
the doctrine of the divinity.”[471]
I shall now cite some proofs from the Christian writers of the three
first centuries, to show that though, in correspondence with Platonic
doctrines, a derived and subordinate divinity was ascribed to Jesus,
nothing like the present orthodox faith was dreamed of, and that the
highest authorities on these subjects, Cudworth for instance, are fully
aware that, for nearly four hundred years, the Creeds of the Church
embraced nothing more than the Platonic Trinity.
And, first, I shall give one distinct testimony from Origen, to which
others might be added from Irenæus and Tertullian, of the _Unitarianism
of the Jewish Christians_:
“And when you consider the faith concerning our Saviour of those of the
Jews who believe in Jesus, some thinking him to be the son of Joseph and
Mary, and others of Mary only, and the divine Spirit, but still without
any belief in his divinity.”[472] “_And they of the Jews who have
received Jesus as the Christ_, go by the name of Ebionites.”[473]
* * * * *
I am next to cite evidence that, for the first three hundred years, the
Christian writers acknowledged _the inferiority of Jesus to his_ FATHER,
though ascribing to him a derived divinity. It is not until A. D. 140
that we find any very distinct mention even of this description of
divinity as belonging to Jesus.[474]
_Justin Martyr_, _A.D._ 140.
“I will endeavour to show that he who appeared to Abraham, Jacob, and
Moses, and who is called God, is different from the God that made all
things,—_numerically_ different, though not _in will_; for I say that he
never did any thing but what that GOD WHO MADE ALL THINGS, and above
whom there is no god, _willed_ that he should do and say.”[475]
_Irenæus_, _A.D._ 178.
“We hold the Rule of Truth, that there is ONE GOD ALMIGHTY, who created
all things by his Logos.” ... “This is the Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ; and of Him it is that Paul declared, There is ONE GOD, even the
FATHER, who is above all, and through all, and in us all.”[476]
_Clemens Alexandrinus_, _A.D._ 194.
“There is one unbegotten almighty FATHER, and one first begotten, by
whom all things were, and without whom nothing was made. For one is
truly God, who made the _beginning_ of all things, meaning his
first-begotten son.”[477]
_Tertullian_, _A.D._ 200.
“I do not speak of Gods and Lords; but I follow the Apostle; so that if
the Father and the Son are to be named together, I call the Father God,
and Jesus Christ Lord: though I can call Christ God when speaking of
himself alone.” And he goes on to explain this by declaring, that a ray
of the sun may, with sufficient propriety, be called the sun.[478]